Things that probably didn't happen to you this week

Well, a couple things that I bet didn't happen to you this week go as thus:

• Eat squirming octopus (with some suction cups sticking to your tongue!)
• Almost get hit by a bus with maybe a foot of clearance at most (and have it hit the traffic cone just next to you, causing the cone to fly up and hit you in the arm)
• Play duck-duck-goose with a bunch of cute little Korean kids at a hap ki do academy
• Eat a half gallon of Baskin Robbins ice cream
• Eat Betty Crocker brownies made out of a box you found at E-mart with all English instructions (maybe you did the brownies part though...)
• Teach Koreans English tongue-twisters and realize that every Korean can say "Toy boat" 5 times fast with absolutely no problem (for us Americans it's nigh-impossible)
• Get asked at family home evening at a members house with all the missionaries in your area there along with some other members too, to sing...And so you decide to do a rap in English about modesty instead.
• Find a super good suit sale with all of the suits ranging from $40 to $80!

When Did the Conference Fly By?

Wow, first off general conference was soooo amazing!  It went by soooo soooo fast though!!  So in Korea, because their time is so much earlier than in America where General Conference is held, they watch conference the following Saturday and Sunday.  All of us English speakers in the two wards that meet at our building (missionaries and members) had our own little room set up for conference with a TV.  And it was so fun! I loved getting to hear all of the different messages from the General Authorities.  I really loved the Saturday Morning Session.  That was probably my favorite one.  

 

Our room for conference

And now that conference has passed, it's suit-wearing weather in our mission!  From now until April, we're going to be wearing our suits whenever we're doing missionary work; AKA, all the time! Luckily it's not too stifling hot anymore, but the weather hasn't completely transitioned to Fall yet.  It's teetering on the fence.  I can't wait till it starts getting cool all the time outside!

 

I forgot to mention about 3 weeks ago when we had a baptismal service for 2 sisters.  And one of them (이송이) asked me a few weeks in advance to baptize her.  And that was such an honor and such a spiritual experience.  Our ward missionary leader baptized the other sister. After the baptismal service there was a mini 'talent show' kind of thing.  And Elder Wagner volunteered me to play piano in it.  So Elder 박 and I (he's insanely good at piano) had a 'piano battle.'  We played a few songs each going back and forth with the songs getting crazier and crazier, and more and more complex the whole time.  And while the other person would play we would make fun of them to the audience.  It was really last minutely planned, but it turned out to be pretty comical and funny! Now the ward members always come up to me and ask if I was the one who played piano then, and tell me how good they think I am (this even happened yesterday from our bishop's wife, haha).  They're all so sweet haha.

 

This past week we had a ward activity out in 나주 which is a more country-sidey area next to ours.  It was at a soccer field and it was really pretty fun.  The place looked a whole lot like Asia (probably because it is I guess....).  The best was when Elder Wagner found a football (a very poorly made one, but a football nevertheless) that a member must have brought, and we started passing it back and forth.  The members were so amazed at how well we could throw a football!  They had no clue how to throw it correctly and just kind of threw it like a baseball and it was super funny.  Let's just say, us Americans looked pretty snazzy throwing the old pig-skin around!

Some pictures of the park the ward went to

 

We had an amazing lesson this week with one of our investigators named 권승천.  He's fluent in Enlgish but we still teach him in Korean.  He met with some other missionaries about a year ago, but he works for the city and got really busy. But we found him out of the area book and called him and he wanted to meet.  So this was our second lesson with him, and we taught him the Gospel of Christ.  The Spirit was incredibly strong during the lesson.  And he asked the most golden questions about baptism.  "Is baptism essential for my salvation?" "What if I were to die right now; could I be saved?"  We were able to explain and testify about the necessity of baptism to him and he committed to be baptized when he comes to know more.  It was the best lesson I've been in.

 

In regards to Korean, I'm progressing a lot.  Nowhere near that 'fluent' level, but I pick up on a lot more of what people say (as in I know a few of the words or feeling of what they're saying some of the time).   And I can speak a lot better when I teach.  I'm able to teach all of the lessons independently if I needed to without any Korean resources to use as back-ups, so that's good!  And I passed off our mission's Initial Pass-off!  Only 5 more levels to go! ;)

 

A cute English mistake

Korea is great and I love it! Hope all of you are doing great in wherever you are! Stay safe and stay awesome! Love you all!

 

Time Keeps on Slippin'

Wow, so sorry about no entry last week.  I don't think anyone exept missionaries understand how much of a struggle emailing everthing you're supposed to is in your hour time-slot.  But I'm doing my best here!

