Bob Kim - Canada

My name is Youngsoo Kim and I was born on August 26, 1956. This is a personal testimony about how I became Christian. I became Christian around the Thanksgiving Day of 1983, when I was 27. At that time, I was a first year student in the Ph. D program in Economics at the graduate school of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At that time, the school and the program I was in were quite famous. Even now, Economics Department of MIT still has, or, produced more Nobel Laureates in Economics than any other institutes in the world. Many members of alumni have been appointed as chief economic advisors of presidents of a few powerful countries in the world, including USA, Brazil, Mexico, and, Argentine. Such famous Nobel Laureates as Professors Samuelson, Solow, Modigliani, Merton, Scholes and such powerful economic policy makers as former Secretary of States, Dr. Shultz, and the current IMF vice president, the former World Bank Vice President, Dr. Fischer, who used to be my thesis advisor, were all from MIT. Obviously, by being a part of such a prominent tradition, I was excited and full of hopes and ambitions. Yes, I was an ambitious young man. I had many grand plans and global hopes, and, I thought I had a lot of resources to pursue those plans realistically and successfully. In relative terms, it was true that I had a lot more resources than most other people have. In addition to the academic success, I had inherited a sizable wealth in real estates. Plus, being a son of very powerful politician, I had also quite a number of connections. At the age of 25, I could call 5 cabinet ministers as ¡°Uncle Somebody¡±, because they used to be my late father¡¯s personal secretaries. Also, having passed a very competitive examination to become a diplomat, and having served in the Presidential Palace, I, by that time, already had accumulated somewhat enviably promising government career. Even now, I still think that I had a decent chance of some successes in the government. Well, in order to succeed in the government, like any other big organizations, one had only to stay away from getting involved in scandals, from making enemies, and from making administrative mistakes, which means ¡°not doing anything while pretending doing everything¡±, plus some good degrees in some prestigious schools. I thought I had all those ingredients, and I thought I knew the formula. But, strangely, inside, I felt very inadequate. I was not sure whether I really liked such a career, or, I was not very sure whether I could really succeed even with all those ingredients and formula. Or, whether I really care. Vaguely, and, unspecifically, I felt being drifted aimlessly. But, in retrospect, nothing more specially adrift nor more aimless than other young people at that age. In any way, I struggled all the more to gain more resources for the goals which I did not even know just because I felt very inadequate for the very (?) goal, or any goal. To be precise, I did not really know what the goals I had so that I could pursue for the rest of my life enthusiastically. Simply, I could not really figure out what I really wanted. Thus, I was concentrating on saving up more resources just in case. Any resources. Without knowing who my enemy is, I was arming myself with more bullets and more guns¡¦ Just because I did not know who my enemy was, I had to prepare all the more weapons for all possible occasions. I think that I planned a lot of things too. Too many things and too far away things. I was just like that. Had a lot of things, still feeling inadequate and trying to overcome such feeling by accumulating even more things. Like that, I went to Boston to start a student life. And, there was another Korean man in the same department of MIT. His name was Mr. Yongsoon Yim. He and I had gone to the same high school and same college. Even though I had not known him very well before I went to MIT, I knew about him. He was also from a very prominent family, but, he had two more reputations: Very smart guy probably the smartest among our high school alumni, also, too much into Jesus. Well, the second reputation bothered me a little bit. Not much. Once I met him upon arrival at MIT, I realized that those two reputations were very accurate, not at all groundless. He was truly brilliant academically, also, he was a way too much deep into Jesus. He became Christian a few years before I went to MIT, and, I could easily guess that something fundamentally big must have happened to him so that his life was completely changed (?) like that. (At that time, I did not know the such Christian jargons as ¡°transformation¡± or ¡°conversion¡± Now, I can describe his situation better. But, let me continue to use the words that I relied on at that time) He talked only about Jesus in all conversations. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus¡¦. Having newly arrived, I naturally wanted to get as much practical information as much from him for smooth settling in: where to find an apartment, where to do groceries, which professors are to be avoided, etc. etc. But, somehow he always found ways to bring back our conversation to ¡°Jesus¡±. Because I absolutely needed his help to settle down, I was not in a position to embarrass him by impolitely cutting his talking. I had no other choice but to listen on, and, from time to time, just to prove that I was still listening, I had to give approving nods and u-huh¡¯s, or occasionally threw half sincere questions such as ¡°really?