A Drop of Water

Our theme for this summer retreat is “Lord, give our church the fire of the Holy Spirit.” As the retreat draws near, God is giving us His message about how He wants to work through us and what we should prepare through our first short film, A Drop of Water.

The film A Drop of Water, which has been selected and nominated in numerous film festivals in the U.S., was not a project aimed towards a movie. The Holy Spirit lay the foundation, and children who reacted and repented upon the Word of God carried on the project.

1. Children seeking the Holy Spirit in repentence

In March of 2021, children gathered again and shared the Word of God after months of being separated due to COVID. They were glad to reflect hearts based on the Word, listening to and sharing with others. They had so much to share, that the hour of sharing was never enough. Spending the Passion week, they heard about Judas Iscariot and Peter. When this question was asked, “Peter met Jesus and repented his heart, but Judas did not confess and rather chose to end his life. Which do you want to choose?”, the children were cut to the heart. Even after their time for daily devotional, they gathered and began repenting their hearts that had betrayed Jesus like Judas.

Ellie’s prayer: “Like Judas Iscariot, we all have the heart to betray Jesus, but we don’t want to choose death by not repenting like Judas, but help us to repent and return to God as Peter did. And when our hearts are wandering away from God, help us to defeat Satan and repent. Holy Spirit come to us. We cannot live with out the Holy Spirit, so please come and make us clean. We sin everyday because we are sinners, but help us to repent everyday.”

2. Children living according to the Word of God

In April of 2021, while the children were meditating on the Book of Exodus, they began making plays based on the stories. The devotional of our church was based on the Book of Exodus, and based on this story, they created a play in fifteen minutes everyday. One student became Pharoh, another became the frogs of the ten calamities; they were filled with the joy of creating.

“April 8th. Through the passage about how God met Moses with the fire from the bush, the children meditated on how God called Moses and gave him the calling to save the Israelites who were suffering as slaves in Egypt. We remembered how we have our fellow people in North Korea who have been suffering for the past 70 years under Satan. Children looked deeply into the Scripture and shared prayers for North Korea.”

(April 8th, 2021/ Daily Devotional)

May 2021, children applied the Word of God to create plays about North Korea. The first play about North Korea was a testimony of how Juye Rhee(written in North Korean spelling) escaped North Korea and met God. The plot was about despite the difficult process of defecting, God was the thankful provider.

For the first play about North Korea, children changed the lyrics to the song “Happiness.” They confessed their hearts with their own lyrics. “Although we may not sing aloud, the life that seeks for the Holy Spirit is true happiness…”

3. Children’s confessions (How each role was assigned)

In May of 2021, after hearing Philippians 2:13, they each journaled the hopes God gave in their hearts.

Ellie: “I had a thought about an orphanage to take care of orphans and young children, and I think this is God’s hope given to me. It’s because I have a lot of siblings and I want this to be used for God. I want to open an orphanage to heal the hearts of children, give them joy, and tell them about Jesus.”

Juha: “A hope God has given me is to write a book in English to share about Jesus (also in Korean and North Korean) and I want to share the gospel with Juye. I want to demolish the Kim Il-Sung monument and learn to construct so that I can build church buildings.”

Lee Hyun: “A hope that God has given me is to go evangelize in Africa and China with Juye. When I prayed with Juye, I didn’t feel like the Holy Spirit had come to me, so I thought only Juye had received the Holy Spirit. But Juye told me that the both of us had received the Holy Spirit, so I knew that the hope God has given me is to go evangelize.”

Sion’s confession “I want to evangelize to at least one person. When I’m sleeping, when I’m walking down the street, God gives me the heart to go evangelize. As an U.S. citizen, I want to become a missionary sharing the gospel in North Korea.”

Children started to have wishes of God after they had heard the in North Korea and the living Word was planted in their hearts. Ellie, who struggled with three siblings now had hope for an orphanage to heal the hearts of North Korean children. Juha wanted to write a book to share the gospel and wanted to build churches in North Korea. Lee Hyun and Juye wanted to go around the world evangelizing, and Sion, who was born in the U.S., wanted to go evangelize in North Korea.

Based on these wishes, each was given their respective roles in the movie. The role that each was playing in the movie was an expression of how they will be used ten years from now according to God’s wishes.

4. Song of the Waterdrop

With the help of teachers, children started preparing for the movie in various ways.

November 2021, children who were participating in creating the soundtrack for the movie were making a song with the teachers. This was when Sion first brought up the word “waterdrop” which was included in the title of the soundtrack and eventually became the title for the film.

“A waterdrop is small, but it gathers and becomes large, and then flows on. I want us to become the waterdrops of gospel so that we may flow onto the Yalu river in North Korea. Eventually so that the gospel will be shared in North Korea.”

This is how the soundtrack, “Song of the Waterdrop”, came to be with children themselves writing the lyrics. With the hopes that we would become waterdrops of gospel, flow into North Korea, and fill the world with the gospel of God…