How I Met My Girlfriend

For all of my undergrad, I was the proud, self-proclaimed president of the "happily single, not ready to mingle" club. And going into my first gap year, I didn't really expect things to change. I mean, I'd be back home and seeing even less people in my age range, so I thought that the next opportunity for me to meet someone would be in professional school. So, as per my life motto, I had learned to lower expectations so that the results could overdeliver.

Fastforward to the time I was preparing to lead a GMMA mission trip to Honduras for my first time and as a baby RC I had learned pretty early on that for most of the responsibilities that were expected of you, you had to figure out for yourself. And often, the best way to do that is by asking a whole bunch of experienced people what they had done before. So when I asked Dr Chung Sr who I should ask for guidance with the VBS schedule, I was intrigued when he told me to seek out a third year undergrad missions coordinator named Mina Kim from UVA.

Side note, I may have saved her contact info as Mina Park initially ... my bad, I'm not sure what went down there but in my defense, Park is a pretty solid guess for a Korean too y'know 🤷‍♂️

Anyways, this man Dr Chung has been working with generations of RCs who've had plenty of experiences leading mission trips (some of them leading multiple mission trips in a summer), so when he recommended an undergrad officer, I remember wondering whether this girl was some kind of undergrad prodigy mission trip logistics queen. And lowkey, she kinda lived up to the title. As soon as I got her phone number from David Cha whose number I got from Erika, she replied within minutes! As an RC, not even I had that A1 response time (to be fair I may not be the best example to use tho).

And before we continue, one thing you should know about me is that I am a massive procrastinator 🙃 I always leave things for the last minute. Whether that's checking in for my flight or submitting my senior year thesis, I'm always getting things done just before the deadline. And this time asking Mina for help was no different. I was trying to figure out the VBS logistics before my next online Saturday morning missions training session, and guess when I texted her? That's right, the day before, on Friday, and during my lunch break at work too LOL. Why do I do this to myself? 🫠

So you could probably imagine how grateful I was when Mina replied within minutes. And not only that, she offered to have the meeting right then and there - talk about clutch! But because my lunch break was ending, I only could meet after work past 5:30pm. And even though she had praise team practice at 6pm, she was still down to call and help out. What a queen.

I don't remember too much from the actual meeting but I do remember how nice and supportive she was! My journal entry from that day went like this:

• Call w Mina from UVA to go over GMMA mission trip curriculum prep! Twas v helpful and she was so nice and supportive for our trip

After the call ended, I didn't expect to run into Mina again. But little did I know that before retiring as an RC the next year, I would see Mina again in-person not once but twice! And that's where we'll leave off for now :)