Faith & Life

The Best Gift on Mother’s Day

The second Sunday of May is a special day in the Philippines. It is Mother’s Day when all family members gather to express love to their mother. On this day, a family event was going to be held at the Mandaluyong Zion. I wanted to invite my family to this special event. I used to invite my family to many Zion events before, but I was rejected every time. My family didn’t like my going to church. My parents were very sad that I changed my religion without their permission. Their attitude didn’t change for a few years. When I tried to deliver the truth to them, they only listened absentmindedly and showed no interest. I heard the news about…

Vernalyn P. Marcos from Taguig, Philippines

A Happy Task

I wanted my middle school student son to have a meaningful memory before his vacation ended. What I thought of was to let him experience his father’s job. My husband, who is engaged in the distribution business, delivers hundreds of 18 ㎏ [40 lb] cooking oil tins every day. As it is tough work, my husband hesitated, but agreed, and my son too was willing to try it. The day came for him to experience his father’s work. Seeing his dad carrying heavy cooking oil tins, he said, “Dad, you are a real man with veiny arms.” Then after carrying two oil tins, he looked at his forearms and the back of his hands. “Mom, would I look nice if…

Gwon Seong-eun from Uijeongbu, South Korea

God’s Blessing for My Whole Family

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…

Seok Min-seo from Seoul, South Korea

The Reason You Need to Make Your Bed

“If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed first.” This is what U.S. Navy Seal Admiral, William H. McRaven said during his speech at a university graduation ceremony in Texas. The act of making the bed is something that anyone can do. How is it that someone can change the world by doing something so simple? Admiral McRaven said that if you make your bed every morning, you have accomplished the first task of the day. This simple act will give you a small sense of pride and encourage you to complete another task. He said, “Even if by chance you had a miserable day, when you come home to a bed that is made,…

The Most Popular Titles

The title of a book determines the first impression it will receive. The title of a book should suggest the overall content of the book well, and attract the attention of the readers. As a result, authors make every effort to select a perfect title before publishing their book. From the title of a book, readers can somewhat determine the social circumstances and interests of the people during the time period the book was written. To commemorate “World Book Day” on April 23, 2019, the National Library of Korea surveyed the titles of books published in 1998, 2008, and 2018, respectively. They ranked the words most frequently used in titles from 1st to 20th. Some of the words that appeared…

Positive Words Design Happiness

In 2016, at the 31st Rio de Janeiro Olympics, a men’s fencing individual épée match was being played. South Korea’s Park Sang-young who was competing with Hungary’s Géza Imre was losing 13 to 9 in the final third round. He got a point, but soon lost another point, leaving Imre a chance to win a match point (the final point that decides the victory or defeat in a sports game). It basically meant defeat for him. However, he scored more points one by one and scored four consecutive points, creating a tie at 14-14. And he won a victory like a miracle by winning the last winning point. It was an unbelievable dramatic turnabout. The decisive energy that created the…

Specify Your Happiness

“Are you happy?” If you can’t answer this question without hesitation, there are probably two reasons: One reason is that you actually feel unhappy, and the other is that you are confused whether you are happy or not. When you think of happiness abstractly, you find it difficult to grasp it as it seems vague and sometimes far away. If you can’t get a clear answer to the question, “Am I happy now or not?” specify happiness, asking yourself about what you are thankful for, if there is someone you love, what pleases you, when you are proud, what brings you a sense of accomplishment, and so on. If you ask yourself these questions, you will know that you are…

What Changes Me into a Good Person

Good and evil, true and false, light and darkness, joy and sadness! If you like one, you come to dislike the other.However, there are relationships that you must like both. They are you and me, compliment and rebuke, success and failure, and high and low. If you sacrifice yourself for others, you will find joy in your life; and if you are willing to accept rebuke or correction and change yourself for the better, you will receive compliments later; failure becomes the foundation of success; and if you become humble, you will be exalted by other people. You, rebuke, failure, humility . . . These are the things that you may find it hard to embrace. However, if you accept…

A Son with Great Filial Piety

There is a young man of twenty, named Guo Shijun, living in the Anhui province, China. A few years ago, his mother was left mentally disabled from a battle with meningitis. What was worse, his father was injured after falling fifteen meters off of a bridge and became paralyzed from the waist down. Despite such insurmountable odds, he was a good student earning top marks at school. However, before entering university, he had a big problem. Although the university welcomed him, exempting him from paying the tuition and promising to give him a scholarship, and his grandfather promised to take care of his mother, he had no one to take care of his father who was left alone. So he…

Not Becoming Weary and Not Giving Up

The Cape Town Cycle Tour is a large-scale international cycle race; more than 35,000 cyclists from all around the world participate in the race and more than 2,500 volunteers manage race operations. On March 11, 2018, more than 70 members from the Cape Town Zion supported this event. Since the event was scheduled to begin early in the morning, we gathered at 3 a.m. and got to the venue after driving for forty minutes. We were supposed to volunteer at a rest area in the middle of the course, located at the mountainside. It was pitch black because there were no streetlights or electricity. Thanks to that, we could admire the stars shining beautifully. Not long after the race started,…

The Cape Town Church in South Africa

To the Southernmost Part of Japan

Japan is a long island country with four main islands and countless islands around them. Kyushu is the most southerly among its four main islands. And about two hours by plane from Kyushu, there is a little island called Okinawa in the very southernmost part of Japan. Right now, one deaconess runs a house church where some brothers and sisters are keeping their faith. It’s been a long time since a house church was built in Okinawa, but unfortunately there were only a few members left because many souls who received the truth failed to overcome various trials and temptations, and the deaconess’ children moved out to a different region. It must have been hard for the deaconess, but she…

Oh Seung-gwon from Osaka, Japan

Make an Exciting Family Slogan!

