The Korea Anabaptist Centre (KAC) has an annual theological lectureship where they invite overseas speakers to travel around Korea and speak and teach on behalf of KAC.
Kyong Jung Kim is the KAC Office Manager and the main contact person for the speaking tour.
He was also our primary translator, host, 
and driver of “Cheap Grace”, the KAC van.
He is a skilled networker and we got to enjoy the fruit of his earlier labours as we visited communities from north to south in the country. He was also an excellent companion for our sojourn in his country. 
Kyong Jung met us at the airport in Incheon and drove us to his apartment in ChunCheon, a three-hour drive. Like most Koreans Kyong Jung and his family live in a high-rise apartment building. 
Kyong Jung and his wife Ellen gave up their bed for us and slept on the floor in their small study. This behaviour was repeated as we travelled around Korea. We were treated royally as others sacrificed and hosted us with wonderful grace and humility. Mary had fun with the Kim daughters.
We arrived in the country on Good Friday, had part of Saturday to get settled in and then spoke on “Children’s education and Homeschooling” at Jesus Village Church,
one of the two Mennonite churches in Korea. 
Easter Sunday we spoke twice more at Jesus Village Church and then moved on to Seoul on Monday, 24 March.
Jesus Village Church is blessed with many children and they took an active part in the Easter worship service.
Our first presentation in Seoul to the Joshua Homeschool Academy.
The meeting was held in one of Seoul’s mega-churches.These are congregations of thousands with high-profile pastors and large budgets.
Our Monday meeting was the first and last contact with this kind of church.
For two weeks in the Seoul area, we stayed in a Baptist guest house close to an international school.
We had a half-hour walk to the subway so we had plenty of opportunities to walk off the food we ate in one luscious meal after another.
We learned which foods to eat and which to avoid due to their spiciness.
Koreans eat some of the hottest food in the world.
They sit cross-legged on the floor to eat, something we didn’t quite get used to in our three week visit.
We did get pretty proficient with chopsticks though. 
Tuesday, 25 March, we spoke again about parenting and homeschooling with a parent’s group that formed when a schoolchild committed suicide after being bullied in school.
We met in the afternoon with the staff at the KAC office.
Their office is one floor of an office building where they also run a programme called Connexus – teaching English.
Several Mennonite volunteers from North America teach in this programme.
They are open to having Aussie and Kiwis join them too.
We were also interviewed by a journalist and photographed by his photographer while at the KAC office.
The article and photo were published about a week later in a national newspaper.
On Wednesday, 26 March, we gave our only English lecture (no translation).
It was at Torch Trinity Theological Seminary on “Mission World.”
We discovered that David Shenk from Eastern Mennonite Missions also taught at this institution.
Mark wore a suit (no tie) he purchased for forty dollars at a Salvos in Mona Vale.
Kung Jung said Mark looked like a priest. The suit was only worn a few times during the trip and is now safely back on a hanger in a closet.
Thursday was a rest day. 
We visited Insadong, a tourist area of Seoul. We had one of the Korean students from Connexus as a guide.
He introduced us to more Korean foods and a special candy made from honey and nuts.
We met a troupe of actors getting ready for a re-enactment of a traditional Korean wedding. They were jealous of Mark’s real beard (their’s were fake).
We purchased some Korean clothes and visited arts shops where Mary was fascinated by the large brushes.
Friday we were involved in an all-day Peace Education Workshop sponsored by a group called Women Working For Peace. As you can see in the first photo, Mary hangs on Mark’s every word!
We led a group exercise based on John Paul Lederach’s model of reconciliation.
Jae-Young Lee was our translator for this event. Jae is the Peace Programme Director for KAC.
And of course, we enjoyed another Korean meal.
Our hosts and guides for the evening were two bright young women who are KAC interns.
SongJu [left in photo] accompanied us on our trip south during our last week. She was a big help selling books, taking photos, and translating during meals.
SongJu and Mary had some enjoyable talks and walks together. Saturday we met with a group of church workers interested in peace education. A number of pastors who are normally part of the group missed the meeting because they went home to work on their sermon for the next day. One of the participants said at the end of the meeting that the pastors should have stayed. “They could have gotten tomorrow’s sermon right here.”
