Kathryn Spurgeon – Page 16 – Kathryn Spurgeon

Sometimes Love Hurts

10/24/201401/26/2025 by Kathryn Spurgeon, posted in My Thoughts

Have you ever loved so much it hurt? Loved those unlovely souls who need a tender touch from God? I’m talking about the people no one wants to think about, like the woman imprisoned for murder, the lowly, blind beggar in India, or the drug addict on the street corner. Those kinds of unlovely.

How do we come to a point where we can show God’s love without pulling back in dismay? Come to think of it, how do we learn to respond in an appropriate Christian way to the horrors and heart-rending monstrosities experienced by the unlucky ones?

I have. I have learned.

I have cried with a woman who killed her child, lost a part of myself to someone who feared death, and knelt beside a sleeping child whose mother abandoned her.

There is a method of spiritual growth that allows us to have that Mother Teresa kind of passion. A passion for love, not just any love, but the kind that moves your heart to tears and your feet to action.

Can you love cross-culturally? Give time to one of another nationality? Allow them to live in your home? Listen for hours to one who weeps over an abused childhood so different from yours? Travel the world to look into the eyes of a lonely widow?

Yes, you can learn to love. I have. By God’s grace, I love. Not perfectly, but, with His guidance through my life, I have learned to love. It sometimes hurts so deeply that I think my heart will stop, but it hasn’t. My spirit just keeps on loving, more and more, deeper and deeper.

I cannot love on my own. I am too selfish, it is possible only by allowing God’s love to flow through me. God is the source of love and He alone can teach about true, everlasting love.

You are loved,
kathryn

Korea adoptees find each other

10/01/201412/15/2015 by Kathryn Spurgeon, posted in International

Korean culture came to my house in a big way – through my adopted daughters. My daughters are from Ilmagwon orphanage in Gunsan, Korea, which is far from Seoul. They were babies when I adopted them and I lived at the small orphanage for a few months. My daughters and I traveled back to Korea in 2012 for the first time in about 40 years. It was an amazing trip.

Now the most exciting news– after my daughters and I traveled to Korea I blogged about it and several adoptees from Ilmagwon contacted me through my blog. Sixteen Ilmagwon adoptees from the 1970’s and 80’s have connected. Sixteen! That is such sweet news after not being in contact for years. Every time we find another lost sister, my heart is blessed. The girls live all over the U.S., from Florida to New York to California.

I feel like the godparent of these precious ones, some of whom lived in the orphanage the same time I did. A few girls got together in June 2014 for the first time. Rick Matthews, a GI who lived there and adopted a Korean baby too, came with his wife from Kansas.

We turned my house into a mini-Korean gajeong. We lowered the dining room table so we could sit on the floor. We tried on gorgeous hanbok dresses, watched an excellent tae kwon do performance (one of my Korean grandsons is a black belt) and catered in the most delicious Korea bulgogi and kimchi we could find. Then to top it off, we made homemade bimbops!

All in all, it was a success and a whole lot of fun. I hope more of the Ilmagwon girls get to come next time!

Minji: I had no family here

03/05/201403/05/2014 by Kathryn Spurgeon, posted in My Thoughts

I grew up in Bundang, a suburb of Seoul, and studied at a South Korean college, Seoul Women’s University. I never knew poverty. I went to New Zealand to study language for half a year and then spent eight months in Australia.
Read her story at
http://spurgeons.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/minji-i-had-no-family-here/

Korean Adoptees Find Each Other

11/10/201312/15/2015 by Kathryn Spurgeon, posted in International

Adoptees from the small Ilmagwon Orphanage in Gunsan, South Korea, are connecting after almost forty years!

My two adopted daughters, Gina and Treasure, and I returned to Korea for the first time in 2012. I was in Korea from 1972 to 1974, living several months in the orphanage. We met the same woman, Mrs. Park, who ran the orphanage while we lived there. The one who cared for hundreds of babies and children is now 91 years old but she remembered us. This godly caretaker had prayed for her babies and their adopted families.

I sat in the orphanage office and looked at a photo album with baby pictures. Each abandoned baby had been assigned a page and a number. I saw baby pictures of my girls on numbers 134 and 141. As I flipped through the pages, I saw babies/toddlers I remembered and I cried. I had spent many hours sitting on the floor holding those babies and hugging those toddlers. What had become of all those bundles I wanted to take home with me and couldn’t?

I wrote several blogs about the Korean trip and posted old pictures of the orphanage. My daughter, Treasure, even blogged about it.

Most Korean adoptees are from Seoul, so only a few were adopted in the 1970’s from Ilmagwon Orphanage in Gunsan. Men and women from the U.S. Kunsan Air Base “Wolfpack” still visit consistently and help the children. I’m so proud of them. It is not a babies home any more but I think about 70 children live in the orphanage now.

It was amazing, a dream of a lifetime to return to Korea, but the most amazing thing has happened since we returned. Angela from California, another adoptee, who lived in the orphanage at the same time as my daughters, contacted us. She had found us through my blog. She was number 140. She was in the orphanage at the same time as my daughters! She was one of those babies I held! My heart about flipped with joy when I met her for a few minutes in the airport when coming back.

Then another girl wrote, Nikki from Alabama, saying she was also from the same orphanage at the same time. Then Michelle, then Mindy, then another and another.

Eleven of the Korean Adoptees from the 1970’s have found us! They live across the U.S.—from Oklahoma, California, Alabama, Kansas, Texas, New Jersey, and Arkansas! If we had visited Korea ten years ago, this internet connection might never have occurred. Only God can do something like this!

Forty years after I left Korea with two precious little ones, we plan to have an Ilmagwon Sisters reunion – some time in 2014. Mrs. Park will be thrilled to find out these children of hers are connecting and I’ll be glad to give them all a big hug!

You are loved,
Kathryn

“A New Language of the Heart” to be released this weekend!

10/04/201310/05/2013 by Kathryn Spurgeon, posted in Writing

HHBC writing team’s newest book, filled with life changing stories of international college students, will be released on October 7, 2013!

Fifty stories have been collected. Fifty people from around the world who have been impacted by leaving their homes and moving to Edmond, Oklahoma, and attending the University of Central Oklahoma, have shared their inspiring stories! One student was a Buddhist monk, another student’s brother disappeared during Kenyan riots, and another became a Christian while visiting a church beneath a Ramen Noodle store in Japan!

We, along with several others, have had the opportunity to share Christ with sweet people from China, Bulgaria, England, Mongolia, Cameroon, and so many more countries.

The books will be given to our church families but donations, of course, will be accepted. Our goal is to be able to pass out these books free to international students who come to our city. I am so blessed to be a part of this ministry. It always amazes me what God has done right here in Edmond.

For more international stories see www.spurgeons.wordpress.com.