Eric Ji’s Prayer Letter

Dear friends and partners,

The sun is still beating down on Guam, and the only real escape from the heat is the beach, so whenever we have time we take the boys to the ocean. Jayden is thirteen now and Asher is twelve, but they still love building sandcastles. Jayden, our oldest, decided he wanted cologne and bought his first bottle with his own allowance. The whole house smells like it now. I suppose we have reached that stage. Asher, our younger one, has been complaining of stomach pain all month, and we still have not found a clear cause. Please pray for him.

Both boys had Spirit Week at school, where they heard a lot of Scripture and prayed a lot. They tell us they feel closer to God, and every morning on the way to school the two of them talk about it together. It has been a joy to watch.

My wife serves alongside me in our campus worship and baptism classes, pouring herself into discipling young adults. With so many young women in our ministry, her help is close to essential. Many of our students have little to lean on at home, and I am grateful that she is able to stand in that gap for them, even a little.

Three Years for One Sentence

Three years ago, when I started a prayer meeting on campus, it was a gathering the school did not recognize. If anything, it was probably something the school would have preferred we not do. Naturally we had no room of our own, so my office became our main meeting place. Some weeks I sat there by myself and went home. But I kept showing up, every week.

This semester, students started saying things I had waited three years to hear.

When I heard those words, the whole three years came back at once. The Tuesdays when no one came. The prayers I prayed alone. God did not waste a single one of those days.

Three students are now going through baptism classes ahead of our baptism service on October 18, and I get to sit across the table from them and walk through the basics of the faith together. Please pray with us for the day each of them says, in their own words, “Jesus is my Lord.”

“But Who Do You Say That I Am?”

On Sunday, September 13, I preached at Guam Evergreen Presbyterian Church from Matthew 16:15-17.

Peter’s confession did not come from being clever. Jesus said plainly that it was revealed to him by the Father in heaven. When a person confesses Jesus as Lord, that is God’s work from beginning to end.

The same question I put to the congregation that Sunday is the one three college students are now getting ready to answer for themselves. I am grateful that God let me stand before that question both from a pulpit and at a small table on campus (our Tuesday gathering, The TABLE).

A Summer in Pink T-Shirts

From August 10 to 16, a vision trip team from Juan Presbyterian Church in Korea came to Guam. Our mission, MGM, served as their local coordinator, so I spent the whole week with the kids.

The team ran an English camp in two age groups. On Wednesday evening at the Chamorro Village night market, kids in matching pink T-shirts sang and did motions in front of the crowd and shared the gospel. They also visited Zero Down, sang with the children there, and handed out gifts they had brought from Korea. Kids from across the ocean and kids from this island, singing the same songs in the same place. I will remember that for a long time.

No Shyness Here

When a new semester begins, we go around campus with our students to share the gospel. This time we set aside the first two weeks of our Tuesday worship, The TABLE, as outreach weeks. Wearing pink T-shirts donated by a church in Korea and holding Four Spiritual Laws fans, our students walked up to every table in the student lounge and started conversations. Watching them from behind, I wrote this down:

A church that visited us in the summer ended up fueling our fall outreach. Pastor Dasol Lee of Lord’s Church also joined our Tuesday worship for the second time and once again fed our students. As the name The TABLE suggests, I am thankful for everyone who pulls up a chair.

A Meal with a Pacific Student Ministry Leader

David, the Pacific regional director of IFES (known in Korea as IVF), reached out before a visit to Guam. We shared a meal and a long conversation and agreed to work together going forward.

A Dirt-Floor Kitchen, and One Stove

I cannot forget what I saw on my first visit to Sino Elementary School on Tonoas Island in Chuuk. The school has no kitchen. Mothers come to the school and cook the children’s lunch on portable butane burners set on the dirt floor. For a school of more than 250 students, that is nowhere near enough. When it rains, the mothers cook in the rain.

In November, with the support of the senior pastor and members of Guam Evergreen Presbyterian Church, two of its deacons and I are going back. We plan to build a wood-fired stove so lunch can be cooked properly. One stove may not sound like much, but when I think of 250 children’s meals and those mothers’ labor, it is not a small thing. We hope this is the first of many school kitchens.

Looking back on this month, I did not do much. I kept showing up, I kept the door open, and I sat at the table with whoever came. God is the one who sent the students, sent the churches, and sent your prayers. You have been right in the middle of that grace the whole time.