Oklahoma born · Seoul since 1982

Jesus Led Me All the Way

With dual citizenship I look like a boy from Oklahoma, but my adult life has been lived in South Korea.

For forty-four years I have been making rooms for people who did not have one.

An orphanage in Uijeongbu. An interpreter’s booth. A church for people who could not pray in Korean. A school for other people’s children. A cancer ward in Houston. And now a museum. Six different rooms, one instinct — and not one of them built alone.

Three ways in

The heart of it

Six rooms

A rice paddy, a booth, a church, a school, a hospital, a museum — told one at a time, each with the one-another it taught me.

1960 – now

The same years

My life set beside Korea's own history, year by year — the coup and the curfew, the orphanages and the Olympics.

The book

The Half Apple

Finding a Father in God when mine walked away. A memoir, in English and Korean.

Two of the six

1984 – 1987 · Hwarang & Soongsin Orphanages, Uijeongbu

The rice paddy

Bear with one another.

I came at twenty-one with a one-way ticket and no Korean. They did not put me in a mission compound. They put me in an orphanage in Uijeongbu, among children whose parents were gone, and I stayed three years. We planted rice together. I was in the water beside them and I was not good at it. My own father had come home less and less until he did not come home at all. Nobody there knew that about me. But I understood the room I was standing in.

Who stood in the water beside you when you were small?

Planting rice behind the orphanage, Uijeongbu

1988 – 1997 · Youngnak Church · The National Prayer Breakfast

The interpreter’s booth

Submit to one another.

For nine years my work was to disappear. Headphones on, inside a booth, turning Korean into English and English into Korean — Sunday mornings at Youngnak, and the National Prayer Breakfast in front of the country’s leaders. An interpreter has no sentences of his own. You carry another person’s meaning across and you do not add to it. When I was twenty-one I sat alone in a basement and watched a 16 mm film of Billy Kim standing beside Billy Graham at Yoido Plaza in 1973, turning his English into Korean for the 3.2 million who came over five days. I did not know that was a job. I have spent much of my life doing it.

Whose voice needs carrying this week — and are you willing to be the one nobody notices?

The interpretation booth — the sign above the window reads KOREAN

All six rooms

The book

The Half Apple

Finding a Father in God When Mine Walked Away

My father came through the door after work with a lunch box, and inside there was always something left — half an apple, the last bite of a sandwich. He did it on purpose. My mother cut it into three. Then he came home less, and then he did not come home. Available now in English (paperback and ebook) and Korean (ebook).

Read The Half Apple

From the field

The Beginning · Age 13

I Tried Not to Raise My Hand

I was 13 years old at a youth camp when a missionary speaker asked three questions. "How many want to be President?" Hundreds of hands went up — including mine. "How many want to be the richest businessman in the world?" I raised mine even higher. Then came the third question. "How many of you believe God wants you to be a missionary?" I tried not to raise my hand. But I couldn't keep it down. Getting out of my chair to walk to that stage was harder than raising my hand. Seven or eight teenagers stood in a line while he prayed over us. I never looked back. 44 years later I'm still in Seoul, Korea — still telling people about Jesus.

Bill Ray Majors · The moment that changed everything · "The Half Apple"

“When I lived in South Korea and attended your church, you once gave a sermon about Mary and Martha that resonated with me. Today, in my Lenten devotional, I was reminded of your sermon. As I journey I wonder if I have changed to be more like Mary and less like Martha. This email is less about that question and more about the gratitude of your ministry to me in 2007. Today He sent you to my heart and to my prayers — and I think sometimes we all need to hear that.”

Cassandra — IWE Young Nak Church, 2007

A sermon preached in 2007 — still speaking 18 years later

All stories and voices

The work continues through CrossCulture Community

Everything on this site is one man’s part of something larger. CrossCulture Community Foundation is the umbrella under which the Great Commission is carried out across Asia — and it is where support for this work belongs.

Visit CrossCulture Community

Support

Two ways to give

One in Korean won by bank transfer, one by card from anywhere. Each says plainly which organisation receives the gift and how it is treated.

From Korea — bank transfer

To CrossCulture Community, our Korea-registered non-profit association. No sign-up, no fees — just a transfer from your banking app.

Bank: 신한은행 (Shinhan Bank)
Account: 100-038-836672
Account holder: 크로스컬처 커뮤니티
Tax number: 602-80-07169

Before you send, check that your banking app shows the account holder as 크로스컬처 커뮤니티. If it shows any other name, the number has been tampered with — please stop and tell me.

Give by card, from anywhere

This one goes to Bill and Niki’s support as missionaries, received by CrossCulture Community Foundation, a Texas 501(c)(3). Zeffy charges no platform fee, so the whole gift reaches the work, and you are sent a tax receipt. One-time or monthly.

Give by card →

Get in touch

Say hello

Whether you want to tell me a story of your own, ask about the book, invite me to speak, or simply say hello — I would like to hear from you. My phone and email are on the name card.

WhereSeoul, Republic of Korea

ElsewhereYouTube · Facebook · Instagram · Name card

The other sitesCrossCulture Community
Seoul Bible Museum