Timothy Pent Family
September '06 . . . October. . . November '06
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WRITING AS WE TEACH The two co-ops every Tuesday, a third to be added next month, the Family Sunday School every Sunday, the Men’s Meetings with Timothy, and the Mothers’ Meeting with Boni, all have to have transcripts for translation. Judah and Catie will also be starting a Bible Study for the middle school and high school students next week. This is slow going, but it is a wonder to me that we are allowed to be here and able to function at all. Whatever we do, volunteers have to be enlisted from the Koreans to make the “Unit Study” and “Character Training” times, as well as the Bible and Family Discipleship classes, all a usable product for the 40 home school families and the 35 “to be” home school families in the Family Sunday School. In conjunction with the co-ops, Joshua International Academy (JIA), also directed by Brad Voeller, our director, has been writing a comprehensive curriculum for home schoolers using many of the familiar resources we have loved from the U.S. They are producing a one of a kind resource for Koreans. Due to typically thin resources, their small team gets the translation and editing done for the Logos Book, as it is called, just in time for each new month. But there is much energy and determination from these pioneering Korean families towards what we are doing here, so we press on. LEARNING AS WE GO With the general transition to high speed automobiles within the last 15 years or so, accidents are a dangerous consideration in Korea. It seems that adding two hundred horses to everything you do may be a fair way to describe the speed of many things in the culture here. They certainly have excelled in business, and we travel in that stream daily, learning to survive in a mixture of purely Eastern and some familiar Western ways of living. Our shopping day to the open air market of Garak for produce and meat was impressive. Fresh fruits and vegetables abound as well as eels and octopus, and the living outnumber the dead. Another day on a field trip, we were digging sweet potatoes in a remote village with some of our Korean comrades. It was enjoyable to have a morning outside in the country, learning about how sweet potatoes grow and are harvested. This was followed by a lunch stop at a local traditional Korean restaurant. After lunch, we traveled to the birthplace of Empress Myeongseong which has been converted into a museum and theatre explaining the life and death of the empress. The last stop of the day was at the Incheon Rice Festival. The festival had many games, traditional dances, crafts, music, and food. We were able to walk around, observe, and participate in many traditional activities. Our large American family obviously stood out from the crowd. The camera crew made their way to our family and took pictures and video while asking us where we were from and how we enjoyed the festival. After a few hours at the festival, we returned home having spent a long but fun day enjoying many new Korean experiences. RUNNING AS WE WALK Something will have to give. Either we are going to have to produce faster, or we are about to see a change in manpower (or maybe angel power) or perhaps we will have to lower the expectation level of what we are able do. One thing is certain: every son and daughter has been needed for the development and implementation of all that we are doing here. Judah has become our IT and PR man. He also teaches and prepares additional classes for the older students, and teaches the advanced English class while Catie teaches the middle school English class. It’s as if this older age group will be a crucial experiment to see if these beginning families who are so familiar with the public school peer path can be brought alongside the family discipleship model of education. Just like in the U.S. over the past 20 years, there are many vital spiritual battles involved in this transition. There have been some indications that the reasons we are here are Providential in spite of all the difficulties. One example would be our Korean language lessons. Eun Ae, an award winning Korean language teacher, volunteered to help our family learn the language. She just happened to be inquiring about home schooling one day at JIA last month when she heard about our need and volunteered to help us. She and her young daughter, He In, meet with our family on Saturday afternoons to teach us Korean. Along with her, three college-age students, Jung Joo, Han Awl, and He Jin have also given their Saturdays to help out in teaching us Korean. They have all been a wonderful help to us as we try to learn the new sounds and characters of the Korean language. Our family is so grateful to them for the many hours they have devoted to us. A NOTE FROM JUDAH Tuesdays have become a very long day for me. I spend the entire day until 6pm working at two co-ops. Then, at 6:30, I head to a facility that houses North Korean refugees. These facilities are to train North Korean refugees in basic computer skills and basic English skills and to train them how to drive a car and live in an advanced city. A refugee spends three months at the facility before heading out into society to seek a job. I have had the privilege teaching at an English class on Tuesday nights for these North Korean men. It is hard to share the Gospel with them because of the language barrier, but we start and end the session in prayer. We also share a little bit in Korean about Jesus. Please pray that God would show Himself to these North Koreans. They have made it to a better land on this earth, but I pray that through it, they will make it to the best land. PRAYER REQUESTS: Pray that the evil in North Korea would be dismantled and that “the Word of the Lord would have free course and be glorified” during this 100 year anniversary of the great revival that swept North Korea in 1907. Pray that the non-Christian spouses of home schooling parents would come to know the Lord. Pray that we would have wisdom to discern what God's will is for us each day. Pray for Jared as he has had to deal with work on top of his heavy load at UCF this semester.
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