Joining them in the circuit work in 1967 were Jim Tylich, Merlin Stoin, and Durand and Rachel Norbom. The Norboms are now members of the Kongdo Bethel family. Rachel remembers some of the questions she was asked when visiting congregations.

“Even as late as the early 1970’s a Western woman appearing in the countryside was a novelty, and one had to get used to some very personal questions,” she explains. “‘How old are you?’ ‘Are you married?’ ‘How many children do you have?’ and then, ‘Why don’t you have any?’ In one place a rumor spread that an American couple came to take some children to the States for adoption, and so several women came to offer their children to be taken to what they thought would be a more prosperous life.”

Durand and Rachel Norbom and Liz and Milton Hamilton (left to right), two missionary couples who have been in Korea for more than 20 and 33 years, respectively