Teaching of Rev. R.A.Torrey III at Jesus Abbey

“모든 성도와 함께 여러분이 그리스도의 사랑이 너비와 길이와 높이와 깊이가 어떠한지를 깨달을 수 있게 되기를 원한다”(에베소서 3:18).

대천덕 신부는 바울이 에베소 성도들을 위하여 기도했던 그리스도의 사랑에 대한 4차원의 사랑을 깊게 추구하였다. 즉 더 넓고 깊게 사람들을 사랑하기 위하여 예수님을 더 높고 깊게 사랑하길 소원하며 기도와 사랑의 코이노니아 실험실인 예수원을 세워 실천적인 영성의 삶을 살면서 가르쳤다.

가문의 전통과 재정 문제에서 배우는 영성 대천덕 신부(Reuben Archer Torrey III)의 가족이 엄격하게 지키는 전통 중의 하나는 각 사람은 개인적으로 하나님의 자녀로 거듭나야 하며, 하나님의 가족이 되는 것과 개개인의 가족 내력은 별개라는 것이다. 또한 모든 자녀들이 고등학교를 졸업하면 1년 동안 대학을 진학하지 않고 삶의 현장 속에서 살도록 한다는 것이다. 고등학교를 졸업하여 이제 성인이 되었으니 각자 자신의 관심과 전공과 연결되는 삶의 자리에서 ‘사람들의 소리’를 직접 듣기 위하여 음식점, 농장, 어장, 사무실, 공장 등에서 일한 후에 대학에 진학한다는 것이다. 우리는 어떤가? 명문 대학에 자녀들을 입학시키려고 얼마나 힘쓰는가. 좋은 대학은 누구를 위하여 또한 무엇을 위해 필요한 것인가?

대천덕 신부는 “믿음의 주요 도 온전케 하시는 이(the pioneer and perfecter of our faith)인 예수를 바라보자“(히 12:2)는 구절과 “그뿐 아니라 하나님을 대적하여 말하기를 하나님이 광야에서 능히 식탁을 준비하시랴”(시편 78:19)는 말씀을 붙잡고 “책만 가지고 신학을 가르치지 않고” 더 나은 방법을 찾아, ‘그리스도인의 삶에 있는 세 가지 실험실’(The Three Laboratories of the Christian Life)을 세우기 위해 예수원을 세워 개척자의 길을 갔다. 그는 교회가 한 번도 개척되지 않은 시골 마을에 들어가 바닥부터 시작하였다. 그는 필요한 사람들과 자신이 도울 수 있는 사람들을 하나님께서 보내실 것을 믿고 출발하였다. 그는 같은 생각을 가진 사람들과 함께 살면서 노동과 물질과 기도를 나누면서 하나님을 위해 불을 일으켰다. 그러나 우리는 선교와 사역 속에서 안정과 기득권을 유지하려는 노력은 하지만 “배에서 나오라”(마 14:29)는 예수님의 명령에 순종하여 개척과 과감한 실험을 못하고 방황하는 형편은 아닌가?'

R. A. Torrey 선조들은 유럽을 떠나 미국으로 건너와 한 곳에 정착하지 않고 여러 곳에 살면서 수중에 돈이 떨어질 때가 많았다. 그때마다 빚을 얻거나 하나님이 허락하지 않은 일을 하거나 후원금을 요청할 수 있었지만 항상 하나님이 일용할 양식을 주시도록 맡기며 살았다. 4대에 걸친 R. A. Torrey의 간증은 “의인이 버림을 당하거나 그 자손이 걸식함을 보지 못하였다”(시편 37:25)는 것이었다. 사회적인 안정과 지위를 얻기보다 가정을 통하여 하나님의 뜻이 이루어지길 원하며 ‘가난의 서약’을 하고 살았다. 언젠가 예수원의 운영자금이 바닥났을 때에 대천덕 신부는 서울의 미 8군 휴양소에 열리는 컨퍼런스에 참석한 적이 있었다. 그러나 대천덕 신부는 컨퍼런스 중에 사람들에게 예수원의 필요에 대해 한마디도 하지 않았다. 그러나 얼마 후에 한 미군이 대천덕 신부에게 한국 돈을 한 뭉치 주었지만, 한국 여성이 한 지역에서 선교 프로젝트를 설명하면서 경제적 지원이 없으면 중단 할 수밖에 없다고 하자 전날 받은 돈을 전부 그 사람의 가방에 넣어 주었다. 그런데 컨퍼런스 마지막 날 한국 여성이 다가와 자신의 삶을 통해 받은 은혜를 감사한다면서 처음에 받았던 돈보다 몇 배가 많은 돈을 예수원을 위해 쓰도록 주었다.

