Lee Tae Ryong Story

Lee Tae Ryong - Kim Su-Yong


 



Lee Tae Ryong holding Teddy and Jason, and Kirn Su-yong holding Jeanie
 
Spencer J. Palmer, <The Korean Saints>

 

 

Lee Tae Ryong (Yi T'ae- ryong)

Born as the fourth son of my father, Yi Pong-hwa, and my mother, Paek Pyong-un in Seoul, Korea, in 1954, I moved to Paraguay in South America with my whole family in 1967. Koreans gathered in the capital city of Paraguay, Asuncion, where there was a nondenominational Christian church where they could worship. Although several sects met with each other in this one church, since they only gathered for the purpose of speaking in Korean (all they did was argue), there were a lot of bad feelings between the members. As a result, our family, which had been seeking after the more spiritual aspect of religion, left that church and didn't go to church for a long time; then, when we had become a little more familiar with Spanish we began searching for a church again.

Before our family left Korea we had lived in Seoul's Yonhui-dong (it wasn't a rich neighborhood in those days). In those days we had attended an American church called "The Restored Oiurch of Jesus Christ." When we attended this church mv elder brothers learned a little about the Mormon church, and they had also bought a small book that explained al5 of the Christian sects that were in Korea. The book said that the Mormon church still practices polygamy, that it is a very bad church, that the members of this church were ven' faithful and numerous, and that this church was spreading rapidly in Korea. Mv brothers wondered how the Church could be veiy bad and still be able to have faithful members, and they steadily grew more interested in the Church.

la Paraguay, we, like most other Koreans, ran a grocery store. In those days, a regular customer of our store was a ladv who worked as the cook at the house of the missionaries of the Mormon church. Eventually, we learned the address of the Mormon church through this lady, and on one spring even.iiig my eldest brother, Yi Song-nyoing, my elder brother, Yi Kyong-nyong, and I knocked on the door of the church.

We went without knowing when the church roeetings were; the morning m·©Çæ$¾Þ were over and it was after everyone had gone home. However, there was an eighteen-year-old young man there and we talked with him for a while. The young man, Javier Oironel, told us how he had read the Book of Mormon and obtained a personal witness of its truthfulness. Since, up to that point, I had never chanced to meet a person who spoke of spiritual things so sincerely, I thought that he was either lying or that he was just crazy. However, since he had spoken so soberly, this troubled me so much that I couldn't just laugh and disregard what he had said. I went to church and attended sacrament meeting on time the next Sunday. When I first came in and sat down in the church I felt that something was missing, and I asked the missionaries whv there was no cross in the chapel. The gave me a pertinent answer. As we attended church for six months, we studied with the missionaries, and we were eventually baptized on March 24, 1974. The missionaries that baptized us were Elder Tom Watson and Elder Lee LaPierre.

When I first went to church, since my Spanish language capabilities were very weak and although I didn't really know what was being said, I just attended because I liked the atmosphere of the church. I started to read the Book of Mormon as I studied with the missionaries. Since there was no Korean translation (of the Book of Mormon even at that time, I read a Spanish translation of the Book of Mormon. It wasn't very interesting since I couldn't understand it for the most part, so I just spent time trudging through it as though I were studying for scho¶° and I dutifully read through several pages a day. However, around the time I was to be baptized I had read about midway throuh the Book of Alma, and a few weeks after I was baptized, for some strange reason I was able to understand what I was reading in the Book of Alma. As a result, not more than a few weeks passed before I finished reading the whÀÌC Book of Mormon and was able to understand its story line. It seems to me that at that time I experienced the gift of the interpretation of tongues. Not more than a few months after I was baptized, I was called as the Young Adult president in my ward, I enrolled in the institute program, and I studied the restored gospel eveiy Sunday evening.

A year after I was baptized I was called to serve as a Sunday School teacher, and over the course of the next year my Spanish-language speaking capabilities improved several times more than they had over the previous seven years living in Paraguay. As a result, three years after I was baptized I decided to go out as a full-time missionaiy. After having an interview with then Uruguay Mission president Gene R. Cook I submitted my missionary application.

