August 18, 2014

The fruit here is pretty good. Have I told you about the grapes?! They are so cool! The skin is really thick; Koreans usually don't eat it. They usually just bite a little bit off and then suck the inside out. It's so fun!

Anyways. So I'm a week into my second transfer! What the what?! It's crazy how fast time is flying... and also how fast it's not flying :P Haha. Soo... what happened this week... I got force fed some more. Though not too bad :P ;)

More yummy food

 

Hm. Once a week we do a discussion thingy with the Fairhursts, and this last week I led the discussion. I enjoyed doing it and hearing others ideas and thoughts. I chose to base it off of the big lessons I have learned this last transfer, which is that we need to be content in doing what we can, as best we can, and focusing on making sure that what we are doing is the Lord's will. As we do and pray for that, He will help us do more and more every day. It's just very important that we seek His will with all our hearts. 

This week we have done a lot of preparation for the Luau, because it's coming up this Saturday. It should be pretty fun, provided I don't smack myself in the face with the Poi or look like an idiot doing the Hula :P Haha.

 

Daegu countryside

As far as appointments go, this week has been pretty uneventful. We started meeting a lady who has been going to church with one of the American ward members, so that was cool, but she had a bad experience with an unkind priest, and has since been very against churches. We'll meet with her again this week. I'm coming to see that some people just meet with us because they like missionaries, which isn't exactly a good thing :P It's good that they like us, but it's bad if they join the church for that reason alone. That's probably why there are a lot of less active members in Korea. Sometimes they join without really believing in God and Christ, etc., but they just really liked the missionaries. We just have to be careful that people really have the right intentions and really understand the Gospel.

   

My cute companion...

Addicted to ice cream

OH! So, last Monday was interesting. After emailing home, we left to go do stuff, and near the church (where we email) is the home of a less active woman, who is probably in her 70s. We stopped by to say hello, and she invited us in; she was so sweet! However, like every Korean woman, she wanted to feed us. So she proceeded to feed us 4 peaches (big), and then a bowl of rice, and seaweed soup. The whole time, she was talking about the missionaries she had first met with, who were SO good at eating. Because being good at eating is a big deal here.

Yup, we ate it all!

 

If you can eat a lot, they love you. So we felt obligated to eat a lot, especially just to show we appreciated her kindness. That soup, however, was hard to eat. The seaweed itself wasn't all that bad, and the liquid wasn't too bad either... but there were chunks of dried fish in it, which was really gross. I seriously had to choke those down. I got a second bowl of it.. yay. Sis Sung, like a very good, obedient Korean girl, got 3 bowls, even though she also didn't really like it. So the next day we both felt kind of...strange. You see, seaweed is very good for your stomach, I guess. Because it kind of clears out your stomach. I'm trying not to think about it :P 

 

Some Random Buddhist Temple

Anyways. I think the biggest other eventful thing was yesterday during church. That morning, I had been stretching, and somehow like... pulled a muscle in my upper back, or something, because it really hurt to turn my head or tilt it. Throughout the day and sitting through church, it started to really hurt and feel very achy and stiff. I wasn't happy about it :P And I didn't want to try stretching or massaging it, because I didn't want to make it worse. After church, people usually stick around for a while (like yesterday, we all ate bibimbab (?) together, and there were meetings and choir rehearsals), and after a youth choir rehearsal, Sis Sung mentioned it to a member who we know fairly well, she is super friendly. Anyways, this woman proceeds to start ferociously massaging my back. It felt pretty good, I think, but it was also a little hard. And then she started pulling my arms behind my back while pushing her knee into my back. And then she had me stand up back to back with her, linked arms, and she leaned forward, lifting me into the air on her back, and told me to relax while she jumped/bounced a little. I had no idea what was going on because I couldn't really understand her, and it as SO unexpected, I just started laaaaughing so much. It was seriously hilarious. But hey, my back felt better afterwards :P Today it's just a little sore, but I think it'll go away soon. Man. Good times. 

 

Shell-shocked Sisters I met before at the MTC

On the first P-Day of a transfer, the Fairhursts hold a breakfast for the whole zone and feed us pancakes, so that was this morning. It was pretty fun :) When I was about to leave the MTC, a new group of missionaries came in, so I knew some of the people who just came to Korea for this transfer, and I was excited to see who was going to be in my zone. One of them is a girl that I knew from BYU-Idaho; we had the same mission prep class. That was fun to find out at the MTC, haha. So it was good to see her again and see how they are enjoying their first few days in Korea. Seeing them made me realize how shell-shocked I looked on my first few days in Korea. Hahah :P 

 

