Faith & Life

The Happiness Rules

In 2005, an unusual experiment was conducted in the small town of Slough in England. In order to find the secret of happiness, the Happiness Committee that consisted of experts such as psychologist, workplace specialists, and social entrepreneur made ten happiness rules and let the residents keep them for three months. As a result, people in Slough were very satisfied, saying, “My life is getting exciting,” or “I feel happier to experience positive change.” The ten steps to happiness are as follows. Plant something and nurture it. Count your blessings-at least five-at the end of each day. Take time to talk-have an hour-long conversation with a loved one each week. Phone a friend whom you have not spoken to for…

Think Before You Speak

There is a saying, “Pay more attention to the words coming out of your own mouth, than to the words coming out of others’ mouths.” Like this, there are many quotes about the importance of words in every country where language is used as a means of communication. Words are the best tool to exchange thoughts and information. However, on the other hand, words can also hurt each other’s feelings and cause misunderstandings and disputes; humans have learned this lesson through their experiences accumulated over a long time although their languages are different. Conversation is interactive communication. It means that there is a speaker and a listener. When we toss a ball to each other, the ball can go a…

Just One More

The bright new year of 2020, filled with hope for the Kingdom of Heaven, has arrived. In the New Year, 20 churches from the U.S. Southeastern Church Association united to go on a 21-day short-term mission to Newport News, Virginia. It is said that it takes 21 days to form a new habit. When we reflect on Mother’s will, it seems that Mother granted this short-term preaching to us as a gift so that we could leave our lacking and sad hearts behind with the year 2019 and have the right habits and correct gospel mindset for the new year of 2020. I truly give thanks to God Elohim for always giving us much joy and happiness. It wasn’t easy…

Alex Post from Ridgewood, NJ, U.S.

A Girl Who Had Apples

A little girl followed her mom to a fruit shop. The girl waited quietly while her mother was choosing what to buy, and the fruit shop owner gave her apples in her both hands. The girl and her mother returned home pleasantly. Her dad and younger brother were waiting for them at home. Hearing the story of how she got the apples, her dad said, “Oh, that’s good. Then can you give one apple to your brother?” After hesitating for a moment, she bit off the apple in one hand and chewed and swallowed it. Then she had a bite of the apple in the other hand. Dad was about to give her a stinging rebuke because he thought she…

Love Your Brother as Yourself

My house is always full of noise. The ones who make the noise are my son and daughter who are a year apart in age. The two always play together but mostly end up in a fight. Sometimes, I even order them to keep one meter away from each other. However, while I’m preparing for a meal or cleaning, they get together and play again. Seeing my children, people around me envy me, saying, “It’s so nice to see them get along well and take good care of each other!” Although I’m glad to hear that, I get upset whenever they squabble over nothing at home. One day, my family was given a mission of making a family newspaper and…

Park Jeong-a from Gimcheon, South Korea

A Brain Scientist Who Had a Stroke

Competent brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor collapsed from a stroke at age 37. As she has been studying with great interest in the brain since she was young, she accepted her stroke as a wonderful thing rather than being in despair. It was from the idea that few scientists had the opportunity to study their own brain and observe the process. Taylor who underwent surgery of removing a blood clot the size of a golf ball in her head, overcame the disease after eight years of effort with her strong will. Currently, she is working more actively by sharing her experiences through writing and lectures. Another factor that enabled her to live a second life was her mother’s great love.…

Teamwork Rather than Competition

Many enterprises induce competition by offering incentive, a pay raise, and promotion to improve work performance. At school too, students are made to compete with each other by grading and ranking them in an effort to improve learning. However, does competition really help one work or study better? Professor Stephen Garcia at University of Michigan in U.S., and Professor Avishalom Tor at University of Haifa in Israel, investigated the number of SAT takers and the average scores in order to learn the correlation between competition and outcome. As a result, it turned out that as the number of competitors increases, the scores are likely to decrease. Some other experiments also showed that the increase in competition causes the outcome to…

The Sawyer Effect

Tom tries to sneak into his room through the window after playing until late at night. But he gets caught by his aunt and is told to whitewash her fence as punishment. Next day, Tom cannot stop sighing that he’s whitewashing on the golden weekends. Then one of his friends approaches him, nibbling his apple, and teases Tom. Feigning ignorance, Tom pretends to be giving a gentle sweep on the fence with the eye of an artist. His friend keeps teasing him, but he says to his friend carelessly. “Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?” This puts the thing in a new light. “Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.” “No! My aunt said…

It’s Better When We Do It Together

The National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico [IPN] is one of the top universities in Mexico, having campuses in several locations. Among those campuses, the members of the Mexico City Church volunteered to post anti-drug posters and paint bulletin boards in Zacatenco campus. It was part of “Reduce Crime Together” campaign with ASEZ, the University Student Volunteer Group, from Korea. Before we carried out the volunteer activity, we went to the campus to meet the person in charge. There, we met not only the person in charge but also the president and the vice president of the university. Hearing the introduction of ASEZ and the Church of God, the president said gladly, “We are lucky that our university met ASEZ,” and…

The Mexico City Church in Mexico

Conditions for Flowering

Once the cold winter passes and it starts getting warmer, flowers bloom here and there. However, even though the spring flowers are in the same condition, they bloom at different times. For example, azaleas bloom after forsythias bloom, followed by cherry blossoms. The reason they bloom at different times is that each plant species has a different amount of heat that needs to be accumulated in them. In order for a plant to bloom, it needs to be exposed to the warm temperature for a certain amount of time. However, heat alone is not enough for flowering. The amount of the cold that a flower needs to endure for a certain amount of time needs to be satisfied first. If…

