June 17, 2025 • 12 mins
What happens when God's pursuit takes someone from a Buddhist household in South Korea to the heart of Catholic missionary work? Amy's remarkable story reveals the unexpected ways grace finds us, even when we're running in the opposite direction.
Her journey reminds us that God's pursuit never ends—from South Korea to Oklahoma, from India to corporate America, He continues drawing us closer through every circumstance. Have you experienced God's pursuit in unexpected ways? Listen to this episode and reflect on how mercy might be finding you exactly where you are today.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Unwritten, a podcast dedicated to sharing
stories of the movement of theHoly Spirit in the world.
Today I'm your host, trevorBureka, and on today's episode
we're getting to hear from AmyChang.
Amy served as a Focusmissionary for eight years and
was gracious enough to comeshare her story with us today.
It's summertime right now and alot of people are on the road,
traveling, visiting differentplaces.
(00:28):
I've actually been on the roada decent bit myself and I've
been thinking about howsometimes God brings you some
places that you could have neverexpected.
In today's story, amy sharesher journey from South Korea to
Tulsa, oklahoma, to India andeventually to serve as a
missionary for the church.
Welcome to the show and listenin.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I want to start by reading the Gospel of John,
chapter 8,.
And it says this but Jesus wentto the Mount of Olives.
Early in the morning he cameagain to the temple.
All the people came to him andhe sat down and taught them.
The scribes and the Phariseesbrought a woman who had been
caught in adultery and placingher in their midst.
They said to him teacher, thiswoman has been caught in the act
(01:13):
of adultery.
Now, in the law, mosescommanded us to stone such.
What do you say about her?
This?
They said to test him that theymight have some charge to bring
against him.
Jesus bent down and wrote withhis finger on the ground.
And as they continued to testhim that they might have some
charge to bring against him,jesus bent down and wrote with
his finger on the ground.
And as they continued to askhim, he stood up and said to
them Let him who is without sinamong you be the first to throw
(01:34):
a stone at her.
And once more, he bent down andwrote with his finger on the
ground.
But when they heard it, theywent away, one by one, beginning
with the eldest, and Jesus wasleft alone with the woman
standing before him.
Jesus looked up and and for alot of years in my life, I think
(02:05):
that the main question wheneverI read this gospel was okay,
but what did Jesus write in thesand?
And that's often the questionthat I would always go back to.
But I think that questionovershadowed the richness of
this gospel passage and how muchmercy Jesus was extending in
(02:27):
this passage specifically.
And I think for a lot of yearsin my recent life this has been
so foundational and has broughtme back to the root of who I am
and who I am called to be, and Iwant to get into that a little
bit.
But I want to start off by justsharing a little bit of how I
(02:49):
grew up.
So I grew up in South Korea intoa Buddhist household and
growing up there was really twomentalities in our house.
The first one was you were tobe the best at what you were
doing or it wasn't worth doingat all.
And the second was we nevertalked about emotions in the
house, so if you had a problem,go figure it out and don't bring
(03:10):
it inside the home.
And growing up, life became allabout me.
It was all about what I wantedto do.
When I grow up, it was allabout what I wanted in life, the
pleasures that I wanted topartake in whatever it was, and
I thought that this was just sonormal kind of living in a
secular world.
(03:30):
And so I entered high schooland there was a lot of pressure
being put on me by my parents.
High school, and there was alot of pressure being put on me
by my parents, by my school, bymy counselors, to be the best,
to be everything that my parentswanted me to be.
And because I couldn't talkabout my emotions in the
(03:51):
household, I turned to drinking.
I wanted to be a pro golfer, soI golfed in high school, wanted
to do that on a collegiatelevel and then on a professional
level, and because of thedrinking scene a lot of things
just got really blurry and Iended up not pursuing that path.
But I wanted a fresh start.
I knew what drinking had doneto me in high school and I
didn't want that to be what myfuture looked like.
And so I went to collegehundreds of miles away, never
(04:13):
visited the state of Oklahoma,went to school there and I was
immediately greeted bymissionaries Catholic
missionaries, with focus, andthere was something about them
that just captivated my heart.
And the conversations.
They were just normalconversations, but it was really
(04:33):
the joy and the peace in whichthey spoke that I was like man,
there's something here that Idon't have, that I really,
really desire, and so I followedthem everywhere.
