Sunday, June 20, 2010

Way Back When Wednesday - Suk Jae

The Sokcho branch was small, but it had a lot of love!  One great of example of this was the love everyone showed for a 12-year-old autistic boy in the branch.  His name was Suk Jae.  He was fairly severely autistic which would make me think that people would shy away from him; especially in Korea where being different is not a good thing.  But everyone loved him and treated him as if they were their son, grandson, brother, or nephew!

Suk Jae was very active and would get up, flap his arms, yell and run around the chapel every 10 or 15 minutes during sacrament meeting.  Once you got used to it, it wasn't that distracting. 

One Sunday Brother Kim, a young man who was attending college in the area, wanted Suk Jae to sit down next to him to enjoy the reverence of the sacrament (and help Suk Jae's mother relax).  Suk Jae really didn't want to sit still and struggled a bit.  His 3-year-old sister saw this, marched right over to them and said in a loud voice, "Hey you!  Let go of my brother!  Let go of my brother!!"

Brother Kim was taken aback and decided that letting Suk Jae go would cause less of a disturbance than his little sister yelling at him.  So Brother Kim let him go and Suk Jae happily jumped up and continued running around the room!

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