For five days from June 3 to 7, the overseas members from North America, Europe, Africa, and mainly from the Central and South America entered Korea. They are the 63rd Overseas Visiting Group members from 80 local churches composed of 23 Spanish or Portuguese speaking countries such as Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Ecuador. The number of applicants for this visit was over five thousand, but the Head Office had to decrease the number by church because of the difficulty in managing all of them. Finally, a total of 237 people stepped on the land of Korea. Over 90 percent of them were the gospel workers in their 20s to 30s, who visited Korea for the first time. They came to Korea with the hope to feel and learn Mother’s love in person by meeting Mother they missed, and to share it with their local members and neighbors.

Mother welcomed the 63rd Overseas Visiting Group with Her warm love, who came from the ends of the earth despite two to three-day journey. Mother asked after the local members who could not come together and expressed how much She missed them. Then, She asked the visiting group members to deliver abundant blessing of the Holy Spirit to their countries. Mother also asked them to tell Her any inconvenience during their stay in Korea and to drink warm water often and take enough rest to prevent MERS that began to spread in Korea. Mother checked the health of each and every member. Receiving such care, both the overseas members and Korean members could finish the schedule with no problem.

The schedule of the visiting group consisted of the Bible seminar, visit to local churches, Church of God Museum tour, Korean culture experience, and so on. The members who met Mother for the first time and shed tears of joy, thanks, and repentance were all wearing smiles throughout the visit. Some members who rarely smiled, including the male adult members who always looked serious at church, smiled here all the time; they were amazed at the change of each other.

“Before, I was not a kind of person to smile. But since I came here, I cannot help but keep smiling. Mother always smiles at us and asks us if we have slept well, or if food is delicious. And She keeps saying, ‘I love you, I thank you,’ in my language. She keeps blessing us and delivers love. We are really happy because Mother is with us.”

The overseas members said in Korean, “Omoni Miso [Mother’s Smile],” after greeting each other in their own language, “God bless you.” In order to obey Mother’s words: “If you deliver the gospel with smile, the gospel work will go well,” the Brazilian members began to greet like that since the New Year by the sacred calendar. That way of greeting spread quickly among the 63rd Overseas Visiting Group members. As a saying goes, “If you laugh, blessings will come your way,” the happy news that the Church of God received—the Presidential Citation from the Korean government—during their visit was delivered and so their joy doubled and redoubled.

On the day when two weeks of their visit ended, though the visiting members were sad to part, they got themselves together and left for their countries, being full of energy, saying, “We want to return quickly to deliver the love and joy we’ve received from Mother to all the members in our country.”

ⓒ 2015 WATV