Elizabeth Stover and her husband (Preston) of Dock Woods Community were out walking on the path in the beautiful woods connected to the Community. Coming toward them was a young man with his small playful child. He was hanging on to his legs so it was a “conversational moment.” The young man (Insoo Lee) said that he was Korean and the youth pastor of a local Korean church in Landsale. Elizabeth invited them to their home for a dinner. Since she was a leader of a prayer group at Dock Community she also invited Insoo to come and speak to the prayer group.
At that meeting Insoo found out about the Worm Project and invited Claude Good and his wife (Alicia) to present the project to the young people of his church. They were met with overwhelming enthusiasm by the Korean young people in addition to the wonderful Korean food served by the group. Some of them wanted to take the contribution containers to their school classrooms to encourage their classmates to contribute as well.
That small group of enthusiastic young people was able to pull together $1,000.00 in a few months! The Worm Project is able to buy a de-worming pill for just $0.02 each when bought by the million. It is a mint-flavored, chewable pill that only has to be administered once every six months. That one pill can save enough food from the worms to help a child have, on average, an extra 10 lb.of food during those six months. So at $0.02 each, $1,000.00 will buy enough pills to treat 50,000 children! But it will be even more than that – Insoo says that the youth want to keep the contribution containers to continue raising funds for the very poor “wormy” children of the world!
Additional information: The Korean church, as of January 1, has moved to the Hatfield Church of the Brethren and has become one church in Christ as Grace/Hatfield Church of the Brethren. Now they have an English service at 10am and a Korean service at 11:30am.They are planning to provide bilingual service soon.
Presentation of $1,000.00 from the Korean Youth Group to the Worm Project
First row from left to right:Yoon Kim, Julia Min, Esther Choi, Anna Kim.
Middle row: Insoo Lee, (Youth Pastor), Preston Stover, Grace Min (president of Grace Christian Church Youth Group), Claude Good, (Coordinator of the Worm Project), Alicia Good
Back row: Noel Santiago (Executive Minister), Elizabeth Stover, Michelle Kang.
The opinions expressed in articles posted on Mosaic’s website are those of the author and may not reflect the official policy of Mosaic Conference. Mosaic is a large conference, crossing ethnicities, geographies, generations, theologies, and politics. Each person can only speak for themselves; no one can represent “the conference.” May God give us the grace to hear what the Spirit is speaking to us through people with whom we disagree and the humility and courage to love one another even when those disagreements can’t be bridged.