Five years ago when my wife Donna and I arrived in South Korea to begin service as Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Representatives for Northeast Asia, we carried just six bags – “full of madness and miracles” we said at the time. The first two years were extremely difficult, and sometimes we wondered if our move was only madness after all. But eventually the strange ground of a new terrain and call became holy ground. And when we departed Korea in early July after ending our five-year term of service, it was with tears of heartache. Reflecting on those five years, here are some surprising discoveries from our Asian journey that speak to me and, I hope, also to you – from what it means to plants seeds for reconciliation across deep social divides, to meeting an inspiring new generation of Asian Christians, to (re)discovering the person who is closest to you.

Surprise #1: From rising hostility to rising hope on the Korean peninsula.

We were deeply inspired by South Korean colleagues seeking to be faithful in a new unfolding time: from the Sewol ferry sinking the year we arrived (300 people died, mostly high school students) and the high-level malaise and corruption it uncovered, to walking in downtown Seoul amid the 2016 “Candlelight movement” with a million peacefully-protesting citizens and families, to their success in forcing a president’s impeachment. Then came rising U.S.-North Korea threats in 2017 – so intense that we began developing MCC evacuation scenarios. Who could have predicted what was next? Suddenly, the joy of being with our Korean church at the 2018 Winter Olympics, as South and North Koreans marched into the opening ceremony together. Then, only two months later, the leaders of South and North meeting at the Demilitarized Zone. And a month later being at a hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea during an MCC monitoring visit and discovering that U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo was in the hotel negotiating the first Kim-Trump summit in Hanoi which would come in 2019. On both sides of the Korea divide, we felt both unprecedented hopes for a new future and entrenched places of resistance.

Surprise #2: Planting seeds for reconciliation on both sides of the Korea divide.

In spite of enormous obstacles, we were surprised to learn that we in MCC, from four different countries, could do things that greatly mattered:

• In North Korea – building on 25 years of MCC work there, beginning humanitarian support to three pediatric hospitals. Every visit to a hospital offered a fresh face of Americans and Christians to the patients and their mothers with them, and to the many dedicated directors, doctors, and cooks we encountered.
• In South Korea – the South Korean-North American MCC team serving together, working with partners in church and society to provide formation for young Christian adults in service and peacemaking and a new focus on peace education serving the church.
• In the United States – through intense efforts of MCC advocacy offices in Washington DC and in New York at the United Nations, responding to US and UN sanctions which hindered serving vulnerable North Korean children.
• In Canada – bringing together high-level North Korean counterparts and MCC leaders for 4 days in 2017 and 2018. Surprising encounters resulted, such as the North Korean diplomat who became overwhelmed by the hospitality of a South Korean restaurant owner and of a Mennonite farm family who hosted his delegation for dinner in their home.

These engagements transformed my understanding of peacemaking. The greatest obstacle to a new future remains the inability of ordinary South and North Korean people to meet. For if we cannot engage the “threatening other,” there is no hope of a new future. This requires political change, and became my baptism in the Christian challenge of seeking to persuasion and nation-state power.

Surprise #3: A “new we” growing across Korea, China, and Japan.

Over the past five years, participation in the annual Christian Forum for Reconciliation in Northeast Asia doubled, with 95 leaders at the May 2019 Forum in Jeju, South Korea. The historic wounds and current tensions are serious between their countries – China mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and U.S. But over time the shared worship, engagement with Scripture, pilgrimages, and seeking of solutions are establishing a small but powerful “God movement” between Protestant and Catholic, practitioners and scholars, older and younger. In a time when many powers are seeking to divide these countries, and divide the church, we have discovered this “new we” creates an alternative power, an alternative reality which says “no” to ultra-nationalism, “no” to treating wounds lightly, “no” to unforgiveness. And within this “new we,” each person becomes a “new me.” This is giving birth to new initiatives for peace.

Surprise #4: Discovering a young generation of Asian Christians restless for renewal.

Young people are rapidly leaving the church in South Korea, disenchanted with its fast but shallow growth, money and power scandals, and hierarchy, and too busy trying to succeed in a competitive society. But MCC’s high priority on providing formation for young Christian adults put us in close contact with a vibrant minority who are not content to surrender to the so-called “Republic of Samsung.” They and the young adults we worked with from China, Japan, and the U.S. and Canada inspired us as signs of hope for the renewal of a church which is ready to live faithfully as an active minority in society, not expecting establishment power.

Surprise #5: The need for American Christians to be present across the world in a new model of sharing and receiving.

Every organization has its stubborn captivities, and MCC is surely included. Even so, of the many institutions I have worked for, MCC has been perhaps the healthiest, a true hybrid of NGO and missionary worlds (in the best sense of those two categories). I have found MCC to be marked by humility, collaboration, and transnational mutuality. The short version of MCC’s mission statement is “relief, development, and peace in the name of Christ.” Yet from the Korean peninsula to Afghanistan to Sudan, MCC intuitively understands that its core calling is peacemaking, or what I call “Mending Communities in Conflict.” MCC works best not attempting comprehensive change, but as a catalyst. Historically MCC has been an innovator in fair trade, restorative justice, cluster bomb removal, and sustainable living. This “small but powerful” approach offers a creative missional alternative. In contrast to the “one-way traffic” of much of traditional Christian mission from the west, this approach speaks to missiologist Andrew Walls’ call for new models of “sharing and receiving.” Over these 5 years I learned that, seeking to work as servants in the name of mutuality, our presence as Americans in places of brokenness is welcomed by local people and also brings a needed experience and voice back to the U.S.

Surprise #6: Taking time for beauty.

We knew we’d work hard and face many challenges, and we did. But from Mongolia to Myanmar, from India to Vietnam, what we didn’t know is how our MCC travels would take us to 12 Asian countries. In countries which measure history not by centuries but millennia, we took time to receive their beauty –the stunning loveliness of the Taj Mahal in India, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Mount Fuji in Japan, China’s Great Wall, and the exiled Dali Lama’s Potala Palace in prayer-permeated Llasa, Tibet.

Surprise #7: Discovering Donna.

I grew up as a missionary kid in South Korea. For me it was an exciting surprise to return fifty years after our family first arrived there in 1966 and to be “twice-gifted” by Korea. For Donna it was all unfamiliar, a major cross-cultural and language leap. Added to that the distance from our children, giving up her nursing career … The list goes on. I have come to see with fresh eyes what a brave person she is. It was hardly easy for us, learning how to share a job and what was often 24/7 responsibility. But I’m not sure if my or Donna’s grief was deeper when we had to depart this month – that land and people got deep into her welcoming bones. About 20 years ago I sensed God say, “I will reveal the work I have for you through the companions I give you.” And that work was given through the blessing of serving with Spencer Perkins in Mississippi. With Emmanuel Katongole at Duke. And, as great a surprise, with Donna in Korea. I do believe we will look back on these as some of the best years of our life.

We do not always see the fruit of our work. But the seed we have seen planted in the cracks over these 5 years is good seed. Small? Yes. Yet like a mustard seed perhaps, with hope for future fruitfulness.