 

So to recap for the past two weeks:

 

We finished the transfer and our district changed up just a little.  Elder Cowles left for 전주 and got replaced by Elder Hogen, a completely new greenie fresh to Korea (I was with him in the MTC for 3 weeks).  I got sick that week off of 김밥 and had to stay at home for an eveing throwing up. No fun... :P  But the week was good overall.  

 

We met some good new investigators this past week that we've started to meet with.  Our 3 Cambodian investigators with baptismal dates have dropped off the face of the earth lately though and we haven't been able to contact them.  But we won't give up on them.  Hopefully they pick up their phone soon.  Elder Wagner had to go to MLC (missionary leadership council) on Tuesday and so I went on a split with Elder 박 and Elder Hogen.  That was fun and interesting at the same time.  Poor Elder 박 had to deal with two 'greenies' for the day haha.  The next day was combined zone conference which was just a lot of meetings all day.  But it was fun and cool to see some misisonaries from the other zones.

 

I can't think of too much crazy stuff to include.  I got a haircut today! That's exciting I guess. Korean people have a really hard time cutting American hair.  It's just different and they really don't know how.  Luckily it doesn't look too bad or anything.  I'll just leave it to pictures to make sense of everything. So yay!  Korea's going good and it's crazy I've been here almost 2 months already! Love all of you! You're the best!

 

Me with: 이지선 자매님 who just finished her mission!

박인오 장로님

 

 

Elder Cowles

We had to break into one of the rooms in our house.  It got locked from the inside to we had to go through the window!

Korean desserts look pretty weird sometimes....

Almost the last week of the transfer!

This was a good week! We got to teach a lot and I'm just about done with my initial for pass-off which was the biggest struggle!  I went on a split this week with Elder Cowles and that was really fun!  He taught me how to 가가호호 (which is basically knocking doors) in a big apartment building. And we found a cool little Buddhist building thing as we were walking around too!  

I pulled out my Texas flag from my suitcase the other day and it is now displayed above my bed (or it was till it fell off the wall...).  

It's been a pretty awesome week!  I talked to a guy and girl (the girl joined our conversation our of curiosity and to help translate for both of us) on the back of a bus. I explained about and gave him a Book of Mormon and got his number.  I called him last night  to see when we could meet with him and that was a trip.  Korean over the phone, is entirely different from Korean in person!  I had absolutely no clue of a single word that he was saying.  But my companion helped out and hopefully we'll get to meet up with him this week.  He was a cool guy :)  

My missionary 'mom' (the oldest sister in you first district) goes home this week which is crazy!  She started her mission back when I was a junior in high school!!  Elder Cowles leaves this week for his next and last area, and coincidentally enough, his next companion is going to be Elder Murdoch, my MTC companion!  Hahaha.  
 

I forgot to mention that we went bowling last week!  I averaged around a 100 :P But Elder 박인오 had the coolest bowling style ever!  Too bad the only video I got of him bowling he got a gutter ball ;)

 
I don't have much time to write, but I love all of you! Have a great week!

One Month in the Country!

Wow, I've been in the country for over a month now! I can hardly even believe that!  The big holiday, 추석, was fun!  All the stores were closed for the most part, the buses ran less often and had practically no one on them, and there were no cars out practically anywhere!  That is until the next day (make that the next 2) when the streets were flooded with cars trying to go back home.  I heard that that's just because I'm in 광주 (Gwangju) which is a pretty big city. Apparently when you're out in smaller little cities, everything is completely deserted basically the whole time!

 

Me and Elder Cowles looking fly

 This week I had my first meal at Lotteria with one of our investigators.  My companion hates Lotteria food (except for the ice cream), but I didn't have a bit of a problem with it!  Also in regards to food, we (all the missionaries in my district) ate at a buffet with Robert Holley (who is a famous tv star to Koreans) And so basically all of the people we saw that knew we were with him must have thought that we were all American tv stars too. Hahaha

 

This week we went up to Daejeon for TNT, which is where all the greenies and their trainers have a meeting just to see how everything is going and what not.  That was really great to get to see all of my 동기 (MTC group) again and how they're doing.  We've all made leaps and bounds in Korean, and all had some pretty good stories to share.

 

This week we also had our 'Robert Holley English Speech Contest' which was a way for us to find investigators and be a good activity for them.  That was fun.  We heard 40 or so short little English speeched on dreams, or hobbies, or friends, and the like.  Some people were incredible at english, some were super funny, and some were so cute while they spoke.  I guess I probably look the same while I'm trying to rack my brains to speak Korean!