Anytime they invited me to ahouse party, I went.
Anytime they wanted me to go tosomething, I went Because I
wanted to see what they had thatI didn't have, and I wanted to
pursue that.
Long story short.
(04:54):
The end of my freshman year, Iwas baptized, confirmed to
receive my first Holy Communion.
Both of my godparents werethose focused missionaries.
My second year in college, mysophomore year, they had gone to
different campuses to serve asa missionary and I felt like I
was all alone on my campustrying to live out this Catholic
faith.
That was really.
That was brand new to me.
(05:16):
I mean these focus missionaries.
They were the first ones toreally introduce Jesus Christ.
I'd never heard his name before, never was talked about him
before, and so they were reallythe first ones to introduce me
to him, and so their lack ofpresence my sophomore year
really left this kind of hole inmy heart to search for a faith
(05:36):
that I didn't really knowanything about.
At the time I was also in asorority and I was trying to
learn what it meant to be aCatholic, but also in a sorority
, and ended up back in thedrinking culture, in the
drinking scene, and a lot ofthings went sideways in my
college life and really came tothis place at the end of my
(05:58):
first semester, my junior year,where I just hit the bottom of
the barrel, was now gettinginvolved with the police and
being threatened to get kickedout of school.
I just remember in that momentI was like man, I just need one
more chance, a restart at life,and I don't know why or what
(06:18):
came over me, but I was like Ijust need to go to these focus
missionaries that were brand new.
I had no idea who they were,but I ran to those missionaries
and I was like listen, I'm likedestroying my life right now and
I just need some help to get itback on track.
And one of the missionaries shewas a first year and God bless
her because I just I remember mytime as a Catholic missionary
(06:39):
and I just am like gosh.
I pray for those missionariesthat walked with me.
I remember going up to her andI'm like telling her all these
things and she just reallycalmly says, hey, this summer
I'm going to India on a focusmission trip and I'd love for
you to go with me.
And immediately my mind waslike, absolutely not, I'm not,
I'm not going on a four and ahalf week mission trip over the
(07:01):
summer to India where it's loud,where it's hot, where I don't
like the food.
She asked me seven times to goon this mission trip with her
and after the seventh time Isaid, okay, fine, if I go on
this mission trip, will you,will you leave me alone?
And she was like, yeah, totally.
So fast forward the summer of myjunior year, I go on this
mission trip and it completelywrecks me.
(07:22):
For the first time I am notdrinking for four and a half
weeks.
I am praying consistently, I'mgoing to mass consistently.
I'm having these conversationswith these missionaries about
the beauty of the Catholicchurch and not just the rules of
the faith.
And for the first time I thinkmy eyes are open to this is what
(07:43):
a missionary does Like.
This is their life, this istheir livelihood and this is the
beauty of it.
And I just fell in love withthe Catholic church when I was
in India and so when I came backI was like man, I wanna start
living a life for Jesus.
So fast forward.
It's my senior year, I'm livinga life of discipleship and I'm
graduating early and I'm tryingto figure out what I want to do
(08:05):
with my life and my career andall these things.
I get an offer to work incorporate finance, and it was
the first time that I actuallyheard my parents tell me that
they were so proud of me forgetting this job, and I was like
I have to do this because myparents were so proud.
And so I said yes to thiscorporate finance job.
And you know, maybe six monthsdown the road in corporate
(08:27):
finance, I'm living alone, I'mremoved from community, I'm not
really going to mass anymore andI start to think to myself is
this all that life has to offer?
And I go back to when I was incollege, living kind of like a
really mediocre life, reallyliving kind of bottom of the
barrel, and and it's the samefeelings that I'm having when
(08:49):
I'm living in college I'm likegosh, I just can't believe that
this is, this is what my lifehas amounted to and this is
where the rest of my life isgoing.
Ultimately, I put in mytwo-week notice in corporate
finance, I said yes to focus, toserve as a Catholic missionary,
and I get to summer training.
And this is where I want tobring back around the gospel of
(09:14):
John, chapter 8.
Because in a lot of ways I feltlike this woman who had been
caught in adultery, where thescribes and the Pharisees are
bringing this woman into themiddle of the temple and her
sins are being eliminated to thepublic.