Today was fun! Even though it has been raining a TON (the river is so flooded), we went thrift shopping :) You can find such cheap clothes in Korea! And they are modest! And cute! It's crazy...and so unfair! I got two skirts that are modest and nice for $9. TWO! I'm so jealous that we don't have this in America. The market place was fun. Unfortunately they don't allow pictures there (i'm not sure why), but imagine something like a European market with tons of little shops all next to each other selling all sorts of things, and then Asian-ize it, and add a bunch of fish (dead or alive, with or without skins and heads, etc.) and you probably have it pictured :P  It was fun to look around :) Though there are food items that I would definitely NEVER be buying from there :P

Cool looking bell

Fun stuff. Not much going on, I think. Just trying to plug along (is that even a phrase?) and keep going. I'm trying to learn as much as I can, and teach as well as I can, which is hard in Korean :P But I'm slowly getting better. I think. I just have a lot to learn. :P

August 11, 2014

This past week wasn't too eventful. One day we had 3 appointments planned, but 2 got cancelled, so that was a bummer, but we have them rescheduled for this coming week :) Uh. Hm. .... OH! We did deep cleaning of our apartment this week. It was nasty! Our apartment is super old; missionaries have been living in it for 20+ years, and I don't think missionaries have cleaned it properly. When I arrived, there was a side room for storage, I guess, and it was FULL of trash! It was nasty! It looked like several transfers worth. So we had taken that out in waves (because trash you recycle in our apartment is only taken out once every week), and at the end of a transfer you do deep cleaning. It took us 3 or 4 hours, and some of our furniture LITERALLY changed color!!! And we cleaned our floor, also nasty. I was so tired after, but we both felt so good about our lives afterwards :P Haha.

There's still some left to do, but it is SO much better now :) yay. So I guess that was exciting. 

Hm. .... I'm getting kind of better at talking with people. Sort of :P Yesterday during church, I felt like I really understood the first speaker! Yay! But then the second I understood less. And the third, hardly anything. Haha, I think it depends on who is speaking and if they mumble or not or if they have an accent/dialect. Blah. 

A cathedral that reminded me of Europe

I've learned a lot this past transfer, but I still have plenty to learn. I'm painfully aware of that every day :P Haha. I want to smack myself in the head all the time for being such an idiot sometimes :P But I have this perfect opportunity to learn, so I'm doing as much as I can. I hope. :P It's hard to tell if there is more you could be doing, or if doing more will overwhelm you. 

There's a whole chicken in my soup. Thankfully it was yummy!

Something I forgot to mention last week, but was pretty cool, was there was a guy who came to our English class; he apparently comes sporadically and is kind of an "eternal investigator," because Sis. Sung knew him from before when she was in Suseong at the beginning of her mission. His English is pretty good, so I was working with him and some other "advanced" people, and he started asking me about how to find happiness, and God, and stuff like that. Talking with him was really interesting for me, because I could really see that he has really deep questions that he is really wanting answers to, I think he feels like he is missing something in his life. He came again this week, and this time Sis Sung was able to talk to him in Korean, and I think that really helped him. I just really enjoyed the experience because it is not often that people we talk to are really seeking anything, they just kind of have a lukewarm interest. And I could really feel the Spirit guiding me, because honestly, I'm only a 19 year old girl, and he's in his 40s or 50s and has such a different life, how am I supposed to help someone like that? Honestly, I can't. But the Lord knows that man's heart, and that definitely helped me to talk with him. 

Yummy stuff

So Yummy!

Anyways, the only other exciting thing this week was today! P-Day, and it was transfer meeting. There's always a meeting on that day for the missionaries who are moving to switch to their new companions and departing missionaries to meet at the mission house with the mission president. And anyone else who wants to go can, so we did! So we traveled to Busan early this morning. It was a really nice meeting. I really enjoyed hearing the testimonies of the departing missionaries, they have such a strong conviction and testimony about missionary work and God's love for all of His children. It was just really awesome to hear them speak, who are at the end of their missions, while I am at the beginning of mine. I learned a lot from them, and about things I want to be able to say I learned by the end of mine. BUT the cool thing was Sis Hill and Sis Stratton were both there!! 

Sisters Hill and Stratton

Yaaaaay! Sis Stratton is finally in Korea, she arrived last Wednesday, and she had a great time in Salt Lake. I think she definitely learned a lot. And it was great to see Sis Hill, and to be able to talk about our Korean experiences so far. It's great to be able to talk to someone who is at the same point in as me in their missions, because usually I'm around people who are just like "oh, you'll be fine. I remember those days, but you'll get over it". But we were able to mutually laugh about our Korean skills and stuff we've seen and done and eaten. We all talked together for awhile, and it was just wonderful to see them again. 

Pictures of Daegu

  ...and a crane

Korean Food...

Deoni, from the American Ward

August 6, 2014

Yesterday was our pre-transfer district meeting so I thought you might enjoy a few photos of these missionaries. They are wonderful young men and women and I am grateful to serve with them.