대천덕 신부는 “믿음으로 받는 것만 아니라 믿음으로 주며” 살면서 예수원 공동체의 경제 원리를 세워 오늘날 교회가 에너지의 상당 부분을 내부 정치와 세상적인 야망에 힘쓰는 것에 도전을 주고 있다.

리더를 세우는 멘토에게서 배우는 영성 대천덕 신부는 평생 동안 수많은 사람들을 멘토링하였지만 여기서는 PRMI(국제교회갱신사역)의 총재로서 Dunamis Course(능력사역 훈련과정)을 세운 브래드 롱(Rev, Brad Long)목사와의 관계에서 나타난 모습을 밝히려고 한다. 대천덕 신부가 48세 때 브래드 롱 목사가 15세 소년이었을 때인 1966년에 만나 2002년까지 그들의 관계는 36년 동안 계속되었다. 대천덕 신부의 아들 벤 토레이(Rev. Ben Torrey)는 브래드 롱보다 한 살 많지만 두 사람은 친구가 되어 쉽게 친구의 부친에게 접근할 수 있었다. 대천덕 신부와 브래드 롱 목사의 부친은 미국 노스 캐로나이나에 소재한 데이비슨대학 동문이며, 모친 또한 같은 주에서 미술 활동을 하는 등 많은 부분을 공유하고 있었다. 이러한 요소들을 통해 하나님은 대천덕 신부가 예수원을 1965년에 시작한 후부터 계속적인 관계를 가지면서 바울과 디모데처럼 멘토십을 나누게 하셨다.

믿음과 행동이 하나 되는 예수님의 제자 1970년 겨울 양식인 쌀이 떨어지고 호박과 김치와 멸치 젖도 떨어졌을 때, 금식하며 가난한 자들이 내일 양식이 없는 처지를 생각해 보라고 가르치면서 어떠한 환경 속에서도 하나님을 신뢰하며 일용할 양식을 구할 것을 기도하고 기적을 맛보게 하였다. 예수원에서 식사 후 차를 마시며 여러 사람들의 대화에 참여케 하는 한편, 많은 시간을 일 대 일로 만나 기도하며 질문에 답해 주고, 개인의 하루 일과표와 저술 및 개인기도 시간을 소개하면서 믿음과 행동의 일치를 강조했다. 이러한 체험은 브래드 롱 목사가 1982년 대만에 평신도 훈련원을 세울 때 재정과 사람과 프로그램도 없는 불가능한 환경에서 하나님께 순종하면서 기적을 베푸실 분을 신뢰케 하였고, 미국 노스 캐로나이나에서 ‘십자가 공동체(The Community of Cross)'를 세우기 위해 2003년 30,000평의 땅을 구입하는 과정과 사역을 펼쳐나가는 일에서 철저한 순종과 기도의 삶을 살도록 하여 열매를 맺게 하였다.

예수님을 함께 닮아 가는 ‘하늘 나그네’ 브래드 롱 목사가 한국에서 고등학교를 마치고 미국 대학 입학을 위해 동아시아를 거쳐가는 과정에서 인도 캘커타 거리에서 죽어 가는 사람들을 보고 절망과 회의에 방황할 때가 있었다. 그러나 한국인들도 꺼려하는 강원도 산골에서 공동체를 세우는 대천덕 신부의 실천적인 모습을 되새기며 벤 토레이의 권면으로 다시 일어나 극적인 회심을 경험하고 그리스도께 헌신하게 되었다.

브래드 롱 목사가 대학 재학 때인 1973년 여름에 예수원의 설립 멤버들이 떠나가고 방문객도 극소수에 불과하고 운영에 어려움이 있을 때가 있었다. 그들은 서로의 문제를 부자간에 나누듯이 기도하며 분노하고 울고 들어 주었다. 대천덕 신부는 브래드 롱에게 밤을 세워가며 한 달 동안 성령에 관해 가르쳐 주면서 헬라어와 히브리어를 참고하면서 성경 속으로 인도해 주었다. 그때 한국인에게 예수원의 비전을 구체적으로 나누는 문제와 성령 세례에 대해 공개적으로 가르치는 문제와 공동체 문제에 대해 깊은 아픔과 개인적인 고통을 함께 나누며 함께 새로운 도약을 하게 되었다.

