Things are heating up quickly in Daegu now that May has arrived. SungJin and I went to turn on the AC today only to find it broken so we're hoping the church will provide a new one so we don't melt away in our stuffy apartment. Let me just say that heat over here is a lot different from heat back home in Canada. People here always assume Canada to be a place of ice, snow and polar bears but I have to explain that we do actually encounter a decent amount of heat in the summer and so this is always surprising for Koreans. The only major difference with the heat here is the high humidity levels. As I experienced living in Taiwan last year, humidity can be a suffocating reality in the summer months and so I'm preparing for another intense summer season here in South Korea. Theres nothing better then coming home drenched in sweat with the AC set to 'North Pole'. Looking forward to getting that AC...
I've been experiencing a lot of great community in these last few weeks as SungJin and I have opened our apartment up to the youth and University Students in the church and area. This has been such a refreshing time of growth for me, being an 'expressive introvert' (someone who appears to be an extrovert but is secretly an introvert..shhh!) and having people hang out at my place all the time, eat my food and sleep in my bed with me has been a good test for me but I'm really learning a lot about valuing community and investing in the youth here in being a source of encouragement and stability in their lives. The other night at 2am one Korean buddy comes into our house, turns on the light and says "can I sleep here?" Half asleep, annoyed and concerned I half muttered him to come in and so he jumped right into bed with me and slept the rest of the night. This 'open-door' policy definitely has its moments but praise God that these youth can have a safe place to come and hang out. We will provide this for them.
We've put on our wall a map of the world with the hopes to inspire the youth to get a vision for where in the world God has called them to go as well as big pieces of paper where we write down our prayer requests, visions and every-day things we're thankful for. This has made for such a encouraging and empowering atmosphere to have vision and gratitude a constant reminder in our times together.
Learning to value community in Christ,
Jer
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