“I Shall Never Again Be Truly Cold”

Choi Dong Sull was a Presbyterian minister who felt it was his responsibility to protect his flock from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “I taught them that it was an evil church in the sight of the Lord,” he said. In the early 1980s, however, when two Latter-day Saint missionaries approached him in downtown Seoul, he agreed to speak with them, feeling it was his duty to learn as much as he could about other religions. As he continued to meet with the missionaries over the next six months, Dong Sull gained clarity about some doctrinal issues that had troubled him. But this new knowledge created its own problems for Dong Sull. “As each point became clear and as understanding came into my mind, the turmoil within me naturally increased,” Dong Sull recalled. He knew his new convictions would not only require a career change; they would jeopardize his relationship with his father, who was chairman of the Presbyterian Church of Korea at the time. “For my own mental and spiritual well-being, however, I had to be honest with myself, no matter what the ultimate cost may be.”

Dong Sull chose to be baptized in the Han River. “I wanted my baptism to be an experience as much like Jesus Christ’s as possible,” he explained. On the foggy morning of September 5, 1981, the water of the Han River was cold, but when he came up out of the water, Dong Sull felt warm inside. “Now I belong to God’s true Church,” he said. “I shall never again be truly cold.” Two weeks later, his wife and two sons were also baptized—this time in a warm meetinghouse. Joining the Church didn’t make life easy for Dong Sull and his family, but it made possible new blessings. “The persecutions and sufferings … after my baptism are beyond my ability to tell,” said Dong Sull. “We lost much in the process [of joining the Church], yet we have gained more than we ever dreamed of.”