A few days before we left for Korea, our Senior Pastor, Pastor Peter Chin, informed us of a great opportunity to apply to become “Supported Missionaries” with Global Missions Church, one of Korea’s biggest mega-churches (over 10,000 members). When we saw the application, our jaws dropped… 9 pages… In Korean… And lots of supplemental documentation required too… Worst of all, it was due in a week! Oh my!!! As most of our stuff is in boxes, we had no clue where our “graduation certificates” and “family heritage” documents were. US passport pictures are different from Korean passport pictures… 3 references each too… Stress!!!
Once we arrived in Korea, we raced to finish the document. After a few days of trying to translate all of Peter’s answers into Korean, I made a desperate call to GMC’s Missions Department and asked if we could answer some of the questions in English. Thankfully they said yes – phew! It took a huge burden off of my shoulders. (You should have seen the shock on the face of the pastor who received our application when he saw Peter’s English portion. =D)
In terms of the documentation, we went to take our passport pictures and were surprised to find that they were more expensive than at Costco in the US but that they also photoshop passport pictures! You have to show both ears and can smile but cannot show teeth. Peter looks like he’s wearing makeup. =) Receiving my family heritage document was no problem as I’m still a Korean citizen and have a Korean national ID number, but receiving Peter’s was a bit more complicated as Peter’s whole family renounced their Korean citizenship many years ago. After a phone call to the US and trying to extract as much additional information as possible from his parents, I went back and the wonderful people at the government office had already prepared the paperwork I needed! It was a different version of the family heritage document from mine, but it was sufficient. I was so excited I temporarily forgot that I was pregnant and ran back to our officetel. =) The 3 people providing our references were wonderful and acted very quickly despite their busy schedules. In my desperation, I remembered that we’d sent our transcripts to Pioneers for our file and emailed our Pre-field Coach. Despite him still being in recovery from major surgery, he scanned and emailed our transcripts to us with time to spare!
We left California on Tuesday, arrived Wednesday night, and all of the above happened between Thursday and Saturday morning. I was up from 3:30am Saturday morning finishing our application and was on such a high after we handed it in Saturday lunchtime that I didn’t realize how tired I was. GMC is about an hour and a half from where we’re staying with a few subway transfers and lots of walking. One station didn’t have an elevator so we had to carry Juhee and her stroller up and down lots of stairs. A not very fit pregnant woman going up and down stairs in heels carrying a heavy baby and stroller equals a very sore and tired pregnant woman. But we were very very happy and felt like we could now breathe, relax, and start to explore other opportunities. =)
Please continue to pray for our application with GMC. We’ll find out on Dec 19th if we will be one of GMC's many "Supported Missionaries" or not.
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