07. Helping Hands in Ministry!

[말레이]

07. Helping Hands in Ministry!

No matter what you do, there are not many things you can do alone, and it is already obvious that things will be much better if you join forces and help each other rather than doing them alone.

In the Busan and Gyeongnam regions, those who do praise work in the region gathered together to form the ‘Busan Gyeongnam Praise Workers’ Association’, and one of the praise workers who serves as the leader of the association suggested that the praise workers who go to each church and do praise work and receive a living allowance gather those who would dedicate themselves to the praise work once a year and go to the mission field to dedicate themselves to the praise work, so a team was gathered and came to the site. After seeing the local ministry, I visited various churches in Korea and got to know many pastors, so I introduced them to many missionary work such as building a church in the local area, and many ministries were carried out.

One of them was the heart surgery ministry. Through the butler’s introduction, I met a Korean ‘heart foundation’ and received a proposal to perform surgeries on children with heart disease such as ‘Molicia’. So I decided to first find out about the local situation and then contact them, and started to find out about various situations locally. When I found out, there were many children with heart disease locally, waiting at the national hospital. However, even for ‘Molicia’, there was a high possibility that problems would arise if they were to proceed with this individually. So I looked into how I could proceed, and found that the local heart foundation was also doing this, but while there was a limit to the amount of fundraising locally, there was already a channel established with the local national hospital to perform surgeries, so it was possible to proceed by joining hands with the local heart foundation. Through a local coworker’s introduction, I was able to sign an MOU to cooperate with the heart foundation, and I was able to connect with the local national hospital and proceed with the heart surgery program with the help of the national hospital. In this way, I have been performing surgeries on an average of 16 children with heart disease every year since 2007. And then, I needed a flight to Korea for surgery, so I went to the branch manager of Airline A and asked the headquarters to look into social contribution programs. After looking closely, I noticed that the branch manager’s attitude was a bit different, so I asked if he had served as an officer in the military, and he said yes. So I asked where he was from, and he said he was a bachelor. When I asked which class he was from, he said he was from the 13th class. I was so happy to hear that, I held out my hand and said I was from the 10th class. I greeted him again and asked him to take care of things so that things would go well in the future. Then, through his hard work and help, flights and other amenities were arranged, so that heart disease patients could travel to Korea comfortably. Another thing was that I needed to set up a mission center that would be the center of the ministry, but when I looked into it, the rent was too expensive. No, the cost of purchasing with a bank loan and paying it off every month was the same as the cost of receiving a bank loan and paying it off every month. So who would rent it? Why would they buy it with a bank loan? I thought. So I started looking for a suitable place. Then, a very good building happened to come up, so I contacted the owner and asked to sign a contract. I said that it would take time to process the loan, so I put down a deposit of 1.5 million won, and I made it clear that I would not get it back if there was a problem. However, when I sent the building documents during the process of applying for a bank loan, the building was an independent building with a lower floor made of cement bricks and an upper floor made of wood, so the bank said that they could only give me half of the loan because they only give loans for cement buildings. So I lost all my deposit and started looking for a suitable place again. After looking into it for a while, I realized that a standalone building would need a separate parking lot, and if it was close to a residential area, there would be complaints from neighbors about noise from gatherings, so I looked into a commercial building in the city. There was a good building that was being built and sold, and since it was a commercial building, it even had a large parking lot. Also, even though the parking lot was usually full, the stores started opening slowly from 10 AM, so by that time on Sunday, the service had already started, and there was enough time for the attendees to park their cars. So I decided that this would be a good place and put down a 2% deposit. Then I started looking into bank loans. However, the problem was that getting a bank loan was not as easy as I thought. Most missionaries are in a hurry to do their work because they receive monthly support. That is why it was difficult to qualify for a local loan. Fortunately, I was qualified to get a loan due to the process and results of my ministry. However, even if they were qualified to receive loans, it was not easy for banks to provide loans to foreigners. The reason was that some foreigners who had previously come here received bank loans, set up factories, bought used machinery, pretended to operate them for a while, and then went bankrupt and returned to their home countries. When the bank confiscated the factories and machinery, they found that the machinery was no different from useless scrap metal. So, it was obvious to everyone that after that, providing loans to foreigners would become more difficult in many ways. So, when I asked a local pastor if there was a solution to this problem, he introduced me to a bank branch manager among his church members. So I met him and explained that the monthly building rent and the monthly repayment after the bank loan are the same, so if I were to get a loan and buy the building and pay off the bank loan, I wouldn’t have to pay any more office rent, so I would like to get a loan and buy the center. I don’t have a penny right now, but I think I can pay the monthly loan. I asked if he could help me. He said he would look into it and get back to me. After about a month, I got a call from the branch manager to meet him. When I met him, he said that in Korea, the branch manager can make decisions on expenses of that level with his full authority, but in this country, everything is reviewed and decided by the head office. He said that foreigners can get a loan of up to 80% on paper, but in reality, they give 60-65%, which is a lot, and he talked to the head office as much as he could and got 70%. However, I said that I needed to get 80% to get a loan, and that a 70% loan would be useless to me, so let's just ignore it, and he said he would look into it again and left. So I thought that this was no longer the case, but when we met again a couple months later, he finally asked me if I would get a loan since he could get the full 80%. So I said yes. Then, after thinking about it carefully, I came to the conclusion that I had to come up with the remaining 18% since I had already paid the deposit. I had to solve this problem too, but there was no other way. So one day, while praying, I had a really strange idea. I thought about going to the company that developed and built this building and suggesting that we pay the 18% cost in installments while paying the bank interest. Of course, if you think about it on the other hand, a development company is a company that buys land with a lump sum, develops it, builds a building, sells it, and makes a profit, so they need a lump sum, and there was no way they would handle it with a small amount of money that comes in every month. Nevertheless, thinking, “Why can’t I pretend to be crazy and make a suggestion?” I finally went to the development company and asked to meet the person in charge. When I was guided to the person in charge’s room, the person who greeted me there was a member of another club with whom I had worked and interacted for a long time through Lions Club activities. We greeted each other warmly and asked how things were going with the various ministries, including the heart surgery program. He said that it was still in progress and talked about this and that before asking why I had come to see him. I hesitated to ask him this question and said that I had actually come to make a ridiculous suggestion today, but since you were sitting there, I felt embarrassed to bring it up, so I suggested that I just listen to what he had to say. So once again, my face turned red and I said that in fact, my company had decided to get a bank loan to purchase the building that was developed and constructed by your company, and I had paid a 2% deposit and signed the contract, but since the loan money was coming soon and I didn’t have the remaining 18%, I came to make a proposal to you, asking if you could let me pay the interest on the bank loan over the next 5 years, but I was flustered because you weren’t there. I told you that even though I was the representative, it was an issue that I couldn’t decide unilaterally and that I would discuss it with the board of directors and let them know the result. I was grateful for that in itself, and after saying goodbye, I left the office. I could really feel my face turning red after I left.

And after about a month, I got a call from him asking to meet, so I went to his office and he joked that Pastor Lee must have really prayed a lot and congratulated me. He brought up the issue to the board of directors and said that Pastor Lee had performed surgeries on children with heart disease in our country and had helped many other people in need, and had been doing volunteer work with us through the Lions Club, so how about we help Pastor Lee now? All the directors unanimously agreed and said that this was the first time in the 30-year history of their company that something like this had happened, and that they really congratulated me. I couldn’t tell how grateful I was to hear that. So I kept saying thank you over and over again and did my best not to show him any shame for 5 years, and then I visited him in the last month to express my gratitude and gave him ginseng tea as a gift.