순수한 여자 대학생 하나 더

This English Literature student of mine is named..... Well, I am sorry but I can't say her name, but I will say that she is one of the many students I have had the amazing opportunity to share the Gospel with.

 

I have written many stories of some friends here in Korea and my ESL university students, and I am aware the experiences usually revolve around the female persuasion, but considering the majority of English students at my university are female, this is all due to the circumstances and the statistical probability of coming in contact with females over males.

 

I am not complaining, though. Sharing the Gospel is Sharing the Gospel.

 

Anyway, this student─who I will call Minji─was taking my English essay writing class a few semesters ago, suffering through my heavy workload and demand for creativity and details in a foreign language. And, like my English conversation classes, the students chose one book from a list of ten and answered an autobiographical question about said book. Half of a sixteen page MLA essay was to be written at midterm and the final required them to edit the eight pages written at midterm and add eight more pages. The essay topic was for the students to apply the contents of the book to their modern, university life. I purposefully chose that question to get the students to think about their present situations and to keep them from doing the ctrl C ctrl V cheating prevalent with the invention of the Internet.

 

Also, keep in mind that this was all at a Catholic university in which religion was a main focus of the learning. So, every semester, I put a religious book and the New Testament on the reading list the students could choose from, and nobody found it odd or offensive, even the Atheist and Buddhist students. And, Minji was one of those Atheists who decided to read Heaven Is For Real; but, as she later admitted, the original selling point of the book was how short it was.

 

 

 

 

Minji had just come back to university that semester, having taken three semesters off to work at a cell phone store and get her act back together after a drunken freshman year that ended as anyone would expect it to end:  Disastrous. Time and seeing her friends become better, and grow while she was stagnant, she decided she was ready to come back to university and try again.

 

She was, after her return, I am glad to report, doing better─significantly better. She even bought the book for the writing class early and began reading it long before the other students even decided what book they wanted to read. And, I know she was reading it because she asked me about the contents of the book about a week after she started reading. She had taken the required Catholic Catechism classes and the Ethics classes all freshmen were required to take, but her knowledge and understanding of Christianity and Catholicism was almost null, at best. It was like she was a blank canvas when it came to God and what He was all about.

 

Heaven Is For Real was about to start doing some magnificent artwork with this blank canvas.

 

Minji honestly asked me in class, two weeks after starting the book, if the events were true. I will never forget the look in her eyes and the tone of her question, both of which portrayed a young girl who wanted answers. Colton and his father Todd seemed trustworthy to me when I read it and I told her such. My faith was strengthened a little by that boy Colton, and Minji listened intently as I told her my feelings about the book. She agreed and said; I quote: "How could a young boy like him make it up? He is too innocent?" The father was a little questionable to her, but probably because of the problems with her own father, but Colton's words were enough to bring her faith back and get to invite the Spirit back into her life. She confessed that the book was a deciding factor in believing in God again, and I continued to be amazed at how Todd's pen strokes and belief in his own son led to the conversion of a young girl in South Korea.

 

 

 

I told her to come to my office after class and gave her a Korean Bible. She was overjoyed at the pink, handheld Bible I gave her. And, after telling her to ask me questions anytime, she put the two books in her bag and left my office, bowing and saying the very polite salutation in Korean, "고맙습니다, 교수님." (Thank you, sir)

 

ADDITION:  Minji is doing well these days and her faith is growing in minute fractions every day. Any growth brings me happiness, and I hope it continues.