I didn’t have music classes in elementary school, middle school, and high school. I think it was because it was a rural school, so it was hard to find a music teacher. At Jinju High School, there was no music class until the second semester of the third year. At that time, there was a big incident in Jinju City. Jinju High School was known as a prestigious high school in the region, and it admitted about 50 students to Seoul National University every year. Once, there was a music quiz competition on the radio between Jinju High School and Jinju Girls’ High School. It was a game where you had to guess what the song was first when you heard it. As soon as the song started playing on the radio, a male student stopped first and told the title of the song. I think the song was probably a very easy classical song. But he told a song of BBongZzak. However, by telling the title of the song, it became a big topic of conversation in Jinju society. The principal was heavily criticized. They asked how on earth he taught the students’ general education.
I think a music teacher volunteered because of that. She was a female professor at a teacher’s college who was divorcing her husband. I loved it. The school didn’t have a pump organ or a piano, but she started teaching music theory to third-year high school students. she also taught them how to compose basic compositions. I found music theory interesting. However, I came to Seoul to take the college entrance exam after getting a taste of music for a semester.
When I came to Seoul, I contacted my grandmother in Jinju. The school said they wouldn’t write my application for admission to Seoul National University, so I asked my grandmother to take care of the problem. My maternal grandmother is a sharp-witted and strong-willed person. She would blink when I said something. My grandmother was a friend with the father of our high school principal, an elder in the church. My grandmother talked to the elder and asked him to have the principal write my application. That’s how my application was submitted, and I was accepted to Seoul National University. What would have happened if the school hadn’t written my application? After that, my junior came to Seoul and told me that I had caused a sensation at that school. That’s because a student who the school didn’t expect to be accepted had been accepted. Just as he gave power to Gideon, he did the same to me. It was God the Father’s reward for my life training through illness. It was to revive my spirit.
However, I couldn’t study much because of my illness. It was when I was a sophomore in college. I became the president of university student meeting in the church I attended. One day, a member of our meeting brought a college friend from another church to our church’s college meeting. The friend came to me and said, “Brother, are you saved?” I couldn’t tell you how angry I was when I heard that. I kicked him and chased him away, thinking, “Hey, who do you think I am, and how dare you ask me that?” (I thought to myself, “I am a 4th generation believer, a member of the choir, a Sunday school teacher, and the president of the meeting, how dare you ask me if I am saved…)
After that, the question “Are you saved?” kept coming to my mind. When I was walking down the street, the voice asked me, “Are you saved?” When I was eating, when I was reading a book, when I was listening to a lecture, when I was lying down to sleep, the voice asked me, “Are you saved?” From that time on, I began a deep and long journey of faith. I began to wonder whether the Christianity I believe in is the true truth, whether the Bible is the true word of God, whether God is actually alive, whether there is heaven and hell, and who I am. So I read philosophy books, psychology books, and listened to lectures. Without reaching any conclusion, I became so neurotic that I thought I would die, so I climbed up a steep rock on a high mountain and tried to die. When I looked down, I felt dizzy and thought I would die, so I came back down. Because of my severe neurosis, it was difficult to study.
And when I took tests in subjects like biochemistry, organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, and calculus at school, they were all things that had to be solved with math. I floundered in a swamp of endless disappointment. Because of that, I lost my spirit. While other students were arrogant, drinking, and roaming the streets of Seoul at night, I had no time to enjoy the privileges and pride of being a Seoul National University student. My brother cousin by my maternal uncle, was my senior by two years and we spent two years together. He said that he enjoyed the best college life of his youth by drinking and hanging out with his friends.
God sent me to Seoul National University to compensate for the illness I had suffered from, but he kept me from being arrogant and thinking of other things, and he kept me from moving.
Every summer vacation, I did volunteer works in the town of the church and led a summer Bible school at a rural church. That required a lot of preparation. No one helped me prepare things like train discounts, recruiting members, and going door to door to prepare subsidies, rice, and side dishes. I had to do all the preparations by myself.
