Fragrance of Zion

A Blessed Mission, the Duty of Giving Love

A pastor couple of a small church used to live next door when I was young. As my mother was a close friend of them, I naturally started to attend their church because I had been a Christian since my birth. Sunday was the busiest day of the week for me. Since I hold various positions in the church—president of the youth group, manager of general affairs, secretary, etc., I had to go to church early in the morning and came back home around midnight, totally exhausted. Despite that, I loved working for the church. My only desire was to love God and do the work of God all my life. The church often got into trouble. There were many…

Yeong-ye Cha from Gimhae, South Korea

The Most Valuable Work, the Most Special Blessing

Just like most other Korean dads, my life was also a series of days to go to work, seeing the stars early in the morning, and come back home, seeing the stars again late at night. Back then, I didn’t know what the starry world in the distance was and for whom those stars were shining. My only goal was to give my family a comfortable life, not asking others for help, as a head of my family. With this goal, I worked hard without taking a day off throughout the year. It was not until my wife told me about the truth that I thought this life might not be all. Actually, I didn’t believe the truth at first…

Choi Su-hyeon from Austin Town, India

Tears of a Prodigal Child

Before I entered high school, I was led to the Church of God by my cousin, and I started attending the Church. My parents opposed my going there, but I liked Zion so much because there was a beautiful unity among brothers and sisters through the word of God. However, my mind changed when I entered university and my parents approved of my faith. Just as the saints of the early Church relied fully on God and kept their faith firm during hard times but became neglectful of the truth during peaceful times, my mind, which once went towards Zion, gradually started to go towards the world and I became lazy in my life of faith. After I started a…

Hui-jeong Im from Namyangju, South Korea

Something That You Know When You Do It

My parents died when I was young and I had to earn a living. So, my life was literally like a war and the world was like a battle field. In order not to get left behind in the cold-hearted world where no one could protect me, I worked tenaciously. Even after having a family at a late age, my life was the same. Doing the delivery service in the market, I had been working nights and sleeping days for over ten years. It was even difficult to see my children due to my busy daily life, so my only joy was to chat with the market vendors and get drunk. Since we had been living a tough life, we…

Ahn Byeong-chan from Seoul, South Korea

Hoping to Be the Protagonist of the New Book of Acts

‘O God, I will do anything if I can go to heaven, so please give me confidence in salvation.’ This is what I always made sure to say whenever I prayed, because I wasn’t confident in my salvation though I went to church. Although I was young, I was so scared of going to hell that I went for all kinds of retreats, praise gatherings, and early morning prayer meetings. I also read the Bible every day, and waited to have confidence in going to heaven. One cold winter day, I met two angels who were preaching the truth, and I learned about the Sabbath day, the Passover, and many more. I received a new life immediately, and studied the…

Song Hye-ju from Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic

Parents’ Love that Rejoices Over a Child Who Returned

For parents, the ones who are beautiful and lovely like flowers must be their children. Anything in this world cannot be compared with the devotional love of parents; they can even give up their lives for their children, the source of their joy. The reason it is hard to understand parental love is that it is like a precious pearl hidden in the deep sea. When I was little, my father took me wherever he went. Whenever I saw kids playing outside on the way back home from my father’s work, I wanted to play with them, but my father didn’t want me to. So sometimes I got in trouble as I went outside to play without telling him. However,…

John Pariyar from Kathmandu, Nepal

The Greatest Decision

One day in August, 2012, my friend told me an astonishing secret of the Bible, beginning from the words in the Book of Genesis. I was overwhelmed while hearing the words but I couldn’t just simply be happy because I was worried about my parents’ opposition; they were diligent in the Catholic Church. After thinking about it for three weeks, I finally accepted the truth. It wasn’t an easy decision but I have no regret till now. The decision I made to follow Heavenly Mother was the greatest decision I’d ever made in my life. The most thrilling truth was certainly about Heavenly Mother because I always had a question, “Doesn’t God the Father have a wife?” since I was…

Charles Tespoer from Iloilo, Philippines

With Love in Every Word

You have to walk a long way to reach the summit. Although it’s hard to walk up the steep path, if you keep on walking, you can feel the joy of standing on the top of the mountain. My journey of faith has been like climbing the mountain. The path was rough sometimes, but those rough paths made my soul healthier, and helped me enjoy more blessings and joy. My mother believed in Buddhism, but I always liked the word “God” ever since I was young. I believed that heaven where God dwells must exist. So whenever a new school year began, the first thing I did was to find a Christian in the class and go to her church…

Gwon So-young from Suwon, South Korea

The Opportunity to Restore Love

“Is God coming down?” When I was a child, I mumbled to myself, looking at the sunlight emerge from the gray clouds and shine straight down on the ground. Though nobody taught me, I was convinced that God exists for sure. So I went to a Protestant church since I was in elementary school. After becoming a university student, I was eager in my religious life; I even played the guitar on the street to preach. However, as time passed by, the sermons which were like cloud drifts in the air didn’t touch my heart at all. Whenever I did something for the church, I felt empty in the end. When I saw the secular life of the church members…

Shin Se-hee from Seoul, South Korea

Song of Life Flowing to the World, Taking the Radio Frequency

At 10 p.m. on Sunday is when people leave behind a joyous holiday and prepare for the next day. At this peaceful and starry night, the red light of On Air is on at the studio’s screen, and the radio airs for three hours, lightening up the world and reviving souls. It is New Song Radio. Beautiful and magnificent melodies of New Songs and fragrances of Zion which arrived from all around the world flow through the radio frequency, and make us feel God Elohim’s grace that spreads even to the opposite side of the globe. New Song is the music of the saints who want to give glory and thanks to God Elohim for Their love and salvation. New…

New Song Radio Broadcasting Team from New York, U.S.

