Pastor Lee Jin-woo
In my case, I was evangelized through my mother, but it doesn’t mean my mother was a member of the Christian Gospel Mission.
One day, she suddenly heard that something was going on at Inha University, so she came to the church, but no one was there.
“Where did everyone go?”
She was told that someone had come to Inha University.
“Really?”
So she went to Inha University. When she got there, the Teacher was there, and her first impression of him was very good. She heard there was a completion ceremony in Jeonju, so she went there.
At the ceremony, when she saw the Teacher, she liked him so much. She was sitting off to the side, quietly watching him. She had never sat still like that for so long before, except that time.
When the message at the ceremony was over, people lined up, and the Teacher was leaving.
From her seat, she kept watching him intently. Then suddenly, he made his way through the crowd and came over to her, shook her hand, and greeted her.
“How are you?”
“Oh! You, follow me.”
“Yes!”
So she followed him right away. From that time on, she followed the Teacher along with the other brothers in the service team. The Teacher treated her so well. She followed him for two years like that.
Then one day, my mother heard that her son was in Wolmyeongdong, in Daejeon. So she came with a deaconess from another church she knew. From the Wolmyeongdong Natural Temple office, I got a message that my mother had arrived at the guard post.
“They say your mother is here.”
“Huh? How did my mother even know to come here?”
There was a path down by the rock threshold area. As I was walking down that way, I saw my mother coming up from the area in front of the old restroom. She seemed like she wanted to say something but said nothing.
So I asked, “Oh! You’re here?” but she didn’t say anything.
I wondered, “Why isn’t she saying anything?” as I led her back up.
Up ahead, the Teacher was there, so I took my mother to him.
The Teacher told my mother right away, “Your heart has been deeply scorched.”
My mother stayed quiet, and then the Teacher said he would pray for her.
So he prayed for my mother. After praying for her, he also touched the shoulder of the deaconess who had come with her. Later, my mother told me something she regretted. “That day, why did I go back down so quickly? I should have stayed longer…”
My mother had suffered from pain in the back of her neck for 50 years. I had seven older brothers, but all of them died in accidents in their early twenties. After that, people would say, “It’s because a bad woman came into the family. Because of her, all the sons died.”
My mother heard all those accusations. She was the one whose heart hurt the most, but she said she could never cry out loud anywhere.
She had actually come to confront the Teacher because of me, but when she met him for the first time, he knew her pain and prayed for her. That pain she had never even told me, her son… I was so grateful.
The deaconess who came with her said on the way down, “When he touched my shoulder earlier, the pain I had for over ten years disappeared. My shoulder doesn’t hurt anymore.”
And my mother also said, “The pain in the back of my neck that I had for 50 years is gone.”
Later, I said to my mother, “Mother, you should start coming to church.” She was originally a Catholic. “Well, then I should go to the Teacher’s church I met that day. If I go to your church, I can see the Teacher, right?”
“Yes.”
In a way, the Teacher himself evangelized my mother. That’s how she started coming to church and also began listening to the Word.