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My Candidate Story: Mira Kim
The reason and the passion for why I want to serve refugees and immigrants here in South Philadelphia is that I was born here. The opportunity to serve your own neighborhood—there’s nothing more rewarding than that! As a child of South Korean immigrant parents, I was constantly caught in the divide between cultures. God planted a seed in me through a sixth-grade assignment to get to know my family history. I called my mom’s dad and found out that he grew up in what is now North Korea. Any chance I got I did research on North Korea—the humanitarian crisis, refugees fleeing from North Korea. Always in the back of my mind, I had the thought, That could be my relative. That assignment became the beginning of God calling me to be the bridge between countries and between people looking for a safe place, a safe home, because that’s really the story of my own family.
I’ll be serving as the refugee ministry director for a church in South Philadelphia, stepping into an existing ministry where there’s a history of what the Lord has done. I’ll be working alongside Pastor David and Lisa Grainge, who have built a legacy of serving refugees. My hope and prayer are to develop a trauma healing ministry here, where we can tend to not only the spiritual, but also to the deeper emotional needs of refugees and immigrants living in our neighborhood. Many of them have gone through things that they’ve never spoken about to another soul. I feel God calling me to go in, find refugees and immigrants who are still hiding in their memories, and create a healing ministry where they can finally find a way out of that suffering by inviting the Holy Spirit to come in and bring hope to their lives.
Learn more about Mira here: https://infaith.org/mira-kim