Sunday the 30th of March found us in two churches giving sermons in both and being treated to more Korean meals. Koreans take off their shoes when they enter buildings and slip on slippers or thongs (or just go around in socks).
Mark never did get used to preaching in a suit wearing slippers. It just didn’t feel right. [Note the exhaust hoses hanging in the restaurant behind the pastor and his wife who hosted us. These hoses are for when you have barbeques right at your table.]
We had a funny experience in the second church. Mark was speaking about “Walking in a World of Evil and Forgiveness”. He starts by talking about the reality of evil in the world today and using several quotes about how to overcome evil. 
Some of these are meant to present ways the world deals with evil and then Mark goes on to tell the story of Jonah and says God’s way of dealing with evil is by forgiveness. Well, during the quote from George Bush about destroying the evil ones through killing them, the pastor starts saying “Amen” and then the congregation joins him with their “Amens.” We knew it was going to be a tough sermon from there!
Monday evening we spoke at a prayer meeting sponsored by The Frontiers
(http://www.thefrontiers.org/Eng/index.html ).
In 1993 they began meeting each week to pray for conflicted areas in the world. And then in the early 2000’s they began sending young adults into some of these areas to hold peace camps.
Today they live in two communities – one in Seoul and one outside the city – and send workers to countries like East Timor, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. We were greatly impressed with their zeal and dedication to the cause of peace and the fact that it is all bathed in prayer and worship.
We visited their rural community on Tuesday after speaking at an all-girls school in the morning.
We spoke for 20 minutes in a chapel service about being peacemakers and were treated afterwards like we were visiting rock stars.
We stood in the back of the auditorium and shook all the girls’ hands (or received hugs from them), had photos taken with several groups,and then tea and coffee with the principal and other officials in his office.
There we were given heaps of gifts. We thought “All of this for twenty minutes of talking. Imagine if we spoke for an hour.”
One of the highlights of our trip came on Wednesday, 2 April.
We attended the weekly demonstration held at the Japanese embassy.
This was the 807th consecutive demonstration – the longest ongoing demonstration in modern history.
It is held by the comfort women who were taken as young girls by the Japanese to “service” their soldiers.
These women are now in their 80’s and 90’s and still demanding an apology for their treatment.
Their message is end all war and then no more women and children will suffer the way we have.
Mary got to address the gathered crowd and we later hosted the woman to lunch.
At lunch one of the women thanked us by singing a song.
Mary responded with one of her own.It was a very moving event for us.
Wednesday afternoon we travelled by train south of Seoul to CheonAn where we had a fantastic meal with a pastor [SongJu’s father] and his family,
spoke in an evening service in a church, and had a counselling session with a couple after the meeting.
We stayed overnight and toured a memorial to the March 1st Independence movement the next day.
We were also treated to an afternoon at a spa/pool before
a trip on Korea’s fast train (297 KPH’s) back to Seoul.
Thursday, 3 April we spoke on conflict transformation and peacemaking at Soongshil University, a Christian university
in Seoul.
We saw signs on the walls in the university about a talk being given by “International Experts on Peace”. We said “We should go hear that.” We discovered it was us.
The professor sponsoring our talk told us about talks going on in China between North and South Korea – all under the radar of the media. He and others we met expect North and South Korea to be re-united possibly sometime in the next ten years. Many churches are praying and preparing for this knowing they can play a key reconciling role in the healing of the split in their nation.
On Friday, 4 April we had another rest day. We left our guest house early in the morning to catch the subway to the American USO building where we joined a bus tour group to the DMZ (De-militarised zone).
It was an interesting day of visiting “No-man’s land” in a war that has been going on since 1950.
We went down into a tunnel the North was building under the DMZ and visited a train station built near the border that is brand new and empty, just waiting for peace between the north and south.
Our tour guide was hard to understand. Beyond a speech impediment which made it hard to figure out what he was saying, he mixed up his “p’s” and “f’’s”. He started by explaining that our trip would be in three “farts” and that we should keep our “fassforts” in our “fockets” at all times. (Mark said it was good he was not trying to explain the different aspects of hockey.)