It's not because of anythingpublic that happened at summer
training or anything like that,but for the first time I had to
(09:35):
admit my sins.
I had to admit my brokenness.
I had to admit that I didn'tlove who I was, and that was
really hard for me to bear,because growing up I lived a
life for myself, right, and soeverything that I had done was
for myself, was for my glory,was for my own satisfaction.
And now I'd come to this placewhere I was like man, everything
(09:58):
that I'd.
And here I am in this placewhere I just hate myself in a
lot of ways, and so I reallyfelt like this woman caught in
adultery.
Jesus waits for these Phariseesand scribes to go away so that
he's alone with this woman.
He's encountering her face toface.
He sees her in her mostvulnerable state.
(10:20):
He looks at her and he says Isee you, I see what you've done,
I see that you're so vulnerableand maybe you're shameful,
maybe you're afraid You've beenpublicly humiliated.
I see all of these things andstill here I am.
Still here.
I am to choose you, to pursueyou, to love you, not to condone
(10:43):
your sin, but I'm also not hereto condemn you and I've felt
that so, so vividly in my life.
It's a choice to go to him.
It's a choice to say Lord, I ambroken, I am full of sin, but I
want to be your daughter andsin, but I want to be your
daughter and I want to choose tobe your daughter and I just
(11:07):
need a little bit of help.
I need a little bit of mercy, Ineed a little bit of grace,
probably a lot of mercy and alot of grace.
But I want that, I want to livea life with you and Jesus says
come, daughter, I want toembrace you.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Thank you, amy.
God's pursuit of Amy and herstory she shared today is what
blows me away.
Her journey to living fullyalive in Christ was already a
miraculous setting.
You know she comes from halfwayacross the world to Oklahoma.
She's encounters these collegeCatholic missionaries in a new
place and in time, and there'salready a lot of drama in that
(11:44):
initial setting.
That could have made a story inand of itself.
But it didn't stop there.
There were these continuedmoments of conversion on her
heart, on the mission trip whenshe encountered the Lord more
fully, or six months into hercorporate finance job when she
was yearning for more.
I've been following the Lordfor some time and to me it's so
refreshing to remember that Godis still at work in my story,
(12:06):
through all of these differentcircumstances, to draw me closer
to him.
And it's not as if my storywith the Lord has already ended,
but he's still at work, callingme back to himself and working
in my heart to draw me closer tohim.
Thank you so much for listening.
We hope to see you next week.
Welcome to Unwritten, a podcast dedicated to sharing
stories of the movement of theHoly Spirit in the world.
Today I'm your host, trevorBureka, and on today's episode
we're getting to hear from AmyChang.
Amy served as a Focusmissionary for eight years and
was gracious enough to comeshare her story with us today.
It's summertime right now and alot of people are on the road,
traveling, visiting differentplaces.
(00:28):
I've actually been on the roada decent bit myself and I've
been thinking about howsometimes God brings you some
places that you could have neverexpected.
In today's story, amy sharesher journey from South Korea to
Tulsa, oklahoma, to India andeventually to serve as a
missionary for the church.
Welcome to the show and listenin.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I want to start by reading the Gospel of John,
chapter 8,.
And it says this but Jesus wentto the Mount of Olives.
Early in the morning he cameagain to the temple.
All the people came to him andhe sat down and taught them.
The scribes and the Phariseesbrought a woman who had been
caught in adultery and placingher in their midst.
They said to him teacher, thiswoman has been caught in the act
(01:13):
of adultery.
Now, in the law, mosescommanded us to stone such.
What do you say about her?
This?
They said to test him that theymight have some charge to bring
against him.
Jesus bent down and wrote withhis finger on the ground.
And as they continued to testhim that they might have some
charge to bring against him,jesus bent down and wrote with
his finger on the ground.
And as they continued to askhim, he stood up and said to
them Let him who is without sinamong you be the first to throw
(01:34):
a stone at her.
And once more, he bent down andwrote with his finger on the
ground.
But when they heard it, theywent away, one by one, beginning
with the eldest, and Jesus wasleft alone with the woman
standing before him.
Jesus looked up and and for alot of years in my life, I think
(02:05):
that the main question wheneverI read this gospel was okay,
but what did Jesus write in thesand?
And that's often the questionthat I would always go back to.
