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"SHOUT FOR JOY, ENLARGE YOUR TENT!"

By Juan Kim

First of all, I thank God for guiding and blessing the wedding between Young Hwa Lee and Sandra Betancourt on May 6, 2018 at the center of Nicaragua UBF. God sent Jose and Maria Ahn from HQ Chicago, USA and S. David Nam from Gongreung UBF to support this wedding. 

1. This wedding took place in the unstable national political situations in Nicaragua.

Since April 19, the government oppressed the students and demonstrators. Many young people died and were injured. The protest is continuing in several places.
     On the wedding day, as the first part, we heard the message of Sunday Worship Service by Jose Ahn (Isaiah 54:1-5) "Shout for joy, Enlarge your tent!" The Nicaraguan people felt like a sterile woman, like sterile Israel. There is injustice, corruption, repression and deaths. We do not know where the country is going. The people felt helpless and discouraged. But God said to rejoice, burst into song, and shout for joy. It is because the children of sterile woman are more than married woman. We learned God is our Redeemer, Holy of Israel. We should rejoice, shout for joy and enlarge our tent with prayer, with words, with vision, with action, waiting for our God.
     According to this teaching, we prayed for Young Hwa Lee and Sandra to be a missional House Church for Korea, Nicaragua and to the world. We prayed that God may send Sandra as 1st Nicaraguan missionary to enlarge the tent of Nicaragua. We would lengthen our prayer cords while we strengthen our stake, deepen our Bible study.
     Please pray continually for the situation in Nicaragua, because the situation is not easily established. More demonstrations are continuing.

2. Wedding Ceremony 

     For the second part, we celebrated the wedding. The groom Young Hwa Lee is a person of God's witness of the resurrection, creation and life. Because of the problem of the death of his father and mother in his youth and because of his weak health and sins, he was like a spiritually dead man. However, God saved him through the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 years ago, he fell from the 3rd floor in the construction field, but God saved him, not leaving him to die or have serious damage. From that moment, Young Hwa Lee experienced the faith of the resurrection. He became a man of faith and full of grace. He was even able to form a house church for world mission.
     The bride, Sandra has been a faithful coworker of Nicaragua UBF for the last 10 years. She was like a Samaritan woman who had the thirst for love. But she found Jesus as her Savior and Christ. She passed several tests of God. She did not leave the faith. She had been patiently serving God’s flock. Now God has blessed her in his time.
     At the beginning, we planned only to celebrate a marriage engagement. But God helped to establish a house church at once. Because they were ready and joyfully and happily accepted the marriage. The bride's widowed mother also accepted it immediately. We were also happy and could have a wonderful marriage ceremony. Thank God for the preparation of Gonreung UBF and thanks for the advice of Jose Ahn and Maria Ahn. The students of Rebekah’s Korean language course also celebrated with their fan dance. The church brothers sang songs of 
blessings and jubilation. We felt as if Jesus was blessing us as in Cana in Galilee. Many enjoyed themselves.
     We believe this marriage of faith is so pleasing to God. We were able to see the vision and hope of God through this marriage of faith. In God, nothing is impossible. Through the marriage of Young Hwa Lee and Sandra we saw that there would be no one who can not marry. Many young Nicaraguans suffer from a broken family and divorced parents. There are many single moms. But this marriage of faith challenged this environment and showed the marriage by faith so preciously. Missionary John Kim officiated the wedding ceremony with the word from John 12:24 "Truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains a single seed, but if it dies, it bears much fruit." He blessed them to bear many fruits following the example of Jesus who fell on earth and died and bore many fruits.

3. We sent Mariano as a short term missionary to Tecucigalpa, Honduras.

     On the day of celebrating the wedding, We sent out Mariano, a chemistry master student. He will prepare the thesis in Tegucigalpa, Honduras for 8 months. Based on the word of Isaiah 54:1-2, we were challenged to extend, to the right and to the left, lengthen the prayer cords and reinforce the stakes of the word of God. I pray to God that Mariano can fight alone depending on God and feed the Honduran sheep.