First off, I'd like to say that I am a regular customer of jack.html now. It's a brilliant page. Everything I need is on that page. Highly recommended.

Browsing through some peoples' thoughts, I stumbled upon Dave Hong's latest one about how he's at a Korean church and if he should expect certain things from church in general, etc. "So, I think about my experience so far, and sadly, I think I go to church now just for the language thing." (Dave) Well, this statement is supported by the historical context of Korean American church growth and the role it played in Korean language maintenance. I'm currently doing research on the Korean church, and using the church I attend as a case study. It's been really interesting.

Through my research, I became more aware of the issues and problems that a Korean church faces. And instead of being frustrated at the many things I see wrong with a Korean church, I am now excited to be a part of an American phenomenon. The Korean church situation has changed dramatically in the past 80 to 90 years, and continues to change. I wonder why I was born Korean.

Oh, what's interesting about my research is that I took a quick survey about two years ago of Stanford members of KCPC regarding identity and language issues. One of the questions was : Will you attend an Asian-American church after college? An overwhelming majority said that they would. I wonder if this has changed in a matter of two years.

Anyways, enough about research. I realize that I don't get an opportunity to talk about stuff like this with my regular friends. It just doesn't come up in conversation. I'm very girlie when it comes to conversations. Not that talking about church and research is NOT girlie, but what I mean by "girlie" is that my conversations with my friends are mostly about emotional topics. Boys, relationships, love, and marriage constitute about 95% of our conversation topics. The rest is about where we'll end up next year. Job? Graduate school? West coast? East coast? Missions? God, where are you taking us?!?!

Kemi wrote me an email today, and I was really glad to hear from her. She said something that made me think: It's hard to know what God's will is. Or something like that. Will we ever know how to answer that? I remember reading a book called Knowing and Doing the Will of God, by Jack Hayford. One insight I got was that we are to wait on God. I always thought that meant a passive waiting. But Hayford was saying that we have to actively wait on God. Sort of like a waiter or waitress who waits on people. That revolutionized my thinking. We need to step out in faith as a part of waiting on God. Henry Blackaby illustrates this in Experiencing God, where we enter this crucial moment of decision in our lives, and we have to step out in faith. Not a blind faith, but one that's rooted in His Word. This reminds me of the time when I went to a training camp as part of briefing for CCC. We were in LA, and we each had to climb this tall tree (without branches) strapped with ropes so that we don't fall. At the top, you had to leap out of the tree and hang on to a trapeze. The scary thing is that the trapeze is just far enough that you really have to prepare yourself to jump. And if you fall, someone's holding you up so it's okay.

I almost had a heart attack!!! The most scariest yet exhilarating thing ever! I took a deep breath and jumped, but just as my fingers touched the bar of the trapeze, I realized I didn't jump enough to grasp it. I was suspended in the air for one split second before I fell to the ground. Of course, the ropes came to the rescue and I was able to fall gracefully. I think this is a beautiful picture of what faith and God's will is. So we're in this crisis of belief, we take a jump in the air, going the direction we think God's will is. If we mess up, His grace catches us, and He won't let us fall.

Well, that's what I think of Korean church, faith, and God's will.

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