Holy Moly!

Brace yourselves guys... Are you ready? ... I've been in Korea for 6 months, starting tomorrow! As Ahreum put it earlier today, starting tomorrow, I will be on the latter half of my stay in Korea! D:

Looking back on it, it's all just one huge blur... The most eventful days are probably the weekends, and so maybe thats why I feel like I've only been here 3 months or so... Its so funny how all of my work days start to blur together in my memory... There really isn't too much to differentiate the days from each other I guess?

But yes, these pays few months have definitely been good. :) Making new friends is always a blessing! Though, to be honest, I do kinda wonder if it's a good thing that I don't really miss everyone from LA all that much.. It's definitely good in the sense that I'm really quick to adapt to my new situations, and that I don't get homesick so much! I'm going to try not to dwell on the flip side of that too much. ^^;;

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My stay here in Korea has challenged my faith on SO many different levels in these past few months. I think the first thing that was challenged was really my definition of "church" and a "church family." Never in my life have I received SO much support from my brothers and sisters at church! And that's not to say that New Philadelphia is some kind of lovey-lovey hippie church, but people at NPC are serious about accountability. What I mean by that the leaders at the church are more than willing to share about their pasts and their struggles, and in so doing, create an atmosphere where people are willing to share theirs. And once that wall is broken down, that's when serious accountability happens.

This isn't just with small group leaders either, but most of the brothers and sisters around me have been keeping me accountable in the varying areas of my life, whether it's how I'm doing as I serve on the service team, or how I'm interacting with the sisters, or what have you. And with so much accountability, I have so much support and encouragement as well! :) I LOVE IT! This atmosphere has really helped me to mature in these past few months!

I think the next new concepts for me were regarding the blood of Jesus and the power of His Name. My faith in this area is growing! By the blood of Jesus I mean it's ability to purify us, protect us, and the grace it allows us to move in. The blood of Jesus is still something I need to learn more about, but I have since been convinced of the power of Jesus' name!

Most of you probably don't know, but I actually get "sleep paralysis" pretty frequently. If you've never had it before, praise the Lord, because it's not pleasant. (If you don't know what it is, I can explain it to you later.) It always used to bother me that I could never do anything about it, and that had to just endure.. But no lie, the last three times I've had "sleep paralysis," the very moment I've, in faith, said (more like grunted...) the name of Jesus, the pressure lifted and I was free to move again! Which has lead me to believe that His name is truly powerful, and that demons really do tremble at the sound of his name. And not only that, but I'm now pretty convinced that 100% of cases of "sleep paralysis" is demonic oppression, but that's another topic entirely...

Another challenge I've been faced with is the limit of my Faith. I think that on the whole, American Faith is pretty weak. I may be overgeneralizing though. When I'm talking about Faith, what I'm talking about is Hebrews 11:1 Faith: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

I would say the majority the Faith I had in the States was a very... comfortable faith. It gave me hope that I would mature as a person and as a believer, and it gave me the confidence that my life was secure in God's hands, but I honestly don't know how much further it went than self-preservation. But New Philly has really shown me "risky" Faith! That can look like many things! Like the Faith to willingly put yourself in a situation where you look like a complete FOOL in the world's eyes, because you are CONVINCED that God wants you there and has you in His hand. The faith that gets you praying for physical healings, even when you haven't seen a single person healed through your prayer, SIMPLY because you know God is the Healer and our Salvation! Even now, I know that I have a long way to go regarding my levels of faith, but I'm moving forward, and so I'm pressing on!

In closing, I think I am being most challenged in the area of my perception of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Love of God through the Holy Spirit. Man oh man. I have such a long way to go! Looking back, prior to coming to Korea, I knew next to nothing about the Holy Spirit. I mean, I knew the basic theology behind the Holy Spirit, but how that plays out in daily life, or in my life at all for that matter, was a complete mystery to me! Even now, I STILL don't know EXACTLY what the Holy Spirit does, or how He moves... But I do know one thing. The Holy Spirit is powerful and active! I know now that we don't have to have tongues of fire on our heads in order to be empowered by or moving in the Spirit. I know that for sure! I haven't seen any fire landing on anyone's head, but I sure have seen the Holy Spirit at work!
This is also the area I'm really pressing in for the most right now. It sure isn't easy though. I've been trying to move in the Spirit myself in greater ways, and with greater manifestations, but I really have no idea if I'm going anywhere. It feels like, the more I press in, the more I feel like I'm getting works oriented and trying to "earn the Holy Spirit" through my actions. But to be honest, I don't know what else to do! Even surrendering is difficult for me right now! People talk about surrendering completely to what God's doing... but I'm so confused because I feel as though I'm surrendered, but I guess I'm not, and when I try to surrender more fully, I start to get action-focused again! I don't get it!! >.<

As you can see, I'm getting challenged a lot! I've got a LONG way to go, but I'm looking forward to the journey. :)

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Ugh... I hate to have to do this, because it totally disrupts the flow of my blog... but due to the nature of what I've written, and from past experience, I want to put a sort of disclaimer on what I've written above.

