If you’re like me, you have certain habits that help you cope with college. I’m sure that at this point in the semester, all of your professors have scared you with their syllabi and threatened you with hoards of work, steep punishments for slackers, and a quick pep talk why their class is the most important. And this makes you feel…well…overwhelmed.

As I was saying, you probably have a coping mechanism. For me, it is to get rid of all the non-essentials until I get a grasp on the semester. Things like working out, video games, and reading the Bible all get tossed out temporarily because nobody is going to give me an F if I stop doing those things.

As I sat in the auditorium staring at 60 young adults, I couldn’t help but be moved. This was the Campus Target commissioning service, where these 60 young adults–coming from all sorts of different backgrounds, family situations, and educations–were being sent to Asia for 10 months to reach the area’s top universities for Christ. As I write this, they are probably waking up from their first night in an unknown place, fighting jetlag, and itching to change a nation for the Kingdom of God.

Campus Target is one of the most dynamic ministry opportunities for young adults today. The young adults involved with CT are history-makers, literally planting churches where people have never heard that Jesus died for their sins.

The thing that struck me this night was one simple word: commitment. These young Christians are missing Christmas with their families, hugging boyfriends & girlfriends goodbye for a year, saying no to America’s prescription for a normal life, and for what? They are trading it all for smoggy cities, squatty potties, long nights with food poisoning, and winters with little indoor heating. It isn’t logical. But these students are committed to follow Jesus’ command to go to the nations. They are committed to a cause greater than themselves.

Her name was Ri Hyon Ok. She was probably a lot like someone you know: a 33-year-old wife and mother of three. But she is no longer playing with her kids or enjoying the pleasures of preparing a nice meal for her family. You see, Ri Hyon Ok was publicly executed on June 16.

Her crime? Ri Hyon Ok was caught giving a Bible away. She lived in North Korea, where a communist government fabricates charges of sedition and spying against people caught violating restrictions on Christianity.

And what happened to her husband and three children? Sent to a political prison the day after her execution.

But as I read about this atrocity, I could only think about one crime: the fact that I barely happened to find this article buried on page 8A of my newspaper sandwiched between ads for playgrounds, arborvitae, and premium paint.