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The opendoor that opendoor people think
Opendoor Representative/ Chum Gon Hwang

It has been fourteen years that the opendoor's door was opened. We ordinally say that one organization need to take about ten years to root in the society. Then, it's time for the opendoor to grow steady young tree and root in this society. Through the work of changing the shade of the society to the light, we should work hard on our calling that God gave to us.
At this point, i'd like to think over again about the calling that are entrusted to the opendoor people. At the service of the opendoor, there are big four pillars as the education business, shelter business, consultation business, and cure business. This four pillars are the united system to help the alienated people to live healthy. Now, we should deal well with our service to be operated smoothly that supply necessary nutriment to the pillars whenever they need to. This service is to supply necessary nutriment to the full to the people who need our help. This work is the duty of the opendoor people. The opendoor people who are going to cope with this duty need to confess one thing to the God. That is a self confession of faith that "we will give ourselves unconditionally to the people who need our help." This confession is the confession of devotion that entrust myself to the God. Through this confession, the opendoor people find out the meaning of the service that they're doing, obey to the God's plan toward us, and express the beautiful life as children of God in the place we're staying.
The opendoor people need to say the beauty of life by their living. They should able to live the life that loving poverty and being friendly with alienated neighbors. Most of all, they have to find out their true life in the living of bountiful live that serving alienated people with gentle mind and sharing all their possession ungrudgingly with ample mind. In order to that they should lower themselves first. They can find out their true figure in the lowering life. We can be the beautiful people who achieve the goodness by working together because of our thoughts go deeper, mental vision become wider, and mind become more bountiful as we lowering ourselves.
The opendoor people are doing race of love in Jesus. The race of love can be started when we love others unconditionally as Jesus loved us. This race of love is not to turn away to the people who ask for a help. The race of love is sharing with others what we have as ample and bountiful mind that we can feel when we share such a small thing with others. To the people who start this race, there are the joy and happiness from the heaven that the world never can give. So, as we race more and more we feel happier, and as we give away more and more we could be more abundant. I hope we could start this race from the small thing we can do, so we could learn and feel the love to be part of life.
The opendoor people is the small Jesus who light the love in this society. We entrust ourselves to the hands of God. The people who entrust ourselves to the hands of God should truly love the poverty for the neighbors. And they have to be sure that their life can be created, polished, and established by God. This is the also self-denial that totally entrust our life to God. When we deny ourselves, there are the participation and plan of God. Through the self-denial, we can confess that what I live is only Jesus lives inside of me. Therefore, the opendoor people should be the good instrument of God who can deny ourselves.
Like this confess and practice of life can be the driving force of establishing the four pillars of the opendoor. And it will bring to us the meaning and direction of the service that we have to go through. We are the people who love God. And we wish to live the life of praising God. We'd like to be the joy of God who can influence and change the others through the life of the opendoor people.

Until To Cure The Abused Child
Chum Gon Hwang
/ Representative

When the day yoon-chung(pseudonym) came to my house, all of my family couldn't say a word for a while. If it was as usual, we were supposed to be busy with welcoming new kid and having a welcome party, but that day, we couldn't have a party because our hearts were so aching. I've seen many abused children so far but never saw the one like her whose figure was so miserable because of the severe abuse from her parents. All of her body was covered with wounds. She had some wens over her had by beating, her face was all red with bruise, and her wrist and ankle bones were fractured. And she was so thin as Somalia child who's starving to death. We couldn't say nothing to the child who is being so afraid of people. Only a big obligation that I should love and take care of her placed deep in my heart.
She was suffering with a androphobia that she didn't make any eye-contact with nobody and only stared at the floor. Much more, she couldn't fall into deep sleep in the anxiety and tension, and she often wet the bed . And then, she was shaking with fear that someone might scold her. Because she was never be loved but only beaten by others, all other people were the subject of fear. I was so sorry and pitiful for her. When I put the food on the table, she ate them hurry and throw up. And she often hid her snacks or tried to put them all at once in her mouth and got choked.
