South Korea

After multiple missions trips to South Korea with our college, we were asked by Sooyoungro Presbyterian Church in Busan to become their first international staff after we graduated. Sooyoungro is a 30,000-member church with a 350-member English speaking congreation with expats from 28 different countries. We were honored to join their staff, and we moved to Busan six weeks after college graduation, each living with our own Korean host family for a year. We both taught ESL classes as an outreach ministry of the church, and Ben also served as the English youth director and Julie as the English children's director. We loved our time in South Korea and the many wonderful people we were privledged to work with. When we decided to return to the US at the end of the year to get married, we wanted to return to South Korea long-term in the future.