But I think that questionovershadowed the richness of
this gospel passage and how muchmercy Jesus was extending in
(02:27):
this passage specifically.
And I think for a lot of yearsin my recent life this has been
so foundational and has broughtme back to the root of who I am
and who I am called to be, and Iwant to get into that a little
bit.
But I want to start off by justsharing a little bit of how I
(02:49):
grew up.
So I grew up in South Korea intoa Buddhist household and
growing up there was really twomentalities in our house.
The first one was you were tobe the best at what you were
doing or it wasn't worth doingat all.
And the second was we nevertalked about emotions in the
house, so if you had a problem,go figure it out and don't bring
(03:10):
it inside the home.
And growing up, life became allabout me.
It was all about what I wantedto do.
When I grow up, it was allabout what I wanted in life, the
pleasures that I wanted topartake in whatever it was, and
I thought that this was just sonormal kind of living in a
secular world.
(03:30):
And so I entered high schooland there was a lot of pressure
being put on me by my parents.
High school, and there was alot of pressure being put on me
by my parents, by my school, bymy counselors, to be the best,
to be everything that my parentswanted me to be.
And because I couldn't talkabout my emotions in the
(03:51):
household, I turned to drinking.
I wanted to be a pro golfer, soI golfed in high school, wanted
to do that on a collegiatelevel and then on a professional
level, and because of thedrinking scene a lot of things
just got really blurry and Iended up not pursuing that path.
But I wanted a fresh start.
I knew what drinking had doneto me in high school and I
didn't want that to be what myfuture looked like.
And so I went to collegehundreds of miles away, never
(04:13):
visited the state of Oklahoma,went to school there and I was
immediately greeted bymissionaries Catholic
missionaries, with focus, andthere was something about them
that just captivated my heart.
And the conversations.
They were just normalconversations, but it was really
(04:33):
the joy and the peace in whichthey spoke that I was like man,
there's something here that Idon't have, that I really,
really desire, and so I followedthem everywhere.
Anytime they invited me to ahouse party, I went.
Anytime they wanted me to go tosomething, I went Because I
wanted to see what they had thatI didn't have, and I wanted to
pursue that.
Long story short.
(04:54):
The end of my freshman year, Iwas baptized, confirmed to
receive my first Holy Communion.
Both of my godparents werethose focused missionaries.
My second year in college, mysophomore year, they had gone to
different campuses to serve asa missionary and I felt like I
was all alone on my campustrying to live out this Catholic
faith.
That was really.
That was brand new to me.
(05:16):
I mean these focus missionaries.
They were the first ones toreally introduce Jesus Christ.
I'd never heard his name before, never was talked about him
before, and so they were reallythe first ones to introduce me
to him, and so their lack ofpresence my sophomore year
really left this kind of hole inmy heart to search for a faith
(05:36):
that I didn't really knowanything about.
At the time I was also in asorority and I was trying to
learn what it meant to be aCatholic, but also in a sorority
, and ended up back in thedrinking culture, in the
drinking scene, and a lot ofthings went sideways in my
college life and really came tothis place at the end of my
(05:58):
first semester, my junior year,where I just hit the bottom of
the barrel, was now gettinginvolved with the police and
being threatened to get kickedout of school.
I just remember in that momentI was like man, I just need one
more chance, a restart at life,and I don't know why or what
(06:18):
came over me, but I was like Ijust need to go to these focus
missionaries that were brand new.
I had no idea who they were,but I ran to those missionaries
and I was like listen, I'm likedestroying my life right now and
I just need some help to get itback on track.
And one of the missionaries shewas a first year and God bless
her because I just I remember mytime as a Catholic missionary
(06:39):
and I just am like gosh.
I pray for those missionariesthat walked with me.
I remember going up to her andI'm like telling her all these
things and she just reallycalmly says, hey, this summer
I'm going to India on a focusmission trip and I'd love for
you to go with me.
And immediately my mind waslike, absolutely not, I'm not,
I'm not going on a four and ahalf week mission trip over the
(07:01):
summer to India where it's loud,where it's hot, where I don't
like the food.
She asked me seven times to goon this mission trip with her
and after the seventh time Isaid, okay, fine, if I go on
this mission trip, will you,will you leave me alone?
And she was like, yeah, totally.
So fast forward the summer of myjunior year, I go on this
mission trip and it completelywrecks me.