Even going to the train station to get a discount on a train ticket required taking a bus and going back and forth several times. As I walked around alone in the scorching sun, I thought to myself, “Why am I wasting my time like this when I could go into the mountains and study during the vacation to catch up on the subjects I had fallen behind in?” But I did it anyway. The hard work was worth it during the volunteer work. However, when the vacation was over and I went back to school, I suffered again. It was the same during the summer vacation of my second year.
God compensates for all those things. When I came to Canada and studied computer science, I don’t remember exactly whether it was statistical mathematics or not. I was sick of math in Korean college, but I thought to myself that I would get revenge on math, my enemy. I had to take a math test at the end of the semester. The teaching assistant handed out six blank test papers. There were two questions, but each math test took three sheets of paper. You had to use three pages to solve one problem, and you had to be accurate in the process of solving it, and you had to get the answer right. I got a perfect score on that test. There were only two people in that class who got a perfect score: me and a Vietnamese refugee who was a Navy captain. So I blew away my sadness about math at a Korean university. God made me realize that I can do math well too. If I go to college again, I want to study math or physics. Studying math is fun. I bought five math books and put them on the bookshelf, and every time I look at them, I say that I should study math when I have time.
Up until now, God has tied me up with illness and math problems during my school life, caught my free-spirited childhood temperament, trained me to observe, made me humble, and kept me from standing out. He was pleased with the time when he kept me hidden. He trained me to be strong-willed and cautious in my actions. I am the type of person who cannot sit at a desk, but He made me do so through long and arduous training. I did not exercise until college. My health was poor until my 50s. He made me participate in marathons starting at the age of 60.
One day in my 50s, after the early morning service, I went to the public swimming pool in the park in front of the church to swim. I was in a swimming pool 25 yards (22.86 meters) away and I wished I could do 10 round trips. But after doing 10 turns, I thought I could do more, so I said I would do 50 turns, and I did. Then I said I would do 100 turns, and that happened, so I thought I could do 300 turns this time, and I kept going, and when I reached 200 turns without stopping, I thought I was strange. I was scared and surprised that I had such strength. I quit that day. It was about 5.7 miles and over 3 hours. I did it not freestyle, but by dog swimming. It was the way dogs or cows swim on the water. We called this swimming method dog swimming. Since you don’t put your head in the water but keep it out of the water, your body is perpendicular to the water, so you swim with your whole body against the water’s resistance. That’s why it’s a very difficult and slow swimming method.
When I was young, the Hwang gang River in my hometown was usually empty, but during floods, muddy water would flow. At that time, I swam without putting my head under the water. At that time, I didn’t even know there was a freestyle swimming method. Freestyle swimming is swimming where you keep your body parallel to the water surface, so it takes less strength and is much faster than dog swimming.
I was so surprised that I could swim for so long that I came home excited. Then I decided to try again. I decided to test if it was a coincidence or my own strength. But without a single rest, I swam 50 times, 100 times, 200 times, 300 times, and kept swimming. It was during summer vacation, so at noon, when the general public was allowed in, the kids came rushing in and the water was surging, so I couldn’t swim anymore, so I came out and saw that I had been swimming for 4 and a half hours without stopping. Ah! I was so touched that God had given me this ability.
I remember talking about swimming, but I’m a mountain boy. I’ve never swum in the ocean. During my summer vacation in my second year of college, my classmate team went to the South Sea to study marine life ecology. It was the rainy season at the time, so I spent a whole week doing experiments in the lab, and then one morning when I came out, the weather was clear. I thought it was time, so I saw a small boat in the middle of the ocean in front of me, I thought that I swam over there, got on it, rested for a while, and then come back. I started swimming. After a while, the water suddenly became cold. I was scared and looked back, but since it was too far to go back, I decided to go forward. However, when I got closer, I saw that it wasn’t a small boat, but a large ship. It was a large ship that was over 2m high above the water.