멘토가 자신의 인간적인 문제와 약점을 인정하며 함께 기도하기란 얼마나 어려운 일인가? 대천덕 신부의 모범 속에서 브래드 롱 목사는 자신의 부족한 부분을 인정하기를 기뻐하며 함께 사역하는 사람들이 자신을 위해 기도해 주기를 기쁘게 요청하며 다른 사람들의 제안과 비판을 수용하게 되었다. 진정한 리더십이 무엇인지 보여 주며 가르치는 삶 대천덕 신부는 의도적으로 브래드 롱 목사를 리더로 키웠다. 예컨대, 기도사역이나 전도 집회가 끝난 후, 브래드 롱 목사를 따로 불러 영적 리더십이나 성령과의 협력에 대해 가르쳐 주었다. 1983년 대만 목회자들이 예수원을 방문한 마지막 날 밤이었다. 20명의 목회자들이 대천덕 신부에게 기도를 받으려고 기다리고 있었다. 다섯 명만 기도해 주고 자신은 급하게 할 일이 있다고 하면서 브래드 롱 목사가 성령께 의지하며 기도할 수 있도록 시간과 자리를 내 주고 자신은 밤을 지새워 제자를 위해 기도하였다. 1984년 대만에서 집회와 1991년 미국 레이크 조지에서도 마찬가지였다. 마지막 날 밤 성찬식에서 “지금이 기회입니다. 누구든지 성령으로 세례를 받고 싶은 사람은 앞으로 나오시오 브래드 롱 목사님과 제가 여러분에게 손을 얹고 기도해 드리겠습니다.”라고 전통에 젖어 있는 대만 장로교 목회자들에게 도전하여 주님께서 역사하시는 자리를 마련해 주었고, 브래드 롱 목사가 삼층천의 경험을 할 수 있도록 1년 동안 계속적으로 중보기도를 하여 응답 받았다.

대천덕 신부는 기도가 하나님과 우리 사이에 ‘평생 지속되는 계약에 의해 이루어진 전적인 상호 책임과 상호의 의지의 코이노니아’로 해석하여 기도하지 않는 것은 하나님의 방해하는 것임을 강조하였다. 브래드 롱 목사는 기도를 통해 하나님께서 자신을 그분의 파트너로 불러 새로운 창조를 위해 협력하기 위해 담대하게 순종하기를 명령받았다. 브래드 롱 목사는 대만에서 하워드 초우라는 사람이 400만 불 상당의 부지를 헌금하겠다는 제의를 사양하고 세계 복음화를 위해 미국 사역의 초청을 받아들여 ‘십자가 공동체’(The Community of Cross)를 세워 포기와 순종과 광야를 걸으며 주님이 주신 ‘기적’을 체험하였다.

대천덕 신부는 브래드 롱 목사에게 진정한 리더십은 힘이나 권위가 아니라 하나님께서 원하시는 것이 무엇인지 알고 그것을 이루기 위해 순종하며 나가는 것임을 일깨워 주었다. 브래드 롱 목사는 리더가 순종할 때 권위와 능력이 나오는데, 이는 리더의 은밀한 기도에 나타난다고 생각하여 끝없이 은밀한 기도를 한다. 초기 스탭들이 떠나며 재정적인 문제와 갑자기 심장이 이상이 있어 응급실에 입원하는 환경 속에서도 중보 기도를 요청하면서 하나님께서 하나님의 일을 이루실 수 있도록 기도로 씨름하는 영적 용사가 되었다.

배성현·국제교회갱신사역 한국사역

[Article] A Lot Can Be Done, and They Can Be Part of It

Paul Farmer has been described by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder as "a man who would cure the world." Founder of the Boston-based nonprofit group Partners In Health, Paul Farmer is known worldwide for his pioneering work in global health. Farmer grew up as the second of six children in an unconventional family that moved frequently, living at times in a trailer park, in a bus, and on a boat without running water. Making friends easily and possessing a "photographic memory" for facts, he graduated from high school as valedictorian and went to Duke University on full scholarship.

It was there he began reading about the German physician Rudolf Virchow. Virchow, sometimes called "the father of public health," wrote: "Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing but medicine on a large scale. The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should largely be solved by them." Of his inspiration, Farmer explains, "Virchow had a comprehensive vision: pathology, social medicine, politics, anthropology — my model."

Farmer splits his time between Boston's renowned Brigham and Women's Hospital and a small hospital built by Partners In Health in the tiny village of Cange, Haiti, called Zanmi Lasante (Creole for Partners In Health). Since beginning his medical career in the 1980s, he has devoted his life to improving the health and lives of the world's neediest people — building a health care center in central Haiti; helping prison officials fight epidemic tuberculosis in the former Soviet Union; and working with his colleague Jim Kim to fight multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) in the shantytowns of Lima, Peru. Most recently, Partners In Health has expanded its work into the African nation of Rwanda.

