Jesus!

In honor of Easter, a post about Jesus.

That's what the woman said to me.

I was nearly crying I was laughing so hard. Let me explain.

There's a lot of religious people here in Korea. Christians to be more exact, both Protestant and Catholic. I'm still adjusting to some parts of life here after my six months in Turkey and one of them is religion.

In Turkey the people were Muslim, but they were secular. Turks almost never talked about religion unless it was a religious holiday or you asked them, which I did on a frequent basis.

But here in Korea, there's a lot of Christians who have no bones about asking you, "What religion are you?"

Further more there are a lot of missionaries around who stop you on the street and hassle you, no matter how little English they speak.

Missionary #1 stopped me outside the immigration office as I was getting my residence permit processed.

He showed me a piece of paper that read, "Have you heard of God our Mother?"

At first I thought the women's lib movement went to damn far, making God a woman. But then I remembered a little book I read called, "The DaVinci Code."

So I blurted out the best that I could paraphrase, "The concept of a female counterpart to God is nothing new. Pagans believe in the Sacred Feminine and the concept of a woman countering a male deity, much like the Yin and Yang."

To that he nodded his head and said, "Thank you."

Missionary #2 spoke pretty good English. She caught me walking through the streets near my apartment and asked me if I would listen to her give a short speech. At first I thought she wanted me to give her private lessons, until she took out a booklet from her church and asked me, "Have you heard of the Holy Mother?"

To which I said, "Yes, I have."

"Oh really, Western people usually don't about the Holy Mother, how do you know about it?"

To which I replied: "The concept of a female counterpart to God is nothing new. Pagans believe in the Sacred Feminine and the concept of a woman countering a male deity, much like the Yin and Yang."

She was ecstatic and invited me to her church, which I politely declined, telling her I was a Scientologist and preferred to believe human life comes from a far away planet Xenu.

With that I bid her a good day.

Missionary #3 was my favorite though.

I saw her when I went to the bank one day. I passed her walking towards the bank when she tried to hand me a flier and said something in Korean. Thinking she was selling something, I politely said, "Aneo" which means "No" in Korean.

I did my business at the bank machine and walked toward the woman again, heading to the subway entrance. With an excited look in her face, she says, "Jesus!"

"That's nice," I said as I walked by and went on with my day, laughing almost hysterically.

I have to tell you, I never once met a Muslim missionary in Turkey. I took it for granted.