There were glass balls with a diameter of 50cm on the water around the ship, so I tried to hang on it and rest, but it kept spinning, so I couldn’t rest and had to come back. I don’t know how many hours it took. When the students realized I was missing and looked for me, I was nowhere to be found, and no one saw me. After a long time, they found me swimming far out in the ocean. I got close to the shore, put my legs on the bottom, and collapsed in the water. I wonder how many miles it would take for a ship that size to look like a small boat in the middle of the ocean these days. When I swim in the ocean, I swim 1 mile and come back (for the triathlon), and the boat that was 1 mile away from the ocean didn’t look that small. The reason I tell this story is because I discovered a part of myself that I didn’t know.
When I was running a marathon, I thought that I should do a triathlon because it was boring to run on the road for 5-6 hours. Since I know how to run and swim, I thought that I just needed to learn how to buy a racing bicycle. Since a bicycle is a racing bike, it costs at least 2,000 to 10,000 dollars. I buy a bicycle at a low price and practice. I’ve ridden up to 80 miles a day. When you ride long distances like this, you need to eat often and eat well, but a racing bike is not designed to carry food. That’s why people practice long-distance bicycling in a group. I always had to do it alone. As a pastor, I had to exercise alone on Mondays when everyone else was working.
To do a triathlon, you need to swim fast, and to do that, you need to swim freestyle. By putting your head in the water and keeping your body parallel to the water surface to minimize water resistance, you can swim faster and farther with less effort only by freestyle swimming.
To learn freestyle, I ordered 5 books on triathlon from Amazon. Some of the books were 1,000 pages long. While reading the books, I found out the three tips for freestyle swimming. First, keep your body parallel to the water surface. Second, tilt your body left and right. At this time, raise your head above the water and breathe. Third, make your body as long as possible. To do this, extend one hand toward your head and then extend the other hand toward your head continuously, making your body as long as possible. I read about how to put your head in the water and how to breathe at that time, and I started to experiment with the principles at the pool and learn them. I tested to see if I could actually do this in the water according to this theory, and I could.
At first, it was hard to go back and forth twice. But once while swimming, God coached me by saying (in my mind) ‘Don’t try to run fast, but swim slowly.’ So I swam slowly and went back and forth ten times without difficulty. After confirming that the theory in the book was actually working, I returned home after doing that much that day. From then on, I was able to swim underwater for 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, and 2 hours, and finally I was able to participate in the triathlon. God coaches swimming, studying, and math.
When I was pastoring in El Paso, I didn’t know if there were any academies at the time, and even if there were, I couldn’t afford to send my kids to academies, and I didn’t even think about academies. I helped my kids study. When I taught my kids math, there were easy, medium, and most difficult problems in the math textbook. My kids were the only ones who could solve the most difficult problems among the homework problems. So the math teacher recommended my kids to the National Math Gifted Club. When I study math with my kids, if I can’t solve a problem, I pray to God. I think of it when I say, “God, help me figure out this problem.” That’s how I solved the problems.
Once, I was in charge of accounting at the church where I was serving as an associate pastor. On Monday morning, before going to the bank to deposit money, I checked my checks again and there was one check missing. I was in big trouble. I prayed to God and He gave me an idea and told me to look deep into the lower drawer. When I looked, I found that one check had slipped out into the lower drawer when I closed the upper drawer. Hallelujah !. When I was in korean college, I thought that God could never teach me to study, help me with my exams, or help me do well on them. That’s because He didn’t help me even when I prayed during college. When I was a pastor in rural America, I tried to teach my children so that they wouldn’t have to struggle with their studies like I did in school. Now that I think about it, I thoroughly realize that God helps me with my exams, my studies, my math, my wisdom, my understanding, my thoughts, and listening his voice. I emphasize this to people.
As compensation for not being able to exercise when I was young, God allowed me to participate in marathons and triathlons at the age of 60s, an age when most people quit exercising. When people think of triathlons, they think of the Ironman. There are many different types of triathlons based on distance. A true Ironman triathlon is a 2-mile swim, 120-mile bike ride, and 26.2-mile run. At first, there was no cutoff, but as the number of participants increased, a 17-hour off.
I started doing half marathons when I was 70 so that I could run a marathon until I was 80. My wife started running marathons when she was 66, so I changed to a half marathon to keep up with her. My wife ran a half marathon in 8 months at the age of 67 and received a medal.