¡± or ¡°isn¡¯t that nice?¡± just as a polite conversation continuing technique. He obviously knew enormous amount about Jesus. The impression I got at that time was that he seemed to have memorized the whole Bible. Otherwise, how could he quote so many verses so naturally? Frankly, I did not enjoy the conversation. I just put up with it. Such occasional but forced conversations about Jesus went on about two months. (Later I found out that many people prayed for me during that period, and, some fasted for days, too. I really wish that God bless those people abundantly) Then, about two weeks before Thanksgiving, accidentally (?) it came to my attention that a Korean church in the suburbs of Boston, the name of which I already forgot, invited a speaker to hold a revival meeting. The name of the speaker was Dennis Goodel. He was one of those many faith healers that roamed the southern US at that time. Up to that point, I had never been to any Christian revival meeting up. But, somehow, I wanted to go there and see what it is like. There was no particular urge, no sense of being drawn forcefully¡¦ I just felt that I wanted to go. Also, one can say that I was not particularly interested in going to the meeting itself. Rather, I was more attracted to the dinner Mrs. Yim provided before the meeting. When a person is a graduate student, he does not pass up a free lunch lightly, not to mention a free dinner. So, I went with the Yims. We drove about thirty minutes from downtown Boston. The meeting was held in a nice church building in an affluent neighborhood. But, the meeting itself was terrible. The speaker did not seem to be an educated person, to start with. A former marine, a Vietnam War veteran. A fat guy who occasionally threw a few easy Korean words at the Korean congregation who gathered there. Obviously, he had been stationed in Korea, as a GI. I felt insulted because he threw those Korean words, as if he was throwing chewing gums to war orphans. Also, he was carrying a sing along machine with which he sang many songs very loud. Vulgar songs. Just loud. In Korea, only beggars use those machines on the street to beg. (Quite mechanized, isn¡¯t it?) Plus, his gestures were so phony and plastic that I just clearly knew that I would not gain anything good from the meeting. Furthermore, what he was saying was not convincing at all. ¡°Not convincing¡± is too mild an expression. To be accurate, they were ¡®total lies¡¯ and ¡®outrages¡¯. Not even exaggerations. Exaggerations have to have some grains of truths to expand on. But these were pure and total lies. He even said that he once prayed for his friend during the war whose upper body was separated from the lower body by many machine gun bullets, and at the very moment of prayer, his friend was healed. (Ha!) Of course the two parts were glued together miraculously. (Why not?) According to the preacher, the friend was also serving God as a preacher. (Why not? He even had a corroborating witness!) I laughed. Was his friend Elvis? That was simply a total lie! It was obvious to me that there were two young American Marines. They took too much LSD under too much stresses. They simply hallucinated. Period. What a freedom of press! He needed a therapy, a professional one¡¦ But, what was funnier was that everybody seemed to believe it. Some even shouted ¡°Hallelujah!¡±, most of them clapped hands. To me, it was a clear case of mass schizophrenia, and mass psycho-manipulation. Mass hypnotism by massive lies. They needed a group therapy. But, even though I was laughing at every episode of this preacher, somehow, I did not hate those stories at all. I, strangely, kind of, enjoyed listening to his talk. Stories after stories like that. I did not believe them at all, but, I found myself wishing that those things were true and the same wonderful things may happen to me, too. Around the end of the meeting, he invited people to stand up. I did not really hear him clearly. But, many people stood up. I stood up too, without knowing clearly why. Later, I found out that the people who stood up were the ones who had prayer requests, which I did not have one. I guess that I stood up either out of a pure herd instinct, or, Big Hand pulled me from above. In any way, even though I did not know that people with prayer requests were supposed to stand up, it was apparent to me that that was a moment when something nice was being distributed. Something nice like lottery tickets, nice grocery discount coupons. It was also apparent that what was being distributed was answers to those whole bunch of miracle requests. Probably, I just did not want to miss out these free gift handout moment. In any way, I started the evening with a free dinner, why should I miss this moment in which some miracles are apparently being distributed at no extra charges? In any way, it did not seem to do any harm. Even though I did not really believe that my standing up would lead to any actual miracles, I thought simply why not? Also, I remember having thought that this Jesus, whom the preacher was