Grandma Jung Hae-won (Non-CGM member)
Even when working in our field here, if it started to rain, while the other kids went to school,
he would stop along the way to pray. Our field was right there, so I knew about it.
I asked him, “Why aren’t you going? Why are you just standing there?”
He said it was to listen to the voice of God.
Once, our family was invited to the house in Seokmak-ri. I had always been curious about this.
His mother said that he was always late to elementary school. She told me that when he heard God’s voice, he would stop to listen. That’s why he couldn’t go on and stood there in the rain, listening.
At lunchtime, when others would eat, he would say he’d be back after praying. If he went into a cave, Teacher wouldn’t come out for a long time. People said that when they went to look for him, he would be praying with tears and a runny nose.
I didn’t see it myself, but the children’s grandfather did. When they found him not coming out, they would go, and there he would be: praying, tears streaming down his face, his nose running. People said he must be crazy to pray that long. They called him crazy because he prayed for 40 days without eating a single meal, his face becoming thin and drawn. I knew this because his mother told me.
Sometimes the children’s grandfather would go with him, even to bring Pastor Gwang-seok from Dalbalggol, or when they went to visit him and he wasn’t there, they would just boil some sweet potatoes and go. When they arrived, they would find him praying.
They said he carried his Bible strapped onto his A-frame pack with straw rope. Whenever he had time, he read the Bible. There was no rice, no barley, nothing to eat, and yet he would bring in mentally ill people.
He would always bring people who were troubled like that, so he himself became thin and dark from not eating enough. You can imagine how distressing that was.
But his mother always set aside a bowl of rice, thinking he might come back. A few days later, he would come in, dark and thin, bringing only people who were mentally unstable.
One time he brought someone from Gurye-ri who wanted to attend a revival meeting at church.
He left that person to stay at our house and went.
After graduating from school, I was working in the bean field with my mother and siblings.
I think I had gone to pick vegetables that day. When I went to Wolmyeongdong,
his mother told me that the mentally ill man had disappeared while working in the field.
She said the man was making a scene and acting wildly.
I went there once or twice, and the road was so rough to get there, you had to cross rocks and go down steep paths. The way to Wolmyeongdong was very rugged back then.
And yet, he said that someday cars would be able to come in there. His mother told me about it, saying, “Just wait and see.”
We thought to ourselves, “He’s not an ordinary person.”
But when he said such things, our parents, who were farming, would tell him, “How can you talk like that? Stop your crazy nonsense and get back to working the field!”
That’s what his mother said.