“I love divine appointments”, muses Beth Norris. Beth and In Soo were out taking the message of Jesus to whoever would listen at the London School of Economics recently. They happened to meet a Japanese girl who did not have a religious background, but had adopted a belief in reincarnation because it sounded good and the Christian concept of heaven sounded boring. However, her concept of God was of someone who was warm and compassionate, and as they explained the gospel to her, she became more and more open. She was ready to invite Christ into her life.
A similar thing happened when a Korean student named Sung Joo Kim encountered an Agapé staff worker on her way to the London School of Economics back in the early eighties. The effects rippled out further than anyone could have ever imagined.
Sung Joo Kim grew to become one of the most influential women in business today. She was named one of the Wall Street Journal’s “Women to Watch” in 2004, and one of the 1997 Global Leaders of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum among other accolades, but when Georgia met her, she was a young international student, travelling on the London Underground.
Georgia Gonzales worked with the Agapé’s Workplace Initiative, with business people and professionals, and was given the specific focus of reaching international influencers in London. She recalls, “I went home with a tremendous burden for this, I stayed up for hours praying. When I finally went off to bed, I had a remarkable dream where I felt God wanted me to witness to an Asian girl the next day… I can name only about five times in my life where the “impression” was as clear and strong as it was that night.”
Georgia went to her morning Bible study, wondering when this divine appointment was going to happen. It was busy on the Tube and there were no seats. Georgia suddenly focused in on a face inches in front of her. It was a young Asian girl. She tried to start a conversation, but it was brief and awkward. She somehow got the girl’s phone number and they met up for tea the next day.
“As I told her my little story of how I had felt that God wanted me to meet her the day before, suddenly she had tears falling from her eyes. She had received a phone call from her sister just before she boarded the tube the day before… her sister, a Christian, had told her, “You are turning away from God, I am going to pray that God would bring someone into your life to turn you back to God”. It was a few hours later that I met Sung Joo on the Tube." 
They met together frequently for discipleship after that encounter, and today Sung Joo is putting Kingdom values and principles into her business practice in Korea. She is radically refusing to give in to the bribery and corruption rampant all around her, and invests ten percent of all her business income to compassionate causes and missionary work. She cares and provides for her staff above and beyond the call of duty and is hoping to have a positive influence in North Korea too. “I believe that in five or ten years, North Korea will open up… I really want to devote myself to helping North Korea.”
“The university is a clear-cut fulcrum with which to move the world… change the university and you change the world”. (Dr Charles Malik, Former President of the General Assembly at the United Nations.)
Written on behalf of Agapé
