Yoon's musical note

The Season of Christmas has been a little bit different for me. When I lived in Korea, most Korean churches have Christmas day worship services in the morning on 25th. Especially when I was in a high school choir and adult choir, we had a caroling tour for all night on 24th. Due to my church size and members were from all over area near Seoul, we rent huge buses to go to the caroling. We put the announcement in a bulletin to make routes among those people's houses which usually took all night to be covered. We started caroling from nursing homes and hospitals near the church which is located in downtown Seoul around 5:00 PM on 24th, and sang whole night visiting those houses who registered through the church. We arrived at the church early morning on 25th without sleeping but sang at the service in the choir loft for the Christmas service. The challenge was how to be awake during the service especially the sermon time. However, we managed to do all those things and came home after ...

One of my daughters shared with me how frustrated she was when she was facing unfair treatment from one of her teachers. She cried while she was telling. I hugged her and shared that life is unfair and it is. We need to learn the unfairness is not our fault, and just move on. The conversation went further with a question how she could love someone who treats her unfairly without affection. And she started complaining how hard to live as a Christian. I nodded my head, told her that it is hard to live as a believer in Jesus, and even Jesus warned us many times through the Gospel that it is not going to be easy. Lately, I have thought about problems among most Christians right now. Especially watching the process for election lately my thought has wondered why it is so hard to live as Christians without compromising, making excuses but with ALL IN. We have become too smart to put all in in our faith. We say that our first priority is God but we decide to go to se...

It has been a very busy but focused month, September. After sharing my motto of this year (2012-2013) at the choir retreat, I truly have been trying my best to apply my motto; BQQ. Best quality, best quantity to God. I asked a same question like a habit whenever I have moment; "Am I doing my best in this situation spending time?" Interestingly, a majority of killing time has been disappeared; such as watching funny shows through Internet, spending time at Facebook etc. Most of all,  reminding myself to live my best to glorify God in each moment has made benefit on relationship. I even remind myself the question while I am with my girls. It has helped me refocus on conversations, and listing carefully. And when I listen carefully with my full attention, I noticed that I remember better and think of the conversation often afterwards. It helps to understand and pray more for the person too. Someone asked me how come I came up with the motto. It is a long story but short; I have...

While praying for my church and music ministry this morning, God has given me a image of "back to back" ministry. I often image about a team work as holding hands together. However, God showed me this morning that instead of holding hands together in a circle, we need to be in circle in back to back position as a team minstry. I was thinking why it should be in back to back position and got answers. First of all, we can cover other's back and ourselves better. If we look each other holding hands, our backs are not covered any. And it is not helping to move forward but rather inward. Secondly, we can also get supports more in strong ways from others back. If you think about it, when we lean each other back to back, it helps you to maintain strength. Even though one or two people can get tired standing straight, the others can hold them up still. Last, we can work without worries because we have strong support...

A couple of weeks ago, there was a sermon about inclusive. Well... our church is very open to diversities for sure; there are people from more than 40 different countries attending the church. The council always makes clear that "inclusive" in all ministries not only racially but also any kinds. We talked about issues learned from a movie" Remember the Titans". The pastor challenged congregation that we need to go further deeper to accept others as part of their families because people are nice to others. On that day, there was a luncheon followed, the pastor intentionally told them that he expected to see tables filled with various people. I have been working here for almost two years. I shared with other people how different southern cultures from Indiana where I used to live for more than a decade. My first year in southern GA was lonely. I hardly get a phone call during weekends, or holidays. I noticed that...

While I was teaching a little girl the piano at her lesson, I realized a same method between how to play piano well and how to live well in this world; fix our eyes on the Lord. well... for piano case, fix our eyes on the score not the keyboard. My student had a hard time not to press wrong keys and she was only looking at the keyboard. I told her "Trust that your fingers will follow your eyes, believe or not! and just look at the score and read it through. Your fingers will follow your eyes." Tada~ yes, it worked! I think that is the way that I have live in this world. Fix my eyes to the Lord only! not in the world, not in my circumstances, not among people but only the Lord. At Hebrews 12:2, we find the word; " fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Even though we know so well that we have to look up only but why we fai...

Do you like to get free samples at Costco? I do. Not only free samples, I do like get free anything. I don't know why but I like to get stuff as free. However, I have noticed that when I get something free, I usually do not give much attention to them. If I drop it on the way, I just do not have much feeling and throw away easily. I had a chance to talk to several musician friends who teach music. We all agree that if we give free lessons, both students and parents usually don't pay attention to practice enough or even keep the lesson time on time. So, some of my friends have to make them pay, even though they pay less with their financial status. I did give some free lessons before with people who could not afford paying the lesson fees, and could tell you that for sure I agree totally with my friends! I should have asked them pay some. It never success; either they quit the lessons without telling me, or did not show up on time. Some people even want to pay more to buy fam...

