Bless My Seoul

At Incheon Airport and cursing the fact that this computer has no photo processing software. Coulda done it on my laptop but now it's an (immaculately clean!) mile away. Stay tuned.

Got the midnight flight from Ulaanbaatar with Darisuren and Enkhtsetseg. At the airport saw Sean, a Peace Corps volunteer I know. He'd made arrangements for his brightest student, a young woman named Tsetsgee, to spend the summer in America learning English. She, like Enkhtsetseg (some of you may have noticed that an awful lot of Mongolian women have "tsetseg" somewhere in their name. Means "flower"), had never been on an airplane before, and was also going to DC. Would we look after her? Mais oui! Now we are four.

Boarding the plane, I saw a group checking in, all similarly uniformed, that at first I thought were Boy Scouts, tho a tad on the old side. Sitting on the plane and watching them file in, however, I saw that their insignia, emblazoned on cap and shirt and everything else, was a stylized, blood-red cross on a black background. Yikes! It was a Korean Jesus Army! I tried to let my tattoos show and look tough. I mean, the imagery was militant to the edge of fascist.

Then after everyone settled in and the plane pushed back, I heard the guy behind me try to strike up a conversation with the Mongolian woman to his left. After some broken small talk, the inevitable, "Do you go to church?" To which the Mongolian politely inquired, "Huh?" "You know," he repeated, "church?" Blank stare. "Church," he persisted and then went on to say the word, seriously, about a dozen times, with what I imagine were an increasingly inventive set of hand gestures, line drawings, and perhaps a puppet show complete with diorama for all I know.

Then he started in with the other words (maybe this time intertwining his fingers in front of the pin light to make shadow figures) -- "Jesus," "Christian," etc., at which point the Mongolian made a noise that after two years I now recognize as an artfully vague combination of "Ooooh, I get it" and "Holy moly am I glad this isn't the transpacific leg stuck next to this yahoo."

My eavesdropping continued apace, and it was revealed that this group of Christian soldiers were Korean, yes, but lived in L.A. They had come over to Mongolia with the urgent mission of building an entire church in 6 days. Surefire way to feel smug about your virtue (It's just like God! And the universe!) and ensure you never actually meet a Mongolian on their terms, learn their language, or anything about their culture. Good thing for him the sweet pumpkin porridge we were served was quite delicious, because I entertained fantasies of turning around and dumping it on his head. After we landed, I did turn to look at the woman he had been accosting. She took in my robes and rewarded me with a radiant smile, which I happily returned. 'Nuff said.

OK, my internet hour's almost up and I think I have a plane to catch! So, just two quick things:

1. I'm a little surprised no one in my family at least took a stab at the previous post's prizeless contest. Maybe it was really too obscure. The phrase "The fan is bust!" was meant to recall the hilarious sequence that ensued in Pogo Comics after the turtle Churchy LaFemme hollered "The dam is bust!" So obscure I can't even find a link to a drawing; there was only one faint reference in the Harvard Crimson. At least my obtuseness is in exalted company.

2. While I'm on the endless flight from Seoul to DC, do go look at the exquisite photography my friend Gaz has put up at his Flickr site. I mean, click through all four pages; he's a rare talent. He was the Leedsman I misidentified as Irish, who accompanied me on one of the Gobi trips. A couple photos from that trip grace the site, including one immortal one on the first page from our ger camp, entitled "Gobi Soccer Pitch." Enjoy; more soon. As my friend Tod would say, "Korea desk out."

Comments

[Leamur]

Photos delightful, TY! Hope the flight wasn't too bad.

[Samaya]

Remembering my first honeymoon "trip"....crazy sixties...an early morning knock on the door.....been up all night...looked through the peep hole, and saw uniforms...blue uniforms...like NYC police uniforms. Very scary, but I opened the door anyway. Who was at the door?

Two stalwart representatives of the Salvation Army Officers Training School, (located across the street from my place) who wanted me to save my soul by buying their magazine. It was called "The War Cry"

My mind was already blown from the activities of the night before, but I remember saying over and over again, "The WAR Cry" "the war CRY" "THE war cry"

THE WAR CRY?

I remember closing the door. It was 1969, Viet Nam and all, so I went to bed and cried about the war.

[Karen]

Thanks for the photo link.

Christian missionaries in Mongolia - Oh dear, yet another unChristlike bro. from the sounds of things. What will happen to this six-day church? This is no way to love and serve mankind.

Sorry to all Mongols.

Not all Christians are like this, although many seem to be under this cloud of setting the whole world straight by their hard words rather than by Love.

I do wonder how much of this mission work is really directed by God's Spirit. I think sometimes Christians do genuinely believe that what they are doing is a good work of Faith and that this is because of the way they have been taught in their particular church or denomination.

I find stories like this and Samaya's account above, quite difficult and I am very sorry.

I recently witnessed an evangelical outreach in my own home city centre where a man who had been involved in the gang scene testified via an over amplified public address system as to how Jesus had saved him from a life of crime. Fair enough, but the noise volume, the aggressive tone of his speech showed no humility and just served as an irritation to all and sundry. I felt that he had gone from being a hard man of the streets to being a hard man on the streets shouting about Jesus, rather than allowing His perfecting work to take place within him.

I turned away.

The characteristic of this type of behaviour is the lack of patience; the desire for quick fixes and returns on investments i.e missionary activities.

If only they could realise how imbued with capitalism their religion has become with the pursuit of conversion as their sole goal like some sort of sales target.