Keep Your House Neat and Clean

A house is like the face of a person who lives there. If you do not wash your face even for a day, it gets dirty. Likewise, if you do not clean your house often, it will get dirty soon. In the chaotic and distracted situation, a home cannot fully function as a comfortable haven. The mission of this month is to keep your house and its surroundings clean and neat where your precious family dwells. When you wash your face, it feels good. If you keep your house clean which is like the face of your family, it will refresh your mind and your house will give off good energy that everything will come out right. Tip Clean the…

The Blankets a Father Placed over His Daughters

In Thailand which has a tropical climate, the average annual temperature is 28℃ [82.4℉]. However, in December of 2019, the temperatures dropped across Thailand due to intense cold fronts from China. In some parts of the country, the temperature was below 10℃ [50℉] due to the strong wind. This sudden cold weather hit the house of a father (38) of two daughters in a village in Bueng Kan Province in northeastern Thailand. Since the house was under construction, there were not doors and windows yet, which let the cold wind blew right through. The father gave all of his blankets to his daughters, and he slept on a thin mat. He was dressed in a shirt and shorts. His eight-year-old…

The True Rest

There is something that many workers do when they receive a new calendar. It is to count holidays. Holidays give that much happiness to workers. To me, as a person who has just started a career, the autumn season of 2018 was one of the happiest moments in my life. It was because I could rest for seven days: five days for national autumn holidays, one day for National Foundation Day of Korea, and one day for Hangul [Korean alphabet] Proclamation Day. I got back to work after the long vacation. I started to work with a determination, “I will work hard from today since I got a good rest,” but I found it difficult to focus on work. I…

Lee Jae-uk from Sacheon, South Korea

The Effect of a Big Smile

In psychology, a genuine smile is called a “Duchenne smile.” It was named after the French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne, who first discovered it. It is a smile that utilizes the muscles of the mouth, raises the cheeks and the muscles around the eyes that are difficult to move. In simple terms, it can be called a hearty smile. In 2010, researchers led by Professor Ernest Abel at Wayne State University in the U.S. conducted a study on 230 baseball players to find out a relationship between facial expressions in photographs and lifespan. The players were grouped into three categories according to their smiles, and their actual lifespans were compared. The players were rated as “no smile” if they were just…

Since God Leads the Gospel Work and Our Members Dedicate Themselves to the Gospel

At present, I’m carrying out my gospel duty as a missionary in São Paulo, Brazil. I’ve learned what mindset I need to have for the gospel after experiencing God’s grace. So I would like to share the realization through this writing in the Elohist. The Church of God in São Paulo manages the branch church in Ribeirão Preto. In 2019, the Ribeirão Preto Branch Church was granted a new temple under God’s grace. We were so grateful and worried at the same time, because Ribeirão Preto was 300 ㎞ [190 miles] away from São Paulo and so it was difficult for our members to go and help its construction. While I was urgently in need of help, unexpectedly one brother…

Seol Yun-deok from São Paulo, Brazil

Just Like Down Wool That Spread in All Directions

In a town, there was a woman who liked to talk about other people. So the people who were heartbroken by her went to a sage and complained about it. “She starts rumors about my mistakes.” “As she adds it on, it’s uncomfortable to hear even a trivial thing.” “She told me that I am a good eater, but she speaks ill of me before others that I am a glutton.” After listening to the complaints, the sage let them go back and called the woman in. “Go up on the roof and cut a pillow with scissors. Then come back to me.” The woman did not know the reason, but she did as she was told because it was…

The Secrets of Blue Zones

Dan Buettner, a researcher at National Geographic in the United States, has traveled around the world for over ten years to study the secrets of longevity. He named a longevity village with the low incidence of cancer and dementia and high quality of life as a “blue zone.” And he discovered common characteristics of the people residing in blue zones such as Icaria Island in Greece, Sardinia Island in Italy, and Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. It was the environment where they walk even quite a distance and constantly do physical activity, and their attitudes of living well at ease with self-sufficiency. They also enjoyed a plant-based diet rather than high-fat foods. The most striking feature was that all of…

How to Negotiate for a Good Relationship

“Almost everything is negotiable.” This is a quote from Herb Cohen, an American negotiation expert. When it comes to a negotiation, most people would imagine an intense and close match for important issues such as an international negotiation and a salary negotiation. However, negotiation is not a special mission just for foreign diplomats or businessmen. Narrowing differences in opinions such as negotiating the price of a product at the market, deciding the lunch menu with a co-worker, or dividing household chores with family members, or deciding the amount of pocket money for a child is a type of negotiation. Although we don’t necessarily sit facing with someone at the table in a formal way, our daily life is a series…

Heavenly Family I Met in the Town of Hope

Mexico, where most of its land is mountainous, is dense with many villages along steep hills even in the middle of the mountains. Since its state religion is Catholicism, the majority of people believe it, and people never forget to mention Catholic Churches when choosing tourist attractions in any area of Mexico. However, people are not interested in the words of God, and countless people don’t go to church, disappointed by secularism of the Church. Despite such difficult environments, I’ve found our heavenly family members full of hope for Heaven in a town called La Esperanza. Interestingly, esperanza means hope in Spanish. As usual, I was preaching the words of God with Zion members, and a man came and talked…

Lee Su-bin from Puebla, Mexico

Between Patience and Excess

Good health is very important for a happy life. And exercise is essential for good health. However, too much exercise may hurt the body and the mind just like the case of athletes who were forced to retire in their peak because of injuries caused by overtraining. It is important to steadily exercise with patience as if you are climbing a mountain step by step, or completing a marathon by keeping your pace. It is not advisable to put your competitive spirit ahead or to endure pain blindly by overestimating your ability. In fact, there is a fine line between patience and excess. Still, there are some criteria that they can be distinguished. For example, if pain on joints and…