God’s Blessing for My Whole Family

Seok Min-seo from Seoul, South Korea

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In the summer of 2017, my happy dream finally came true; I had been dreaming that my whole family would sing in one voice and share hope for heaven in God. When I was attending a Sabbath morning service together with my loving family, my eyes were filled with tears of happiness.

I always had faith in God and hope for heaven in my heart ever since I was in primary school. However, I stopped going to church, seeing so many problems in Christianity, and then I got to know about the Church of God. While studying the truth of the new covenant, I became confident in going to heaven and received the truth with joy.

It was about two months after I started going to church that my husband suddenly started to come home early from work; actually, he was always so busy at work that he hardly had time to be with his family. But he would take us out to eat and say to our son while eating, things like, “Let’s go out to eat together as often as possible. Enjoy your meal,” with eyes full of love for his son. I knew there was something going on, and I carefully asked him what it was. He said that some of his co-workers had recently gotten sick and one of them even died, and that it could happen to him, too. He added that he started thinking about death as often he woke up at 4:44 and saw the number 4 almost every time he walked in the street. (The number 4 in Korean is pronounced as sa, which is coincidentally also the same pronunciation as the Chinese character for death.) His mind had become so weak that he was relating everything to death.

He was trembling in fear of death, unable to see anything ahead of him in life. So I explained to him the truth of the Passover, which has the promise of protection from disasters and the blessing of eternal life. Upon listening to me, he got up even before he finished eating and headed for Zion. Seeing him receive the promise of salvation as if he had been waiting for it, I thought that none of the things that had happened was a coincidence. It seemed that everything that happened to us was part of God’s plan to save our family: how I had heard the truth first two months before, and how my husband had suddenly started to fear death.

I couldn’t stop thinking about my sister-in-law who had been diagnosed with lung cancer at a young age and was about to face death. When she underwent an operation as cancer cells were detected in her body the first time, everybody thought that she would recover soon; the tumor was too small to be seen. However, after removing two third of her lung, other cancer cells were found in her body, so she had to remove the rest of her lung. When she had no more lung lobes to remove, her cancer recurred, and she had to live a painful life in a healthcare center, receiving chemotherapy once every three week. Hoping that my sister-in-law, who had been suffering from cancer for a long time, would live a happy life without pain in the kingdom of heaven, my husband and I prayed eagerly and delivered the good news of salvation to her.

My sister-in-law willingly became a child of God and showed such amazing faith that it was hard to believe that she was a critical patient. Although tens of times she received chemotherapy, which some people say is harder than having cancer, she came to Zion by driving her car for one and a half hour to keep the Sabbath whenever she had strength to do so; whenever she came, she always brought someone from the healthcare center, either a new member she had led to the truth or a person who was interested in the truth. The reason was simple; she just wanted the sick people at the healthcare center to meet God, who came as the spiritual Doctor, and to receive a new life. My sister-in-law greatly moved not only my husband and me, but also the brothers and sisters of Zion, and her effort was followed by blessings of God. When she received the truth, she only had six months to live, but she’s been keeping her faith for three years now, and she’s getting healthier in God physically and spiritually; she was so skinny before, but now she has gained ten kilograms [22 pounds].

Seeing my sister-in-law enjoy great happiness and blessings in the truth, I eagerly wished for my parents’ salvation. Several times, I preached the truth to my parents, who were Catholic, but they didn’t even pretend to listen. I tried to appeal to them as their family member, crying and asking them to listen to the truth, but it was like throwing an egg against a rock.

I thought about giving up, exhausted from their stubbornness, but then I realized that I only delivered the knowledge of the Bible to them, not depending on God. Repenting of my arrogance, I plucked up my courage and went back to them.

“Mom and Dad, God has placed someone like me who believes this truth around you, because God loves you. I believe that God will turn your hearts.”

My parents nodded their heads as I spoke and soon opened their hearts, which never seemed to open, and they received a new life.

As my husband and I witnessed how God led the gospel work, we started praying for the salvation of my parents-in-law with one mind. At that time, my parents-in-law even tried to avoid visiting our home because they had been shocked by the news that their eldest son of the Confucian family had started going to church. Preaching the truth to them was hardly thinkable.

We visited them often, practiced love as taught by Heavenly Mother, and carefully delivered the church news and the truth to them, but they showed an attitude of indifference. It felt like driving on a long road with no intersections.

But then one day, my father-in-law said that he had bought a book about the Bible from a Christian bookstore and read it. To me it sounded like he was saying: ‘I’m trying to understand you. We want to be with you.’ Just around that time, the vacation season started, so we invited my parents-in-law to stay with us. It was supposed to be a five-day-long visit, but it was extended to a week, because my parents-in-law unbelievably received the truth during their visit and wanted to study the Bible more before they left.

They studied the Bible in Zion until they left for home, and now every Sabbath day they get ready early in the morning and head to a nearby Zion. One day, I called my mother-in-law to ask how she was doing. She said, “I’m practicing finding verses.” How can I describe the joy of praying and praising God in unity with my loving family members?

After keeping the first Sabbath worship service, my mother-in-law told us what had been in her mind. She said she had been disappointed that her children decided to walk a different path of faith, but what bothered her more was her concern that something bad might happen to us. She said there were more times when she cried because of her concern than the times when she felt upset. When she said she was so happy to be with her loving children, I could feel the parents’ love once again. Also, I could fathom a little bit of God’s heart; God prays with tears for each and every one of us, His children, earnestly desiring to share the happiness of heaven with us all.

When I think of how my husband, sister-in-law, parents, and parents-in-law were led to Zion, I can see God appointed a certain time for each soul to be saved and precisely accomplished their salvation at the planned time. My whole family will participate with wholeheartedly in the work of preaching to 7.8 billion people, which will be accomplished by God’s great will.