Before players come onto the field, they say, “Let’s go!” to cheer up each other. In Spanish, people say, “Animo!” When you shout encouraging words, you give yourself strength and confidence to do things, and you can strengthen team spirit, radiating good energy. Family, too, is like a team. Why don’t you create your “family slogan” for good teamwork? Family slogan does not only build family teamwork, but also give strength and courage to each other, conveying the message of hope. Now, clench your fists and shout your family slogan all together! Tip Discuss which words would be nice to be included in the slogan. Make the slogan give an impression of joy and positiveness. Clapping and a gesture can…

A Woman Who Lives as a Man

Sisa Abu Daooh, 65, makes a living by polishing shoes in front of a train station in Luxor, Egypt. Having short hair wrapped in a turban and wearing a baggy robe, Sisa Abu Daooh looks like a man, but is actually a woman. Every woman wants to look womanly and beautiful no matter how old she gets, but she’s been dressing like a man for over forty years since she was twenty-one. She lost her husband when she was six months pregnant, and she had to fight the world alone. She had to do something to raise her daughter, but women were not given any job back then because of severe gender discrimination. That’s why she made up her mind…

A Young Lady Disguised as an Elderly Woman

A woman in her prime age of 26 went out to the street, disguising herself as an 80-year-old lady. She wore a white wig, put on make-up to look wrinkled, stuffed cottons in her ears not to hear well, and wore dirty glasses to make her view dim. She even wore iron leg brace to make herself slow to move. Patricia Moore, an industrial designer, traveled around 116 cities in Canada and the United States in the form of an elderly woman for three years. The reason she was disguised as an old lady was to experience the physical difficulties the elderly go through, and to know what they really need. She is known as a key figure of Universal…

A Dad Who Does His Daughter’s Hair

A special class is given once a week at a beauty academy in Florida, U.S. It is the Daddy Daughter Hair Class, which is a program for dads and daughters. The instructor is not a beauty expert, but a 33-year-old car mechanic. The reason he started a hairstyling class, doing rough work, was because of his nine-year-old daughter. He always felt sorry for his daughter as he was raising her alone. He made a lot of effort to fill the void left by her mother, but he had much difficulty in doing delicate things, and it was too hard to tie her thin and long hair with his big hands. However, he did not give up doing it for his…

With Father and Mother’s Protection

Portugal where I stayed for a year for the mission work is a very peaceful place. The people there, living comfortable lives, were not interested in God’s word. However, there were still God’s children among them. One day, I was preaching near a bus stop when a young mom came up to me. She asked me for directions at first, but then she was curious about what we were doing. We told her that we were preaching about God the Mother, and she showed interest by asking us back, “God the Mother?” We opened the Bible right away and showed her the existence of God the Mother. She said that it was very interesting and wanted to learn more about…

Kim Gyeong-ryun from Bucheon, South Korea

Great Wine

Making wine starts with planting vines. Good wine requires good grapes, and good grapes are produced on good soil. Winemaker’s skill is important in making good wine, but the biggest impact on its quality is grape-producing region. France is famous for its finest wines because of its natural conditions—vineyard location, soil, rainfall, and sunshine. The set of all environmental factors are called terroir which is derived from terre, meaning land. The land that is good for producing wine grape is a slope near the river and a rough and barren soil with many small stones. When the ground is dry, the vine grows stronger with roots deep in the ground, looking for various nutrients from different layers of soil. When…

A Boy Who Became a Shoe Shiner

In April 2011, a Chinese rural boy began to walk toward Guangzhou, one of the largest cities in China. All he had was a shoeshine kit box made of waste wood. He walked along the national highway, and when he was hungry, he ate wild grass and drank water from the rivers. When the day got dark, he lay on grassland or wilderness to sleep. It took a full month to arrive at Guangzhou which was about 340 kilometers away. The boy went to the most crowded place in Guangzhou and started working as a shoeshine boy. Why was the boy so desperate to earn money? It wasn’t to get what he wanted or to become famous. While walking on…

Accompanied by Angels

When I was going to India, a small problem occurred in the process of issuing a visa at the airport in Nepal. The money I had was only Indian rupees, but they said it was impossible to pay unless I had Korean won, American dollars, or Nepalese rupees. Even the currency exchange machine was broken, so I was going here and there without knowing what to do. But with the help of two kind foreigners, the urgent situation was solved. It was definitely Mother who sent the angels to me. The appearance of angels didn’t stop there. I planned to spend one night in Nepal and then go to India. So I wanted to see if anyone from the hotel…

Kim Ji-young from Busan, South Korea

Halmangbadang (Granny’s Sea)

In 2016, the UNESCO officially recognized the culture of women divers [haenyeo] in Jejudo Island, Korea, as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The local community’s solidarity, economic activities co-existing with nature, diving technology passed down from generation to generation, the strength of women jumping into the sea without any mechanical equipment, and its scarcity were acknowledged to be preserved. Among them, the culture that cares for the weak is indispensable. The sea zone of the women divers differs according to their personal skills. It is a tacit rule that high-level haenyeo dive in the deep sea. However, even if they are excellent in diving, when they grow old and weaken in strength, they cannot help but underperform. There is…