News > Korea

This year the Daejeon UBF Summer Bible Conference was held at Namchunan Church retreat center in Gongju, Choongchung-namdo July sixteenth through nineteenth. We had several prayer topics for the conference: forty attendees, powerful and life-giving messages, unity among the coworkers and well-prepared programs. With these prayer topics, we spent six weeks for conference preparation. God heard our prayer and blessed the conference with exactly forty attendees (24 leaders, 7 student members, 7 new students and 3 missionaries and second gens), life-giving messages and genuine repentance of attendees.

Before the conference, the messengers gathered every Saturday for message preparation. The shepherdesses served the messengers with food and supported them through united prayer meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We chose the conference title as 'The Father's Great Love' and prayed that the attendees may accept His love. Later, we found out through the testimony sharing that many students actually made confessions such as "who am I that God so loves me?" and "How great is Jesus' love that He gave His life for me?" And we saw many of them crying while sharing their testimony.

During the conference, we experienced the immeasurable love of God toward sinners through the various messages. Jesus visited a hopeless paralytic who was lying around Bethesda for thirty eight years. He gave the paralytic hope for healing and recovered him to walk. Jesus also came to Samaria to meet a wounded sheep, the Samaritan woman. And we also learned that God is our Heavenly Father who accepts even the prodigal son who left Him and squandered his life. Finally, the climax of His love was revealed through the message of Jesus' crucifixion. Jesus laid down His life on the cross and prayed for the forgiveness of sinners.

On the second day, we watched the movie "John Q" under the guidance of Sh. Lydia Shin. The main character was so poor that he couldn't afford the medical treatment for his dying son. However, he even wanted to lay down his own life and give his own heart to save his son. In the end, this love saved his son. We realized that God's love is like this.

The specific list of the messages was: John 5:1-9 (opening message), John 4:1-30 (evening 1), Luke 15:11-32 (main 1), Hosea 6:1-6 (evening 2), Luke 23:13-43 (main 2), Luke 9:18-27 (evening 3) and John 15:1-16 (main 3). Also, there were four life testimonies and eight testimonies by new students, two on the second day and six on the third day. As a special program, the students offered a CCD (Contemporary Christian Dance). The students who were dancing with white T-shirts and jeans looked almost like angels. After this, some shepherds learned and performed the same CCD. This gave us a great joy. Also, M. Christine from Nante, France gave a mission report and had fellowship with us.

As for the follow-up summer ministry after the conference, we will group the new student attendees into several grooups and raise them as disciples through testimony writing and sharing.