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Europe UBF
January 13, 2014

We thank God for granting us this conference in the beautiful Polish countryside, right next to Warsaw.

We thank God for the labor of love of our 2 missionary families in Poland who made this a memorable time – Missionaries Elijah and Deborah Park with 3 children in Warsaw, and Henry and Hanna Lee with 4 kids in Poznan. We thank God for the young people who attended the conference and served with sing-along, making a good environment. Most of all we thank God for being with us, revealing his word and his grace to us.

There were about 70 people from 21 European nations along with Korea and the USA. From the beginning, we also prayed for our coworkers in France, Netherlands, Norway, and Spain who could not make it this time. We also prayed constantly for the recovery of Susanna Cha in London, Lydia Lee in Athens (presently in Korea), and Joseph Chin in Bergen (Norway).

The conference started with M. Elijah Park’s message on Mark 1:15, “Believe in the Gospel.” He insisted that the time has come for God to rule in our lives and challenged us to come out of our comfort zone. Afterwards, Pawel Zaleski gave a meaningful introduction to Poland, sharing the God-given greatness of the land and nation as well as its sorrow from being considered an easy booty to strong neighboring nations. Poland is the nation of Copernicus, Frederic Chopin, Marie Curie, and many others.

In the afternoon and evening, we listened to the annual reports. Each of them had a clear topic that glorified God and his sovereign work among us. We also had 3 special reports. Elia Lee shared about the ISBC at Indiana University this year; his wife Susan reported on the “Neuanfang” (New Beginning) conference by and of German new generation; and David Shin gave an account of the European CBF conference that had been held in the Czech Republic, again. We were greatly encouraged to pray for the continuous spiritual growth of our young people and that they would take more and more leading roles in European campus mission.

Day 2 of the conference focused on the 2014 key passage from 2Tim. 3:10 – 4:8 with the key verse 4:2, which says, “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.” After group Bible study, P. Abraham Kim delivered the thorough, meaningful message. His preaching opened our hearts and minds to accept Apostle Paul’s testament to share the living word of God with this generation, even in Europe. He also explained and emphasized the importance of “great patience” and “careful instruction” as we serve young people. We all prayed whole-heartedly after this message. And reflection sharing time was also prayerful and encouraging.

In the later evening, M. Daniel Park (Dusseldorf) gave some insight about the preparations for the upcoming European Summer Bible Conference at Willingen-Upland, August 14-17, 2014. With the title “Faith in God,” we pray for a revival of Bible-based faith in Europe in the wake of the 500th anniversary of the reformation that God had started through Martin Luther. We are asking God to send more than 800 people to this conference.

On the closing day, after personal prayer time in the morning, we had our Sunday worship service with Walter Nett’s message on Hebrews 11:1-7, “Faith Is …” Based on the examples of Abel, Enoch, and Noah, he emphasized that our God is living, loving, and holy and that we have every reason to put our faith in him, no matter what our circumstances are.

After a summary of prayer topics and agenda by both P. Abraham Kim and Walter Nett, we prayed on our knees, imploring God with contrite hearts. We intend to meet again in Switzerland around the end of 2014.

Some of us could visit the city of Warsaw and pray for the students and for our missionary families. Others could even stay longer and see beautiful Cracow by night, a salt cavern with several chapels and even a large underground church of salt. With prayerful hearts, we also saw the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau where 1.1 million people (mostly Jews) were killed between 1940 and 1945. It was a lesson of history that mustn’t be forgotten.

All the more, we mustn’t forget that God has called us to serve this generation by preaching the word of God with great patience and careful instruction.