Sunday at church the pastor started by stating the number of people who needed prayer, like the man just finding out he had liver cancer or the grieving family who just lost their 7 day old baby boy. God was still speaking to me on prayer. Over the weekend, I read the following in my devotional by Andrew Murray:
SEPTEMBER 2
“…As we pray let us be willing to accept our place with Him- crucified to the world, to sin and to self. It means a readiness to follow Him at any cost. It means a simple, wholehearted acceptance of Christ as Lord and Master and a surrender of our heart and life to Him.”
SEPTEMBER 3
“…In the quietness of prayer let us believe that a simple, determined surrender of our whole will to God’s promise will indeed bring the heart-cleansing we need.”
After church, I became the tour guide in a way for the new teacher, Glauce, from Brazil. Praise God, I am not the only teacher now who has never been to Korea before.
Instead of just going home some teachers were going to take us to the area I know in Itaewon, but their plans changed. Glauce and I felt like being adventurous so they gave us directions to get the bus we would need to get there. After getting there, I knew how to get home since I did it the week before. However, we could not find the bus number they told us too. So we were going to just go back to the subway and see if I could get us there that way (though a little longer, but we didn’t have anywhere to be). On our way back Glauce stopped a Korean women and asked if she knew English. She did, but didn’t know the bus either. She and her husband ended up being from church and told us to get in their car and they would take us. Wow, what a blessing! However, this became a God ordained encounter. They told us to find them next week at church so they could introduce us to the younger Koreans they knew. And they actually live in the neighborhood where the new school is located, and hopefully where we’ll be living. God is good and blesses in the most amazing ways when you least expect it.
Glauce and I had lunch at the place I knew and talked about how we got to Korea and a lot about God. We then walked the streets for awhile, though today the thing that shocked me the most was the lack of friendliness from other foreigners. We would smile when someone else like us past by, but they did not smile back but rather rudely looked away. I found this to be heartbreaking but an interesting observation in that being in a foreign country I would definitely want to be friendly with others who were a foreigner like me. Korean’s are much friendlier.
We, me who has been here only a month and she, Glauce, only a day, also decided to go and walk up by where the new location for school will be to see if we could find it. We were also going to find her apartment. She already has one over there, but will be staying with Gretchen and I this next month so she does not have to commute being new to the country. The hopeful part is that she mentioned Mr. Song pointed out two apartments he said he signed leases for on Saturday. The one closes to hers she said he mentioned the girls (as in Gretchen and I) would be living. This may be true in the fact that the other apartment he signed for is for Ben and Norma. Norma had gone with Mr. Song on Friday to look at them and he kept mentioning the other one for us as well. That would be great because it is walking distance to school and will be right between Glauce’s and the Sullivan’s villas. Gretchen and I are praying really hard. We ended up not going by her apartment or the one that may possibly be my new one because the hills were very steep and we didn’t want to walk down another hill and then back up since the hill we already walked up was pretty steep and it was getting late. We were afraid some others might be worried why we weren’t back yet too.
As we walked up the hill and then were going back down, I as getting very excited about the character this neighborhood has. Yes, it is by Itaewon (a place I being American and blonde will not want to be after dark on any given night) and by the military base with so many foreigners around. But it has character and is in the heart of the city, yet out by itself in a way. I can’t wait for October to get here so I can really get settled in. I just really hope that the hope of moving right away to that location that Norma and Glauce put in my heart is what will really happen. It is in God’s hands.
God so continues to bless even with my selfishness lately and doubt. Maybe that is because He really knows me and knows that more than anything I want to be where He is and where He wants me.
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