During our Spring Break, Grace, Paul, Beckie, Laura, Jerry and I went up to Seoul to go on the Seoul City Bus Tour. This is my third year here and I can't believe I have never done this before. We get on a bus at a certain location, and they take us from place to place, where we can get off the bus, look around, take some pictures, and get back on. One of the places that we went to was the USO at Yongsan. We had an American lunch there and then waited while the girls went to the bathroom. While we waited, I was standing by the door, near a stand that had flyers of things around the neighborhood, kind of like at a hotel in the states, where they have little things of "things to do while you are in Podunk". You know what I'm talking about. Well Grace looked over at me and out of the corner of her eye she saw something and said "Hey, why haven't you seen that yet." I looked over and my eyes fell on a ad for Steven Curtis Chapman in concert in Seoul. I was almost floored. I grabbed it expecting it to be a past event that I miss, however to God's wonderful blessing, he was going to be in concert the next month on the 18th, at 7:00 pm in Seoul. I took it, put it in my backpack and continued on the way. The following Monday at school, I went to one of our secretaries and gave her 110,000 won, which is roughly 110 dollars and had her put in an order for two tickets as close as she could get them. I got them and was thrilled that I would be seeing him again. This would be my third concert of his that I would see. One in Kansas City, one in Oklahoma City, and now one in Seoul South Korea.
The next morning, I got to school and was excited about telling people that I would be going to the concert in like three weeks. But Melissa Williamson beat me to the announcement. In our daily devotions, Melissa made the announcement that Steven Curtis Chapman would be in concert. I was sitting there with this grin on my face thinking, "yeah I already have tickets". Then she dropped the bomb on me. She went on to tell everyone that he would be at nearby Camp Humphries giving a "FREE" concert to the troops and she was asking if anyone wanted to go. This concert would be the night before the one I already had tickets too... What in the world was I going to do? Grace and I looked at each other and kind of put our hands up. I really didn't know what she was thinking so I waited until the devotions were over and went over to Grace. I asked her what she thought about doing both concerts, knowing that she was very busy with end of the year things and stuff like that. But she suprised me and said. "Yeah, let's do both of them." Wow was I in shock.
Fast forward to the night of the first concert. It was going to be at 6:00 on base,so we all brought our passports and things to be signed on, and headed to the hall around 5:15. I really thought that this concert would be outside because of all the people that would be at a FREE STEVEN CURTIS CHAPMAN concert. However, I was wrong. We got to the building and it was a small 200 seat auditorium, and three people were there when we showed up. And they were sitting in the middle of the hall. So I went in saw the front row open and started drooling. I went over the the middles and sat down on the second seat from the inside. Everyone else that came with us was laughing because they knew how I was feeling. They wanted to go get something to eat, so I saved all of the front row for our teachers. They asked if they could come and trade so I could get something to eat and I said "Like I could eat now!"
Anyway the concert was GREAT he came out and said that he wanted this to be between a normal concert and just a get together between close friends. After the concert some of the troops went up on stage and behind the curtains to get autographs, and I just figured that that was it. We started packing things up and all of a sudden he walks out and takes a seat at the far end of the hall. We got in line and because there weren't a million people there we just waited about twenty minutes before we were at teh front of the line. Once there, I bent over and shook his hand, laid my "Steven Curtis Chapman guitar book" down on the table and we talked for a bit and I told him that I was a missionary teacher here in Korea, and he seemed interested in that. I then asked if he would take a picture with me. He said "Sure". So I went behind the table that he was using to sign autographs and stood behind him. They couldn't get both of us in the picture, so he stood up, well that didn't help much either because he only came up to like my armpit. So he actually climbed up me and stood on a nearby chair and wrapped his arm around me which is the picture below.
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