Chul & Sharon Kim
Sharon
I love ministering to international students! With their rich cultural heritage and backgrounds, I am always learning something new about the world as I try to love and share the gospel with international students. It brings me so much joy when I see international students leaning in, being amazed at how the gospel is so different from anything that they have learned. Over the past 20 years, as I opened my home to international students, cooking with them, raising my two kids with them, and doing life with them, my home became their home away from home, and, in return, I got to have hundreds of homes all over the world.
Now that our kids have grown up, Chul and I have the privilege, as empty nesters, to travel to different campus towns, supporting international ministers as they juggle ministry, family, and work. No matter where we are, either at our home in Chicago or Ann Arbor or Madison, we start the day with our 7am Devotions where we are strengthened by God’s Word together. It is quite a challenge for any mom to be working full-time and raising a family let alone doing student ministry on a college campus, but we are experiencing that it is possible when we are doing it together as a team, holding onto God’s Word for strength every day!
Chul
I came to the US for my Ph.D. study at UC Berkeley. I actually started coming to our church through Sharon, who later became my wife, after turning me down several times when I first asked her out. I taught Chemistry at Cal State East Bay for 16 years as a professor while teaching Bible study to international students at UC Berkeley. In 2019, I became a full-time campus minister, overseeing international ministries at multiple campuses.
Having been a covocational minister, I am passionate about helping other working professionals to grow as covocational ministers through different stages of life from singlehood, marriage, and child-rearing while growing as campus ministers.
Since 2021, my wife and I have overseen the international ministries at the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Purdue University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago.
Go-to verse for inspiration:
Revelation 7:9-10
“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb…crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”