Galilee International Church
Greetings! May the grace, love and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with all of you!
At first I thanks our Lord God for His mercy and grace upon this Church and His people. I pleased to congratulate our Senior Pastor Rev. Dr. In Myung Jin, Assistant Pastor Rev. Park, Galilee Church administration, all the migrant missions in Galilee Church and to the whole congregation on 25th anniversary of Galilee Presbyterian Church.
I'm Pastor Javaid Akhtar from Karachi, Pakistan. At first, I came here to start my Theological studies (M-Div) in Seoul, South Korea in Aug, 1999. I successfully completed my two Master degrees (Master of Divinity and Master of Theology) through His grace and love. At Present I am studying for my Ph-D (Doctor of Philosophy) for which I already finished my course work and working on my dissertation to complete it. God provided me a helper named Florence Javaid, to whom I married in 14 July, 1989. God blessed us with three wonderful children (one daughter and two sons). My eldest daughter is studying in undergraduate programme at soongshil University, Seoul as first year student of English Language and Literature. My second son will join Kyung Hee University next year March, 2011 for undergraduate programme as a student of Hospitality & Hotel Management. Third son is a student of middle school final year and will join High school first year in 2011.
During my ministry at Galilee Church as a Pastor for Pakistani community, suddenly in 2004 our Galilee English ministry Galilee International Church (previously named: Asian Union Church) Philippine Pastor suddenly quit his ministry and I was invited to preach the Galilee English Ministry as well as Pakistani ministry for time being but later Galilee Church administration handed over me this responsibility permanently. So since 2004 until now I am preaching and administrating both the English and Pakistani Urdu ministry with the co-operation and encouragement of Galilee Church and blessing of our Lord Jesus Christ. During this long journey, our Senior Pastor Rev. Dr. In Myung Jin and his administration made every impossible thing possible for us by their kind and good behaviour.
It was, 2004 when I first started to preach the group of people from different nationalities such as Philippines, Bangladesh, Korean, Chines and some others. In the beginning I felt many administrational troubles, but later I controled with His grace. We have only 12-15 people in the beginning but after one year God added more people. We established our office and formed a Church committee to run our church properly. We taught and prepared people about baptism and baptize many who were not yet baptized. In 2008-2010 our number was increased up to 40-45 people every Sunday. During last four years we baptized about 50.
The Church was running very smoothly, but unfortunately after the Korean Immigration crackdown (still in force) for the foreign migrant workers, our number is going down and disturbs our congregation. Most of our leaders and old members who we taught and trained were caught and sent back to their homelands. It effects our work in this Church but in every circumstances we never gave up but continue our worship with His grace and love. Galilee Church and it's administration always help and encourage us to overcome these crises. My service with Galilee Church completed 10 years, during this voyage, I faced many problems and crisis but Galilee Church specially Rev. In Myung Jin and his administration always helped and encouraged us to handled these difficulties.
The mission of Galilee International Church is to spread the Word of God to those came here to work, study or travel. We help them for their spiritual growth and better brotherhood in the foreign land. Training leaders and believers spiritually and developing their skills about the knowledge of the Word of God. Beside this spiritual help we also provide social help to those who visit us by planing different programmes during the year and specially on vocational season in Korea. We plan summer tours, sports day, Ski resort trip, Bazar festival and different kinds of programmes time to time for social development of our members. For their health care, we provide free medical checkups and free dental clinic. We provide them free hair cutting and also free counselling for their work related problems every sunday. Once a year we arrange complete physical checkup for all who attend.
I on behalf of the Galilee International Church, seoul Korea, grateful to our senior Pastor and all the Galilee administration for providing us such a nice place to share our spiritual thoughts and believe with each other. We once again pray and wish that may God almighty bless our Church and all the believers. He always keeps our senior Pastor Rev. Dr. In Myung Jin with sound health and spiritual wisdom and knowledge. We also grateful to all the Galilee administration and all the congregation for their support and help to the Galilee International Church, in Galilee Church for last ten years. We hope in the future Galilee Church will continue to helps this ministry to spread the Word of God among all the foreigners and local korean.