Trained as a medical anthropologist as well a physician, Farmer never stops asking the sometimes uncomfortable question "Why?": Why shouldn't poor people have access to medical care and drugs when they are sick? He has taken this message around the world and said it enough times that he now believes the world is beginning to listen.

"Finally people are starting to notice that a lot can be done, and they can be part of it," says Farmer. "The essence of global health equity is the idea that something so precious as health might be viewed as a right."

In true Robin Hood fashion, Farmer has begged, borrowed, and stolen AIDS drugs from virtually any source he could find, carrying the pills back to Haiti in his suitcase. He goes to the same lengths to secure medical supplies. Much of his time on planes, he says, is spent writing thank-you notes.

His dedication is paying off. When Farmer recently took some donors to visit the project in Haiti, they asked why they hadn't seen any AIDS orphans as they had in Africa. Farmer replied, "It's because we've been taking care of their mothers." Mothers who are HIV-positive are treated with AIDS drugs so they can raise their own children. Farmer and his team pioneered a system that showed that with the help of community health workers called accompagnateurs, rural people could follow even a complex regimen of antiretroviral therapy. The antiretroviral drug program began in 1999, when such efforts were almost unknown. "We didn't do it to be a model program; we did it because people were croaking," says Farmer, with characteristic deadpan outspokenness.

Farmer believes it's his responsibility to be outspoken, and he lectures widely on global health. "I feel it's part of my job to make the problems of the poor compelling," he says. "It's only through a failure of imagination that people turn away. The poor are doing their job — they're shouting as loud as they can. It's we who can't hear them. What the American public thinks is very important to the future of global health. Many people are moved by the idea that there is unnecessary suffering in the world, and we could do a lot to stop it. We have the technologies necessary to stop most of the suffering."

* Paul Farmer and Jim Kim are changing the way the world combats multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/rxforsurvival/series/champions/paul_farmer.html

• Part I: Poverty and the Rise of MDR TB in Peru (3:49)
• Part II: Everyone Around Her is at Risk (8:20)
• Part III: Facing TB Head-On (4:56)
• Part IV: Reason to Endure (3:40)

[Article] Sons of Lwala

When residents of a tiny Kenyan village sold their chickens and cattle to buy Milton Ochieng a $900 plane ticket to Dartmouth College, they told him they wanted something in return. Eight years later, he's a Vanderbilt University Medical School graduate preparing for his residency. In his home village of Lwala, a clinic he and younger brother Fred established serves about 100 patients a day.

A documentary about their struggles to raise $150,000 to build the clinic — while attending school full-time and coping with their parents' deaths — will soon be screened at universities across the country.

"It's not common to have a couple of village boys come to the U.S. and advocate for a clinic to be built in their country," said Barak Bruerd, program director of Blood:Water Mission, a Nashville-based nonprofit that has contributed to the clinic. "The fact that they were able to bring so much support to their community is amazing."

Before the clinic, Mr. Ochieng says, sick villagers often had to be carried for miles just to get to a paved road. As a child, he remembers seeing a friend's mother taken away in a wheelbarrow during a difficult labor. Neighbors pushed her for 45 minutes before she died. The image stuck with him. His father, high school chemistry teacher Erastus Ochieng, emphasized the need for health care closer to the community. It was his dream to see a clinic in Lwala, a village of about 1,500 people in southwestern Kenya. It wasn't until a college service trip to Nicaragua, where students worked alongside villagers to build such a facility, that Mr. Ochieng started to think his father's dream could become reality. The elder Mr. Ochieng would not live to see the project completed. He died in 2005 of AIDS, which had killed Mr. Ochieng's mother the year before.

For several years, Mr. Ochieng made plans. Fred Ochieng followed him to Dartmouth and then on to medical school at Vanderbilt. By 2005, Milton Ochieng was ready to build, except he had no money. So he put Fred Ochieng in charge of fundraising. That weekend, Fred Ochieng raised $9,000 at a conference for a Christian ministry group. But it took another two years to raise the $150,000 they needed. They were finally able to open the clinic in April 2007, helped by a $45,000 donation from Blood:Water Mission, which was founded by Christian rockers Jars of Clay to reduce the impact of HIV and AIDS in Africa. In its first year, the clinic saw 20,000 patients at a cost of about $100,000.

"It's important for people to get a sense of how far the U.S. dollar can go," Milton Ochieng says, noting that one woman had emergency surgery for an ectopic pregnancy at a cost of only $250. A similar procedure could cost at least $10,000 in the U.S. The clinic is also getting help from former TV reporter Barry Simmons, who quit his job after interviewing the Ochieng brothers to work full time on a documentary about their struggles to build the clinic. "Sons of Lwala" has so far raised about $230,000.