 

Elder Skinner (our AZL)

Elder 박 sitting on my bed

 

 It was a really busy week with travel and big events and what not, so there aren't too many crazy stories! ....Except for trying to do calculus in Korean. That was a struggle....

 

The price of a car in Korea (They look so dang expensive with all those zeros!)

 

 

Love all of ya!

The Past 2 Weeks!

Sorry that I didn't get around to posting a blog entry last week other than those pictures!  I'll try to sum up the past two weeks as best I can!

 

 

This week Elder Wagner and I scored a desk for our house; now he doesn't have to use two filing cabinets pushed together for his desk anymore!  We made a 광고 (an advertisement) for how we teach free English.  We post those around our area all the time and people call and we can get new people to teach in that way.  We walked down by a big soccer stadium in the southern part of our area and that was cool! It's got a huge Lotte Outlet store right next to it.  Elder Wagner and I didn't know the store was there and first saw it from behind.  And the back entrance is on the top of a hill, and it looks like a dinky little shop.  But it was Lotte Outlets, so we were confused.  We went in, and quickly discovered how huge it is!

 

 

We had our interviews with President Shin that we have every two transfers.  I'm one of those groups that just had an interview with president just a few weeks before this one.  We got a new fan for the house, so now we aren't 'sharing' one with the other companionship (Elder Cowles and Elder 박) So that's something good! Because of the interviews, the APs stayed at our house for the night, and that was really fun!

 

Elder Wagner and I met with one of his recent converts and helped him with some o
f his essays for school that he has to write in Korean.  We discovered that even though Elder Wagner and I both speak English, we have different writing styles.  We finally just had to decide that both of our ways of writing was grammatically correct and completely fine, even if that's not how we would have written it.  Who thought speaking English could get so dramatic?? ;)

 

We went to a young single adults game night thing (all of us 10 missionaries) because we had some investigators going.  At one point, some of the girls (not the sister missionaries!) danced to K-pop songs on the stage - cause dance competitions are normal in Korea and a lot of people do it as a hobby I guess.  Hearing that music was so weird, cause it had like bass in it.  Hahaha, but yeah!

 

I went to the clothes store and bought multiple ties for super cheap! Korea!  And according to the missionaries that I was with, they were like twice as much as ties you can find at other places (like 6000 원 [Won] instead of 3000 원) 

 

We discovered that in 광주 (Gwangju - my city) that every night in one part of town they have like a show that's like Disneyland's 'World of Color.'  Of course it wasn't as impressive as at Disneyland at all, but it was still pretty impressive!

 

 

This week I went on a split with our Zone Leader, Elder Allan.  That was fun!  We met with his investigators and he introduced me to two of his favorite drinks: 밀키스(Milkis) and 코코팜 (Coco Palm).  One of his investigators was a Korean guy who lived in England for a little while and speaks really good English. And he had the best English accent ever!  Ahh, it was like talking to a guy from England!  Afterwards we went and had Whoppers at Burger King with him (they were only 3000원 each!).  But before we decided to go, he said my favorite thing a Korean has said to me here.  He asked: What do you fancy 우즈? (my name is in Korean. They say it like 'Ooh-juh') and it was in his sick accent and everything! It was awesome!  The next day I had a little split with Elder Skinner, the assistant ZL and that was cool too!  I had some good soup with him!

 

 We went to a 외국인 party on Saturday (me, Wagner, Skinner, and Allan) and met some cool people from all over.  I talked to an Egyptian guy named Emad who was really cool!  We talked some about the church and he told me some of the stuff he believed (he's Muslim) and stuff like that. We talked in English, and I realized just how hard teaching in English is!  Because I don't have practice teaching simply in English, I went crazy with excitement, jumping from this topic, to this one and kind of confused him. If I could do it over again I would have taught much more simply.  Korean really restricts me to teaching simply in a good way, but for those times I do teach in English I have to contain myself.  But we're going to keep meeting him cause he's totally excited to do that.  He called me Mr. Woods.  It was so cool!

 

 

 

Today is 추석 a big Korean holiday.  It's like their equivalent of Thanksgiving in the US, but it's like Christmas in regards to just how big it is.  People all travel around and most stores are all closed.  We're going to go to a members house (us missionaries) and play games there so that's going to be fun I think!  I'll tell more exciting stuff about what happened next week if it's noteworthy!

 

Well I love you all!  Stay safe!

Pictures!

A big outlet store!

A truck with a TV display on the side!

"King Grapes" -- bigger than the coin!

The subway character thing!