Background/History

 Purpose:

This blog will serve as an update to those back home at ODM (Open Door Ministry of Vineyard Presbyterian Church in Elmhurst,IL) a Korean church I joined March 2016, the parents/players of the Chicago Bulldogs '02, and'03 teams of 2016-2017, and all of my other lovely friends who wanted to keep up with my travels. Most importantly my parents who I love with all my heart, and appreciate the incredible love they have shown with their support of this endeavor, Thank you Mom and Dad from the bottom of my heart.

I'm basically rushing to finish these first few posts because SO MUCH has happened in the past 3 days. I'll start at the beginning for those of you who aren't clued in to what I'm doing. This first one will be a long post to give everyone a history on how this all came about. I don't anticipate most posts being this long. I'll do a TL:DR for those with the ADD. (Matt Tolbert I'm looking at you...)

What am I doing?

I am in Daegu, South Korea, yes SOUTH Korea, yes that's close to North Korea, no I'm not going to try and sneak in there, yes I know they are testing nukes, yes I know they hate Christians and Americans thank you, please direct any other comments/concerns to my recycling bin...moving on...

My main purpose here is to work with students in the K-PACE program as a mentor/aid and an RA.The K-PACE program is a very special program. In fact, a unique program to Asia, and possibly the only one of its kind outside of the U.S. This program brings special needs students with developmental disabilities to the university (in this case Daegu University), and provides them with the training needed to get a certificate (similar to a degree) so they can flourish in the real world. From what I've heard, people with special needs are looked down upon and in some cases even shunned in Asia, so this is a HUGE step in the right direction.

Here is a picture of me with the students in Bethesda College of Concordia University Wisconsin. This program is the sister program of the K-PACE program in Daegu that I have been sent over to. Together we are trying to help these students realize that they are not the only ones with developmental disabilities. We are trying to bridge the cultural gap, and bring these students together, not only physically, but through video conferencing as well.

Through this program, the school has offered me compensation of a room/board, and a tuition waiver for their Korean Language Education Center (KLEC). I have been wanting to learn a foreign language for years. I believe it poses one of the greatest intellectual challenges that a person can undertake, as well as enriching not only your life, but the life of your children when you pass down your bi-lingual affinity. So far my schedule looks to be Mon-Fri: 9-1 KLEC, 1-5 Free time, 5-bed (RA for K-PACE students).

Why am I doing this?

Well as mentioned before I wanted to learn a foreign language. However, that is admittedly just a bonus for me. It all started way back when *ripples and flash back effect*...

I fell in love with the Asian culture. The first I can remember of this is when I was working at Blockbuster Video back in 2007 or so. I started watching foreign films and began to fall in love. I loved the honor. I loved the respect. Most of all I loved the fact that stories were told from a real life perspective. Main characters would die often, and this represented what happens in real life in my opinion. There are no fairy tales here, every victory comes with many many failures. Every win comes with substantial losses. I didn't know it yet, but God had begun to work in my heart.

This affinity for Asian culture subsided but the foundation had been laid. Fast forward a few years to the emergence of K-Pop and other Korean media forms in the U.S. I first watched the Girls Generation Music Video "The Boys" on YouTube through a random video recommendation and it blew my mind. Admittedly I was first enthralled with how incredible these girls looked, but over time as I started to explore more and more Korean media, I moved from the popular music and shows into deeper cultural roots. In fact one of my favorite artists now is Song SoHee. She sings Pansori, or Gugak which is a traditional Korean style. She tends to take more contemporary songs and put an old twist on them, and she is absolutely captivating. But I digress... (Shout out to my man WipKim for turning me on to KSoul).

Another random occurrence (or maybe not) was me deciding to teach English in Korea. Now, this one was pretty much out of nowhere. I can't really explain how these things ended up coming together. It was basically a short-lived luke-warm flirt with Asian/Korean culture and then gone again. Yet it persisted down in the base of my soul. The reason this was such a big deal, is that up until this point in my life I really had no direction. There were plenty of things I was good at, but nothing I loved to do. Nothing I was passionate about to the point of doing something about it. This desire was head and shoulders above anything else I had ever wanted to do in life. I finally had a purpose! This was so exciting! Yet, I did not have a direction. Enter Matt Gates.