"It was always the plan to give them a platform to raise money and spread their story," Mr. Simmons said. The volume of patients is growing, Mr. Ochieng says, because of the high standard of care the clinic provides, even without running water or a consistent electrical supply.

The Washington Times Sunday, July 6, 2008

[Article] Story of a 'Solitary Yellow in a White World' is Tale of Hope

A portrait of Yung Wing, Yale's first Asian alumnus, was alongside Law School Dean Harold Koh as he recounted Wing's life story in a recent talk.

When Chinese native Yung Wing came to campus in the mid-1800s, there were "precious few people of color, no women and virtually no non-Christians," said Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh in a recent talk. "As the only yellow in a white world, Yung Wing was at best a curiosity and at worst a freak," asserted Koh. Yet, Yung Wing's story is ultimately one of "accomplishment," he noted. "In a very real sense, he is the spiritual ancestor of every one of us of Asian heritage who studies or works here at Yale today."

The dean's talk was the first in a year-long series of campus events honoring Yung Wing, who became Yale's first Asian alumnus -- and likely the first Asian to earn a bachelor's degree from any Western institution -- when he graduated from the University 150 years ago. The event brought an overflow crowd to the Graduate School on Sept. 27.

Koh began his talk, titled "Yellow in a White World," by recounting Yung Wing's tale: His early education in China by Christian missionaries, including Yale alumnus the Reverend Samuel Robbins Brown; his journey to the United States and his matriculation at Yale, where he "made a sensation for bearing off repeated prizes for English composition" and first conceived the idea of bringing other Chinese youths to the West for education; and his return to his homeland, where he found that he had beenso changed by his experience in America that his countrymen could no longer understand his Chinese and he could barely understand theirs.

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Yung Wing spent most of his life traveling between the East and the West, never really at home in either place, Koh said, noting that "In America, he felt Asian; in Asia, he felt American." When Yung Wing volunteered to fight for the Union army during the Civil War, for example, he was turned down because "he was not really an American," added the dean.

In China, Yung Wing worked to promote the nation's modernization. In the 1870s, his earlier vision was realized when he convinced the Chinese government to send 120 youths to schools in the West, including Yale, "to promote mutual cultural understanding and to extend the reach of the Chinese empire," Koh said. Although the Chinese Educational Mission was abruptly ended after only nine years, those students went on to become China's "first generation of 20th-century railroad builders, engineers, medical doctors, naval admirals and diplomats," Koh noted.

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While leading the Chinese Educational Mission, Yung Wing received an honorary degree from the Law School, "which makes him, I'm almost sure, the first Asian ever to receive a degree from the school of which I am now dean," said Koh. Yung Wing married an American woman, who returned with him to China, where he later served in the provincial government and became a diplomat. The couple's two sons both went to Yale, and Yung Wing is buried alongside his wife in Hartford, Connecticut. "Perhaps in Yung Wing's story, you've heard echoes of your own life," said Koh to the audience, noting that it was certainly true in his own case.
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Koh's own parents came to the United States from Korea about 100 years after Yung Wing. His mother was a freshman studying sociology, and his father was one of the first Koreans, "if not the first," to earn a law degree in America, he told the audience. "Like Yung Wing, my parents came away from their educational experience determined to promote mutual understanding between the United States and their home country, Korea," he explained. His parents founded the East Rock Institute in New Haven to carry on that cause, and his father served as the Korean ambassador to the United Nations and as a minister at Korea's embassy in Washington, D.C. He was also an educator who taught courses on East Asian law and society at institutions throughout Connecticut, including Yale.

Like Yung Wing, Koh's parents helped hundreds of Korean students come to the United States to study, and they frequently invited those students to dinner in their home. "So many Korean students came to my house that we had a regular chair that was just left available for whoever was coming to dinner that night," Koh said. "When I was [U.S.] assistant secretary of state, I went back to Korea a few years ago. Hundreds of well-meaning Korean government officials came to me and said, 'I ate dinner at your house.'"

There are many truths that can be gleaned from Yung Wing's story, Koh told the audience. Chief among these, he said, is "a lesson about making our own choices, no matter how difficult they might be." Koh remembers watching "Perry Mason" as a youngster and asking his father if he should become a lawyer. "My father turned to me and said just two words: 'Study physics,'" he recalled. The dean told the audience he later realized that underlying his father's urging were certain "assumptions about choices" -- notably, that law is for "insiders" and "we are outsiders in this country," whereas physics is a profession that is "truly open to Asians"; and that law is not an exact science, and "we will suffer from its inexactness," while in exact sciences such as physics, "they cannot discriminate against you," explained Koh. Although Koh did study physics for nearly 10 years, he decided that law was his true vocation. He wasn't daunted by the "old boy network" and, he said, "It didn't matter that law was not an exact science because, as it turned out, I wasn't very good at exact sciences."

