I know there is never a ceiling in our relationship with God.  Jesus promises that we will do even greater things than Him (John 14:12-14)… if we would just have faith.  I want to hear and know the Spirit’s voice more.  I want to be more intimate with the Lord and know more of His heart for me.  I know I can’t be fully used to heal/set free others until my identity is complete in Christ.  I’m willing to lay everything down in my life to get there.  I want to be able to pray for people so effectively that it is the Lord speaking through me and not my own voice.  Sometimes when I pray for people I try so hard to say the right words and pray hard, but I feel a lacking in the Spirit’s power and I know there is so much more to be had and shared.  But when the Spirit is speaking, it is so easy.  Draw me deeper Lord.  Amen.

NLCF – How Deeply I Need You… old school

NORTH KOREA

I watched a National Geographic documentary on North Korea a few weeks ago with a dorm mother and a high schooler here (the documentary was all in Korean).  Afterwards I asked my high schooler to describe her feelings and she said in her limited English, “Interesting, sad, and scary.”  Below is the last 7 minutes of the documentary (here in English).  Please watch it…

Deuteronomy 32:16-17… “They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols.  They sacrificed to demons, which are not God–gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your fathers did not fear.”

In North Korea “Kim Il Sung” is the “Father” of the nation, “Kim Jong Il” is the “Son” of the nation, and the people are the “Spirit” of the nation.  Watch, and see and feel the truth in those two verses from Deuteronomy.  Please watch!

Here are the links to the first four parts of the documentary, I encourage you to watch it all if you have the time. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGR8SNMmCZA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvDQvEQIsL0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgHzHQgIzOs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBjMX19lQmw

Because my Korean classes ended this past week I had a bit more free time and was able to let the kids come over more.  Here are some video game pics…

Min Shik and Il Ho

Introducing the video game face of Hyun Suk

Another picture

And later, another picture… Il Ho’s and Hyun Suk’s expressions never changed… yay for video games!

The kids were playing Fifa (Soccer game)

The video game face part two… me, Hae Ji, Eun Ji, and Sun Mi

The next picture… Eun Ji remained frozen

We were playing the N64 version of Mario Kart

Lastly, one of my part time volunteers Won Hyung came by for an extra visit last Wednesday evening and took me and our 4th – 6th grade girls out for Baskin Robbins

The kids and me devouring the ice cream… (Korea it is community style, I think we had a quart of ice cream)

The Simpsons family… Soo Jin and me

This past Tuesday I finished Level 3 of Korean classes at Yonsei University.  I’ve learned a lot these past few months, but I still need a ton of practice.  Here are some different sentences straight out of my textbook that I learned during the past couple months…

키는 나만하고 얼굴은 까무스름하고, 안경 쓴 사람이 왔었어요. 
Someone came who was my height with a swarthy face and glasses.

콩 심은 데 콩 나지 팥이 안 나요.
If you plant soy beans you get soy beans, not red beans!

고향에 가서 농사나 지을까 해요. 
I’m thinking about moving back to my hometown and doing some farming or something.

금강산도 식후경이라고 하던데 먹기부터 합시다.
They say, “Even the Diamond mountains are to be seen after eating,” so lets eat first.

집에 있으라니요?  내가 강아지인가?
Stay home?!  What am I, your dog?!

생일이니까 미역국이라도 끓여 줍시다.
Since its her birthday let’s at least make her some seaweed soup.

비 오듯이 나를 반긴다.
Sweat falls down from my face like the rain.

저 사람이 우리더러 욕하는 것 같아요.
It looks like that person is swearing at us.

Good times.  God bless!

Please welcome Jina, our newest child. 

She is 1 and a half… a few months older than Na Rae

Jina

With some of the kids

Another try for a group shot

Kang, Jung Ho, and Hyun Bin

Yoon Ji

Yoon Ji acting goofy and then cracking up as I would try and take a picture

One more of Jina

God bless!

Yesterday I watched the movie “Antwone Fisher” with a couple of my high schoolers.  I hadn’t seen it before and didn’t know its plot but I had heard it was good and Denzel Washington is one of my kid’s favorite actors (after watching Man on Fire and Inside Man) so we picked it.  Turned out the movie was a true story about a navy guy who gets counseling and confesses his past as being orphaned young, being raised in a foster home, receiving physical, mental, and even sexual abuse as he grew up, and at the end meeting his mom for the first time in his life (she had him in prison and he was put in the orphanage as a baby, not knowing she was still alive growing up).  It was weird watching such a movie with my kids.  My kids watching it thankfully don’t have that extreme type of past (all the abuse), but some other kids here do.  The loneliness/questions of orphaned kids is the same for them all.  But my kids take such movies in stride.  I remember showing my 3rd – 5th graders the movie “Lemony Snicket” where some kids in the movie are orphaned.  I remember as the story unfolded a couple of my kids said, “Hey, they’re just like us!”  The movie Antwone Fisher (a good movie, though a couple parts were hard to watch) was actually written by the real Antwone Fisher.  Its powerful that he had been able to overcome enough in his life to share such a rough story with the world.  I pray the same for my kids.  Hopefully we’ll have a bunch of tear-jerking/stories of victory based on the kids of Geon Christian Children’s Home. 

This past week we began renovating the dormitory (6 dorms where almost all the kids live).  Painters worked on two rooms at a time, so at night while the paint would dry and the dorm would air out, the kids from that dorm had to double up in another dorm.  That meant 25 kids and 2 dorm mothers had to sleep in one apartment/dorm.  Here are a few pics of the kids sleeping…

The 4th and 5th graders slept in the TV area (a couple of them hadn’t gone to bed yet)

Here are some of the kindergarden – 3rd graders

Ye Rang, Myung Bae, and Bum Yong

Dal Woo… he injured his back/shoulders in such a way that he has to keep his elbows level with his shoulders and his hands up for a few weeks… weird injury, but he is still in good spirits

Jung Hwan, Joon Hyuk, Yoo Min, Ji Won, and… Sun Jae?

These next three are pictures I took when I was taking care of the chicken pox boys (my apartment in the orphanage is also the clinic/incubation apartment).  This was how my boys slept…

I came home from Korean classes one afternoon to find my boys sleeping like this… their dorm mother had just been teaching them and reading to them

One more pic

God bless!

Shawn McDonald – Pour Out