She had a hard time to form a relationship with her peer group by lacks of sociality and sense of intimacy at such a young age. Even herself, she was suffering to fit into the new circumstance. she didn't know how to express her feeling, and showed self-tormenting metal retardation phenomenon. But little changes started to appear on her. When nobody is around her, she showed some interest on certain subject and instantly did what she wanted to do. One day, she grabbed a goldfish from the fish basin and throw it to the floor. And she started to cut them to pieces with scissors. She was expressing her anger by cutting the goldfish into pieces. That was a big shock to us. But instead of scolding, we had to give her warm hug.
As time goes by, yoon-chung was getting mental and living stability but still repeated degraded behavior. Unsatisfied desires during the young age were gushing, and also behavior expressions and changes that appears in lack of love appeared in term. One day she tried to induce the interest with high temper, and she acted much younger than her age to fill her unfulfilled desire. After two years later, yoon-chung was able to find her smile, and became talkative girl like her peer group. The child who occasionally said " i'm afraid, want to die", is now finding her own features.
Yoon-chung is still being treated behaviour and habit impediment. To find her lost child's mind and to express her thoughts and behaviour, we let her to play in the nature. Also, recovering sociality through the animal and play treatment and improving expression ability through the music, fine arts, and gardening treatment. For yoon-chung's emotion and behavior development, we are applying various cure method as well as relationship recovery treatment. And generally, until to form a healthy self-identity, the child has to be treated from a specialist twice longer than the abused period of time.
From the concern about the each individual abused children
By the way, our society nearly has no organization that applies professional cure methods and also dealing programs about child violence are dissatisfied. In this situation, day by day, the number of runaway teenagers and abandoned children from the parents are increasing because of the home violence. The most necessary things to these children are the place to stay and the food to eat. So, our society focused on facilities of reception concept as a countermeasure for these longstanding problems. Therefore, children became to learn standardized mode of living and thought. Instead of concern about each individual child, our interest was keeping up the facilities and overall management of children, and it didn't bring the stability of emotion and behavior to the children. The emotional, behaving, and living ill-adaptation are still appear on to these children. Also, because of their low self-esteem are not recovered, they have difficulty to return to their peer group.
The worse of this reception concept facilities is not only our problems but all over the world. So an advanced country that has high concern about children problems already sublated the large scale of facilities and interested in small scale of facilities. This small home concept of facilities complements the defect of large scale facilities and help the children to live individually like their own house. And it focused on individual's growth development, so the children can find the emotional and living stability. The shelter business that our open-door center operates are exactly home concept of small scale union.
To the love from Jesus...
The children have a visit to my house with different kinds of stories. Each one has scars from the assault and batter. And deep in their heart, there's a big scars that can't be never erased. The fact that they are abandoned from their own parents. Since I show them in as my family, it has been already 13 years. Now, I could read their mind by looking at their faces. Understanding children's mind is my know-how by living in a great number of children since now. But touching their heart is not know-how but only possible when I embrace the love of Jesus. Only from the love that Jesus gives to me, I can touch each one of their hearts. So, I always try to look each child with a eye that God look at me.
We are operating "opendoor shelter house", "tabitha's house", and "you¡¤i & our house". From the kindergarten to high school, our children go to school. Even though they're couple years older than others, they're all happy about going schools. Various children are living together, but their sleeping sound is very peaceful. I close my day when I listen to the peaceful sleeping sound of my lovely children.
Urgent for the shelter of abused children
But still many children's moaning sounds are left in my heart. The children's tearful voice that abandoned from the parents and abused from the father worry my heart till this night. During 13 years, i've seen and heard of many children's sad stories. Among them the Mi-sook's death is still left as a pain in my heart. Her body was terribly beaten up by her step-mother, and she was dying chilly with bruises all over her body. Her death made my conscience to cry. It wasn't just a sadness of one child's death, but it was conscience-stricken that I couldn't able to protect that child. Mi-sook was asking for the help when the day she died. But no one listened to her cordial petition. That night, she failed to endure the assault of her step-mother, and she was dying chilly. Through her death, I felt that shelter for these children is urgent. And I'd wanted to protect some of them in my room. With that mind, I started to meet the children on the street.