I received my mission call in August of 1977 and spent my first two months in the city of Stroessner in Paraguay. Then, strangely enough, another mission president came and I had to go to the Uruguay Montevideo Mission. Since there was a stake in Uruguay at that time, there was a patriarch there. I received my patriarchal blessing from Patriarch Cardozo at that time, and in the parti´õliars of the blessing he said that I would teach the restored gospel to my own people, the Koreans. At that time I thought that I would go to Korea when I was older, with my wife, and we would serve as a inissionary couple. "Then, two months later, I received another mission call. "This was a call to go to the Seoul Mission. I returned to the Paraguay Mission again in order to prepare my travel documents, and two months later I went to the Language Training Mission (LTM) in Utah. What I learned when I got there was that since I was a naturalized citizen of and held a passport from Paraguay it would take six months to get a visa in Korea.

Therefore. I went to the Korean Branch in Los Angeles and served there as my first area as a missionary among the Korean people. Six months later I received my visa and went to Korea. In Korea, I was in Hwayang-ni for one month, I was in Wonjli for two months, then I transferred to Songnam, where I became a senior companion. During the first two months that I was in the city of SOngnam, we baptized one family and one college student as a result of door-knocidng eight hours a day. However, after we had those initial baptisms we had baptismal services almost every Saturday, and it wasn't long before we were unable to door-knock because we were teaching groups of people the restored gospel at the church. I completed my missionary service in August of 1979, returned home to Paraguay, and decided that I wanted to study at Brigham Young University. Since there was no institute or academy whereim I could study for the TOEJFL test in Paraguay, I studied through practically memorizing a TOEFL test tutorial book I had purchased in Korea. After three months of intensive studying I took the test and scored a 497. In those days one had to S(;OÆñi over 500 to be accepted at Brigham Young University. So I applied to Ricks College, went to Idaho, and began my studies at Ricks College in May of 1980. I graduated from Ricks College in April of 1982 and transferred on to Brigham Young University. I got a job working for the Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, Washington, ¥² 1987; then two years later I transferred to the Boeing Corporation, where I presently work as a systems analyst.

When I was a stadent at Brigham Young University I met Sister Kim Su-yong, who lived in Los Angeles at the time, and we were married in the Los Angeles Temple in August of 1984. We now have two sons. Ted and Jason, and one daughter, Jean. When I told people that I was going to get married before I graduated from the university, many people tried to persuade me to get married after I graduated. However we believed that if we had faith in our love and the Lord we would be able to overcome anv difficulties we might have. Even while we became the parents of two children as stodents, miraculouslv we were able to overcome all of our hardships. We still wonder if those days of struggle and trial were not the happiest days of our lives together. When I look back on my life I am cut to the heart and feel that I would have never been able to tread the path that I have foBowed in my life without the help of the Lord. 1 beea¡Ýe acquainted with the restored gospel of the Lord at a most appropriate time of my life, and the personal progress I have made since I learned the gospel has been an incredibly great blessing to me.

Even now there are times where I occasionally wonder how I was able to pass the TOEFL test and graduate from Ricks College and Brigham Young University without ever having taken a formal English c¾ßirse. For truth, without the help of my Heavenly Father I woµûd have never been able to have all these eaperiences. I know that our Heaveµû Father desires that all of his children are successful in life.

When I first went to Ricks, after listening to the first session of lecture for one of mv classes I hid myself in my apartment and sobbed incessantly. This was because I had utterly no idea of what I had heard or learned upon hearing that first lecture. Therefore, from that time forward I seemed to spend more time praying than I did studying. Then, when I had completed one semester and after I received an A grade I gained c¸¶lfidenµ®i that God did live and that He was helping me, and that made me study even more diligently.

I am presently serving in the elders quorum presidency of the Asian branch of the North Seattle Stake. I am convinced that walking in the path of truth is not always the smoothest road to follow. It seems that God requires that we earn some blessings before He gives them to us. In other words, we will be blessed inasmuch as we strive to endure well the hardships we are called to bear until their resolution. Looking at it this way, we should rather be grateful to the Lord when we are called to endure hardships. This is because the blessings that follow hardships are evidence that they are right at the door waiting for ´Ï,s to receive them if we are faithful.

I humbly testify that the Lord lives, even in these days, and that He watches over ´ÏS ill all that we do. In addition, I believe that the Lord loves each and every one of us alike, without favorites. [THE KOREAN SAINTS, 1950-1980]

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