Korea Trip; Wednesday

Wednesday started with a special ceremonial time. The Korean people are a very formal people who like ceremony. There are many social norms that we are expected to follow; call adults by their last name with the title Mr, Mrs, Dr, etc., bow when greeting another adult, give a small gift to everyone who helps you in any way, show a lot of respect to those in leadership. Wednesday morning we were honored to have a meeting with the Director of Eastern Welfare Society.
The organization was started in 1972 by a Dr. Kim, a Christian refugee from North Korea who loved children and was concerned about the welfare of the many orphans. He passed away just a few years ago, and his daughter is now the director, who is also Dr. Kim. On Wednesday morning, we gathered in the chapel of the Eastern Welfare building which houses the baby nursery, the baby clinic, Eastern offices, and the Eastern guest house we are staying in. First an assistant came and spoke, then showed us a video about the history of Eastern, then took us on a tour of the building. Then we sat together in family groups. Dr Kim came in and spoke about the organization and her father's heart in starting it and running it for so many years. After that, she went to each family group and gave each us us small gift. When she completed that and returned to the front, each of us went to her as a family group and gave a cash donation to her for Eastern, and a donation of goods that Eastern could use for their work.
Libby had an envelope with cash. I had a bag with Tshirts and socks that would be useful for the disabled children who are in their care  in one of their homes. We were told to hold our gifts with two hands when we gave it to her, and bow. This kind of behavior is quite strange to casual, informal Americans, but it was a very nice time. We then had a formal lunch in the Eastern cafeteria.
In the afternoon, we broke into two groups. Libby went to the nursery to hold babies. I went to the home for single mom's which is next door to help out. I spend the next three hours sitting on the floor holding a 6 day old baby. I don't know why that was needed, but I sure enjoyed it.

 Then, we gathered in the Cafeteria with the single expectant mom's, and some who are parenting their children and are still living in the home. The social worker had planned an ice-breaker "bingo" game that was difficult to explain and caused a lot of confusion, but in the end was fun. THEN we worked together on a craft. We could NOT understand what we were supposed to do. After 20 minutes of explanation, we finally possibly understood. We were to use construction paper to create a tree, put trees and flowers on it, then make "fruit" with our names, ages, our "babies" age, our wish for ourselves and our wish for them????

 This is the tree we made.After making the trees, we were supposed to work together to make a spaghetti dinner. I can't describe the confusion and chaos that came from that. We did finally get dinner made and ate.

The purpose of all this was to help us all connect, but connecting young single expectant Korean women and a group of middle age American's was pretty hard. The fact that we could not communicate at all made it impossible.
This whole trip seems to be more of a cultural bridge building trip than anything else. Libby and I have decided that we just have to accept that fact, call it what it is, and not be disappointed about the shortage of true ministry.