Too many children were wandering the night street with no place to go. Among them, children who couldn't bear the parent's severe abuse, who were driven out from the break up family, and who were abandoned from the parents were saying "there's no tomorrow and not hope." and burying their lifes at night street. The most heartbroken things was many children were sleeping at the bench with newspaper as a comforter at winter night. These children said to me that "our parents left us, the heaven huff us to pieces, and the land make us not to stand." After I heard their stories and knew their circumstances, I couldn't eat three meals a day and couldn't sleep in a warm room. Anyhow, I tried to help them and brought few of them to my house every nights. And I started to find concrete counter plan for them. As the one figure of it's device, I got "opendoor shelter", "tabitha's house", and "you¡¤i & our house".
For the ultimate problem solution of the children
As the number of children are increasing, I started to intervene concretely into their pending problems. Most of them had a emotional , behavior, and living ill-adaptation. To solve these pending problems, I concentrated on various programs and consultations, but there was limit to these solutions. At the early entrance, most children are showing obsessive behavior such as lying and stealing, and these are caused by their mental insecurity. It take about 6 months to cure those mental insecurity and to help them to find the stability of living. But the immanent frustration wasn't solved easily. The abused children were very obsessive about the food. We could see this fact through one teenagers who had a meal more than 15 times a day. And also, by hiding food here and there, we realized how their life were unstable. These behavior appears when the children have not any trust toward the others, so instead of regulation and restraint, we need to have generous mind to wait for them.
These behavior ill-adaptation starts from severe abusive and violent languages, and this behavior is caused by self-protection. Unstable children's words and behavior can't be cured among unstable children. So, we need to help them to be cured in a healthy peer group or personal relationship. Therefore, we need to make a continuous chance to contact with healthy people and apply various programs for their social development and positive concept of the future to these children. In my children's case, foster parents, brothers, and sisters make the play culture, and through the studying guidance we keep continuous relationship with the children.
Also, the children who show living ill-adaptation need to be cured in a healthy peer group. For that matter, the abused children have to go a school as a normal children. Especially, intimate relationship with teachers are required for the children's well adaptation in school. Every new semester, we hold a "open house" with children's teachers, counselors, and principals. At this time, we explain the background of the children to the teachers and ask for their help. As th result of that the children can be protected from the home and school, and we can help them to get rid of the awareness of damage from the past and to form a healthy self-identity.
For the establishment of mentality healing center for the abused children
In the meantime, I've seen terrible actual circumstances of children violence and abused children. There were many miserable and pitiful situations. Looking at the cases of the children violence, there were the child who got seared with a hot iron, who got burn the whole body with hot water, fainted child by beating up, bone fractured child with a torn skin, mental distracted child by water torturing, and who was raped by father and so on. As I look at them, I cried a lot, and my heart was so aching. I couldn't just watch these terrible situations anymore.
So, I prepared the children mentality healing center that I prayed for a long time at small country village of Yang-Pyung. I'm going to cure the abused children's damaged mentality through this healing center. Through the gardening, animal, playing, music, art, and relationship recovery treatment, the children will find the emotional, behavior, and living stability. And I'm going to prevent the habit and behavior impediment and emotional development retardation, and I want to cure the children's stress impediment(PSD) that comes after the big shock. Further more, we're going to cure the excessive dependent behavior and degenerative behavior that appears on the abused children as well as improving language expression ability, preventing antisocial behavior and vicious circle of child abuse. We're planning to expand our building on march for the purpose of curing more abused children.
The things we need to do now
At any society, when the children who are living in adverse circumstance make happy smile, we say the conscience of its society is live, and the society that helps the children to expand their oar of child mind is healthy. But the number of children who are mentally damaged from the child abuse and abandoned children from the parents by divorce are increasing. To look at the world with conflict and hatred, way too young children are wandering the street. If we are sons of God, we can not ignore them. I hope that we could get out from the thought of caring only my family and my church and be like a kind samaritan who can look around its neighborhood. To us, there are a debt of love from God. I wish to return that debt as a love of Jesus to the children who lost their home.