Joon Hyoung Park's story

My story goes back to one spring Sunday afternoon in 2003 soon after I became a member of the Sherbrooke Mennonite Church in Vancouver, B.C. Deeply inspired by the Mennonites’ ways of ‘being’ and ‘doing,’ I said to my “geehrtes”* pastor Garry Janzen that I wished to come to the same seminary where he had studied: AMBS. He replied, “How about starting to study online programs as a trial?” I blatantly answered, “I can’t. I am not the person who does many things at the same time. I am mono-chronic, doing one thing at a time. If I study, I have to concentrate on just one thing—studying.”

Three years passed as I learned to get along well with traditionally “reserved” Mennonites. I moved to a so-called Bible-belt city, Abbotsford. When I gave my testimony at Emmanuel Mennonite Church, I alluded to how I’d been thinking of studying at AMBS. Among many words ramblingly delivered to the patient audience, the word “AMBS” was indelibly imprinted on the mind of one of the church elders, Mr. Waldo Neufeld. From that day on, whenever I encountered him at the church, he incessantly asked me when I was leaving for AMBS. Imagine that he looked like a Goliath—too tall to look up to. Soon it became a fear to see Waldo on Sundays, now that I was not ready.

Still struggling to settle in as an immigrant head of the household, I could not conform to the beckoning of Waldo and his God. How could I perfectly submit to God’s calling? I resisted, yelling to God: “There are still many things to sort out; my daughters keep begging to get a pet; they do not want a move; they are in their teens; you know teens—they are emotionally unpredictable, and intellectually nonnegotiable; how about my wife? She’s been moving around with me for the last decade; she also wants to ‘calm down.’ When on earth can I graduate from such instability?”

Thanks to God’s unyielding invitation though Waldo’s mouthpiece, I finally submitted to God’s invitation to AMBS and applied to the MDiv with a concentration on mission and evangelism. But there were still unclear and unsolved problems; how could I support my tuition and living expenses? It is a typical Korean male’s face saving to not officially ask for help from others. By virtue of AMBS’s counselor’s guidance and encouragement (Thanks to Waldo’s son, Jonathan, a chip off the old block), I was able to apply to several parties to support my study: MC Canada, AMBS, Emmanuel, and my non-profit organization which I founded and have worked with ever since. Thanks to other parties’ collaborative efforts to support my study, I am now at Apt. 171, on campus, facing a beautiful berry tree. Throughout the whole process of counseling, application and admission, I was able to witness how God is steadfastly working on me through people who I do know or do not know of. I now marvel what this simple truth means; “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps (Prov. 16:9).”

Joon Hyoung Park, originally from South Korea, studied in Boston, Mass., and lived in British Columbia before coming to AMBS. Shim Beack, his wife, is also studying at AMBS.

*”honourable” in German