Over a century after Yung Wing, Koh still found few Asian faces among his classmates at Harvard, and the only Asian names he encountered in the Supreme Court cases he studied "were always litigants and never lawyers," recalled the dean, adding that the history of Asian Americans is "not a story of victors of justice, but victims of injustice."

Today, the world of academia is very different, he said. "If you look over classrooms at Yale and the Yale Law School, you see a huge increase in the number of yellow faces." The population of Yale College is now 13% to 15% Asian American, and about one-tenth of the international students at Yale are of Asian ancestry. "More than that, the world is not nearly as white as it was. The United States has become a strikingly diverse country, and the number of Asians is growing," he said. "What we have now is a different kind of Asian experience."

Another lesson inherent in Yung Wing's story is that of one's obligation to others, asserted Koh, urging audience members "to be a bridge between two cultures, to be a ladder for those who come behind, to be a beacon to those who look for us for leadership because of our unique educational advantages, and most of all, to represent not just those people who are like us in appearance, but those who stand for the same principles." Yung Wing's story also reveals "how one person, even a solitary yellow in a white world, can make a difference," said Koh, pointing to the Yale alumnus' legacy -- the Yale Library's world-renowned East Asian Collection, which was founded with a gift of books from Yung Wing; the Yale-China Association, which promotes East-West cultural understanding and educational exchange; the Yale China Law Center, which is working to modernize that nation's legal system; and the delegation of Chinese university administrators who came to Yale this summer to learn about the operations of U.S. universities, which Koh described as a "modern-day Chinese mission to New Haven."

All this shows that "people can change institutions, institutions can build legacies and legacies can make history," asserted Koh. "And so, my friends, that's Yung Wing's story. It is a story of what it means to be yellow in a white world. It's a story of choices; it's a story of hope; it's a story of obligation; it's a story of accomplishment," said Koh. "But most of all, I think, it's a story of justice -- the justice that Asian Americans seek, and the justice that Asian Americans can create with the help of their friends and their colleagues."

Noting that Martin Luther King Jr. once said "The moral arch of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice," Koh concluded: "If Yung Wing were here, I think he would have to agree."

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Yale Bulletin & Calendar October 8, 2004 [Volume 33, November 6] by LuAnn Bishop

Transition Period from Book Collecting to Book Publishing

During my stay in Ithaca, I used to be absorbed in social justice issues and often thought how I could contribute to the change of this broken world. Meanwhile, I read "The Shaking the System" by Tim Stafford and learned that the book gives me an important message regarding my thought. The author says that The Uncle Tom’s Cabin, led to emancipation of slaves through the American Civil War, is one of the good examples. What a surprise, the influential novel’s author, Harriet Beecher Stowe was an ordinary woman as someone’s wife and mother of children.

Nowadays I am working for an organization, named Barakat, which provides healthcare and education to Afghan refugee girls and women in India and Pakistan. During working closely on ‘School Outreach Program,’ I have learned about not only the strength of education but also the influence of books on social justice again. Last year, Melissa London, sixth grade teacher of social studies at Pierce Elementary School in Boston initiated ‘service learning project’ between the school and Barakat with the help of the Brookline Education Foundation’s Grant aimed at implementing quality service learning programming. 

During last summer vacation, Melissa gave her students a book to read. The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis, the award-winning book is about a young Afghan girl who must disguise herself as a boy in order to help her family survive under the rule of the Taliban. She also invited all parents to the screening of the documentary film, View From a Grain of Sand by Director, Meena Nanji. The film talks about the last 30 years of Afghanistan's history as lived by three Afghan women, and illustrates how war, international interference, political chaos, and the rise of religious fundamentalism have stripped Afghan women of their basic human rights and freedom.

Through the book and the documentary film, all the students had an opportunity to learn about their peers in other side of the world, whom they had not thought or imagined about before. In the end, all the students organized themselves into three committees: Outreach, Pierce Pride, and Fundraising in order to address the issue of literacy among Afghan girls and women. The committees started working not only to increase awareness about the need of education for the girls and women in Afghanistan, but also to fundraise for them. At the end of 2008, they, the small children, raised about $5,000 through bake sales, raffles, and donations! They showed their real commitment to social justice. It is indeed the power of education and a book. Of course, the teacher Melissa played an important role.