Mother’s Love, the Turning Point of My Life

I was born in an unreligious family in Finland. While swinging on our yard in my childhood, I used to think there would be a time for me to die. I couldn’t bear the thought at all and was hard to accept the fact that I wouldn’t exist some day. I always wondered why I was on this earth, what the purpose of my life was, and what would happen to me after death. And these questions grew stronger as I became a teen. However, their answers could not be found anywhere. After I graduated from vocational school, I went to the U.S. to experience new things as an au pair. After months, I could speak English fluently. On one…

Petra iida Emilia Ruokojärvi from Helsinki, Finland

Until One Soul Is Led

Before I met the truth, I tried many times to have faith in God but it didn’t come to me. I thought, ‘Having a religious belief doesn’t seem my thing. Would I meet God after death?’ Frustration came along with many thoughts. Every day, I would ask myself, “At the end of this life, what will happen to me? Where will I go?” I put all my time and efforts into my studies, consoling myself that those were what I needed to do; but something always felt empty and I was not happy at all. When I was planning my future, I could not help but think that everything was meaningless. I wanted to find something that could bring me…

Maria Cleofe Cuchillo Gutierrez from Lima, Peru

Coming Close to God

When I was in my first year of middle school, I learned the Bible deeply at Zion. Actually, I started to go to church with my family when I was a child, but that was my first time to study the words of God seriously. I had been always proud of myself, thinking I knew the Bible to some degree even though I was young. However, the prophecies of the Bible and their fulfillment made me feel as if I had never experienced the Bible before; the Bible was full of testimonies that I couldn’t deny, and God truly existed. I was so happy to be able to completely believe both in God and the Bible that I wrote a…

Lee Pyung-hwa from Seoul, South Korea

To the New World of the Gospel

“Do you want to hear some words of wisdom?” My friends asked me as we walked back from school on the last day of our junior year in high school. Seeing their eagerness, I wanted to hear them. One who lived close had run to his house and brought his Bible, and they explained the truth about Heavenly Father and Mother and God’s regulations. The words of God were amazing and undoubtedly certain. That very afternoon, I went home and highlighted every verse I had been taught, not wanting to forget even one point. The next day, I was scheduled to leave to boot camp in high school, so I was not able to go to Zion right away. However,…

Nathalia Salvatierra-Abuid from Morgantown, WV, U.S.

A Flower of Love Bloomed in the Garden of Trials

For more than ninety days, I had to stay in hospital to get my back treatment. If you think it’s short, it is a short period of time, but when I was lying down, not moving even an inch because of pain, time passed slowly as if it stood still. I was also distressed, learning that I had to receive outpatient treatment for a long time even after I get discharged from hospital. Even before I was hospitalized, I had already been weakened from sadness after losing my loving family three years before without any preparation. I could barely endure without being completely devastated because I understood the spiritual world and God encouraged me with an invisible helping hand. But…

Park Du-yeon from Changwon, South Korea

What We Need for Communication

I started working when I was a sophomore and learned that social life was not easy. Stress from relationships was indescribable. But the people of the Church of God, I met through my sister, were different. It was joyful to do anything together with them who were like angels. About a year after I received the truth, I volunteered for the overseas mission. I lack preaching experiences, let alone overseas experiences, but I made such a decision with conviction that God is in Zion and everything we do in Zion has God’s blessing in it. The mission place was Sydney, Australia. Several Korean young adults were working for the gospel in Australia with the ambition to establish a church in…

Ju Su-jin from Sydney, Australia

Return to God

When I was young, I worked out in the sea for a few years. Whenever I was out in the sea far from the land, I felt like I was growing away from God. Strictly speaking, I’d already grown away from God because I, once a fervent Protestant churchgoer, had stopped going to church; I didn’t really know what true acts of faith were. However, I hadn’t forsaken my faith; I always had a thought at the edges of my mind that I would return to God some day. To put my resolution into action, I quit my job in the sea and started an ordinary job on land. However, I couldn’t adapt myself to my life on land and…

Chu Myeong-guk from Changwon, South Korea

The Worry That I Had for Nineteen Years Has Turned to Joy I Cannot Contain

“ . . . You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world.” Jn 16:20–21 “Grief turns to joy,” “The pain of giving birth to a child is tremendous but when the baby is born, she forgets the anguish because of her joy.” These are the verses that I liked and read often. I experienced the power of these words through my mother who was born again as a child of God Elohim nineteen years after she first heard about the truth. Mom…

Seo Mi-gyeong from Seoul, South Korea

In the Place Where God Wants Us to Be

There was a very special day for me though it must have been a usual day for others. It was when some smiling members from the Church of God in Peru let me know the existence of God the Mother. That day, God opened my heart and allowed me to receive a new life. My husband who came home from work too listened to the truth and received it, and my younger brother became a heavenly family member as well. Before, I attended a Protestant church since my childhood, where I tried to preach the word to people though I didn’t really know what preaching was. I also asked my husband several times to come to church with me and…

Doris Espinoza Huachaca from Sao Paolo, Brazil

God Has Come

More than ten years ago, I became a member of the Church of God. The words of the Bible were marvelous that I led my two sons, who were elementary students at that time, and my second older sister to Zion. I learned a certain amount of the Bible and heard compliments from the members, so I was confident that I had faith. However, I could not accept God who came with the ordinary physical body that was not different from ours, so I eventually left the truth. Ten years after that, the trials came without notice and even broke my will to life. I was totally exhausted in body and mind, and even the words of people whom I…

Baek Eun-hui from Gimhae, South Korea