Had My Mission Made a Difference?

By Alan J. Johansen

It was my first Christmas away from home and loved ones. I was a 19-year-old missionary seeing a very different way of life in a strange, faraway country. There was no tinsel or tree, no pile of presents to revel in this year. I expected to miss these things but was surprised to discover that I didn’t. Instead of unwrapping new gifts this year, I was intently unwrapping new experiences.

Drawing my scarf tighter and pressing my numb face against the biting winter wind, I walked with my companion up a frozen hillside, strewn with a maze of twisting dirt alleyways. This place was like many others I had already seen in the four months since coming to Korea. Makeshift cinder-block huts and crude concrete walls were all shapes and sizes, squeezed together and situated in a random patchwork. Everything in sight was shrouded with a gray, powdery dirt and traces of soot from the burning coal that heated the homes.

Again tonight, we turned up a familiar alleyway. We knocked on the decrepit wooden door and removed our shoes before stepping into a tiny one-room dwelling to teach an old woman and her teenage son. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, we began our discussion. Sooni Park seemed unconcerned with anything other than the bare essentials of life. Her face was wrinkled, and she had dark, smiling eyes, unkempt hair, and an infectious elflike laugh. At the invitation of her quiet husband, a convert to the Church, we had been trying to teach this woman our short lessons for the past two months. It was a frustrating exercise.

Each week Sooni would invariably raise her hands and shake her head whenever we asked a question. This was her way of saying she couldn’t understand either the concepts or our strained attempts at Korean. Most of the time she would just smile or laugh at us if we tried to discuss anything of a spiritual nature. To make matters worse, her son Sang Ho constantly ridiculed us for coming and said he could never believe anything we said about God.

We simplified our continued lessons for the woman, hoping she would better understand. Exhausting all the patience we could muster, we kept coming to visit her and trying to reach her. For some reason she always said we could come back. During the final lesson, almost reluctantly, we asked her if she wanted to be baptized. She laughed, but then surprised us by answering yes. Her son just scoffed and shook his head.

I couldn’t help wondering if my companion and I were doing the right thing. We wondered if she would stay active after we were transferred. We worried that we might be wasting our time, that maybe we should not be baptizing this woman. We really didn’t know how serious she felt about this ordinance. We examined our motives carefully. Were we doing this for Sooni Park or for ourselves? Was she ready? Since we had a baptism scheduled for later in the week, we finally decided to include her and prayed that we were doing the right thing. We had a white Christmas that Saturday in Korea as we baptized nine people into the Church.

During the years that passed after I returned home from Korea, my thoughts often turned to the people we baptized that day. Had baptism made a lasting impact on their lives, or had the experience with American missionaries been just an interesting but fleeting cultural exchange?

Almost 17 years later a business trip took me back to Korea. The country had changed dramatically. Tall, modern buildings and newer homes marked the landscape now. It was three weeks before Christmas, and I had the chance to return to the area where I had spent my first Christmas away from home. That Sunday I was excited to revisit the white cinder-block chapel in Map’o-gu. Running a few minutes late, I hurried up the familiar hillside. The little chapel looked the same as I had remembered it: simple, stark, and beautiful against the morning sky. It reminded me of the people I had known and loved here. I wondered if any of those long-lost loved ones would still be here.

There were only about 20 people who had braved the winter weather to attend sacrament meeting, among them a pair of pale, foreign missionaries. I searched the faces in the room to no avail. No one I had taught was here. I could not help feeling disappointed, although I told myself that over the years many of them had probably moved away. When the meeting ended I rose to leave, trying to brush off melancholy thoughts. With a prayer in my heart I wondered if my missionary service had brought about anything really lasting in this place.

As I pushed open the chapel door, someone pushed from the other side. Both of us laughed at the coincidence. I looked down at the person holding the door handle. The wrinkled, grandmotherly face looking up was familiar. The short, unkempt hair, even the elfish laugh were the same; it was Sister Sooni Park. Amazed to see one another, we embraced. Spontaneous tears of joy rolled down the creases of her weathered face, and I thought we might both collapse.

After regaining my senses, I spoke to her and learned that she was one of the stalwart members of the second small ward that met in the building. She had been faithfully living the gospel for the past 17 years. We sat together through fast and testimony services. She held my hand tightly and wept as she told me of her husband’s recent death. Then she looked at me with complete faith and whispered, “But I do know that I will see him again soon.”

I was shocked again to see that her son Sang Ho—the same self-proclaimed atheist who had scorned our message 17 years earlier—was now a counselor in the bishopric. He had been baptized after I left the area. He had served a mission, married a beautiful Korean woman, and they were expecting their first child. Sang Ho stood to bear his testimony. Tears welled in his eyes as he talked about lessons learned years earlier from two missionaries who kept struggling up a crowded Korean hillside to visit his mother so many winters ago.

When the meeting concluded and we had said our good-byes, I turned to take one more look at Sister Sooni Park. This was an early Christmas for me. There she stood on the chapel stairway, bundled against the cold, her eyes still smiling: a beautiful soul who had taught me more than I ever taught her about the strength of humility and what it means to be a faithful child of God.

• Alan J. Johansen serves as Scoutmaster in the Pleasanton Fourth Ward, Pleasanton California Stake.