I am not a kind of an activist nor a politician definitely though I hope to make a contribution toward reminding us of our common social responsibility, and changing injustice. My focus is to bring about a change for the better. There might be lots of ways, but at this moment, I just has a small wish to write books, especially children’s books like the Uncle Tom’s Cabin or the Breadwinner. It may be presumptuous of me, but some day I am hoping to make it before going to heaven.

Students at Pierce Elementary School

Be Diplomatic for Life

(back row) Eric Rubin, Seemoon Choi, Hyuna Lee, Stephen Linton, Youngjeon Shin, Woojin Lew, Matthew Carroll, Nackmoon Sung, Edward Nardell, Sonya Shin, Jim Kim (front row) Heejin Choi, Jason Ahn, David Kim, Christie Jeon, Eugene Yim, Ted Cohen on Tuesday 25th November 2008, @Busch Hall, Harvard University

Harvard Medical School, Harvard Korea Institute, Harvard Asia Center, and the EugeneBell Foundation organized a conference entitled: "Tuberculosis in the Korean Peninsula and Global Health" in Cambridge on November 24th and 25th, 2008. As a new grant writer of EugeneBell, I went to the conference with Dr. Stephen Linton, the Founder and Chair of EugeneBell. This conference was for seeking for new collaborations that will improve the future health of the North Korean people. A small number of dedicated scientists, clinicians and donors shared their experience on preventing and treating drug-resistant tuberculosis in the Korean peninsula.

In 1997, EugeneBell was officially invited to expand EugeneBell’s work to treating tuberculosis by the Ministry of Public Health in North Korea. Since then, EugeneBell started assisting programs for tuberculosis, however, physicians found many patients suspected of having multi-drug resistant strains. So EugeneBell has tried to expand organization’s program to include multi-drug resistant tuberculosis patients, who do not respond to primary medications.

The problem is now North Korea does not have an operating MDR laboratory, so Eugenbell has collected samples from patients in North Korea, had them analyzed at Masan National Tuberculosis Hospital and returned with individual prescriptions. Patients’ sputum samples are transported from Pyongyang to Masan via China and Seoul. It takes 5-20 days. It is indeed totally crazy process. That is why in the States EugeneBell is seeking for collaborations to build a laboratory and medical facilities; and to develop strict treatment programs for MDR-TB in Pyongyang. As well-known, North Koreans are highly suspicious of South Koreans’ intentions so North Korea government dislikes any Koreans or Korean-Americans’ helps. It means no Koreans and Korean-Americans can go to North Korea so only non-Koreans can access the laboratory and facilities.

Fortunately, productive conclusions were made at the conference in spite of highly complexed situations. Currently the Chair of Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School is a Korean-American, Jim Young Kim, MD, PhD. At the end of the conference, he said his father was from North Korea so there are still so many family members in North Korea. Then he asked Dr. Linton directly, “How Harvard Medical School can help North Korea with EugeneBell?” and mentioned he has known some people of Gates Foundation, and now the Foundation is preparing to build MDR-TB facilities in China. He is sure that Bill Gates will be quite interested in interrupting North Korea with medical aids. And he added he would like to call a conference with Bill Gates soon. If once a consensus is reached among the Gates foundation, American scientists and clinicians and EugeneBell, it is really amazing progress!

Global health has become a core political and economical reality of our time. Will improvements in health spur improvements in economic development? Or will economic development drive improvements in health? This argument is still ongoing. Anyway our response to NK is urgent to save life and from now on we must think seriously how we can use the possible grant and the chance diplomatically to open up the closed society.

God Grew Tired of Us

In God Grew Tired of Us, the film shows the lost boys-Sudanese refugees. They altogether fled from Sudan to Kenya, and have been locked up in UN refugee camps. Some of them were selected and sent to the US. John Bul Dau and other three people sent to Syracuse, and other four people sent to Pittsburg. 

After a few years passed, among them, John and a few started to take leadership roles for their people and country. One studied economics in the States and went back to their country to build a school. John set up a foundation for academic and medical expenses of Sudanese refugees (johndaufoundation.org).

I can see they spent time together almost for 10 years in a camp, so there is a close bond among them. Also they think it is a shame if they do not take care of their own people. It really touched me.

In terms of North Korean refugees, it is really sad that they are quite different with Sudanese refugees' situation. Their first destination is China, but the government keep holding UNHCR's investigation so there is no refugee camp even the total number of North Korean refugees in China is between 300,000 and 400,000. The refugees are just hiding in China. They can hardly help each other but unwillingly have to be scattered all over the world. It is a tragedy, indeed.
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I cannot remember since when I got to have an intention to help them, anyway I have a strong attachment to them, in some ways, I would like to help them and am waiting for the chance I can do something.