Life is made of full of battles; mostly battle with myself. Of course, as a christian, the battle with evil is true in my spiritual life. I want to talk about battles of physical disciplines. I decided to work out at least five times a week since last year June. I did pretty well during summer because I love swimming. It was not difficult putting my swimsuit, going to swim each night for 30 min. I could tell you that there were many battles with excuses that I did not want to go but it was easier than colder days. I bought several working out DVDs to do at home after summer when the swimming pool was closed. I did regularly with the DVDs until it reached Spring. Spring is always a hard season for me to be focused to do anything. I often get into sort of depression; no...rather to call a lethargy season. I have made excuses not to run, or walk each day even. It has been pitiful to hear my excuses. Why is it so hard to do even 30 minutes of running or DVD? Even though I know it is w...

Today is Maundy Thursday in the Holy week. I have read passion story in the book of Matthew this morning, asked several questions with "what if". You might have asked the same questions like me. The questions are not that impressive but I was wondering what really would happen. The first question has occurred at a scene of Gethsemane when Jesus went out for serious prayers, the disciples fell asleep deeply. What if they did not fall asleep and really prayed deeply with Jesus? How about Peter? What if he really prayed that night then would he deny Jesus still three times? What if Jesus prayed to God only for removing his cup? Did God answer his prayer? I know that it sounds too simple to even answer. However, I have thought about them. What if Peter did not deny but said "I am one of Jesus' disciples? What if Pilate told the Israelite that he could not put Jesus to be crucified? what if one of soldiers stood up for Jesus when he was beaten, said "don't beat...

Since I was two, I have had a birthday cake always on my birthday. Sometimes, I ended up blowing candles three, or four times within my birthday week among different groups of friends. That was good time. However, I hardly had a chance to blow candles on the birthday cake lately. First of all, people did not know about me much since I moved to VA. I hardly had a chance to go out to start friendship with anyone since my in laws have moved in with us. Finally, I did not want to get older from a couple of years ago. My dad always told me a story why I have gotten my birthday cake specially and always. My grandparents lived with my family because my dad was the first son. (It is a custom in Korea.) After I started talking around one years old, I noticed myself that whenever birthday came, I wanted to sing "happy birthday" song with a cake and candles. My dad was too busy to remember when I turned to two, came back home with empty hands. Guess what he had to do? He was kicked out...

While I was watching the super bowl, I could distinguish among players who are "professional" and "non professional" through their faces. Well, all of them are pro foot ball players but I still could distinguish who were more "pro" than the others by their attitudes, eyes, and even their smiles. I have thought about "living life as a pro....". We give people titles as "professional" or "armature" by people's positions. It is also different from "full time employee" or "part time". Not only hours of working, but also their abilities, resource, education, even attitude are elements to distinguish between them. I thought, how about myself? Am I a pro anything? I could say, I am a professional conductor. What else? How about a professional Christian? What makes being professional? If you learn how to play piano for more than 20 years, you become almost a professional. It depends on how much you practice an...

I wonder why people need to workout to live in healthy life. I certainly have in mind that "we have to workout regularly." Whether I am active or not, I gain weight and feel more tired if I do not workout. Whenever people talk about working out, I tell them " I love working out." I honestly do not like it. I love swimming at an outdoor pool during late afternoon. That's it. I sometimes like to run when it's sunny and breezy. However, I tell people "I love to workout". I think that I do that to make myself hearing and confirming that I would like it like....a spelling myself "I like to workout, I like to workout...." How about you? Do you like to workout? I do not think Jesus did workout. However, I am 100% sure that he was a lean person. I don't think that he ate only organic, fat free food either. He just must have been diligently working hard as a carpenter and walking miles a day to visit the sick, teach people. And he was not lik...

I am very sorry to my viewers that I haven't been able to update my blog in 2012. I have written several drafts but could not finish always. Please forgive me. However, I wish you all Happy New Year!!Praying that your new year is filled with God's blessings! As you notice, I have been writing each week on my church blog to update anthems and music. That is my excuse. :) I will try to be more diligent writing at my blog. I recently have started using my calendar more efficiently after I had a training about "Time management" among our church staff. Even though I knew how important it is to use time wisely, the training gave me detailed ideas to apply into my real life. So, I have been following the methods and it has been so far so good! We give five or six priorities goal of our lives; such as God, family, work, ministry, etc. And make schedule along with a big blocks such as scheduled appointments like meetings. I used to use thr...