In the evening we had dinner with Guishik Nam pastor of Grace and Peace Mennonite Church, a member of the congregation, and Juan Martinez, a Mennonite professor from Fuller Seminary in Korea for four weeks as part of a sabbatical. We went to a Greek restaurant and had a fantastic meal (seated in chairs).
On Saturday we gave two lectures sponsored by KAC
We spoke on “Walking in the Resurrection” and “Walking as Do-gooders”.
Some came to the lecture after reading about us in the newspaper. It was an opportunity to introduce KAC to people who never heard of them before.
In the evening we went to a shelter where some of the comfort women live so Mary could interview two of them for a paper she is writing.
On Sunday, 6 April, we checked
out of our guest house in Seoul and headed south for a week on the road.
We visited Sarangbang Community Church homeschooling.
[The presentations were videoed and put on their website. See below for the links.]
This community has done some creative building on its site and hosts an alternative school.
An assistant pastor showed us around after lunch. 
[The pots are for making Kim chi and soy sauce.]
One mother of a school student runs a nearby restaurant and wanted to host us in the evening. Her restaurant has a Japanese feel to it. It was another fantastic meal.
Monday, 7 April we visited an intentional Christian community called Bonacom (the good life). They are a farming community and were quite busy.
We got a rather cool welcome at first but after an afternoon and evening session with their community they were reluctant to have us leave.
One young girl made a present for Mary and said she will try to be a better listener when she is in conflict with her sisters.
As we travelled further south we saw more evidence of Spring – cherry blossoms and forsythia.
The 8th of April found us in DaeJeon City where we spoke on a number of topics ranging
from resurrection and
peacemaking to homeschooling.
Most places we went they had large banners advertising our talks.
These are made of cloth material and we collected a couple because they just throw them out after an event.
Group photos were popular all along our trip.
On the 9th, we moved on to the Dandelion Community, another Christian intentional community.
This one has done a great deal with alternative energy and creative building (grass growing on their roofs).
They run an alternative school. We had several sessions with their staff and students.
When we left we took one of their staff with us to catch a bus to her home town for a birthday celebration.
She wrote to us recently: “On your way to Bu-san, you dropped me to a place near my hometown. It was very kind of you. It made my journey home much easier. I do not know why and how, but I felt kind of 'honoured' or 'treated' not just because of the short ride or what you shared, but more through your presence, itself.
That kind of amazing feeling stayed with me a few days as if I had met God's messengers or somebody similar. I wanted to thank you all - the whole team for coming to visit us with the spiritual tenderness.”
The 10th of April we moved on to Busan, the major port city in the southern part of the country. We gave a lecture in the evening on “Sabbath and Jubilee”.
Mark tried to gently suggest that the busy Korean lifestyle needed to be addressed but we don’t think the message got through. The meeting went till after 11pm.
We stayed in a guest house near a university campus. Students partied outside till after 3:30 in the morning.
After the Korean War, Mennonite Central Committee set up the Mennonite Vocational School (MVS) in Gyeongsan to care for and train Korean orphans.
Some of those former students have stayed in contact with Mennonites over the years and are very gracious hosts when Mennonites vi
sit their area.
We met two of these former students. 
Professor Lee is dean of Koshin University in Busan, a conservative Christian university. Professor Lee told us “My church doesn’t like Anabaptists” but because of his position he can and does have Mennonite/Anabaptists speak in his classes whenever he can. We addressed around 90 students in his church history class on “Mission in a Postmodern and Post-Christendom World." A former student of Professor Lee's, 
who is now a missionary in Tibet, shared about his experiences in that troubled country. Professor Lee put us up in a motel next to the harbour with a view out of our windows of fishermen coming and going. We also had some time for a delightful walk around the headlands of the harbour.
On Saturday we moved on to Ulsan where we met Pastor Lee, another former MVS student. He took us to GyeongJu, an ancient city with Buddhist shrines and royal burial mounds.
