Dear Grand Master Chang,

I hope you and your family are well and that things are good for you.

I also hope your school and students are going strong and training is good.

I follow your blog and all the pictures I see look great.

It has been a while since we talked, but to me it feels like yesterday.  I never stop walking the Hapkido path you laid before us and live my life as a Hapkido man.  You are always in my thoughts, in every training session and throughout my days.  As you taught me I start every day waking before dawn, I watch the sun come up, I throw away the old day and welcome in the new, with a clear and focussed mind.  All my students follow me, because I walk the true way following the examples and lessons you have given us.  You have blessed all our lives, and we stay true to this path so that we may keep our way alive and hopefully pass it onto others so that they to can see the beauty of Hapkido, the Korean people and  live at peace as a human being, clear and true free from lies, with mind and body together.

We have not changed anything you taught me and I believe that this is partly why my school and I are going so well.  Thank you so much.

When last I was in Korea, we spoke about many things, and over the last while I have been working on these things to bring them to existence.  Firstly and most importantly, we spoke about me bringing you to Australia.  To do this I knew there would be several things I would need to do.  Firstly my Dojo at my home in the country was quite small, so with the help of my students, I built a new Dojo along side the old.  It has given us much more space, three times the room.  It required quite a bit of time to build, but we got there and now we feel we will have ample room for our training.  Most importantly we feel we can host a special international Grand Master and event.  I have quite a few photos of the build if you would like to see.

Secondly we needed to save for this special event, and we have. It has taken a while, this country is very expensive to live but we did it none the less.  We feel that we can properly host such an event.

Thirdly I had to ensure all my students were well and ready for some special training, not as easy as you would think as my senior student had a double knee replacement early this year, and I needed to give her an opportunity to recover, she has been with me well over ten years and I would not let her miss this opportunity.  So these things and so many more things have slowly been falling into place, like pieces of a puzzle coming together.  We have been truly busy.

So it is with great pleasure I would formally like to invite You and Mrs Chang to come visit us in Australia.  There are still many things to organize so I was hoping that you might be free in April or May next year.  An important student of mine is away until November, so if you don’t mind we can take a final look at dates once he returns.  Also our summers are extremely hot, so our fall is a much nicer time to visit.  I hope you are able to come, but of course there is absolutely no pressure.  Nonetheless we are extremely excited as we have been working on this goal for some time.  Very exciting times.

Also when we were together we spoke about me building a website for the Australia school, and it is coming along very well.  It wont be to far away before it’s ready, and if it’s ok we will send you a link to view it before we launch it, to make sure all is in order.  Also if possible a portrait of you and a brief history of you or our style would help us represent ourselves correctly . I could attempt to write it, though I would not want to misrepresent you or our Hapkido.  It is an important thing putting up information for the world to see, we need to get it right, so if your able when it is time that would be excellent.

Lastly I would like to give my new email and phone number