Tuesday, October 28, 2014

One Egg or Two?

October 27, 2014

This week has been pretty good. We had a mission-wide 5K in Busan yesterday, that's why I didn't email until now. It was pretty fun to see everyone. I ran it in 24:02, so I was pretty proud of that, especially since I just spent 9 weeks in the MTC sitting around almost all day :)

We spent three days painting some rooms in the church and then a concrete fence behind the church with the bishop. That was a chore. But the bishop really appreciated it; he even thanked us in Sacrament meeting for it. But the good part of this story is what the bishop fed us for lunch two of those days we were painting. The first day, his wife made a ton of ramyun, and gave each of us a huge bowl of it. I wasn't complaining, I was pretty hungry after painting for so long. So I was looking forward to this delicious steaming bowl of noodles, when the bishop pulled out the eggs and cracked three of them straight into my bowl . . . and there went my appetite. I just mixed it in really well so that it wasn't as noticeable, but still the thought of three raw eggs mixed in with my soup was pretty disgusting. Elder Suter said it was even hard for him to handle, apparently completely raw eggs like that is pretty abnormal, even in Korea. The next day, he fed us the same thing, but didn't put any eggs in. So I was pretty excited that I would get to just enjoy it this time. When I was about half way done, he's like, "Aren't you going to have some eggs?" So I reluctantly cracked one in. It was terrible. The worst part was that I had already enjoyed some of it without the eggs. Oh well, that was last Friday and I haven't experienced any side effects yet, so I should be OK.

The idea you found, "Mandu Myul Mang" or whatever it was, isn't like a Korean food or something. It sounds like something some missionary came up with because he didn't know what else to make. It sounds like it has even less nutritional value than ramen, and doesn't sound very appetizing either, so it's funny that people were talking about how delicious it is. We only have an hour for meals, preparation and eating included. So if you come across anything else, let me know please :)

"Preach My Gospel Missionary" just means following the things that Preach My Gospel talks about, it's not very complicated :)

I love you too :)

Elder Hines

Mission 5K

Undersea tunnel connecting the main part of Tongyeong City to an island.
Elders Hines and Suter at the sculpture park. This bay is right next to Tongyeong. It was here that General Ee Sunshin fought off a huge Japanese navy with his turtle ships. 


Wednesday, October 22, 2014

It Was Amazing

October 19, 2014

I can't believe how fast the weeks are going. It felt like it was just barely P day a couple days ago. 

We've actually been teaching a decent amount. We do a program called 30/30, where we teach 30 minutes of English and 30 minutes of the gospel, and there is a man who has been doing that twice a week. He also comes to church usually, so that is a plus.  We were talking to him last Monday evening, and we were talking a little bit about prayer. He says he prays to God when he feels lonely, and from his prayers he feels peace, and he feels like he receives strength from that. It's cool because he already recognizes the Spirit before we had even talked about it. We shared Moroni 10:3-5 with him when we met on Wednesday. He asked for a copy of the Book of Mormon in English, and then we he came to English class on Thursday he had all three verses memorized in English. It was amazing. And now every time he sees me, he asks for "homework," so I give him a verse to memorize for the next time we meet. If he keeps this up, he's going to be a scriptorian in a matter of months. I feel like this man is definitely someone who has only been kept from the truth because he knew not where to find it. He is probably one of the nicest, most sincere people I have ever met, and it is so fun to teach him and see him progress.  

In English class we always give a spiritual thought in Korean at the end, and it was my turn on Thursday. After I finished, someone who was sitting next to me said he was really surprised that I have only been learning Korean for three months. He said I'm basically fluent. It was really nice to hear, but it's not true at all. I feel like I barely know anything, and when I gave the thought, I made a ton of mistakes, so I was really surprised that he told me that. Must just be the Spirit. :)

Elder Suter and I only pass the Sacrament, they have other people to bless it. I've only played piano in Sacrament Meeting that one time, just because the person who normally does wasn't there. But yesterday I got to lead the music, and then afterward people were asking me if I am going to major in music because they think I'm so good at it. I feel like people in Korea are impressed really easily.

I go on exchanges almost every week. Elder Suter is the district leader, so he is supposed to go on an exchange with each companionship once a transfer. So that means I get to as well :)

That is so weird that both missionaries who came over [for dinner] have about the same experience as me. Yeah, there are a ton of Korean missionaries in the MTC, there was between 70 and 90 while I was there. I'm not sure if that's increasing or if it's just normal, I have no idea what it has been in the past. I do know that my group who just arrived in Korea is the biggest group that has come while Elder Suter has been here. So maybe.

No, the language isn't getting any easier. Probably harder, if anything. There's just so much that I don't know, so much I still have to learn. It's really frustrating. That's OK though, I just have to learn a little bit at a time.


I love you!

Elder Hines


Companion exchange with Elder Hamilton

Monday, October 13, 2014

Memorized and in Korean!

