Meet...Ruth and Joy

Ruth and Joy with Teacher Sarah

Ruth and Joy Choi are our Korean neighbours. Over the last six months they have spent a few hours each week at our house doing school. Their mum, Jisun, teaches them at home and is grateful of help. The girls also enjoy a change of classroom and teacher. In the picture above, Sarah had been teaching English.

One day I read with Ruth about celebrations in different countries (in a Geography lesson) and we decided to try and make a papier mache piñata. We researched how to make paste from flour and water and ripped up scrap paper. It turned out that neither Ruth nor Joy really liked getting messy so it actually ended up being me who covered balloons first with Vaseline and then with layers of paper dipped in our homemade paste. I had fun! The climate in Korr is great for making papier mache as the layers dry so quickly in the hot dry conditions; no need for the airing cupboard and no danger of the flour paste going mouldy!

Ruth and Joy's parents, Inho and Jisun, work with Korean Food for the Hungry International and run a child sponsorship scheme in Korr that supports over 400 children through their primary and secondary education. They run a Saturday youth club programme and Jisun has set up a choir.

They have invited us round for wonderful Korean cooking and also lead our singing when we meet on Sunday evenings.

Amongst other things, Inho also preaches to local people about Jesus being the only way to God and heaven. He shares his personal story, having grown up in a traditional Korean family where ancestor worship was widely practiced. He and his mother were thrown out of the family home when they came to know Jesus and refused to participate in the traditional practices. Later the rest of his family came to follow Jesus, but his story resonates with all of us, including the local Rendille people, for whom being Christians will result in changed lives and possible rejection.

In the last six months Inho and Jisun have hosted two teams from Korea. The first was a church group who visited Korr villages to tell people about Jesus using music, drama and the Rendille-translated Jesus video. The second team last month consisted of doctors and dentists from Korea who ran clinics in Korr and the villages.

Inho, Jisun, Ruth, Joy and their older brother David (who attends boarding school at RVA in Kenya), are now in South Korea for the RVA school holidays. For the first part of their visit they are joined by two Korr church pastors, one of the Bible translators and one of Inho's workers whose tickets have been paid for by a Korean church in order to develop links between churches in Korr and Korea.