by Cherlsoon Yim
I heard the gospel while I attended CEF teacher’s seminar in Onyang City which is my home town. After the seminar, when I read John 14:2, I trusted in Jesus who prepares heaven for me to be with Him and I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior in 1974, soon after I graduated high school.
My wife, Hwasook, was invited to Bulkwangdong Bible Baptist Church by her classmate when she was an 11th grader and heard the gospel in 1972. The gospel that Jesus, the Son of God, died for her sins on the cross, she repented and received Jesus.
We met each other at our home church (Bulkwangdong Bible Baptist Church) while we were serving the Lord through children’s ministry in 1987. At that time I was a Bible college student and she was a writer for vacation Bible school lessons for BBF Korean churches. I was in a team to proofread for her writing, and we started to know each other through it.
Our home church is a mission-oriented church and Daniel Wooseang Kim is a mission-minded pastor. God really touched our hearts to surrender our lives to be missionaries through the Word of God. Hwasook got a calling from God through Romans 10:14 and 15, and she dedicated herself to be a missionary in 1975 when she was a Bible college student. I got my calling for missions from Matthew 28:19 and 20 in 1987 and also I was a Bible college student.
I graduated from Korea Baptist Bible College in 1991, I also graduated from Baptist Bible Graduate School of Theology in Springfield, Missouri, with a MA in Missions in 1994 and I transferred to Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary for M.Div. and graduated in 1996. I continually did D.Min at Liberty and finished D.Min course work in 1997 and left the U.S. I finished my dissertation for D.Min. and graduated in 2003 while I was in Ghana.
My wife, Hwasook, also graduated from Korea Baptist Bible College in 1978, and she graduated CEF Leadership Training Institute in 1978. She also graduated from Missionary Orientation Centre in 1985 in England and graduated from Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary in 1997. Now she is a doctoral candidate at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for Doctor of Educational Ministry and she is writing her dissertation and hoping to graduate next year.
I served the Lord for children’s ministry and a full-time staff in our home church and some other Korean churches in the State while I was studying in the States.
While I was studying at Baptist Bible Graduate School of Theology I had to make a mission project and I chose the country of Ghana. While I was doing my project, my interest and passion for Ghana grew more. In 1996, before I finished my study in Liberty Seminary, I decided to make a survey trip to Ghana myself and wanted to be sure that God really called me to Ghana or not. I traveled alone for a month in Ghana. While I was there, I lost my passion for Ghana because of their poverty and living conditions. I was still in Ghana and I prayed to God to send me to a better-conditioned country, not Ghana. While I was praying hard about it, God really touched my heart and showed Jesus came down to the earth and left His heavenly throne to die on the cross for my sins. At that moment I rededicated my life to serve the Lord in Ghana and my family and I arrived in Ghana January 1999.
While we were doing church planting and Bible training for national pastors through our small Bible school, people got saved and trained to plant churches in the villages. But many are illiterate in the villages and their lives did not change and didn’t grow in their spiritual life. We prayed to God for the new vision in how we could serve the Lord better in Ghana and we were considering what will be the effective ministry to help people to be well trained through the Bible.
At that time God gave us a vision to start a Christian college. Until now we haven’t found any Christ-centered Christian college to train young people in Ghana with the Word of God. God allowed us to obtain land (875 acres) from the Have Chief as a donation in 2008.
As a pilot program we started a Christian high school (GIU International Christian Academy – boarding school) in 2008 to prepare the students to be core spiritual leaders for the college in the future.
We are praying to start a college approximately 2012. But we have to do construction before that.
Please pray for some dedicated workers as missionaries to work together:
- High school principal
- On-site teachers for high school (we are using A Beka DVD curriculum) to help students’ academic and spiritual aspects.
- Construction teams: to build school buildings.
- People to work for the college for administration and academics.
Pray for the financial aspects:
- For construction. We are praying for $150,000 to build a building.
- Support for the high school students. You can support a student monthly for $10 so they can study in our school.