Preface

During the prayer meeting at the Chicago church for the 2013 International Summer Bible Conference Richard Choi shared his life testimony, which is posted here. He has been serving prayer servants for Sunday worship service in the Chicago chapter. His wife is Faith Choi. They have two children: Richard and Francis. He has been teaching math in high school.

Title

A Father of Many Nations

Contents

Part 1. A country boy with no vision
Part 2. You will be a father of many nations
Part 3. Laying a foundation as a lay missionary for USA
Part 4. My ministry at UIC
Part 5. Epilogue

Part 1. A country boy with no vision

I was born on Jan. 3, 1955 as the youngest son of a farmer’s family in Dam-yang, Korea. My parents loved me and provided me with all the necessary things I needed because I was born in their old age, after they had three consecutive daughters. My father, who was a leader of the village, trained me as an athlete in the hope that I would grow as a national hero like Son-Ki Jung, the marathon champion in the 1936 Olympics. My mother took care of me as the apple of her eye. She even took me to the public bath for women until I was 12. During those days, I studied hard, partly because I had nothing else to do, but mostly because through studying, I could be exempt from farm work.

To further my education, I went to the city of Kwangju, then to Seoul. It was not easy for me to get along with city people. One senior student beat me because I did not speak their standard language but a dialect. I felt lonely. I had no motivation to study hard. In college, however, I decided to study hard again in order to overcome the boredom of life. I shaved my hair and began wearing a military uniform. I studied day and night for three years in the study room the school had provided. I wanted to find out the meaning of life as well as my future security through devoting myself to the state CPA exam. But my hard work did not remove the emptiness and meaninglessness of life from me. After finishing my daily work at 1:30 a.m., I often cried tears in my bed, asking myself what the meaning of all of these things was: eating, sleeping and dying after endless toiling for survival.

Part 2. You will be a father of many nations

In 1977, I was again preparing the state CPA exam after I failed the test that summer. It was a winter night; large snowflakes were drifting down. Dr. John Jun, who is my cousin brother, and Msn. Maria Ahn visited me in the dormitory and invited me to Bible study. It was God’s personal visit to save me from my sins and give me salvation, new life, and the kingdom of God through his Son Jesus Christ. Through the study of Genesis, God helped me to realize who God was and who I was. When I studied Gen. 1:31, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good,” God opened my spiritual eyes to know the truth that the God of Jesus is the Creator God who created everything out of nothing and that I am his precious child sold to sin but repurchased by his Son’s holy blood. I experienced the utmost joy and freedom in my soul by knowing the truth that I came from God and I was going back to him after doing something good for his glory as a holy pilgrim on the earth. I found salvation in Jesus and accepted him as my Lord and Savior, confessing my sins of selfish life and an ungodly life.Out of happiness and thanksgiving in the salvation of my Lord Jesus Christ, I invited all my friends from school and from work to Bible study. My one word was: “Come and see!” Through Dr. Augustine Sohn, Misn. Joseph and Maria Ahn’s Bible study and prayer support in Jongro Student III chapter, God helped me to bring many sheep to Jesus, including my family members.

Once, I was supposed to attend my mother’s 60th birthday celebration on Sunday. Having known this, Msn. Maria Ahn assigned me to serve Sunday message on that day in order to help me learn the faith of putting God first and my family members second. Despite my absence from the important event of my family, however, they did not persecute me or speak ill of Christianity. Instead, my mother declared that she would believe in Jesus simply because she felt that she had to do so in order to support me with her prayer. God blessed her sacrificial love for her son and helped my father, and all my other family members to put their faith in Jesus. God also used my mother to serve and bring her village people to Jesus as a deacon, offering her house as a house church for the village pastor to use for Bible study every weekend.

In 1981, God established a house church and a missionary family between Msn. Faith and me for his world salvation work. At the wedding, God gave my family one precious word of God through his servant Msn. Samuel H. Lee from Rom 1:17, “The righteous will live by faith.” Even until now, this word of God has helped my family to be faithful to his grace and calling in the time of hardships as well as in the time of his blessings. I was destined to be an ordinary man in my selfishness and meaninglessness of life. But God had a great hope for me to be his servant and to be a missionary for his glorious world salvation work. By faith, I accepted Gen 17: 5, “No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations” as my life key verse and prepared to go to USA as a missionary and to grow as a father of many nations in Jesus.

