Thursday, 19. September 2024
The Diakonia Sisterhood in Mokpo/South Korea – A Portrait
What the city needs: Diakonia
They run a hospice with 70 beds where patients receive round-the-clock care. They have founded a meeting center as a contact point for older people: Senior citizens receive help and a hot lunch here. Here they can escape the loneliness of home. They provide primary health care in the neighborhood, help in the local clinic, finance school scholarships for children and support migrant workers in coping with their everyday lives: the Diakonia Sisters in Mokpo, South Korea.
The history of the Diakonia Sisters
Co-founded in 1980 by Dorothea Schweizer - pastor and missionary of the Basel Mission - the South Korean sisters deliberately settled in the poor district of the port city of Mokpo in the southwest of South Korea. At that time, there were countless tuberculosis patients in this city, which the sisters looked after in the municipal clinic. They were also concerned about the many impoverished factory workers. Therefore they set up an outpatient visiting service.
It happened at the end of the 80s: The community fell into a state of collective exhaustion. The uninterrupted service to others and the tireless dedication to diaconal work had severely exhausted the sisters. Painfully they had to learn that only those who receive can give. Since then, prayer has become much more important to the Diakonia sisters: Every working day is structured by three times of prayer. Even when a sister is traveling, she keeps to this rhythm of prayer. “Work arises from prayer and prayer is work,” they say today.
The “House for Spirituality and Peace” in Cheon-An, a retreat center near Seoul, was born out of the experience of pausing at the end of the 1980s. There, the sisters are trained and strengthened for their ministry in Mokpo. There, the sisters opened their prayer room to seekers across denominational boundaries. A Diakonia family grew up around the retreat house, which today has 30 members. The break at the end of the 1980s was painful, but led to a new beginning.
From South Korea to Germany
Two sisters from the South Korean Diakonia community are currently in Germany. They come every year and stay at the Deaconess Institute in Stuttgart. This time they came to attend the funeral of Dorothea Schweizer, which took place last Friday. Mrs. Schweizer died on 30.8.2024 at the age of 86. Today, the two sisters are visiting the EMS: an opportunity to get to know them and their work. In their beige-colored habits, they sit around the table with concentration and deliberation. The conversation works like a jigsaw puzzle: one of them speaks a little German. In the meantime, a translator joins in via smartphone. The sisters talk with depth and humor. They search for words. They laugh and search again.
Their lifelong commitment to the weak, the poor and people on the margins is remarkable. Their courage to start again and again is impressive. It seems as if the community gives them a strength that they would not have on their own.
“If you had one wish, what would it be?” The two agree: “That we have the money and the strength to finish renovating our motherhouse. That a new future would begin there, from within the Diakonia family.” The future: they don't know, but they trust in God and carry on: with people in mind and God in mind.