I hated studying, but my heavenly father made me sit at my desk and write a book. When I was writing a book, I would stay at my desk for 10 or 12 hours a day. I never thought I was smart. I never studied hard in school. I focused all my energy on fighting my illness and had no interest in studying. And I didn’t think studying was difficult except for my first and second years of college. When I was attending, Jinju High School held a test at the end of every month and posted the rankings of 420 students in the same level of the classes on the wall. I was in the top 50.
I thought Seoul National University was the only place to go because everyone around me was a graduate of Seoul National University. My relative uncle, Kim Gwang-il, was a graduate of Gyeongnam High School in Busan and Seoul National University Law School, my other cousins were also graduates of Seoul National University, and my brother’s friends were graduates of Seoul National University Law School, Business School, Engineering School, and College of Liberal Arts. My brother tried to get into Seoul National University Law School or Business School Economics Department several times but failed, so I thought Seoul National University was the only place to go. I thought I would naturally go to Seoul National University, too. I didn’t consider my abilities at all.
I went to Seoul National University, but I was very discouraged by the difficult studies. While other students were full of themselves, drinking parties, having team meetings with girls, and walking around the streets of Seoul at night, I didn’t have the luxury of being a Seoul National University student and having pride. My older brother is a senior of mine at Seoul National University, and we went to college together for two years. He said that he enjoyed the best college life of his youth by drinking and hanging out with his friends. God made me enter Seoul National University as compensation for the illness I had suffered from, but he told me not to be arrogant and not to think of other things, and he kept me from moving.
I was the president of the college student association during my first and second years in the church. Every summer vacation, I would volunteer in the countryside and lead a summer Bible school at a rural church. That required a lot of preparation. I had to get discounts on train tickets, recruit members, and go door to door to prepare subsidies, rice, side dishes, and other things, but no one helped me. I had to do all the preparations by myself. others students of my church left the work to me, who was from the countryside, and they went around. Even going to the train station to get a discount on train tickets required going back and forth several times.
I thought to myself as I walked around in the scorching sun, sweating profusely. I was so distressed that I could have caught up on all the subjects I had fallen behind in if I had gone into the mountains to study during the vacation, but why was I wasting my time like this? But I did it. When I did volunteer work, the hard work was worth it. However, when the vacation was over and I went back to school, I suffered again. It was the same during the summer vacation of my second year. God compensates for such things.
I started going to church naturally while I was in my mother’s womb. I never experienced grace when I was young. I never experienced a challenge to my faith. At that time, I heard my older church brothers and sisters of the church testify in front of the church that they had received grace after going to cities like Busan, Masan, and Daegu to attend winter and summer SFC retreats. I had never attended such events. My mother did not have the heart to send us to such places. My mother worked as a county office clerk to feed and educate us. Without even receiving a six-month salary, she went on business trips to the countryside every day to give lectures on the women’s movement during the final days of the Liberal Party for the presidential election. My family still had a lot of rice fields that had been passed down from the previous generation, so we did not suffer from hunger when we were young.
My older brother went to school in a foreign place. My older sister, me, and my younger brother spent our time sleeping, eating, playing, raising chickens, pigs, and raising rabbits, missing our mother. The day my mother was to return from her business trip was approaching. We were excited and eagerly awaiting that day, but at dawn we heard a loud clucking noise from the chicken coop, so when we went to check, we saw a weasel entering the coop and stealing a chicken, and blood was splattered all over the place. Because of that, my excitement about meeting my mother turned into worry.
At that time, my older sister was in the third year of middle school, I was in the sixth grade of elementary school, and my younger brother was in the third grade. Another day, my older sister and I were studying in the evening, and we fell asleep with the lantern on, and I don’t know who hit it, but the blanket caught fire and burned. The adults who lived in the next rented room smelled the burning smell, opened our door, came in, and put out the fire.
Since it was close to my mother’s return, my older sister put the blanket back in its original condition. The lantern lid was broken, so we couldn’t turn on the lantern. I remember trying to patch it up with rice paste because there was no glue or tape at the time.