Part 3. Laying a foundation as a lay missionary for USA

In 1983 I came to Chicago, the world mission headquarters, to participate in the work of raising America a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Dr. Lee loved me and prayed for me to grow as a lion-hearted shepherd like King David and King Richard. In the hope of raising me as a good soldier of Christ, he gave me much training such as eating training (at that time I weighed 130 pounds), labor power training (I worked 8:00 am to 10 pm every day except Sunday for more than one month to remodel the old UIC Bible house), and factual Bible study training. After one year of intense young missionary training, Dr. Lee gave me direction to be a math teacher missionary even though my major was in Business Administration. I began the study of math at UIC part time while serving fishing and one-to-one ministry full time. I started my first Calculus courses without knowing what they were. My math background then was limited to general math because I had not studied math beyond middle school level in Korea. I had gotten “C”s on three Calculus classes consecutively in three quarters. Out of frustration I visited Dr. Lee for his advice hoping for a new direction. However, he simply asked me to study with faith by taking the Calculus classes all over again. In obedience to God’s servant, I enrolled in all three Calculus classes for the quarter, even though one professor who was in charge of registration called it crazy and self-destructive. When I depended on God in prayer and through diligent study, however, God gave me a victory to get all “A”s for those courses and to complete my BA and MA in math and ABD in education.

At the time my English was very poor. In fact, even my Korean was poor due to a hearing problem I had that was caused by typhoid fever in my childhood. But Dr. Lee gathered young missionaries like me at the center every Tuesday night and trained us to speak fluent English. This lasted more than four years. Through this English training, God not only blessed us to be good Bible teachers, but also helped us to be superior teachers and professors in our working places (I have received all superior ranks in my teaching evaluation for the past 25 years). I still remember how hard Dr. Lee worked to make me pronounce the ending sound of each word clearly and to the end. At that time, I didn’t know the meaning of his emphasis on the ending sound. But, after Dr. Lee went home to heaven, I understood the importance of making the ending sound clearly and to the end. It was an application of Rev 2:10, “Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life” into our mission life. In fact, God was planting this life-giving word of God into my heart and I accepted it as my family’s key verse since then. At the Christmas worship-service in 2001, Dr. Lee gave us his last message entitled, “Glory to God, peace to men” based on Luke 2:14. He was then 70 years old with an exhausted body after a near-fatal pneumonia attack. But he poured out his life and spirit to serve the message of God, the best message I’d ever heard. After delivering the message, he was too exhausted to walk. His son Sam Lee had to hold him to go to the washroom. After two weeks of this, Dr. Lee went to heaven, leaving one promise of God, Rev 2:10 to his wife, Msn. Grace Lee. Dr. Lee loved Jesus and learned of his faithfulness and served Jesus to the point of death. Through his whole devotion to Jesus and his world salvation work, Dr. Lee showed me how to be beautiful people of God in Jesus and encouraged me to grow in Jesus’ faithfulness. Thank God for his servant Dr. Lee in my life.

One year before I became a math teacher in high school, God gave my family our second child, Francis. He was born prematurely and had to undergo heart surgery, and later at his five he experienced trauma after being hit by a car. It was a storm of life in my family. We were gripped with fear and anxiety. But God came to rescue us and through the words of rebuke and encouragement, he gave us one word of God, Mt 6:33: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well”. We held onto the promise of God and prayed day and night. God heard our/coworkers’ crying out prayers and made Francis get well. Not only did he bring us joy and happiness in my family but God also blessed us with fruitful one-to-one ministry. At the time Msn. Faith was a RN and a computer programmer. But she gave up her job opportunities and served fishing and one-to-one ministry full time for more than thee years. During that time, God had used my family as a source of blessing to growing ministry of UIC. At the beginning of my teaching I was placed in a predominantly African American school. God gave me his shepherd’s heart for them and prayed for them to overcome their fatalistic elements of life as former slaves and with present sufferings. I wanted them not to blame others for their failures and unfavorable situations but to change them into God’s deep grace and fruitful victory depending on God with faith. During the Christmas time, I shared the story of Joseph in the Old Testament with them. Then I gave each of my students a copy of Joseph’s story with a bag of candy my family had prepared. It was my family’s prayer for them to get up from their fatalism and serve the Lord with faith in Jesus. In fact, God honored my prayer for them and raised Barack Obama as the President of U.S.A. in 2009, making him their inspiration and living role model.

Part 4. My ministry at UIC

God blessed our co-working with Dr. James Joung, Msn. David Kim, and Msn. Paul Shin and raised several house churches including S. Nick/Yvonne Timlin, S. Adam/Cheryl Kramarczyk, S. Robert/Tami McHugh, S. Alberto/Rosa Camalina, and S. Benjamin/Maria Westerhoff. Especially, God helped my family to serve Benjamin Westerhoff with Bible study and prayers for several years until God established a house church between Maria and him.