October 13, 2014

Dear Family,

I am doing pretty well. This past week was a lot more boring than the week before, so I don't have quite as much to say. I'll answer your questions first though. I haven't noticed an improvement in speaking the language yet.  But I feel like I'm starting to understand a lot more of what people say. I feel like it's especially hard to understand people in the Busan area, because many people, especially the older ones, have a really strong accent. Well, it's kind of like an accent, it's called 사투리 (saturi) (yes, I can finally send things over email in Korean because the keyboards are both English and Korean :)) and it's like a different dialect of Korean. So really different sounding, and a lot of different words that aren't used in other places. It's really annoying. But my companion just recently told me that he has noticed an improvement in my fluency, so that was really encouraging. I've actually already had two opportunities to recite the First Vision (memorized and in Korean!!) to investigators. It was pretty amazing, my MTC studies are already paying off. :)  

One of the opportunities was when I went on an exchange with one of the zone leaders, Elder Flint, and we taught a 17 year old who had never been taught by the missionaries before. We taught the Restoration, and Elder Flint invited him to be baptized. He accepted without even hesitating. It was really amazing to see his faith and his desire to know the truth for himself.

My interview with President Barrow went really well, I really like him. Yes, he came to 통영 (Tongyeong). It was kind of awkward at first because I didn't know whether to pray in Korean or English. I was thinking English because he is pretty rusty in Korean from not using it since his mission, but I was thinking Korean because you are supposed to use it as much as possible. So I did Korean, but then he gave the closing prayer in English . . . whatever.

We don't sticker-board very often, maybe once a week at the most. We usually have a lot of other stuff going on. It's weird because it always seems like we have a ton of extra time when we're planning the day, and then lots of things come up during the day and we can't even do what we originally planned. Oh well, I guess that's just life, huh? :)

I watched the priesthood session; I watched all of conference over the weekend.  It was really good, I especially liked President Uchtdorf's talk, well, both of his talks actually, since he spoke in Priesthood as well. Yeah, the MTC choir was pretty good, I saw a ton of people who will be going to Korea. They were talking about "tryouts" a little before I left. Basically they were just going to give out a survey to anyone who wanted to do it, and then they would take the people who were the most experienced with choir.

I'm acclimating a little bit [to the food], I'm starting to like kimchi a little bit more, I can tolerate most spiciness, and I don't get grossed out too often.  So that's an improvement.  Earlier today, we went to the 시장 (it's like an open-air market) and we passed by a bunch of pig heads sitting out in a pile. It was really disgusting, but I stayed conscious. In fact, I didn't even get light-headed or anything, so I was pretty proud of myself. :)

Oh, and I think there might actually be a species of Bigfoot here in Korea. I haven't seen one, but I've seen signs of its presence. It smells like old kimchi, and lives in the foothills around rice fields. If I get a picture, I'll send it to you. Until then, my eyes will be peeled.

So we went to the bishop's house for lunch last week. It was really cool, because it was this old shack in the middle of nowhere, right next to the ocean. The only other signs of human life around it were a convenience store, some docks, and a few other houses.  His house was really cramped; it reminded me of the forts I always made with Colton out of tables and blankets.  He has a ton of electronics all over the place; apparently he finds broken things and refurbishes them.  The bishop was really nice, and he fed us really well.  It was this spicy (no surprise there) chicken and rice, with lots of Asian pear, and a really good fruit drink that his wife made.

I have one other experience I want to share. When I was coming back from the exchange with Elder Flint, Elder Suter and I were getting on the bus.  It was really crowded, so we had to sit separately. I sat by an older woman, and it was really awkward at first because I had no idea what to say. After a while, she asked if I was a missionary, and so I told her a little bit about our church. She said she is Christian, and that she plays piano for her church. I gave her a pamphlet about The Gospel of Jesus Christ, with our phone number on it. It was really cool, because that was the first time I have done anything like that without Elder Suter's help. It was really awkward, of course, because I'm terrible at Korean, and she knew almost no English. But everything worked out in the end.

I guess this email ended up being a little longer than I was thinking, you probably won't complain though, right :)

Love,
Elder Hines

Monday, October 6, 2014

Burnt Taste Buds

October 6, 2014

Dear Family,

I like my companion a lot; he is really funny and helps me a lot with Korean, so that is really nice. He likes basketball. I'm not sure what else you want to know about him. We usually speak English to each other; I don't know enough Korean to say much at all. I found out here that the Korean they teach you in the MTC is super simplified so you don't freak out. Yeah, it’s way more complicated when native Koreans use it. But what else do you expect, right? 

I really like President Barrow, he is really nice. I actually have an interview with him this week, so that will be cool. I barely remember much of the mission home; it just seems like a blur of a ton of new things, so I can't tell you what I thought of it. 

Octopus didn't really have much flavor, just really chewy. It's kind of like tofu, just tastes like whatever it's in. Everything here is so spicy, my nose is always running, and I'm always sweating from it. That probably sounds weird, but Korean food is so spicy that you sweat when you eat it. I think I'm going to come back and not be able to taste American food because my taste buds will be burnt off. We usually make our own food, but eat out a couple times a week. I'm really happy that I got a companion who is smart with money. He likes to keep a pretty big reserve fund, so we're pretty good at not spending too much. 

