Letter from HAN family - August 2011

Letter from HAN family ♥ - August 2011

Dear All

Hope you all are well, who are still very precious in our memories.

It has been quite a long time since we wrote the last English news letter. We are sorry to those who have been waiting for it, so please forgive us and hopefully it would be good news for you to hear. ☺

We are grateful to God for His faithfulness on our family’s life during these last three years. Maybe the most important thing is still not ‘what we have done’, but ‘what HE has done for us and others in this part of the world, the Gambia’. However, we will share how each family’s life has been to help you catch up with us better.

John has been mainly doing medical work in Sibanor Clinic which is a rural health centre (see Hee-Jin’s drawing^^) since June 2009 after finishing the first part of Mandinka, a local Language learning. There are about forty full time or part time local workers in the clinic and ten medical or non-medical long term missionaries from seven different nations with some trekkers. So, it is literally international! As you can imagine sometimes it is not easy to work together in multi- cultural team in harsh environments. However, when we see patients and local Muslim co-workers who do not know Jesus, we have tried to do our best to overflow God’s love and compassion through our action and life. We still need more medics like doctors, midwives and nurse tutors to serve our Gambian neighbors who have been suffering from various illnesses like malaria, malnutrition and HIV/AIDS etc…

Although Medical work is the important tool to share the gospel, John and Maria’s ultimate hearts are expecting to see new souls to come to Jesus and new churches planted. God has continually encouraged us for it by giving many opportunities to make good relationships with local Christians and Muslims during last three years. The church in Sibanor where we have been living seemed to be so weak; however, when we look back, we realize that it has been getting stronger though the process seems to be slow. So it has been another experience for us to learn again that patience is definitely needed for building up church with love and faithfulness. Recently John started a discipleship training course with some church members hoping that they could also train other church members and help themselves to plant new church in the future.

Maria’s life has been also busy doing various jobs: CRE(Christian Religious Education) in primary and middle school, teaching in Christian preschool every day. Besides, recently she took over sponsorship ministry for Gambian pupils as the missionary in charge returned to her home country. For those who are concerned about her health, Maria has been fine though she feels tired more often. However, she is very happy now because the girls are back home from BCS(MK school in Senegal) for summer holidays.

You might ask ‘how about Hee-Jin and Yoo-Jin?’ Well… it would be better to see what they wrote when they were asked to tell about their last three years in the Gambia. Here is Hee-Jin’s writing:

“Being in Africa was a great experience for me. I learnt what a mango was and a cashew apple and many other things I never knew. Also I got to see many different cultured kids from Holland, America, Nigeria and all kinds of places around the world. When I first arrived in Gambia I saw lots of people wearing Muslim clothes and I was pretty scared. And all the bugs! I remember when I was living in the house in a compound with Africans for my parents to learn Mandinka I made loads of friends there but sometimes in the night all these big cockroaches came out in our house. Also when we were eating fish loads of flies came in when the mosquito net broke. I hope I'm not frightening you but it was scary. That's what you sometimes get when you are a MK. After our house in a compound dad became a doctor in Sibanor and we got to live in a house in the mission compound called red house that was one thing thankful for but also my dad got very busy because there were only two doctors in the whole hospital. When this was happening we were sent to BCS. And Yoo-Jin and I was separated from parents and to travel there from our house took us 8hrs. If you were ever separated from your parents when you were 10 or 7 would you miss your parents? I'm pretty sure you would the first time. This also happened to me especially the nights but by the help of the BCS family and the love of God I think it helped me a lot. There are lots of things I leant in BCS like to control more of my actions to other people and I also learnt more about God in devotions and quiet-time. All the friends I had fun with...also the staff helped me a lot. BCS is a truly, big experience for me. I think there are always a good thing about something and a bad thing. And for me I think 3 years have gone fast. Also being a MK there is always a difficult choice but I think I'll have to always remember that God is holding me up, always.”

So, our past three years have almost gone and we are planning to have furlough next year for a year. However, we still have our last rainy season in the Gambia and the last term in BCS for my kids. Would you please pray for these 4 months we will be in the Gambia? 1) We would like to see Sibanor church keep on growing, 2) Sibanor health centre and pre-school may recruit more staff and teachers, 3) For those who are standing on the point between Christian and Muslim could come back to our Lord, 4) His church would be planted in Jakoi Bintang, Kampant, Jifanga and Sitta area, 5) Though there might be some difficulties in each place, each one of our family may try our best on our role depending on the Lord. Through daily life, we also want to keep growing in faith and get even closer and closer to our Lord as it has been the most precious thing we have ever had in the Gambia.

We are really grateful for your prayer and support believing that it has been God’s blessings for our family. May our Father keep blessing each one of you and binding us in His love.

Love in Him ♥.

HAN family

(Hyeok-Jun JOHN, Hyun-Sook MARIA,

HEE-JIN Joy and YOO-JIN Grace)