25. For whose glory!

[말레이]

25. For whose glory!

When everything was finished, the teacher invited all those who had worked hard for this work and held a big banquet to encourage those who had worked hard. And he especially gave me a seat at the main table. And through his words of encouragement,

“Today, you have done a great and memorable thing in the history of ‘Molisha’

I would like to express my sincere gratitude.

This was for myself,

and for all of us,

and for our children and descendants.

And I would especially like to thank the professor who opposed the reform

to the end as much as he could in the ‘Letter Reform Committee’.”

Then everyone in the room burst into laughter for a long time. And when the laughter died down a little, he continued.

“Today, there is someone special for me

and for all of us. He was the first person to teach me Korean and the Korean language,

and he supported me and my wife in both material and spiritual ways so that we could study abroad in Korea,

and he ultimately brought my wife and I together in love,

and he also helped me become president,

and he helped and supported us in many ways so that our country could use Hangul as a written language.

Let me introduce my teacher, Simon Lee.”

He suddenly introduced me and motioned for me to come forward. I was already worried about being exposed at the main table, but now he called me to the stage. A trickle of sweat ran down my back. That was because it was absolutely undesirable for my missionary work to be officially exposed to many local people.

However, there was nothing I could do now. I couldn’t refuse the teacher’s call. So I had no choice but to go to the stage. When I did, the teacher bowed his head repeatedly to greet me as I approached, saying how grateful he was. It was something that could be done between a teacher and a student, but now that I was the president and a foreigner, I didn’t know what to do. I was flustered by his sudden behavior, and since I couldn’t find another way, I also bowed my head and greeted the teacher. Then the audience applauded. Then the teacher said into the microphone, “In Korea, when you greet someone, you bow your head like this.” Everyone in the audience applauded and said, “Wow!” Then the teacher said, as if he was proud,

“I’ll invite my teacher, ‘Simon Lee,’

to the podium.”

He then motioned for me to say a word on the podium. So I waved my hand and said no, but the teacher, perhaps knowing my feelings or not, continued to motion for me to stand on the podium, and the people applauded thunderously. Ah! Now I couldn’t understand. So I had no choice but to stand on the podium.

“Everyone!

Hello?

I am Simon Lee, who came to Molisha from Korea 33 years ago!”

Then the people applauded with a “Wow!”

“First of all, I would like to congratulate you on the successful reform of Molisha with a new writing system this time.

I hope that the country will grow and develop overall through this foundation.

Thank you.”

After giving this brief greeting, I returned to my seat and thought,

“Ah!

It is time to wrap up the ministry at Molisha!”

I thought that this was because every role has its own place since ancient times, but I felt that it had already gone beyond that, and in the end, the proper function of the ministry would be lost and dysfunction would appear. In the meantime, the host said,

“Then, with that, I would like to once again congratulate everyone who worked hard on this writing reform, and I will conclude today’s program.”

He announced the end of the program. And when the president got up and left the stage, reporters suddenly came rushing towards me from all directions. And they started asking me all sorts of questions. I answered their questions roughly and then, like someone out of their minds, I turned around and started walking out of the venue. At that time, someone came to pick me up on the president’s orders, so I followed him and met the teacher. As soon as I saw the teacher, I asked him why he did that. Then the teacher said,

“Now, teacher, you have done as much as you could, so you can be known,

and it can actually be more helpful.”

So I asked back,

“Don’t you know that if my face is known,

it will hinder the things I want to do, and I won’t be able to do them properly?”

The teacher went even further and said,

“Teacher! “You have done so much for this country,

so now I would like to give you a medal and a title in our country.

That will actually help you in your future work.”

He said. On the one hand, I was indescribably grateful for the teacher’s consideration. However, seeing the teacher not understanding what I was saying, I suddenly felt tired as I realized that we could no longer communicate, that he did not understand my position and what I was saying. So I said that I was tired today and went home, lost in my thoughts.

