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Korea UBF
May 1, 2014

Korea UBF held its Spring semester staff conference on April 21-23, 2014 at Surety Insurance & Human Resources Development Institute at Choongju, Korea. The number of attendees was 72 including several missionaries. The meeting atmosphere was calm due to the sadness from recent shipwreck disaster in the sea of West in Korea. We canceled athletics competition in the program and instead had Bible reading, prayer and the time of condolence for the victims.

There were three Bible studies and two special lectures in the program. On the first day the invited speaker, P. Park Hee-Chun (Naesudong church), gave a special lecture entitled, "The Secret that can Deliver Word of God Effectively." He said that the secret is only in the Bible. Through the lecture we all examined ourselves before God whether we had a deep Bible study or not as we delivered messages, and repented of our poor attitude toward the word of God. And we all made a clear decision to concentrate on deep Bible study.

On the second day there was second special lecture entitled, “Should I not Have Concerned for the Great City of Nineveh? (Jonah's narrow mind and God's great mercy on sinners) given by Sh. Stephan Ahn. Through the lecture we could learn about the great and wide heart of God and the view of the books of the prophets beyond the book of Jonah.
Jonah who was a self-centered and narrow-minded nationalist ran away from the Lord, for he was reluctant to preach to the enemy city of Nineveh. However, God had mercy on the evil city of Nineveh and wanted them to be saved by sending his servant. He emphasized that we should not be self-centered, nor family, national or ministry-centered but rather have the heart of God embracing all kinds of sinners, even enemy nations in prayer and love.

Afterward Dr. John Jun who served CME in Middle East for seven weeks presented a mission report. The Middle East is absolutely an Islam zone and Christianity is only 2.4% now. It is very hard to preach the gospel in the area. However, recently in the area post-modernism is quickly progressing, and they are facing a transformation because of the influence of smart phone and internet. Most of all, many of them are greatly interested in Korea because of the influence of K-Pop and Korean wave, so he hoped that it may be a good opportunity for Middle Eastern mission work.

At the end Sh. David Kim gave all the staff new direction to have deeper Bible study and to be outstanding preachers in this generation. He also suggested that we ask God to comfort the families of the shipwreck disaster and Korean people who are in deep sorrow for losing their loved ones. Finally, he asked us to pray for all the Korean leaders and people from all walks of life so that each may come near to God repenting their sins that displease God, and let this nation be renewed in Jesus Christ so that this nation may be raised as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation for his name’s sake.

Abraham Suh