talking about all evening, must be a good person because he claimed to give his life for us, which was being said many times at that meeting. Whether he really gave his life for us or not was a secondary issue, I thought, but claiming such a thing, it is quite likely that he must be a nice person even in the case that he did not know what he was talking about. What if it is true? What if he is really the Son of God? Why should anybody give his life for anybody else? I was not even his relatives, I was not even Jewish¡¦ Why me? If it is true that the Son of God really died for me, that¡¯s something incredible¡¦ I do not remember whether such a thought did really give a deep impact to me or not at that time. In my memory, it was just a passing thought, even though I still vividly remember that I had such a thought. But, here is the evidence how weak and unreliable a person¡¯s memory is. People are telling me, after so many years, that upon returning from the meeting, I kept on saying many times ¡°Jesus must be a good guy. He, at least, said that he gave his life for us. Of course, it is a fool¡¯s lie, but, that fool is a good person¡± Years later, especially my wife remembers that I was repeating it strangely many times. My wife thought that a bit strange thing might have happened to me. Also, I told my wife to go to the meeting next day, even though I did not go to the meeting any more. Busy graduate school life and no need to listen to those lies any more. I just told my wife to go to the meeting to collect a few more free miracle tickets. But, during the very night, I felt some very itchy sensation deep in the flesh of the left side of my low back which had been giving me serious troubles for 7 previous years. It was a sports injury. Sometimes, I was bedridden for two straight weeks. When it rained, the muscle on the left side of the low back became like a hard base ball. Swollen and hardened. Rainy or clear, the rear side of the whole left leg always had tingling senses. It was a typical disc outing. I was hospitalized twice. I tried many things. But, nothing really helped. I could not sit for more than 20 minutes without my left leg begining to feel funny. So, I had to use a special chair. I could not lift any thing heavier than a brief case. I could not even hold my 2 year old girl up in my arm. Once one has a bad low back, the immune system weakens too. Even though I was a young guy at the age of 27, I constantly caught colds. Once cold hit me, I had to take huge amounts of antibiotics every time, otherwise, my ear, nose, and throat developed major infection and inflammation which from time to time lasted more than two months of difficult breathing, stuffy nose, mucous, and high fever. But, during the night of the meeting, when I was sleeping, right there, the trouble spot, deep in the flesh of the left side of the low back, felt extremely itchy. The itchy sensation was too deep to scratch. I had to turn my legs across the body in many strange Yoga like positions over and over just to alleviate the itchiness. The spine occasionally made ugly cracking sounds. But, I strangely felt relieved when the cracking sound happened. It lasted virtually the whole night. Twisting the spines, keeping on making cracking sounds. Next morning, I realized that my low back pain disappeared. I waited it to come back, but, it did not. It did not come back the day after, either. It did not come back next day either. I began to think that some thing like healing miracle might have taken place. How nice if this really was! I thought that this symptomatic temporary improvement would disappear unless I keep on giving some fuels. So, purely out of practical calculation, I took up reading Bible. I thought that I should keep pumping some Jesus stuff into the body, otherwise, the temporary miracle would disappear. Some verses made some sense. Not many verses, and, not much sense. But, I kept reading Bible loud to keep the battery on for the improvement of the low back. Later, I found out that once God gives, he does not take away that easily. But, I did not believe in God at that time, not to mention, knowing what kind of giver he is like. I just tried to keep this free gift which came to me apparently by mistake. I had thought that in order to receive real, thus long lasting miracles, one should experience something more dramatic, which had not happened to me, at all. At least such things like electrifying sensation should have flown from the top of my head to the sole of my feet when the pastor prays. At least, I should have fallen backward when pastor prayed, laying his hand over me, at least. Or, I should have promised that I would stay in the mountain for 7 years praying, or that I would give half of my wealth to the poor. Those minimum dramas did not happen. Thus, this could not be a true miracle, thus, this came like a wrongly addressed mail. This will disappear. It was a matter of time. So, I thought that if I keep reading Bible, somehow God may allow me to keep the wrongly addressed mail. Just open it, and, make it useless for the intended receiver, who knows? He may let me keep it. So I went on reading Bible. Some made some senses, not many, not much. This went on two weeks. Then, the Thanksgiving of 1983 arrived. On the Thanksgiving