(07:22):
For the first time I am notdrinking for four and a half
weeks.
I am praying consistently, I'mgoing to mass consistently.
I'm having these conversationswith these missionaries about
the beauty of the Catholicchurch and not just the rules of
the faith.
And for the first time I thinkmy eyes are open to this is what
(07:43):
a missionary does Like.
This is their life, this istheir livelihood and this is the
beauty of it.
And I just fell in love withthe Catholic church when I was
in India and so when I came backI was like man, I wanna start
living a life for Jesus.
So fast forward.
It's my senior year, I'm livinga life of discipleship and I'm
graduating early and I'm tryingto figure out what I want to do
(08:05):
with my life and my career andall these things.
I get an offer to work incorporate finance, and it was
the first time that I actuallyheard my parents tell me that
they were so proud of me forgetting this job, and I was like
I have to do this because myparents were so proud.
And so I said yes to thiscorporate finance job.
And you know, maybe six monthsdown the road in corporate
(08:27):
finance, I'm living alone, I'mremoved from community, I'm not
really going to mass anymore andI start to think to myself is
this all that life has to offer?
And I go back to when I was incollege, living kind of like a
really mediocre life, reallyliving kind of bottom of the
barrel, and and it's the samefeelings that I'm having when
(08:49):
I'm living in college I'm likegosh, I just can't believe that
this is, this is what my lifehas amounted to and this is
where the rest of my life isgoing.
Ultimately, I put in mytwo-week notice in corporate
finance, I said yes to focus, toserve as a Catholic missionary,
and I get to summer training.
And this is where I want tobring back around the gospel of
(09:14):
John, chapter 8.
Because in a lot of ways I feltlike this woman who had been
caught in adultery, where thescribes and the Pharisees are
bringing this woman into themiddle of the temple and her
sins are being eliminated to thepublic.
It's not because of anythingpublic that happened at summer
training or anything like that,but for the first time I had to
(09:35):
admit my sins.
I had to admit my brokenness.
I had to admit that I didn'tlove who I was, and that was
really hard for me to bear,because growing up I lived a
life for myself, right, and soeverything that I had done was
for myself, was for my glory,was for my own satisfaction.
And now I'd come to this placewhere I was like man, everything
(09:58):
that I'd.
And here I am in this placewhere I just hate myself in a
lot of ways, and so I reallyfelt like this woman caught in
adultery.
Jesus waits for these Phariseesand scribes to go away so that
he's alone with this woman.
He's encountering her face toface.
He sees her in her mostvulnerable state.
(10:20):
He looks at her and he says Isee you, I see what you've done,
I see that you're so vulnerableand maybe you're shameful,
maybe you're afraid You've beenpublicly humiliated.
I see all of these things andstill here I am.
Still here.
I am to choose you, to pursueyou, to love you, not to condone
(10:43):
your sin, but I'm also not hereto condemn you and I've felt
that so, so vividly in my life.
It's a choice to go to him.
It's a choice to say Lord, I ambroken, I am full of sin, but I
want to be your daughter andsin, but I want to be your
daughter and I want to choose tobe your daughter and I just
(11:07):
need a little bit of help.
I need a little bit of mercy, Ineed a little bit of grace,
probably a lot of mercy and alot of grace.
But I want that, I want to livea life with you and Jesus says
come, daughter, I want toembrace you.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Thank you, amy.
God's pursuit of Amy and herstory she shared today is what
blows me away.
Her journey to living fullyalive in Christ was already a
miraculous setting.
You know she comes from halfwayacross the world to Oklahoma.
She's encounters these collegeCatholic missionaries in a new
place and in time, and there'salready a lot of drama in that
(11:44):
initial setting.
That could have made a story inand of itself.
But it didn't stop there.
There were these continuedmoments of conversion on her
heart, on the mission trip whenshe encountered the Lord more
fully, or six months into hercorporate finance job when she
was yearning for more.
I've been following the Lordfor some time and to me it's so
refreshing to remember that Godis still at work in my story,
(12:06):
through all of these differentcircumstances, to draw me closer
to him.
And it's not as if my storywith the Lord has already ended,
but he's still at work, callingme back to himself and working
in my heart to draw me closer tohim.
Thank you so much for listening.
We hope to see you next week.
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