After 20 years of fishing and one-to-one at the UIC campus daily basis without much fruit, I felt like I was a failed missionary and a useless servant before God. But my Father God and my Good Shepherd Jesus has been faithful to keeping his promise, “America a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” by raising up numerous disciples of Jesus and house churches and mothers of prayer by himself through his faithful and sacrificial servants in our community. Reaching my fifties, I had difficulty driving almost two hours to and from UIC after my work due to extreme tiredness. In order to overcome my mental and physical digression, I decided to go back to school, inspired by Dr. Paul Hong who had shown an exemplary life of layman missionary working full time, feeding sheep full time, and studying full time. Through the doctoral study in education at DePaul, God has helped me to overcome my middle age syndrome and brought me back to the spirit of student in Jesus. God has given me joy of learning from the Bible as well as from other coworkers. For the past five years God has helped me to co-work with the new generation coworkers at UIC with the learning mind and understanding as a prayer servant. Every Monday I have enjoyed deep Bible study with UIC leaders. Every Sunday morning God has helped my family get together to study the Sunday message and have family fellowship in Jesus. God has also helped me to serve John Martin Jr., Tejumade (UIC, sophomore) as well as my own children with Bible studies and prayers. We started the Theophilus fellowship under the Joshua Jeon’s leadership with five members. But now by God’s grace about 20 members including Andrew Roberts, Karina, Tejumade and Daniel Yoshiba with seven house churches (Joshua/Mary Jeon, Jacob/Paulina Kim, John/Linda Martin, David/Jeun Choi, Andrew/Josephine Yu, Yvonne Timlin, Richard/Faith Choi) are meeting together every Thursday for Bible study and discipleship ministry. This year God has blessed Joshua/Mary Jeon’s family by setting them apart for his pioneering work in Austin Texas. I thank and praise God for this precious family who has been a great blessing to me as well as to all our community members for their faithful and sacrificial life of faith. We are praying for Josuah to depend on God by taking deep root in the word of God and serve the ministry of God’s words and campus ministry in Austin, Texas after the Conference. Also we are praying for Jacob and Paulina Kim to take leadership in our fellowship and continue to raise up many pioneering house churches for American campus mission.

Once Dr. Lee said I was like the old man in the movie, the Old Man and the Sea. I took it as a compliment at the time. But as time passed by, God has helped me realize that I can do nothing by my own will power or human faithfulness. This year God has been teaching me how to depend on him and grow in him through personal prayer. Based on Php. 2:10 and Ps. 62:8 I’m learning the life of prayer through early morning prayer and by serving our prayer servants for our SWS with Shp. Dennis Miller. John’s gospel study every week has brought me God’s love fresh and living that I often secretly cried moved by his sacrificial love for selfish sinners like me. God has blessed UIC ministry by raising up many student leaders. But recently some of them fell away. Little Sarah cried. We leaders cried too. I realized that students don’t grow when we leaders do not continue to grow. I took the responsibility for this event myself and decided to engage in fishing and 1:1 not by my own strength but by the help of the Holy Spirit. May God hear our prayer for UIC and raise up many male student leaders through our diligent fishing and 1:1 with prayers.

Part 5. Epilogue

During my summer vacation, I’ve been having a tennis fellowship with my son, Richard. He is pure and enjoys teaching at his gifted school. My wife and I are earnestly praying for him to accept God’s vision for him to be great and grow as a Ph.D shepherd with a beautiful house church in his grace and blessing. Francis suffered much in his childhood. So I could not discipline him properly. But God has blessed him to grow as a shepherd for HBF with a Federal government job as an economist. I thank God for Mother Barry who have prayed for and taught him Bible 1:1 every week for many years. I thank God for my precious wife Msn. Faith (Pharm.D) who has been serving our fellowship and UIC ministry as well as my family as a prayer servant and a sacrificial mother. Thank and praise God for his good work in us and in our community, UIC , Chicago UBF, and North America to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation by raising up his disciples, house churches and missionaries to the world. May God bless our one-to-one ministry, discipleship ministry, campus ministry and world mission ministry to send out 100,000 missionaries to 233 nations including Muslim Counties, China and North Korea by 2041! May God bless our ISBC with the love of God and his world mission vision for his world salvation!

One word: A father of many nations!