What I've written just now is really more for MY benefit, if anything. Writing all of this out really helps me to process what exactly has happened to me in the past few months, and I've chosen to put it in the public eye so that people who might be curious about what's going on with me will be able to find out! That said, I am the first to admit that I am in NO way the most theologically sound or Biblically grounded thinker in the world, and I may be saying things that simply aren't correct. I'm totally okay with being corrected, and in fact I actually welcome correction. However, if you are going to correct me, please don't do so in my comments... Message me or something, and I will correct myself in my post if necessary... The last time this happened I was actually really hurt, and I would prefer if that kind of situation did not present itself again. Thank you for your patience with me!

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Post-Christmas and Pre-New Year's

So, today is smack dab in the middle of the two major December Holidays, Christmas, and New Years. In the past, these days have typically been spent in an overall state of relaxation, where I can enjoy myself spending as much time as I want catching up with old friends and chilling out with family. However, this year I am spending these few days no differently than I had been spending them last week, or the week before, or the week before that -- working. Oh the joys!

But enough groaning! :)

I don't actually feel as miserable as you might imagine I would be after you've read the above paragraph. The past month since my last update has been an overall good time for me. :D I spent a lot of my time during the past few weeks shopping for everyone's Christmas presents. I must say that this is the first time that I really put a lot of thought and effort into choosing the gifts I gave people! I'm so proud of myself! hehe Total, including all of the time on the buses and walking and such, I probably spent at least 20 hours searching for the right gifts. :) And it definitely payed off in my opinion~ I am proud to say that everyone really enjoyed the gifts that I gave them, or were at least pleasantly surprised by them. :) To sum this all up: Attempt to practice the Love Language of Gifts -- Huge success!

On December 20th, our church had "Bring a Friend Day" and had a special service for the occasion. I was really happy to have Kevin and Ira come out! I hope that they were blessed by the fellowship and I'm praying that maybe they'll come back again some time. :) The special events after the sermon consisted of the "Everything Skit" (which you can see here) and the Cardboard Testimonies (which you can see here). I nearly cried at the end of the Everything Skit. :*) I know that a lot of people were blessed by the event, and I know that many of the things that happened that day have yet to be revealed!

Next on the timeline is last weekend. Thankfully I had Christmas Day off, so I had a nice three day weekend filled with some good times. :)

Thursday night I spent with Gina, Ira, Sara, and Kevin. We had a mini Secret Santa between the five of us, which actually turned out pretty well. :) I got a Banc Sweater, pencil holder, and a pair of socks from my Secret Santa Gina. (Which, I actually need to go get some time soon, since I left it over at the Jeons' apartment...) Kevin's present for me is my favorite, my new mac keyboard! Its awesomeness is due to the fact that it has the 한글, or Korean characters, on it, so it makes typing in Korean a lot easier for me! I'm so excited to put it to good use in the near future! 아싸~!

I spent all of Friday at a couple church events! This is also when I gave out all of my presents. :)

At around noon we went to an orphanage a couple of the women at church are working at and had what we called the Secret Angels event. We each chose an orphan to buy a gift for and on Friday we gave them a present. Unfortunately for me, the girl I had bought my gift for was not at the orphanage on Friday, so I wasn't able to give my gift to her directly.. A few of the church members performed the Everything Skit for the kids and Pastor Myunghwa gave a short message. Again, I know that many of the girls were blessed at that event. :)

note: Pardon my over use of the smiley! I just can't help it! Reading it seems so boring without them. But I guess that's just my personal preference..

Following that event we went to the AIM (Associated International Ministries) Christmas service. The service is a joint service that is held for all of the English-speaking churches out in Seoul, so there were a good amount of familiar faces there. :) We got there about halfway though the message unfortunately, because we spent a little too much time at the orphanage. Afterwards was a time of joint fellowship, where we ended up loitering for a little too long.. But that is only to be expected. :P

We had dinner at Thai Garden in Itaewon, which, as Thai food goes, was not the best, but was definitely satisfactory. :)

We topped off the evening with a gift exchange, which we had to split off into two groups. From what I heard our group fared a little better with the loot. :) I walked away with this nice organizer. :D

Thank you Jen 누나~! So, all in all, Christmas was awesome!

