To whom it may concern,

I am writing today with much grace and joy for the opportunity that you have made possible in my life. Through the scholarship awarded to me via KDSF, which came to being through your generous donation and prayer, I am able to pay off my student loans that were solely on my shoulders.


I would like to share a bit of my testimony with you—an excerpt from my personal statement I wrote in prayer when applying to 2020 KDSF scholarship—because I believe the lesson God has been trying to teach me through giving me the specific vision and making me go through gaps in my life is also a message He wants to have you heard.


“You will become a pediatrician. You will go back to the countries you grew up in and treat children and infants. You will see those I send, ones predisposed with rare genetic diseases which have caused physical abnormalities in their body, depriving them of the basic medical service in communities where awareness of any disability is nonexistent. You will deliver my message that they are my unique masterpiece.” I hadn’t heard God. I had felt Him speak into my thoughts, tangibly present Himself to me in a way that somehow made sense. It was an experience too odd and a vision quite sudden. It was also admittedly a path that would most definitely reflect my original design: children-loving, passionate for education, advocate of public health in third world countries, activist for justice in humanity and volunteer-minded third culture kid raised in developing countries. But it was also one that I had never imagined walking myself—a medical missionary just like my father.


Not long after I had made a firm decision to accept God’s calling as a pediatrician, I was ignited with uncontained passion. As a non-US citizen and one from a family who lives on donations and funds from our supporters, I knew just exactly how much of a mismatch I would be to the medical schools in the United States. But full of trust and confidence that it is God who works in me to will and to act so as to fulfill His good purpose, I sped on with my studies, with the church I was serving, with work-study, with hospital volunteering and shadowing a pediatrician. God was working through me in all He had blessed me with, but I started falling apart quite rapidly. To everyone’s surprise, I had to declare an immediate leave of absence as signs that God wanted me to put a stop to the most pressing point of my academic life became clearer. He told me that it was time I learn to chase after Him before chasing after the vision He gave me.

During my gap year, one thing kept becoming more apparent. The message that God had told me to deliver to the children in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan was a message delivered to me from God: I was His masterpiece and His loving daughter. It took me 3 gap semesters to battle with my low selfconfidence, deeply ingrained pain of having to move between Uzbekistan, Korea, Kyrgyzstan and USA in an average of 3 months as a foreigner without a permanent home address, the tremendous amount of responsibility I felt towards my parents’ ministry at the mission field and finally a tormented family relationship under the veil of nonstop ministry ever since we were kicked out of Uzbekistan. People told me I was loving and lovable, but it cost me a break from everything and everyone to finally accept and learn to love myself in Him—the point at which I was able to start fathoming the tiniest portion of His love for me.


Again, I thank you and thank my Lord for each and every step He has walked me, and for each and every path He is paving for us.

In much Grace,
Yewon Lee from Kyrgyzstan & South Korea

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