Onnuri Church
For
the next
several days,
I searched online and emailed and/or called
every church I could find in Korea that had an English language service or ministry, and
asked if they could help a young American missionary in need in Korea. Some replied
but all of the Koreans declined after hearing what Kristin is dealing with.
That included Onnuri Church, a Pentecostal megachurch in the capital city of Seoul whose English language service website advertised that they do "Deliverance Ministry." After exchanging several emails, an Onnuri Church pastor, a Korean man with flawless English, proposed to have his prayer team take Kristin through an established "spiritual inventory guide that helps people through deliverance issues." When I asked him what was in their "spiritual inventory guide," however, he quickly changed his mind and rescinded his own proposal, claiming that they are busy and prefer to minister to just the members of his church.
Kristin is not only a member of God's church; she is a very young missionary who gave up her life in America to serve God and the people of Asia. In the eyes of Jesus, she is His wounded lamb. If they also belong to Jesus and have been gifted to do deliverance ministry, they should not and could not turn her away.
Also, South Korea would be living under Communism and worshipping the North Korean dictator if 36,000 American soldiers hadn't died to defend it during the Korean War. Furthermore, the Gospel had been brought to Korea by American missionaries, many of whom were martyred. So I had hoped that Korean Christians would want to help a young American missionary in need.
After the seven days, the youth pastor reported that he hadn't been able to find anyone who can take Kristin. I wasn't sure how much of an effort, if any, he had made, but what Kristin then shared was shocking.
The youth pastor had told her that she should return to her parents in USA. When she became incredulous and asked him why she should return to her Satanist father who had raped her since her childhood, the youth pastor had replied that he is still her father, and then added that since he had taken care of her "like my own daughter when you are in need," her father should take care of his 15- and 13-year-old daughters later. When Kristin asked him what he meant by that, the youth pastor had replied that he wanted his daughters to go to college in USA but had no money for their education, so he is hoping that Kristin's father (who had disowned her when she became a Christian) will pay for his daughters' college education in USA. Not content to have taken Kristin to Korea to get himself a job, he was now telling her to go and get raped again so that his daughters can get American college scholarships.
His betrayal would have been less disappointing if he had been a random guy off the street. But he was the one who had deflated the demons in Kristin with just one command when he first met her, and with whom I had forged a brotherhood in the crucible of intense month-long spiritual warfare. I was furious and felt betrayed, but not nearly as much as Kristin must have felt.