August 4, 2014

So, this transfer is about to end and I don't have a new companion...  that only happens sometimes. We'll know on Thursday if it will or not, but chances are it won't, because new missionaries have a "12 week program" that they are trained with. Sometimes they give you two trainers, but I think typically you stay with one. So I'm pretty sure I'll be here for awhile with Sis Sung :P :) Which is good, because we get along really well. We have a lot of fun together and I love her a lot. I can see how a mission prepares you to get married, because you live with someone who typically is a good friend, but sometimes you push each others buttons :P hahaha. It doesn't happen that often, usually we just have fun. :)

Things this past week were pretty busy. I'm glad to say that we did NOT go to a public bathhouse, we just took cold showers. I wasn't prepared to see our neighbors in that way. :P hahaha. We had a lot of appointments and such going on. It was pretty cool. Aaaah, my mind is buzzing so much I can't figure out what is worth mentioning... Uh. We did some practices throughout the week for the Luau coming up... I keep boxing my own ear when I swing those Polynesian things around :P haha.

My District learning the Hula

 Another cool thing this week was a LOT of people just randomly came out of the woodwork, wanting to meet with us. One time, we were in the subway, and a lady stopped us, and asked who we were. Turns out she had met with the missionaries a LONG time ago and attended their English class. We know it was a while ago, because she knew the Church by a different name (in Korea, they retranslated the name about 10 years ago so it would be less strange). She wanted to get to know more back then, and for her kids to go to church, but had stopped because her husband didn't like it. But now she's divorced, and she seemed to be really interested :) We'll meet her later this week. 

We also had another random lady come up to us on the subway. She was Chinese, and a Christian, and she was sooo excited to just see any Christian missionaries, and wanted to meet with us. Haha. Cute. We have also gotten an astounding number of referrals (which are given by members or missionaries, and are for us to contact further) this week. It was cool :D

Also this week we did exchanges! Those are where for a day we swap companions. So I went to another part in Daegu with Sister Choi, who is also Korean, but speaks English fairly well. It was pretty fun and interesting. Basically, the point is to learn from other missionaries. What they do, things they have learned, etc. I did learn a lot, and enjoyed getting to know her, because I don't know that many missionaries yet. The next day however, when we exchanged back, I was really excited to see Sis Sung again :P :D Love that girl. Even when she forgets for the whole transfer to tell me about an important piece of paper that we are supposed to keep track of people on.... :P Haha.

Ah. Today was super busy. P-Day (Preparation Day) is supposed to be restful, I think. Ha, but it was Sis Campbell's last P-Day (she's in my district), so we went to an ice skating rink and ate and took ridiculous pictures in some picture booths (those are so funny. they make your eyes look bigger and your skin lighter, it looks so fake, but so funny!). The ice rink was interesting because in Korea they require you to wear gloves and a helmet. :P 

It is so strange seeing the Elders in street clothes. (P-Day activity at the ice skating rink)

 

Are you taking a picture of me?

 

Anyways. I'm learning a lot. To Koreans, feet are really dirty, that's why you always take your shoes off right inside of the house, and wear slippers in the bathroom and sometimes even in the house. It was funny: at the Fairhurst's house, we had an activity and invited a Korean investigator, and there were some of the American military men there, and as they were leaving, they took their boots into the house and sat on the sofa to put them on, and she looked so shocked. She was like "oh my, is that allowed? is that okay?" and we had to explain differences in cultures :P 

Something else I've also been learning is the love that Heavenly Father has for all of his children. And as a missionary, I kind of feel like part of my calling is to help him love his children, through us. Even if they do not care about the Gospel, we can still help them feel love, we can help them with things. I think that's why a few weeks ago me and Sis Sung felt like we needed to talk to that girl who we later found out was lost. We haven't heard from her since, but I think we felt that way because she needed help, and God was trying to point us to her, so that he could show that he was mindful of that one girl, that he loves her and wants to help her. But stupidly we weren't really listening very well. So as his "hands on earth," we can help others, even if what they need isn't the Gospel. I think he wants to help all of us, and he can do that through the people around us, if they are receptive to his promptings. So I have grown to better appreciate the love God has for all of us, as well as what responsibility that gives me.

Something else that I have also been thinking about, and have mentioned a little before, is doing all I can. I'm really trying to just do that, even if it is the littlest thing, and I've found that if I just do the little bit that I can, I am happy with the day and the things I have done. I'm also slowly seeing how I am getting a liiiiiiiiiittle bit better. I kind of feel like I am just on the verge of a breakthrough, or the verge of learning a whole lot. Maybe that's just because I'm generally understanding some things going on around me, like I know a bit about what people are talking about now, instead of being clueless (though sometimes I am WAY off, haha), and it's kind of exciting, so I'm expecting greater progress or something. But this past week I think I've been just overall happy/content. I've been able to do things, and I am just trying, and that's about all I can do.