Prayer letter from the Land of the Cush

From the Land of the Cush (Ps. 68:31)

Greetings from Ethiopia !

We send hello to our friends in Christ. Owing to your love and prayers, God allowed us to start new ministry again in Ethiopia on New millennium year.

Since we came back to Ethiopia, we were quite busy settling here. As we were assigned to work at Addis Ababa, Jong-kook and I went down to Jimma to bring our household stuff and said good-bye to our friends there. In the house we used to live, there are other missionaries are living. Ethiopian teachers are teaching at the Bible School that we used to do that. It’s good news that they are able to manage by themselves. Churches are still growing and are building the worshiping place. It was hard to leave the place that we had put lots of love and efforts on the first ministry we started. We still hope to go back and work there one day.

This is the 3rd month since we've been here. We are doing wonderful ! We moved into new house, and now we feel our home. Jason and Anna are doing super at school. We are very happy that they go to school from home. We stepped into the complicated and busy city life in Addis. Fleas still welcome us as well as our old friends does. We use local taxis, which most of the people uses as local transportation, to shop or go where we want to go. We still pray for the car that we can use for our ministry.

Preparation for the new ministry

During this term(1999-2003), we are assigned to work with 13 Kale Heywat Churches (KHC) in Addis Ababa. We had a meeting with the representatives who are in charge of 13 KHC in Addis Ababa. We were introduced to them to be involved in working with Addis Ababa KHC. We were warmly welcomed to help them to develop some programs and some ministries. We started visiting each churches and making reports about the churches. We found that the churches are very much growing and they have planted 7 churches in Addis. Most of the churches struggle with the worshiping place and extended the place with the tent as many people come to church. Young people, 50-90 % of the members and children, and women need their own program developed. Most of the churches don’t have a pastor even some churches have over 2,000 members in a church. We see lots of things we need to develop and work out with the churches here. Especially Jong- kook wants to do some pastoral care and training program for pastors and evangelists to develope their ministry. Grace sees the importance of training young people to be used in the church according to their gifts. We pray that KHC Addis grows in the balanced way.

Please pray that

1. the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia can be settled peacefully.
2. they have rains soon as the draught has affected all over the places.
3. KHC may have vision to develope the programs for church leaders, young people, children, and women.
4. we can have good relationship with KHC in Addis Ababa.
5. we may have wisdom and vision to develope new ministry.
6. all of us are healthy and spiritually strong.
7. we find the right 4 wheels drive car soon.

We pray that God’s blessings are ahead on you and your family.

Serving with Him and you,

Jong- kook, Grace, Jason and Anna

P.O. Box 127 SIM Addis Ababa Ethiopia E-mail: cushjkpark@hotmail.com
SIM USA P.O. Box 7900 Charlotte, NC 29715 USA
SIM KOREA Sungwon Bldg. 401 420-21 Sungnae 3 Dong Kangdong-gu Seoul, Korea

After visiting Golfe KHC(Word of life) church

Worship service at new planted church, Makanisa KHC(Word of life)Church