Due to Covid-19 and the start of Wimbledon GVC, I thought that it would be difficult to have a church BBQ this year. Instead, I was thinking about having a BBQ at home with our cell leaders. But when discussing this at a leader meeting, many leaders felt bad about not having a whole church BBQ – so we made a spot decision and decided to go ahead. While there may not be as many people due to people going home for summer break, we’d have the BBQ with whoever was around. Initially, I thought that this wouldn’t be too hard to prepare, as I thought we just need to find a park and buy meat for the BBQ. But with the entire church participating, there was a lot to think about. In particular, my wife had a lot to do. Unlike a BBQ at home where she was familiar with the layout and equipment, with 150 adults participating, and the venue 30 mins away by car, there was a lot of equipment and other things that we had to take, which required a lot of work.

So from the day that we made the decision, she had a lot to think about. On Thursday morning she went to Costco with Deacon Choi Yunjin, and went to the Korean supermarket with Pastor Park, who came to take equipment out of Church storage, and Wooil and Mingu. She had to wash all the equipment from the storage (as it had been sitting there for a while), and prepare not only meat but also side menus, for the vegetarians and also to serve the congregation with a nice, wholesome meal. Preparing the list of items and required quantities was not easy, though – first she had to ask the Family cell to help with food. The work kept on increasing, as she really wanted to feed our hard-working congregation well.

She started with the kimchi, which is hard to ask others to do, and also prepared an octopus salad which required prep work on many frozen packs of octopus. On top of the pork, LA galbi and sausages, she also wanted to prepare some marinated chicken – but since this was too expensive to buy, she bought the chicken, prepared it all and made a marinade to go with it, which required hours of preparation, and quite a few days of working till dawn. Looking after the family is a job in itself – to prepare all this food on top of that required a lot of hard work, and at night she would sullenly say that her fingers hurt and that while others think that being a wife of a pastor of a big church must be so nice, in reality, she just works like a kitchen maid. ^^ Even so, she always says that feeding the congregation gives her so much joy; I had to stop her from preparing an extra large batch of kimchi for the entire congregation to take home!

At the young age of 23, she got married to me without knowing what it was like to be a pastor’s wife, and continuously fed members of the congregation, wherever we would go. She says that she wishes that, like other pastors’ wives, take on jobs at the front where she could lead the worship or teach the bible – but that she’s stuck with this kind of work because she doesn’t like the spotlight. But my ministry was only made possible thanks to my wife and all her hidden efforts. As an introvert, she finds it hard to meet new people, but as the pastor’s wife she has to stand at the door and greet people. And since she likes meeting people one-on-one, she ends up welcoming everyone with a big smile. I am so grateful every time I hear from someone that they were able to settle down at our church well thanks to my wife, and I am sure that God knows of all of the difficulties that my wife has had to go through and will repay her for it all. While nobody in the church is having an easy time, I, for this week, just wanted to write something for my wife as thanks for her support and having had to overcome so much hardship.