Articles for Church Newsletter

 

This is a puppy doll I gave Miah as a gift for our anniversary last week, and I put it next to a turtle doll I gave Miah for her birthday a couple years ago to take a good picture. They look like good friends with each other, and I felt like they were talking about how they ended up living here with us. It seems amazing that we feel affection for these dolls even if they aren’t alive.

This year, Ash Wednesday is on February 14, which happens to be Valentine’s Day. Ash Wednesday is foll...

It’s only natural for us to look back and evaluate what has happened in the past year when we approach the end of it. This year of 2017 seems to me to have been one of the most meaningful, comfortable, and exciting years.

First of all, this year will be remembered as a historical year, when all my family here became US citizens. The Han family has been pursuing and celebrating our citizenships throughout the whole year. Solomon was born here in the USA, but I hope he has had a chance to f...

Concluding some event or time always gives us a chance to look back and re-evaluate what we have done and what we have experienced. Based on that, we will also be able to plan for the next step. This year, 2017, has been a special and meaningful year for me and my family. It’s our 20th anniversary living in the USA and it’s also the year when all our family members have become US citizens.

For this reason, Miah and I have had many opportunities to celebrate this year with our fellow chu...

It seems like the changing of the seasons always comes to us suddenly before we can accept them. From last week in the middle of October, continuously rainy days started and the temperature suddenly dropped. Now I am worried about the baby grass that started growing after a week or so after I put seeds on the damaged spots on the side of my yard. When I look around, many houses were in the process of remodeling or maintaining. People are also cleaning up their garages and gardening equipment....

Again, the season of fall is coming back. Fall is supposed to be a harvesting season, and it seems to be especially true in Iowa.

When I eat my favorite, pork belly or fresh side pork, the Korean perilla (perilla leaf) is essential with lettuce. The strong aroma from the leaf goes wonderfully with oily pork meat. But, it’s not available at any nearby stores. So, I decided to grow it myself four years ago. I bought the seeds for this plant but they failed to grow.  The next year, I put the s...

We recently had our staff retreat, which was Thursday through Friday, August 17-18. This was my first overnight church staff activity out of town. We had a very exciting, fun, and meaningful time together thanks to Amy’s well-planned program, everyone’s active participation, great location, the wonderful facility of the retreat center, and our new staff member Stephanie, who joined us this year.

On the return trip, I was thinking about the retreat. What was the most important lesson I l...

A long time ago, I was chattering with a lady who was a school music teacher as well as church musician.  She said one of her school band students quit band recently, and she asked me if I could guess why.  On my puzzled face, she said the student's mom said she valued her family time, and her son's practicing took away from it. After a brief pause, we laughed out loud together for a while.  The conversation, though, didn't seem like just a light joke to me after I thought about it more deepl...

Our trip to Bremen, Germany was a great experience for many reasons. First of all, it was the first time I put my feet on the soil of a foreign country, except for when I came to the USA from Korea 20 years ago. Miah and I were part of the delegation that represented Americans after becoming US citizens just six weeks before the trip!

During the three-day conference and the closing worship with three different languages (German, English, and an African) on the third day of the trip, Miah an...

Doing our best to make our life worth each day and every day should be our goal.  After a while, though, we should also have a pause and look back, to remind us where we are from, and look forward, where we will walk onward. This will help us see the big picture so that we will not lose our identity and can set the right direction to keep going in our long life journey.

I had a great chance to review the history and the current situation of Korean Christian churches at First Congregational ...