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Pastor Cares for Culture as Well as Souls : Religion: Korean church in Simi Valley is planning to build its own sanctuary. Pastor hopes it will also serve as a community center.

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SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Sam Lim came to Simi Valley from North Korea 15 years ago to try to save the souls of local Korean Americans. Now, after years of prayer and planning for a new church, the 72-year-old Southern Baptist preacher is ready to save their culture as well.

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The small church he plans to build on a once overgrown lot on Cochran Street will help hold the growing community together, Lim said.

With a main chapel, a few classrooms and a meeting room, the church will become a place where Korean Americans can speak Korean and teach their children about their heritage.

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“It will help enrich their lives spiritually,” Lim said. “And they won’t forget where they come from.”

Lim expects the church to be built in about two years. During that time, the congregation will move from its present home to a trailer parked on the lot.

But that is only a slight hardship for Lim, who arrived in the city in 1980 to a Korean American community of only about 20 families.

Since then, the population has grown to about 1,000 people, and his congregation has increased to just over 100.

For several years, the congregation borrowed the sanctuary owned by the Royal Avenue Baptist Church for its Sunday afternoon services. About three years ago, Lim moved the Korean-language service to the Cochran Street Baptist Church.

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The tiny community also holds classes that teach traditional dances, such as the “Three Drum Dance,” the Korean alphabet called hangul , and the Korean language, hangukmal.

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Some Korean Americans are caught between wanting to assimilate into mainstream society and wanting to hold onto their past, said Lim’s daughter, Stephanie, who served as his interpreter during a recent interview.

It is hard to keep Koreans who immigrated to this country with their parents interested in their culture, Stephanie Lim said. And it is even more difficult to keep the U. S.-born Korean Americans connected, said Huison Yi, 23.

Along with teaching religion and Korean at Sunday school, Yi works at her family’s Korean restaurant in Simi Valley and attends Moorpark College.

Unlike the larger and more settled Korean American community in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, Simi Valley’s Korean community is still in its fledgling stage, Yi said.

“It’s growing steadily,” she said. “But so far I would say there is no basic community idea yet. That’s what we’re building.”

To do that, the church continues to celebrate traditional holidays, such as the Korean New Year, which is based on the lunar cycle and coincides with the Chinese New Year.

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The Simi Valley congregation also joins with the six other Korean churches in the county for worship during Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas, Lim said. There are more than 3,000 Korean Americans in Ventura County.

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The effort to build the church in Simi Valley is not without obstacles.

Although the City Council recently granted a permit to allow the group to combine four residential lots into one and grade half of a dirt road, one local couple have objected to the plans.

Tery Fitzsimmons and her husband have used the dirt road for 14 years to get to a horse corral at the back of their home. She said she had nothing against the church, but wanted the congregation to pave the road.

The council overruled Fitzsimmons’ objections in its early consideration, but she said she will renew her fight when the church plans are submitted for final approval.

Jung H. Choi, the Los Angeles-based architect who designed the 5,000-square-foot church, said paving the entire road would have been too expensive for the congregation, which plans to spend about $400,000 to build the sanctuary.

“This is a very small church and a very small community,” Choi said. “Each family chipped in to purchase the land, and there is no way they could afford to do more.”

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