Sang Yang and Donna Partain at Han River

Performers at Theater opening

BCC assistant Miss Ha

BCC assistant Miss Kim

We are thankful to our friends, the Bachles and the Masons, for getting us to the airport in Houston very early in the morning. We did not see a sunset from the time the sun came up in Houston Wednesday morning until after we landed in Seoul Thursday evening, some 22 hours later. There is a 14 hour difference between Houston and Seoul and we chased the sun westward for the entire trip.

We were met at the airport by Rudy Wray and Sang Yang. Rudy had just finished teaching the first month of the new Sunset school in Seoul. He was very excited about his experience and just couldn't find words to express his love and appreciation for the staff and students involved in the school. It would not take us long to realize that his glowing description was an understatement.

The school shares space with the Bible Correspondence Center (BCC) on the top floor of a business building in Seoul. The BCC is a whole other story and I will address that work in a separate article. Brother Yang has graciously carved out a living quarters for visiting teachers that shares the space with the BCC. The living arrangement is very comfortable and includes every convenience one can think of.

It is such a blessing to be housed at the teaching site and not have to travel an hour both ways to get to the classroom as is the case in many places. This is even more convenient since our evening classes don’t finish until 10:00 p.m.

I am teaching two subjects to three classes with a total enrollment of about 50 students. One class meets on Monday and Tuesday evening from 7:30 to 10:00. One class meets on Thursday from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and the third class meets on Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The two subjects I am teaching are Biblical Interpretation and Galatians.

Saturday evening we were invited to attend a grand opening of a new performing arts theatre. We were treated to a variety of Korean traditional, folk, and contemporary performances by world famous artists. It raised beating on cans, pans, and various drums to a new dimension. The costumes and dances were enchanting.

Sunday I was invited to preach for the church that meets on one of the military bases here in Seoul. The congregation is largely made up of American military personnel but there is a good sized and growing group of Koreans that meet with them also. There are around 105 Churches of Christ in Korea. More than half of the church of Christ preachers in Korea are graduates of the BCC program.

Wednesday Brother Yang needed to go downtown Seoul to drop off a video at the studio where we are actually paid to air TV programs that are produced by the Churches of Christ in the USA. The BCC adds Korean captioning to the videos and we air about 6 hours per week over Korean television to the 48 million people of South Korea. Since he was going to be down there, it was a good time to take Donna and I to the South Mountain and let us go up in the Seoul Tower from where we had a panoramic view of all of Seoul, the home of 22 million souls.

Seoul is an ultramodern city made up of the kindest, most gracious people in the world. 70 percent of all buildings, including homes, in the city are wired with DSL Internet connections. They have an Electronics Mall that is made up of several city blocks of high-rise buildings interconnected with overhead walk ways and housing nothing but hundreds of electronics stores.

The crime rate in Seoul is extremely low. In most areas of the city, women, children, and foreigners can walk freely and without fear at any hour of the day or night.