Day, the Yims invited me to a ¡®turkey dinner¡¯. It was a free dinner, again. Of course, I accepted the invitation. Not only that, I went to their house 15 minutes earlier than the time I was supposed to go, while most guests arrived at least 30 minutes later than the supposed time. So, I was alone with them, and my Mr. Yim started Jesus talk again. Why not? But, this time, I had something to say too. This time, I did not have to stay completely defensive because I had something to say too. I told him that I do not have low back pain anymore since the meeting and, I told him that I was reading Bible, expecting him to be impressed. But, he was not impressed a bit by what I was saying, and in a matter-of-fact manner, he asked me one rather benignly commonsensical question. It sound like a follow up question of a TV interviewer. ¡°Youngsoo. Do you know that you are a sinner?¡± Awkward question, at an awkward moment. Who isn¡¯t? But, how can a host ask such questions to quests? I am a guest. Anyhow, I answered ¡°Of course¡± again just in order to avoid confrontation. I was trying to mention some other things so that conversation did not stay there any longer to create more awkwardness. But, he did not let the conversation to go any where. Oh No! Without allowing me to say anything else, and rudely (?) ignoring my comments, he went on asking me further ¡°Do you want to be a friend of God?¡± Another foolish question! Who doesn¡¯t? Go and ask any person ¡°Do you want to be a friend of Queen of England?¡± I was a junior secretary at the Korea Presidential Palace. There, I saw what kind of power and prestige one can have just by being a simple friend of a powerful person. Now, we are talking about becoming a friend of God who is infinite times more powerful than President who was assassinated some time ago. Who doesn¡¯t want it? After all, it made good calculational sense to become a friend of God. Thus, I said ¡°Can I?¡±, not believing at all. He went on asking ¡°Youngsoo. Do you want me to pray for you? I will say something and you can just repeat after me¡± I agreed immediately, because I just wanted that conversation to be over soon. Also, who knows? This must be fun. It did not cost me nothing at all, either. He invited me into a small room and led a simple prayer. As he led the prayer, I repeated the prayer of accepting Jesus as my Savior. Who cares what it means? This was just an incantation. Not too much unlike ¡°Open! Sesame!¡± I did not really appreciate the full implications, I did not either believe what I was saying. I just felt that this must be something good, and I should be earnest. So, I mobilized all my earnestness and repeated after him, believing or wishing that by doing so I could get more free miracle tickets. After we finish, he did not stand up, and he continue to pray. He kept on praying for about 2-3 minutes. I was lowering my head, eagerly waiting him to finish. Then, something happened. (It was probably the single most embarrassing event of my entire life. I had never been embarrassed like that before, and, I have never been embarrassed like that afterwards. Whenever I try to share with other people about that moment, emotion swells so much, my testimony usually did not proceed any further. I always lose words whenever I tried to describe the moment.) As he prayed about two to three minutes, all of a sudden, I began to see some mental images. I knew that my brain is at work on its own. But, I also reasoned that if God wants, that would be one of the ways He communicates to me. Using or playing with my brain to form an image, yes, that was what He was doing, which is fine, as long as he does not break it after He plays with it. But, the problem was the content of the images, not the fact that I was seeing images. The first image that I saw was the scene of me in action of a sin in the past, so ugly, so low, so bad that I can not even describe, hurting another innocent person so much. If I were that person, I would never forgive me. If there is really a God, any God, he will deal with it at first. I became very uneasy, but, I forced myself to stay in the trail of thoughts such as ¡°Youngsoo. It is just your imagination going wild. Nothing more¡±, but, on the top of the first image, another image overlapped. Another sin, an even worse sin hurting another person even more. Yet another image, yet another image¡¦ Before long, I felt violently nauseate and find it almost impossible to breathe as if I was violently strangulated by a Big Hand and suffocated. Literally, I could not even breathe. Massive sense of guilt and remorse. I saw myself. A disgusting petty sinner. Contemptible convict who, even at the moment of execution, tries to cheat his way out. Ripe for immediate and multiple execution. I reasoned ¡°Oh! No. I should not have done this. I came too close to God. Now all ancient sins are becoming live issues. I foolishly called them back from the grave. I should have left them there in the past. I should have kept some comfortable distance from God. I made mistakes¡± But, I also knew that it was too late. I already came too close to Him to run back. Now, execution time! Trumpets! Shining Blades Drawing Youngsoo¡¯s blood. But, right at that moment, all the images disappeared. All gone. My mental