The next morning, my face was on the newspaper and on TV, and reporters were adding their imaginations to stories about my relationship with the president. In an instant, a great crisis had come to the ministry that I had been doing for a long time in ‘Molisha.’ So I prayed about this issue for several days and seriously thought about what to do from various angles. Of course, at first, I came to this country and worked on various social welfare projects and made connections, and as I did these things and achieved some results, I thought, ‘Doesn’t this country give medals or titles to people who do these things? If they had connections with people in politics, they would have taken measures to receive them.’ There were also times when I thought, ‘If there were such things, many obstacles to doing ministry would be eliminated and it would be a great help.’ However, that was when I was not particularly focused on me and my status was just like that. However, when this happened in front of me, I suddenly began to receive attention from other people in ‘Molisha’ and various media outlets, and I felt a huge burden. Every day, media outlets kept asking to interview me, and when I didn’t respond, reporters persistently contacted me and asked for interviews, but I refused all interviews. Furthermore, not only the government in Korea, but also various other places contacted me, saying that it was a good thing. And requests for interviews poured in from various media outlets in Korea, even Christian media outlets. At times like that, I would think about this. Why do they not show any interest when it is necessary, such as when they are raising funds on site, but then swarm me like a swarm of bees when it is not? Who is this work for and whose glory is it? When I thought about the situation where I was restricted in many ways in the things I wanted to do because of this situation, it was truly ironic. Then I saw what God was telling me through this. I did not come here to receive His glory, but I thought that if things were going this way, wasn’t He teaching me that it was time for me to leave this land? So I thought of this as God’s answer to my question about what I should do in the future, and decided to close down my ministry in this country and move forward in a new direction that God would lead me to. When I first came to this country, I thought I would do ministry in this country and be buried in this country, but in an instant, the situation changed. However, since I have to follow God’s guidance and not my own will, I thought that such a thought itself could be my greed or a desire and attitude to reveal myself, so I completely abandoned that thought.

Moreover, if I continued to hang around here, the ministry I had built up so far and my son who would continue it would be exposed, and there was a risk of ruining the ministry. Fortunately, my son had grown up there since he was a baby and knew the local situation very well, so he would be able to solve the future matters on his own. Also, since he had seen me do ministry work, I believed that my son would continue to do well in the ministry, so I left everything to my son and concluded that I should leave the ministry as soon as possible.

Then, I thought back on the situations I had experienced while doing ministry work one by one. When I first came to the mission field with nothing and had nothing but my bare body, I could not describe the frustration I felt when I had nothing to do. Then, as I thought about the many situations I had experienced, such as the support, visits, and fundraising for the mission work as I built the framework for the mission work one by one, I could not help but come to this conclusion. The world is either real or fake. There were times when I was real and times when I was fake, and there were times when I was real and times when I was fake in the way I supported missionaries and visited them, and there were times when I was real and times when I was fake, and there were times when I was real and times when I was fake in the field of ministry. In a way, this was the limitation of the material world and weak human beings, and it seemed like the current state of our faith.

Therefore, I came to know that there are only two kinds of faith in the world: true faith and false faith! Even the same person, depending on the time and his spiritual state, sometimes stands firm in true faith, and on the contrary, sometimes stands in false faith. This simple fact! So, if I think about it differently, is my current appearance true? Or is it false? And am I going straight toward God and His kingdom from where I stand now? If not, am I turning to God and going straight? These questions remain as an eternal homework for me. Meanwhile, the Korean government, in accordance with the declaration of the use of Hangul in Moli, sent regular Korean language teachers to teach in existing schools on a large scale in consultation with the Moli government to have the people of Moli to learn Hangul, and assigned at least one teacher to each school as a Hangul teacher. However, compared to the size of the schools and students, there was still a shortage of Hangul teachers. And, with government support, or through self-funding, or through volunteering by teachers who teach Korean, each NGO and even the Christian community actively sent short-term missionaries and volunteers to teach Korean in ‘Molisha’ for a certain period of time in order to help missionaries, as well as official missionaries. These resources were mainly focused on ordinary young people in ‘Molisha’ who had already graduated from school, and furthermore, they tried to help all citizens learn Korean by teaching them. As a result, volunteers and short-term missionaries who volunteered to teach Korean were overflowing, which was a phenomenon not seen in previous years. In that sense, unlike previous years, the Korean Cultural Center was also overflowing with people who wanted to learn Korean every day and co-workers who would teach them Korean, so even though my wife and all the co-workers were teaching the locals together, there was still a shortage of teachers. So, we individually requested the headquarters to send more Korean teachers, and the number of co-workers also increased significantly. And as so many people came and influenced ‘Molisha’ in various ways, they naturally had a spiritual influence. And from another perspective, if you teach Korean naturally, you will eventually be able to learn Korean quickly later, and then you will have a higher chance of naturally seeing the Korean Bible. In that sense, teaching Korean has already become an important point of missionary work and a way to carry out ministry.