Matt has been a HUGE part of my spiritual life. In fact, had it not been for him I wouldn't be here, and I likely would not have a relationship with Christ as I do now. (Yes he's single and hot, ladies cause I know you're wondering). I grew up a Christian in a Christian household, but did not feel the power of Christ's love until I was in a car driving to North Dakota for a Christian hockey retreat with Matt, and his friend/teammate Eli. I will elaborate on this, however I must back up even a bit further to touch on how we got to this point.

My life was going great, I was coaching AAA hockey in Chicago and living at home saving up plenty of money when things first got shook up. My mentor Dave Maciuk got the axe from my employer at the time and I followed him at the end of the year. My grandfather needed a live in caretaker, and I saw this as a good opportunity to help the family, while spending time with/getting to know my grampa in his last few years. I won't lie, he paid me handsomely, and during this time I turned back to some of my old bad habits. I picked up WoW (World of Warcraft) again, and since I had all the time in the world on my hands I delved deep. My grandfather passed away after about a year and a half of living with him, and I moved back home with no direction and a lot of savings. I ended up playing WoW about 12-16 hours a day while living at home with no job and no desire to look for one. Honestly, this time brought me some of the most fond memories I have due to starting and running a guild (basically a small business) in game. Getting to know people, and teaching them created some wonderful lasting friendships, and almost led to starting a gaming business based on this. I'm convinced had this happened, it would have been an overwhelming success, and probably the worst mistake of my life.

October 2014 came to see me trying to move out of my parents house into a "gaming" house in Florida and almost flat broke. When that fell through I had to find a job quickly. I hopped on the first thing I found and ended up not feeling my time was valued enough at $9/hr so I moved on to the next highest offer. I bounced around like this until I found something around $18/hr. While I know this is a decent wage and I should have been happy to have a job paying that much in this current economy, I was miserable. I am not cut out for corporate life. This brings us back to Portillo's with Matt Gates.

"Gator" as his hockey nickname is, was a friend of mine from a men's league team a few years prior. Matt had recently found Christ, and we had built a friendship through some rough times. As any true friendship goes, you can not talk to someone for years and yet the second you see them/call them you pick up where you left off. This is the way it was with Matt. I found out he was back in town from school up in Concordia Wisconsin (Yes you're super smart for making that connection) and we put together a lunch date. He was incredibly encouraging about my desire to teach English in Korea, even to the point where I sometimes had doubts and he was still strong in faith. Thank you Matt, I also wouldn't be here without you.

Turns out, by divine appointment I believe, that the director of Bethesda College at Concordia Carol Burns has connections here in Daegu. Matt soon figured this out and passed the information on to me. I contacted Carol and I wish I could say the rest was history. However, my adventure had only just begun. I will make this short since I am getting a tad long winded here. Due to my schedule coaching hockey, and some visa time issues my trip was put off a year and a half until this March. There were times when it didn't look like it would even happen. The school ended up changing the offer on me, and we again had scares about getting my Visa on time. In the end though, I left everything up to the LORD and lo' and behold I made it here. In fact, there were many times that I had given up on this dream. After discussing the change of deal from the school with just about everyone in my life this didn't seem like a good plan. Everyone was telling me not to go. Except Matt. Logically, the change didn't make sense to go into, if they changed the deal once, what was to stop them from doing it again when I got there? This is where I took a true leap of faith and decided to completely trust in God. This is something I had been asking for in prayer for months. I wanted to learn to trust God completely. This can be tremendously difficult, especially for someone who has been able to reliably do anything they want in life (I'm learning that it was not me, but God's victory).

The school had told me they would send me an application for attending their Korean language program, and it had been over a month since I had heard from them. I set a personal deadline of a month before the end of my hockey season to decide whether or not I would go, and I let God handle it. I said if the application came in and gave me more than a month to get things together then I would go. If the application came in after that I would scrap the trip and stay. I had honestly almost lost faith. I was telling my employer that I was probably coming back, and to keep a spot open for me. Literally the night that I did that, the application came in. Ironic, but God is not without some humor I believe. Anyways, I made the decision to go based off of my personal deadline (though not without more hard thinking and praying on the issue), and truly trusted God. I was still not sure if I would be able to go due to having to get a lot of paperwork for my visa, but it all worked out just in the nick of time. Writing this only 3 days in, I could not be more happy about my decision, and God teaching me to trust him. This post is getting lengthy so I am going to cut it here and move onto the first day, and me actually traveling here! Leave me some comments and questions and I'll answer as soon as I can!

TL:DR I'm in Korea.