On December 31, 2002, the night before my best friend Mike Kim took a one-way flight to China, I stood on his porch to say goodbye to him, not knowing if or when I’d see him again. We had no aspirations of building an organization. We wouldn’t name our little project until a year or two later. All we knew was that we wanted to help North Koreans in peril.
It was a cold Chicago night and as I stood there, I didn’t know what to say. So I spoke from the heart.
“I’m proud of you,” I told him as we said our goodbyes.
Both our lives would never be the same when Mike stepped on that flight and Crossing Borders was born. We were 26-years-old and too naive to know what we didn’t know. We didn’t know how to run an organization. We didn’t know how to speak either Korean or Chinese. We didn’t know how to help people with trauma. We didn’t know Chinese culture. But for no reason at all, we were hopeful.
I wish I felt this childlike optimism about our plans for Elim House this year but, to be honest, I didn’t. I am excited to start a new chapter of our work and am elated at the response from our donors. However, I know all too well the difficulty of starting anew.
When I went to South Korea this year, I could feel the joys of a place to begin incredible new work. But I could also feel the impending challenges of beginning again.
Not all of the differences of working in a new country are negative. In South Korea, Elim House will be completely above ground - a legal nonprofit organization. For Crossing Borders’ entire existence, everything we have done in China has been secretive and underground. There was never any registration process. In South Korea, Crossing Borders will enjoy the benefits of having an officially recognized organization. Our money will be protected in South Korean banks. Any misconduct, neglect, or abuse from staff in South Korea will have a clear, legal consequences.
South Korea is also a country with an impressive standard of living. South Korea’s gross domestic product was ranked 12th in the world in 2018. It is an incredibly modernized and urban country with vast resources, extensive means of transportation, and one of the highest ranked internet speeds in the world.
But upon landing in Korea in 2018, our staff was met with piles of paperwork and administrative issues that we had to learn afresh. The sheer number of legal technicalities, governmental processes for nonprofits, meetings with partner organizations was overwhelming. Crossing Borders now has to follow rules and regulations outside of the ones we have set for ourselves.
It is also a reality that the wealth of South Korea and its living standard raises the costs and expenses for a small nonprofit working in the country. It is more expensive to work in South Korea than it is to work in China. Housing costs for Elim House will comprise the bulk of the project’s expenses. We will also have to pay our staff in South Korea a considerable amount more than our staff in China. For our staff in the US who worked around the clock to raise the funds for Crossing Borders’ first year in South Korea in addition to the money needed to keep ongoing work in China, the prospect of sustaining a second nonprofit’s activities are an immense source of pressure.
These are things that kept me up at night this year. I’ve woken up with my head full of worry, restless, exhausted, anxious. There have been moments when my hopes and aspirations for our new work in South Korea have been superseded by the fears that accompany this new venture.
But in such moments when I have felt my heart overburdened, I’ve been overtaken by comfort that isn't based on just accounting numbers and projections. This kind of rest is not broken by the great difficulties ahead. It is steadfast.
In the words of Tim Keller, “We need rest from the anxiety and strain of our overwork, which is really an attempt to justify ourselves—to gain the money or the status or the reputation we think we have to have.”
For Crossing Borders, the work is not always about the sum of our individual efforts and abilities. Our successes have never been measured by the talent of our staff or the wisdom of each of our leaders. We have been saved left and right, again and again, by miracles large and small. These miracles speak loudly to us. They remind us that we are not in control, that this work is something more than planning and numbers. This work is about healing. It is about deliverance. What has sustained our mission in a hostile country like China, which is eradicating faithful nonprofits left and right, is not simply our ability.
In the grand scheme of our work, our fate has never been in our hands. But we are still here. For this, we can’t claim the credit. We only have thanks.
So as much as we try to plan, prepare and work, we know that we are in God’s hands. These are, in the difficulties and challenges ahead, hands we trust. We may not have the same optimism of 2002, the bright eyes for things to come. But we have learned this incredible lesson again and again in the last 17 years of Crossing Borders.