We spoke on Sunday in his church 
(with the largest banner of our trip, complete with a photo of us taken from an online website).
Again, the hospitality was over the top – we were treated like royalty.
After lunch on Sunday we hit the road heading north.
Five-and-a-half hours later we were back in ChunCheon and had one last Korean meal in a restaurant with Kung Jung and his family.
We used the drive north to de-brief with Kyong Jung (and relax) and continued Monday morning at his place.
In the afternoon he put us on a bus to the airport and we were on our way home to OZ.
On the way to the airport Mark tried to get some last minute photos.
Seventy percent of Korea is mountains so they’ve gotten pretty good at building tunnels for their roads.
They also continue to build infrastructure like damns to keep their country growing. Church buildings are found everywhere.
Twenty to twenty-five percent of the country is Christian.
We had to include a picture of Paris Baguette. Bread products are a luxury in a country where the diet is based on rice.
Paris Baguette with its French-style baking is an oasis for Westerners longing for wheat products.
We were given so many gifts during our stay that we bought another bag to transport them.
At the airport they wanted to charge us $262 for the extra weight.
After some discussion they let us shift some things from check-in to carry-on and we got away with no extra charge. (Those communication skills come in handy at times.
It was a good trip. We learned much, made new friends, and planted ‘kingdom’ seeds around the place. The crew from KAC is left to water them. They seem a capable bunch. God bless them in their work!
Extras:
Newspaper article
We were interviewed for a national Korean newspaper. Here is the article and picture of us. Sorry it is in Korean. The interviewer picked up on the forgiveness theme we often talk about.
http://www.kukinewscom/mission/article/view.asp?page=1&gCode=kmis&arcid=0920862351&code=23111111
Walking in the Way of Abraham and Jesus
This is the video of a sermon we presented.
http://sarangbang.org/zboard/view.php?id=srb_english&page=1&bgcolors=&sn1=&divpage=1&sn=off&ss=on&sc=on&select_arrange=headnum&desc=asc&no=112
Homeschooling and parenting
This is a video of one of our presentations.
http://www.sarangbang.org/zboard/view.php?id=srb_lecture&page=1&bgcolors=&sn1=&divpage=1&sn=off&ss=on&sc=on&select_arrange=headnum&desc=asc&no=41
Photos from Korea
You are invited to view KAC's photo album: MarkandMaryHurst
Shalom,
Mark and Mary Hurst
I know that I am in Asia when cycles and bicycles are more plentiful than cars or trucks. Two or three people at a time ride cycles, often carrying bundles, packets, or whatever. One I saw today had three people carrying a clothes rack and last night one was a two people cycle but the second person was sitting on a bed frame balanced on the back of the cycle; how do they do that? [In the photo note the gorgeous flame tree in the background. Spring has arrived here so the flowers are wonderful.] While walking along, 'tuktuk' drivers, or taxi drivers constantly offer us rides to show us the city and women offer us massages for foot, hand, or whole body. So far we have resisted though the massages sound great to my 'try to sleep in the airplane' neck. 'Tuktuks' seem to be made to carry 2-6 people but more can be stuffed in. The local ones are powered by motorcycles not leg power.
A friend of ours who works for TEAR [The Evangelical Alliance for Relief] just returned from visiting Cambodian TEAR partners (they work with the poorest of the poor) and he told us about the gas/ petrol stations. Now I have seen it with my eyes. Plastic or glass bottles filled with gasoline/petrol on racks along the side of the street along with the large funnels are ready to fill the cycle tank. As in parts of Korea, footpaths or sidewalks are not just for people but are excellent parking spaces for cars, trucks, and cycles.
Last night we decided to have supper/tea in the hotel for it showered on and off during the whole meal. We had a delightful four course French meal with tasty breads (must have been the French influence like in Vietnam) for U$15 each. So today we were a bit more adventurous and found the Happy Special Pizza Restaurant which also served Khmer food. The Khmer food was bland compared to the Korean food we had for three weeks but inexpensive, only U$6.50. This type of shop lines the streets around the old city market area. Even though the humidity is very high the fans created a breeze so that our repast was consumed comfortably.
