Rev. Dong Ho Kim and Merry Year International

During my trip to Korea, I also met with Rev. Dong Ho Kim. Rev. Kim is a Christian pastor, a radical man of God. He served several churches, including quite a few that he started.

He refused to build the church building. Instead he decided to God's invisible church by establishing social enterprises that were targeted to help the refugees from N. Korea. They were not as well educated as S. Koreans and not trained in business. But he set up a few businesses for them, such as paper box manufacturer, coffee shop, leather wallet manufacturer. He also started a social consulting company to provide consulting for other NGOs that desire to start social enterprises. His foundation owns a building in the heart of Seoul, but he makes the building space available to other NGOs and even social business start-ups for free.

When MYI staff visited to leave Sungeun Choi as an intern

Rev. Kim expanded this social enterprise work to overseas. He supported a few initiatives in Asia and Russia. Recently, Merry Year International, an arm of Merry Year Foundation for international development work, took over one of United Nations millenium development villages in Malawi. MYI wanted to start a micro finance project in Rwanda and has also signed an MOU with UOB to provide support for secondary school students. One intern has been working at UOB for the past three months.

He is now in fight against one of undesirable practices among Korean churches: senior pastorship succession. to the senior pastor's sons or sons in law. It is totally unbiblical but Korean churches have been silent about it when the first one occurred. This practice has since mushroomed to become a generally accepted practice. He finally stood up and declared to initiate a movement against this practice. I am in full support of it. This is the culmination of unbiblical and ungodly practice of making church ministry posts the social elite classes. This practice has induced people to want to cling to their positions, forgetting that the positions/responsibilities were to serve others.

 Our meeting in the office and over lunch were inspiring and encouraging. I also met with Rev. Bumseok Kim, who is Secretary General for Merry Year Foundation and Merry Year International. May the Lord bless our relationship to be a greater blessing to many underprivileged people of Rwanda. - Jeffrey