[Article] South Korean Film's Reception Shows a Big Chill Toward North

Just three years ago, South Koreans were full of warm feelings toward North Korea. They spent billions of dollars on economic projects there, hosted the North's leaders for joint holiday celebrations and put one of its celebrities in TV ads, all part of the afterglow of political efforts to bridge their divided countries.

A new movie here called "Crossing," the first by a South Korean director to portray the living conditions of North Koreans, seemed destined to take advantage of those feelings. Laura Yoo, who hasn't seen her father since he got stuck in the North in the Korean War more than 55 years ago, left a recent showing in tears. "I came here and I thought about him," she said. But Ms. Yoo turned out to be an exception, as the movie attracted far fewer people than its producers hoped. Its mediocre showing is another sign that South Koreans have turned cool toward the North after realizing their outreach was bearing little fruit. Aid agencies say this shift in sentiment is making it harder to interest people in helping out North Korea. "This is the least fashionable topic in South Korea," says Erica Kang, Seoul director of Good Friends, a Buddhist charity that works on hunger relief in North Korea.

The change also stands to complicate international efforts to lure North Korea out of its isolation and end its strategy of wringing aid from others with military threats. An opening in the North could pacify a region beset by tensions for decades and, some hope, even lay a foundation for the two Koreas to reunite.

The shift in sentiment made a difference in the presidential elections here last year. Voters chose conservative candidate Lee Myung-bak, who promised to attach strings to the economic aid South Korea had been providing to the North. This month, that sentiment hardened further after a North Korean soldier fatally shot a South Korean tourist at a resort the South had built in the North to boost its neighbor's economy.

In light of broader challenges now facing South Korea as its export-driven economy copes with the global slowdown, many South Koreans consider further overtures to the North to be a luxury when they are so poorly received. "Every time we've made an agreement with them, they break it," says Choi Doo-hwan, 53 years old, a fruit-juice vendor in Seoul.

Ten years ago, then-president Kim Dae-jung ended decades of hostility from the Korean War of the 1950s by developing a policy of economic and political outreach that was designed to spur North Korea toward openness and change. North Korea allowed videoconference reunions for some Korean families separated in the war's aftermath, but it did little else, falling far short of South Koreans' hopes. A turning point came in 2006 when North Korea tested new missiles and a nuclear weapon.

It was in the warmer atmosphere that movie director Kim Tae-kyun four years ago began work on "Crossing," hoping to show ordinary life in North Korea instead of the political and military imagery that South Koreans had seen for years.

A veteran of comedies aimed at teenagers, Mr. Kim spent more than two years to research and write the serious, fictional drama. To get details right, he interviewed more than 100 North Koreans who had fled the country and cast some as extras. "In the process of interviewing North Korean refugees and reading the literature, I did feel a very deep sense of shame as I realized how much I didn't know," Mr. Kim says.

"Crossing" depicts the journey of a miner who makes an illegal trip to China in search of medicine for his wife. After almost being caught by Chinese police, the man joins a group of North Koreans seeking safety with a charity worker, not realizing that doing so has put him on an escape route to South Korea from which there is no turning back. He tries to reconnect with his wife and son, who become desperate without him, while adapting to his modern, wealthier new life in Seoul.

Reviewers strongly praised the movie, with several noting it depicted North Korea in a way that has never been seen here. After a month in South Korean theaters, "Crossing" attracted only 900,000 viewers and hasn't made up its $4 million production cost, producers say. By contrast, the movie hit of the summer here, a cowboy adventure called "The Good, the Bad and the Weird," attracted 1.7 million people in its opening weekend.

The Wall Street Journal
Evan Ramstad (evan.ramstad@wsj.com) July 29, 2008 

Volunteering Work at A Homeless Shelter in Washington DC

I thought I could help and serve homeless people in Washington DC, however, it was my wrong guess. Ironically, I've been served and beloved too much here in DC. I'm also a kind of homeless in the States. I think I'm not that different from the people. Only one different thing is I have a chance to give them some stuffs, which are also supported by some others. I could neither heal their sickness nor change their hard situations. Jesus came to the earth for the lowly, the poor and the oppressed, only he has been able to do something for them. I found there were few things I could help except talking with them for a moment. Something in my heart of hearts was shouting. "We have to help them, there will be practical ways." How? I have no idea at this time but I think I need to find the ways in my position. I prayed to God for keeping me live as a sincere servant of God. I don't want to waste my resource before I leave for heaven. Everlasting truth! It was a blessing to meet God's servants - Changhoon, Jihae, Junko, Kisung, Susan and Yojin through this volunteering work. Where a good purpose is, there are always good people. Next time I hope to join this ministry again with my Aquila :)