The story about the lantern reminds me of this. I studied at the lantern for three years in high school. I lived alone with my maternal grandmother in Jinju. During the Korean War, my grandmother did not evacuate and stayed at home. When the power lines were short-circuited due to the bombing and the house was about to catch fire, she saw it and pulled out the power lines with her bare hands to prevent the house from burning down. After that, she said she would not have electricity while she lived in that house. At that time, I moved in with my grandmother who lived alone. I could not turn on the lamp(Korean, Ho-Rong) from 10 PM when my grandmother was sleeping.
I will tell you about my older sister. According to the stories of my older relatives, when she was young, she would climb up on the stilt and push the lid of the large cauldron to put rice in it, and when she would scoop up rice, she would climb up on the stilt and push the lid of the cauldron to scoop up rice. My mother went on a business trip to another place for work, and my grandmother was often absent. And my grandmother passed away when I was in middle school, so we ended up living alone. My older sister was busy doing laundry, cooking, preparing side dishes, doing farm work, and going to school. My older sister was three years older than me, but she was like a mother to my younger brother and me.
Let me tell you about my mother. My younger brother lived alone with my mother after his older brothers and sister left home. My younger brother was studying at school, and my mother visited the school. When my younger brother looked through the classroom window during class, he saw my mother throwing a ball by herself at the basketball hoop. My mother said that she was a basketball player when she attended Jinju Girls’ High School. She said that she represented the school when the Jinju Girls’ High School basketball team played against Pyongyang Girls’ High School. My mother was also a leader in education and culture in rural Hapcheon. She started a kindergarten, and once a year, she trained the kindergarten children in plays, dances, and songs, and she even made props and performed them at the Hapcheon-eup theater. It is said that my mother attended a banquet at the Blue House(Korea President’s residence) at the invitation of Mrs. Yuk Young-soo(President, Park Junghee’s wife at that time).
My mother was raising four children when the Korean War broke out. My older brother was eight, my older sister was five, I was two, and my youngest was preparing to be born in my mother’s womb. The elders of the family decided not to keep a young, pretty, and capable woman, so they discussed letting her go wherever she wanted. They decided to let the children be raised by relatives one by one and let her go. However, my mother did not leave and said she would raise her children.
Our house had two buildings, the main building and the outer building. The main building was the living quarters and the outer building faced the road. On the roadside, there were two spaces on either side where we could run a shop, and there were a room and a kitchen. There were also two rooms and two kitchens on the inside, so we rented out the rooms and rented out the shops to people who would run the shops. We also ran the shop. The main building was bombed during the war and was gone. I was thankful that the outer building survived more than the main building.
We didn’t have to go hungry when we were young because of the house and rice fields that we inherited from our elders. What a blessing that was. We farmed the fields and had our relatives farm the rice fields, and we divided the products from farmlands in a 4:6 ratio. In the fall, 50 sacks of rice were piled up on one side of our house, where the shop was. I played and slept on it. Now that I think about it, I think the rats couldn’t come near because I was guarding those rice sacks. When rice was needed, I, a middle school student, would carry the Narak Gaman( a large Korean sack made of rice straws) on Jigea that is a Korean wooden frame carrier and go to the rice mill to grind them.
All four of us brothers graduated from college. Thinking back now, it’s really amazing. It was a time when it wasn’t easy to send one child to college even from a foster family. But we all graduated from college under the care of a single parent. My mother suffered greatly. Heavenly Father raised us.
When I was in elementary school, we would gather all the students in the playground once a week and do physical exercise, and the principal would give them a lecture. At the time, The school would call out students who didn’t pay their membership dues and send them out in front of everyone in the school to tell them to go to their parents and get their membership dues. My older sister, me, and my younger brother were also kicked out at that time. My older sister graduated from high school on credit because she couldn’t pay her tuition. She didn’t receive her diploma, and only later earned money to pay it off. My mother passed away when I was in my second year of college.
호롱(Ho-Rong) 호롱불(Hon-Rong light)
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