Finally, on Sunday we had our Leadership Banquet! The banquet was such an awesome idea. :) You might think that it's only something a young church like ours might do, but even if that's true, I think that it is an event that every church needs to have yearly. The evening's purpose was to give honor where honor is due, and I know that all of our leaders were encouraged and blessed by it. Next year I'll be up there for sure~ ;)

Sorry for the long entry! I realize I didn't update very often this month, but I hope to be able to update a little more frequently next month. :) I hope that this delay hasn't stopped any of you from checking my blog! I will update again soon!!

Note to self: Repost blog posts from tumblr account here later.

I had quite the full day today

So, by the grace of God, I woke up at 7:45 this morning. "Why in the world would you do such a thing??" you might ask. You may even go on to say something like, "It was a Saturday for crying out loud! Plus you're the one who sleeps at 3AM most evenings!" Well fear not, you are very very normal. In fact, these were the thoughts that were going through my head as I was going to bed and as I was waking up this morning.

Well all joking aside, I left the house at about 8:15 this morning to go with one of my co-workers, Kevin, and his mother to the Korean Palaces in Gwanghwamun. (I think. If that is incorrect I will come back and edit it.) They were pretty cool. :) I'll be posting pictures up on Facebook some time soon. Though don't hold me to that, because I have a bad track record with uploading pictures. :P I think the most interesting things at the palace were these weird animal statues... You never could really say what kind of an animal a statue was, or if it was an real animal at all. For example, there was one statue that had a pseudo-lion head and a turtle shell... It was rather strange. We goofed around a lot at the palaces too. It was pretty fun!

After the palaces we went to Hoeheyon and Myeong-Dong to try to shop a little. We didn't end up buying anything though. At around 5:00 or so Kevin left to go home, and I stayed in Meyong-Dong a little bit longer since I was planning on going to a prayer meeting for my church at 6:30. I decided to used this time to try to find some stuff off of my shopping list, but I quickly realized that Saturday evenings in Myeong-Dong are much too crowded for my taste. x_x So I only ended up spending about 20 minutes shopping and just went to the prayer meeting early instead.

Since I was there early, I got a chance to talk to some new people as well as some I already knew. I actually ended up seeing John Lee from LWCC there too! It was pretty random. :P I found out that he's been going out to Onnuri, which I was glad to hear!

The prayer meeting was a HUGE blessing for me though. I hadn't worshipped like that in a long time. I hadn't prayed like that in a long time either! I'm really looking forward to service tomorrow! :) I'm actually going to be joining the Service Team for the first time this Sunday too, so it looks like I'm going to be getting up early yet again tomorrow! Hopefully I will not oversleep my alarm!!

Today was a good good day. :) The only downside of today was that I was standing/walking for basically 9-10 hours total... Maybe more... My feet are killing me...

Oh and also, I somehow managed to break my fingernail, pretty far down on my finger too... I just need to make sure it doesn't get worse I guess? Brady suggested I put a fake fingernail on there... -___-

Give thanks to the Lord! For he is GOOD!!

P.S. If the formatting of my blog is hard to read at all, do let me know and I will do my best to alleviate any blog-reading-related-eye-strain. :)

And so I finally set up a blog!

Hello everyone! It's Matt (...or Matty, Matthew, John, John Matthew, or whatever else you might know me by!) and I'm out here in Korea! I've been here for about 2 and a half months now, and it's definitely been quite an experience.

I have quite a list of things that I can potentially blog about, like things about the Korean drinking culture, or about how awesome church has been, or about how teaching is very draining when you are resisting the urge to strangle them, but I will probably have to get to those things at a later point. :) (And the kids as a whole really aren't bad at all, there are just a few of them that just drive me up the wall...)

I'm currently on a break from work for about 45 minutes, and I told myself that I would finally start this blog today, so here I am! Today is Pepero Day (for those of you who aren't in the know!) and I bought 30000 Won worth of Pepero to give out to my students and coworkers. :) That's 48 boxes, which I had to spread through about 80 students @_@... But I think that regardless of how many they each were able to eat, they appreciated it! I think these are some of the more fun parts about teaching. ^_^

*I wonder when my next class starts... hahaha...*

But I guess for those of you who I haven't spoken to since I arrived here, I'm here safe and sound and nothing tremendously dramatic has occurred! Now that I'm here I am starting to really think that maybe I should stay longer than my 1 year. o.O Shocking, I know! I never thought that I would want to stay longer prior to getting here and seeing what Korea is actually like... I think my church has a BIG role in me thinking about staying though. I'll get into it more later, but it's basically a church for Americans, which helps a lot because I can speak English very comfortably. It's a really solid community too, so I'm looking forward to growing with them! I also hope to get something out of it that I'll be able to take back to the States and back to Living Way specifically. :)

I really miss you all~! I have been praying for many of you here and there! Don't forget about me yet~!!

Anyway, I will be off for now! Keep this bookmarked because I'm going to be trying to update it as frequently as Matt-Ko-ly possible! Catch ya later~