image screens became clear and very clean. Transparent and white. Obviously, my brain could not handle any more of them. Then, I reasoned again, ¡°Maybe. It may be the case that by my brain not forming any more images, God is telling me that between Him and me, all those things are not issues any more. Those debts are forgiven. Amnesty. Forgiveness. New Start, something like that¡¦Maybe. Just maybe¡± When my thought reached there. my chest all of a sudden felt a quick flow of cool wind even though until just a moment ago, the chest was full of hot nausea. Also, right at that moment, I began to sob. I did not know why I sobbed. I still do not know why. But, I sobbed a lot for a long time. Even when I was still sobbing, I did not feel any sorrow. In fact, I was happy. I did not know why I was happy. But, I was happy. Very happy. But also, I kept on sobbing. I sobbed and sobbed. Also, at that time, I began to experience what people usually call ¡®speaking in tongues¡¯. I did it for five to ten minutes. When I finally stopped sobbing cum speaking in tongues, not knowing what it was, I rubbed my face. Already smudged face became even more smudged. Eyes were red, face swollen¡¦ Half sobbing, and constantly hicking up, I came out of the room where we prayed to the dining room to meet fifteen or more people who arrived at the Yim¡¯s by that time, all wondering what happened to this guy. They saw me smiling and sobbing at the same time, with all smudged swollen face, reddened eyes, tears still coming out. Language did not make too much sense because of the twisted tongues. Hicking up¡¦ They were surprised and perplexed. But, what other people think of me did not matter to me any longer. I was really really happy. I felt wonderful. Many years later, I still meet those people who were outside of the room, at that time. They thought that I became mental on that evening. I do not disagree with them too much. I became Jesus mental on that evening. Next morning, I woke up, fearing that it may be still the same world. What if what happened last night was just an accident. What if God withdrew the invitation during the night. What if that was all just emotional breakdown from excessive graduate studies? I opened my eyes in the morning, fearing that all those wonderful things that happened previous night evaporated. But, I was relieved because my world smelled different. It sounded different. Of course, it looked totally different. Also, I could feel somebody was in me. Very gentle and very big. I found myself even talking to the person who entered me the night before. I just knew that somebody entered me. So, I walked to a nice place on the bank of the Charles River where both my apartment and school were located and sat there. I remember I have said to him there ¡°Who are you that makes me feel this nice?¡± I also remember that he answered by saying ¡°I love you¡±. Somehow, I felt like a really young boy. Even these days, sometimes, I dream that I meet God as a young Kindergarten boy with green short trousers. In dreams, I never fail to get a couple of red apples from God. That is just about how I became Christian. Since that day, I began to study Bible a lot. I attended every Bible study group around. I also organized a prayer meeting. I, too, talked about Jesus always. My family back in Korea became concerned because the rumor has reached there that I, too, always talk about Jesus. I just knew that by that time, I must have one of the reputations of Mr. Yim. (MIT virus infected another Korean!) Many miracles followed. Almost daily, there were small miracles such as listening to a sermon over the radio, and, came home to find the very same verses opened right on the kitchen table. This kind of small miracles happened almost everyday. (I am not so sure whether I can really classify miracles by size like this. But, many big miracles happened too such as healings in response to prayers and financial miracles. I promise to give testimonies about those big (?) miracles in the future. Not here) But, my wife always tells me that the biggest miracle is that I changed a lot. Less worrying, a lot more patient. After all, it was not really a bad decision at all. Since then, my back never gave problems again. On a very beautiful spring day, about six months after the Thanksgiving, I took my daughter to a place on the same bank of the Charles river, near where I was asking Holy Spirit ¡°Who are you?¡± and held her up in my arms probably for the first time. I and my three year old daughter held as high as up to the chest were under a cherry tree full of beautifully pink cherry blossoms. My wife took the picture and the picture is one of the favorite photos of our family. This year, after 15 years have passed since the Thanksgiving night, my daughter is going to Tufts university, which is also in Boston. This summer, I am planning to take her to the same spot where I held her up 15 years ago and try to hold her up in my arms, again. 15 years ago, we took the picture of holding her up in praising God for healing me of the back, this time I will hold her up in thanking God for having been with us all those years. I think I am going to be very very happy there. But, I think that I am going to ask God not to allow my hairs to get thinner any further.