Pastor Oh, Beom-Seok, the North Korean Mission director of NSD, and his mission team held an evangelical meeting at Xindien Church from June 26 to July 1 as part of a simultaneous evangelistic meeting in Taiwan. Xindien Church is located in a big city called Sinpei (meaning ‘New Taipei’), right next to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. Sinpei is a densely populated city with a high level of education. This church is served by three Korean pastors who are PMM missionaries. However, due to the recent pandemic, the church had cooled its missionary enthusiasm and hadn’t held a missionary meeting in the past three years. A total of seven mission team members, including Pastor Oh, four deaconesses, and two young people from Korea, decided to join this evangelical program. For the past 100 days, Pastor Kim Min-seop, the pastor of Xindien church, had been praying with the church members every morning, sharing the names of the interested souls and the lost sheep. During this time, the mission team members met through group calls and prayed together.
A total of seven mission team members, including Pastor Oh, four deaconesses, and two young people from Korea, decided to join this evangelical program. For the past 100 days, Pastor Kim Min-seop, the pastor of Xindien church, had been praying with the church members every morning, sharing the names of the interested souls and the lost sheep. During this time, the mission team members met through group calls and prayed together.
However, on the morning of June 26th, when they were leaving for Taiwan, one member was injured in a car accident on the way to the airport and had to be hospitalized, so she couldn’t join the mission trip. Despite this setback, the members felt the need for prayer even more and promised to pray throughout the evangelism. The person who had the car accident, Deaconess Ko Mi-sook, was in the hospital but decided to support the evangelism meeting through prayer. That’s how the evangelism meeting began.
The mission team held a prayer meeting at 6:30 a.m. and went to the streets in the morning to distribute invitations. In the afternoon, they organized a cooking class and a cultural experience class. The Taiwanese people, especially, showed great interest in Korean culture, so they were eager to learn the Korean language, cuisine, and even took pictures in hanbok (Korean traditional clothes). In the evening, Pastor Oh Beom-Seok preached the gospel in English, and Pastor Viki, who was serving at Taiwn Adventist Hospital, translated into Taiwanese. The subject of the sermon was “true happiness,” and for a week, Pastor Oh proclaimed that real happiness and the value of life are found in Jesus. After the preaching, a gathering for young people was held. During the evangelical meeting, the families of the PMM missionaries who were ministering nearby attended and gave encouragement. As a result, several people made decisions about their faith, and two decided to get baptized.
In particular, Mr. Wang and his wife were baptized together, and the day of their baptism was even more special because it marked the 50th anniversary of their marriage. Mr. Wang had graduated from the MIT engineering department in the United States a long time ago. He and his wife were Taiwanese born in Korea and moved to Taiwan 50 years ago. While attending the Presbyterian Church in Taipei with their daughter, Mrs. Wang heard about a church with a Korean pastor nearby, so she started attending Xindien Church to maintain her Korean language skills. While learning Korean from Pastor Kim’s wife, she was touched by the love of the pastor and his wife. Through this evangelical meeting, she made up her mind and decided to get baptized. Their son, along with their daughter, who works as a TV anchor at a Taiwanese broadcasting station, and her husband, also attended the baptismal ceremony to congratulate them.
Mrs. Wang said, “With a renewed mindset today, I will now have Jesus as my groom and live a new life in the Lord.” Deaconess Sun Hye-ran, who participated as an overseas mission team member for the first time in her life, said, “I realized that evangelism is about receiving much more than giving,” and expressed her desire to get more involved in such evangelical meetings in the future. Pastor Kim Min-seop said, “During the past three years of the pandemic, there have been many concerns and doubts about whether an evangelical meeting would be possible. But through this experience, we have regained our confidence, and we are very grateful that the passion for mission has been reignited.”
While preparing for the evangelical meeting, the mission team members adopted “prayer and thankfulness” as their motto. They prepared for the meeting through prayers and continued with prayers throughout. God blessed them with precious fruits, for which they were thankful and gave honor to God for making it all possible.