A Return to Korea – a Mini Learning Tour

We invite you to share the following story with your congregation. It should take no more than 2 minutes to read aloud. You might also wish to include the story in your church newsletter. This story is part of Equipping #62 February 2006.

Stefan Froese is the son of Tim & Karen Froese who served in South Korea with Mennonite Church Canada Witness from ’98, returning to Winnipeg, Manitoba in summer of 2004. Stefan is in Grade 10 and after a year of living in Canada, organized a mini-learning tour for two of his school friends, to give them a better understanding about life in Korea. They accompanied Tim on a trip back to Korea in fall. Stefan writes:

“Hanging out with my friends at each other’s houses is something we really enjoy. Although they often come to my house, I wanted to invite them to my other home in Korea, where I had lived for six years. Taking a trip overseas requires a lot of planning. With the help of my parents, I had to make up an itinerary and figure out a budget. We had to persuade the other parents to allow their kids to go (one of the guys had never even been on a plane before) and we had to get permission from our teachers to miss a week of school.

Even though I had been back in Canada for a full year, when I got off the plane it felt as though I had never left Korea. It still felt like home.

My friends had never been to a city as big as Seoul. They noticed the crowds, the congested traffic, the smell of garlic and cigarette smoke. They noticed that Korea was not multi-cultural, and that being Canadian made them the only other ‘visible culture’. One of my friends commented that this fact made them feel kind of alone. They found that they were hungry a lot, mainly because there wasn’t a lot of meat in the diet. We also had to do lots of walking up and down hills of pavement which made our feet sore.

We had lots of fun hanging out in internet cafes, introducing them to my hapkido (martial arts) teacher, and my Grade 5 teacher had us all over for a meal. We went to a real palace, saw a concert, and shopped at the markets. We visited my old church, and went to the largest church in the world which is amazing (15,000 members).

My friends really enjoyed visiting my ‘home’ in Korea, and it was fun for me to show them around. Now, when I want to talk about something from Korea, two of my friends can identify with what I am talking about. This trip helped us in our understanding of one another, and was an experience of a lifetime!”

The mini-learning tour that Stefan organized has opened the eyes of other young people about ministering in another cultural setting and how we all grow in our understanding of God’s world as we learn from each other