(This is a story that a grandfather tells his grandchildren (Darren, Madeline, Annabelle, Dante) about his life.)
I, Pastor Kim Joonsik, am an unknown person with no money or fame from the worldly point of view, but I tell this story to show you the hand of God and His intention that guided my life.
Children, I will tell you the stories of my life.
My Ancient Times
I was born on the 2nd day of the first lunar month in 1948 in my hometown, Hapcheon-ri, Hapcheon-myeon, Hapcheon-gun, Gyeongsang-namdo, Korea.
People say that the Alaskan cruise at the end of September was boring. They say that all they did were eat, stare blankly, and sleep with the blue ocean in the background all the time. However, the three of us had such a great time. My younger brother in Korea invited us to the Alaskan cruise. My younger brother from Korea, my older sister from Canada, and my wife and I from the US all gathered at a restaurant, eating and talking about old times from morning to night, without realizing how much time had passed. My brothers and sister left their hometowns early and lived separately. My older brother left his hometown when he was in middle school. He went to Jinju Middle School, Gyeongnam High Schoo in Busan, and then to Seoul. My older sister left her hometown when she was in college, and I went to Jinju High School in Jinju.
When my younger brother Junho lived with his mother and relatives and then went to Seoul to enter high school, our family completely left Hapcheon, our hometown where we had lived for generations. Since the elders of our family passed away early, we lived without knowing anything about our grandfather or father. And we only had fragmentary thoughts about our elders. In my case, my father passed away when I was two years old, before the Korean War. Since he passed away when I was so young, I lived until now without thinking about him at all. I never thought about him or regretted not having him. I didn’t even have a concept of my father in my life. However, since I had been reading the Bible and going to church since I was young, the invisible and silent God of the heavenly kingdom was my father. Because the Bible says God is our father. My younger brother is a posthumous child. And none of the elders in my family told us about my father or grandfather.
While spending a week on an Alaskan cruise ship, we shared stories about our lives and the elders in my family. And we were able to piece together the puzzle of our partial memories of those people.
My grandfather attended a five-year Baejae High School and graduated from Gyeongseong Surveying and Technology School for five years after graduating high school. My father also graduated from a five-year Baejae High School and Jodojeon Imperial University in Japan. He initially studied law and graduated with a degree in English Literature. After graduating from college, he worked as a high school English teacher in Samcheonpo. He studied hard for the bar exam and passed, but one day he died in his sleep. My father also worked out hard and had a great body.
My grandfather earned a lot of money through surveying technology after graduating from the surveying technology school.
I’m going to tell you a story that only I know about my grandmother and her family, my grandfather and my grandfather’s father, my great-grandfather(to you children, he is Great great great grandfather). This story was told to me from my ant. when I was a college student, my aunt(my father’s sister), who was a minister, took me with her when she went to the prayer house for a week of fasting and prayer. My grandmother was said to be the daughter of a wealthy Christian family at the time. She married my poor grandfather from a scholarly family, and she tried hard to make her husband believe in Jesus. However, my grandfather lived away from home for 10 years to study, and after graduating from the surveying school, he traveled around the country to do surveying. My grandmother lived with her sick father-in-law (my great-grandfather), and she encouraged my grandfather to believe in Jesus. My grandfather promised that he would believe in Jesus if she healed his father.
One day, a hungry stranger came to visit my grandmother. My grandmother fed him kindly and the stranger offered to repay her. He knew that his father-in-law was seriously ill and offered to tell her a secret to his recovery. if she would wear white for three years and go to the communal well at the mouth of the village at dawn, before anyone else drew water from the well, and let him drink it, he would be cured. My grandmother did this with all her heart and he was cured. My grandfather also kept his promise and started going to church, although he was not very diligent. And my great-grandfather also accepted Jesus before he died. My grandfather donated the current church building site of Hapcheon-eup Church.
My grandmother was very devoted to her children. She was devoted to them and loved them to the point of giving up her own flesh. When I was young, I got seriously ill, and my grandmother took me to a hospital run by German missionaries in Busan, where I was treated as an outpatient for a year.
My grandmother was good at math and had great business mind. When my father graduated from college in Japan, he had to go to war as an officer in the Japanese army. At that time, Japan was already on the verge of defeat in the war, and liberation was imminent. If he was captured by the army, he could die in the battle field. One day, my father received a telegram from home. It said that his mother had passed away, and that his eldest son and only son among siblings, should come and hold the funeral. My father really thought that his mother had passed away and went back to his hometown, but fortunately, it was my grandmother’s clever lie. My father went into hiding from then until liberation, when he finally did.
When my grandfather earned money from different places, my grandmother bought rice fields and other fields, and became rich. However, there was an incident where my grandfather went bankrupt and lost all his rice fields. We started a cooperative in Hapcheon. At that time, Japanese officials made my grandfather the head of the cooperative because he had a lot of property and was a local leader.
It is said that it was a system in which my grandfather would stand as guarantor for people who borrowed money. At that time, the people in the countryside did not know what a cooperative was, and my grandfather did not know what the guarantor system would lead to. People who had never used cash and had no business experience borrowed money from the cooperative and started a business, but they lost everything.
My grandfather ended up paying all the money they lost, and he lost all his property. My grandfather was upset and he got thoughts to leave home, and while traveling outside the city, he would come back after gathering his thoughts, but he woke up one morning and tried to leave the house without telling my grandmother. My grandmother had already noticed and was preparing, and just as my grandfather was about to leave early in the morning, she grabbed him by the back. My grandmother told my grandfather that there was no reason he left for. She said that she had a hundred cows that my he didn’t know about. It was said that she acquired a hundred cows by first buying a few cows and distributing them to poor and hard-working farmers, and when the cows gave birth to three calves, the mother cows became the property of the farmer. she said that he could sell the cows to pay off his debts and regained possession of the fields.
My grandfather passed away during the Korean War, and my grandmother passed away when I was in my first year of middle school. My mother passed away when I was in my second year of college.
children’s great-grand parents and granduncle
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