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Home > Fellowship Plaza Apt. A202 |
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After moving to the United States, we drank many different types of drinks.
There are so many types of coffee, each with different special flavors to attract customers. Before, serving coffee and Coca-Cola was for special guest service. During the time I was moving to the United States, Maxwell House Coffee was a trend, and for soda – Coca Cola was the main thing. I have no clue how many carbonated drinks are being sold in the United States. There are so many far as I’m concerned. Also there are multitudes of other energy drinks and variation of the drinks that exists out there.
During this time, when serving a guest some tea, Lipton was considered the most expansive brand. Since there weren’t so many foreign currency exchanges back then, up to early 1980s, a lot of imported goods were extremely limited. Surely as I remember when my family and I were moving to the United States, we were only allowed to carry with us maximum $200 each person. We had to start our new life with only $800 total. Even then, we didn’t even that much money so all we had was $235 to land in United States. There was a program where the airliner would give the passenger a ride with a small debt. After landing in United States the customer would slowly pay off the debt. Either this was strict Capitalism or just some way of showing mercy? Either way, we arrived in United States and worked hard to pay off this debt.
Having retired as the pastor, I still meet with fellow pastors to have a fellowship, do mentoring, or sometimes hold a seminar to teach the bible and using my time flexibly as possible. I also sometimes had the blessing of able to preach at a pastor-less church and serve them for some time.
The church I used to preach every last Sunday of the month was planted 30 years ago when many other church members who had left for personal reasons and started from there. One of the young adult that I was teaching the bible at that time said about his father who was starting a bible study group in his house, and his father wished for me to preach for them. This was before the San Jose Korean Bible Church, so I served that group for many months on end preaching about Genesis. After many months, and sufficient members to make a church, they asked if I wished to continue serving these families.
At that time, most of the members’ denomination was Assembly of God. Because I was Presbyterian background, I had politely declined. Not that I had any bias against them either. I was just unfamiliar with that denomination.
About 10 years ago, I was invited to hold a seminar to teach “Romans Chapter 12: Christian Life”, and “Old Testament Panorama”. But 3 years ago, the senior pastor had left and they could not find a suitable senior pastor. Their members’ numbers had severely declined as well. They were suffering and in bad shape. The college student that I taught the bible had become a core member of the church.
I had served that church 3 years. Once a month or twice a month, and several months ago, I started coming home after preaching with a bag. The elder who had opened his home to start the church had passed away about 3 years ago. His wife become a kwonsa and is serving the church faithfully. She and her younger son owns a Japanese restaurant. They did not want to waste the rice and made “scored rice (nurungji)” and gave to me and my wife. They had also passed them to their members as well, but just for us they had made large batch of nurungji bi-weekly. Sure, first generation Korean elders had a special attachment to nurungji. My wife told me that in Korean markets they would be sold in bags.
When rice was rare, nurungji would be on the bottoms of pots after cooking was over. Boiling it with water and drinking that rice water, it is unexplainably delicious! I still remember what it was like drinking rice water like that. There was also the fun of scraping it off the pot to eat. If one was slightly more resourceful, they would put sugar in it, or even fry it in oil as a snack. There are so many snacks now, but during Korean War, we had moved to the country side to escape the war. After the restoration of Seoul, we lived in hut where our house once stood, and had snacked on those for long time. I am certain that people under 60 would have hard time understanding this.
When I enter the apartment building with bags of nurungji, my wife would split them into 20 smaller bags. It is so we can share with many of the elderly. It takes quite a time to split them into many even sizes. My wife would call me and I enter the room to help. I pass the bags to male tenants living alone while my wife does the couple tenants. So in order to have a “Nurungju Party” Sunday evenings and Mondays mornings, my wife and I would have to visit all 4 different apartment block. All of them are 3 floored and every apartment has at least one Korean resident.
Even though Nurungji isn’t much, the popularity here is great.
Many of the elderly, who would be too bothered to cook a meal, can just get some boiled water with a microwave oven and pop some nurungji in there. With one side dish it would be more than sufficient to be a good meal. I think it may be from the aroma of the past? Some even likes to fry them and pour sugar on it – many express how it feels great receiving the nurungji once a month.
Doing something for good is not easy to do. The restaurant could not toss all those expansive rice, so they made nurungji with it. I’ll bet that the workers had toiled hard on it. I could only thank to the people who are sending me the scorched rice. That level of care is also needed to split the rice we receive to split into 20 bags and to go around the neighbors and give them it. Sometimes I would have to do the trip two times because the person would be out. But I do it with joy – it’s only a bag of nurungji but many people are enjoying it. It is joyous to share. It is a small joy to meet and share as well. I am thankful that I still can walk strongly, and have no hard time climbing stairs. I know one day I will not be able to do what I am doing now – to serve whenever I can. Whenever the chance arises, I would gladly serve and share.
(May 29th, 2017) |
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Wonderous New Records 
Share a “Scorched Rice!”