Fun with Kor-ingos!

What a fun week we are having here! A team from a Korean church in Ohio (Korean + Gringo = Kor-ingo) is visiting, for the second year in a row, and we get to enjoy a double cross cultural week with them! All of the team members were born in Korea - no second-generation Korean-Americans in this entire group. During their visit, we experience some great Korean foods (they eat gringo meals with us, then cook Korean foods later in the evening - SPICY!!!!), learn a little (very little) Korean, and just generally have a blast. This year, I noticed they are toting a globe around with them, when they go to the villages. I assume this is to show the local Hondurans where they are from. I wonder if they claim Ohio or Korea as home, or both? (I don't travel out with the teams during the week - I stay home to cook and try to keep up with the dishes and laundry.)

I have been thinking, these past few days, that this team seems to have much less difficulty dealing with the day-to-day inconveniences and differences of being in another culture than do many suburban North Americans. Perhaps this is because they live cross-culturally all the time, in the US.

Emotionally, this is an interesting time for the Korean team to visit us, as a mission team of South Koreans is being held hostage in Afghanistan at this moment. We are praying for the safety of those Korean Christians, and we feel a special closeness to them, as we fellowship with these Korean Christians.

One other incident of note, concerning this group: they have now removed four teeth from my family members! Our dear friend Younggi (this is his third trip working with us) is a dentist. He removed two of David's teeth, which were severely rotten (probably due to the poor nutrition he experienced during his first years of life), and two of Russell's wisdom teeth, which threatened to crowd his front teeth.