Good News from Pyongtaek, South Korea

This article was taken from an email from Rev Scriven regarding his aquiring their current place of worship and the GoodNews Site wanted to share the Good News of what God is doing in hearts around the world. 

 

God has been so good to us as we have just finished our first year here in Korea. We have experienced many blessings from the Lord and are looking unto Him to guide us into the second year. When we first came to Korea, we were met with many obstacles, that many of you are well aware of. There were the obstacles of a place to live, a church, finances…and PEOPLE. We started having church in our living room, which was fine except that we had to pick up all of the furniture before service and then put it all back down after service. Nevertheless, God blessed us with a handful of people who were faithful to come during that time.

It was soon evident that we would need a church building but all of the buildings in the area were too expensive on the limited finances that we had, and so for the time being we continued to pray and soul win. One day my wife took a couple of the ladies in our church to Seoul to go on a shopping trip. While they were waiting at the train station, a lady came to sit beside my wife on a bench. She noticed that my wife didn’t look like the typical American woman that lived in Pyongtaek, so she asked why we were here. My wife explained to her that we were here to start a church. The lady, who introduced herself as Momma Cho, then asked my wife if she could guide the ladies on their visit to Seoul and the ladies accepted. They traveled to see the many different areas of Seoul and enjoyed the company of Momma Cho. After dinner, her and my wife exchanged phone numbers and said that she would stay in touch and the ladies returned home. A couple of weeks later Momma Cho called my wife and asked if she would meet her for lunch to which my wife accepted. On the way to the restaurant she said, “Do you have time for me to show you something?” My wife told her that she did and so they drove to a building right outside the gate. She said, “God told me to rent this building to you.” Needless to say, my wife was speechless. She said, “I will pay for the renovations and make everything suitable for you to live.” The price was nothing short of a miracle. When I finished work my wife couldn’t wait to show me the building. It was a two-story building with a two bedroom, two bathroom apartment upstairs that had a huge kitchen, and a nice living room. Downstairs was what looked to formerly be a restaurant with another two bedrooms a small kitchen, garage and an old bathroom with the Korean style bathrooms (which is basically a hole in the floor). The church portion was going to take some major remodeling but Momma Cho said that she would pay for all of the renovations to include remodeling and turning the garage into a Sunday School and remodeling the bathroom to put an American toilet and remodel the kitchen.

It was definitely hard for me to believe that she was going to pay for all of the work to be done but true to her word she did. And on December 10th we had our first service in our new church. The excitement was contagious and people gave offerings to pay for a nice church sign, new pews, a drum set, piano and many other necessary items to take care of the work. Most of all people began to see the new church and we have had more walk in visitors then I have ever had anywhere. God has definitely built HIS church. The sanctuary of our church is small and we have now grown out of it for one service. We are now having two services on Sunday morning and look forward to seeing greater things ahead. Please keep us in your prayers as we move forward reaching the Camp Humphreys area for the Lord.

Do you have an encouraging report you'd like to share with us?  If so, please email your testimonies to wwjd2009@hotmail.com .  We'd love to hear from you.

Here are some photos he sent. (I hope I have them in the right order.)