Trust and Responsibility

26 March 2008

My purpose in coming to serve as an Individual Volunteer in Taejeon and Pai Chai University was to teach a class in Missiology, an English class to the Appenzeller & Howard College Honor's English students and lead an adult English Bible Study during Sunday School hour. Since arriving, I've also been asked to speak to a Saturday group of students whose purpose in meeting is to develop leadership skills. Additionally, we're contemplating the establishment of another "less structured" English class due to interest and requests.

The university students are bright, energetic yet shy, extremely polite, technologically savvy, very interested in learning, beautiful, and have an absolutely delightful sense of humor. They dress in the latest fashions and all the young women sport designer-label handbags. Every single one has the newest cellphone complete with Korean/English dictionaries, calculators, cameras and internet access ... and probably much more, I just don't know the tech-talk.

Yet, with all this, they seem somehow lost in time in terms of life experiences, perhaps protected along the way, unexposed to the fast-paced culture the same-aged students in North America learned while still in middle or high school. Selfishly, I believe this is a good thing. They appear clean, unvarnished, wholesome, innocent, and trusting - still moldable.

It's not an easy task to prepare to teach them. To have such awesome young men and women in front of you each day and for such a short time is a tremendous responsibility. It's serious business and they deserve the best.

They trust me and I can't let them down.

JB