We've actually had two dinner appointments this past week, and we have another one tomorrow with the bishop. The first one was at a restaurant where they cooked the food in front of us in the middle of the table. It was like a stove built into the table. And then there was this soup that was like chilled noodles that were really elastic. It was so disgusting I almost threw up. The guy who took us out just laughed at me, it was pretty awkward, but I think I'm starting to get pretty desensitized to awkwardness and people laughing at me because I don't know what I'm doing. The other appointment was at a member's house, and it was really good, but we had just barely eaten lunch because we weren't expecting him to feed us, so it was difficult to eat and pretend to enjoy it. 

No, there isn't a curtain [in our bathroom], how it looks in the picture is exactly how it is. It's just an open shower with a drain under the sink. Pretty fun :) I don't know if you can tell in the picture, but we each have a mattress, they are just stacked on top of each other during the day. It's pretty cramped, for a table all we have is a little one that folds up and is about a foot off the ground. But that is normal for Korea, we just sit on the floor to eat. Those pictures show just about all of the apartment, so it's pretty small. But it is sufficient for our needs :)  

We won't watch conference until next week, and we’ll watch it in English at the church.  

I've had a pretty fun week, I went on an exchange with another missionary. He came here to Tongyeong. His name is Elder Shaw; he was a lot of fun. We walked around a lot and visited some of the members. 

Tongyeong is all right on the coast, so there are a lot of street vendors selling seafood stuff. There is a ton of this fish jerky stuff. It's just like they took a fish, cut it in half, and laid it in the sun to dry. There are flies all over it and it looks and smells disgusting. It looks like a carp someone caught and left on the bank, and has been sitting there for a week. I don't understand how anyone would find that appetizing. Hopefully I never have to eat it. 

The food here is doing weird things to my stomach; I think it's worse than the MTC. It's just a weird feeling, hard to describe. Probably all of the fermented food. We ate at McDonald's here though, it was pretty amazing actually. Way better quality than in the US, and a little cheaper too. And it was a really nice break from Korean food. It's funny because most of the missionaries here that I have talked to didn't like McDonald's in the US, but here they love it. So either it's way better here, or Americans just start getting desperate for American food. Maybe a combination of both. 

Anyway, most of the recipes in my recipe book won't work here in Korea, either some of the ingredients are too expensive, or just too hard to get. So my companion has shown me how to make some Korean foods, and also the Korean way to make rice. It's really easy, and I can actually remember it :)

So we went most of last week without teaching any lessons. But on Saturday, we went to play basketball with some potential investigators. The one person who was interested had his friends there, so when we tried to tell him about our message, no one took it very seriously. We went back to our apartment pretty discouraged. When we were almost there, a kid stopped us on his bike. He was a Korean, about 16 years old, but spoke English really well. He was really interested to meet us because he lived most of his life in Malaysia, and only moved back to Korea about a month ago. He said he feels like a foreigner because he isn't very good at Korean. He was really happy to meet other foreigners who spoke the language he was most comfortable with. He also said that he just wanders around from church to church, so we invited him to come with us the next day. He came, and I think he liked it. So that was a really cool experience.  

The other cool experience happened last night. We were doing this thing called sticker boarding, where we have a board with questions on it that the Book of Mormon answers and we ask people to put a sticker next to a question that they have had before. Then we tell them that we have a book that has the answer, and offer it to them. The area we were doing this at is by some "turtle ships." It's like a tourist area by the docks, with models of these ships that were invented by some Koreans to fend off the Japanese. One of the pictures I sent you was a painting of one, the really cool one that looks like it's coming out of the wall. But anyway, there are always a bunch of old drunk guys gambling around this area, it's pretty funny to watch. One of them saw us and came up to us. He read the questions on the board and started yelling at my companion.  He was slurring everything really bad, so I didn't understand much at all, but my companion told me what he said afterward. So when he first came up, he had the intention to fight us. He went off about how we were completely wrong, that there is no way we can know if there is life after death since we haven't died, and that since Jesus is a Jew, he isn't relevant to the Korean people. Elder Suter was going to try to explain it to him, but he could tell that wasn't going to work. Eventually this guy started to cool down. He gradually changed his demeanor, and then said that he was sorry for what he said, and that he should have listened to our message before he judged us. Then he started talking about his kids, and that they go to church, but he doesn't really believe in that. He actually started crying a little bit, and then he just walked off before we could give him anything, which was too bad. I feel really bad for him, he is obviously so lost in his life, and we weren't able to help him. But the overall experience was really interesting. I know that Heavenly Father is protecting us, and that He softened this man's heart. Maybe (if he actually remembers any of it) he will be prepared to receive the gospel in the future.

Anyway, that's my week. I love you so much!

Elder Hines

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

First Week in Korea

September 28, 2014

I was on an aisle seat for the long flight so I didn't see outside very much, but I sent a picture of the flight route. We actually went over Alaska and Russia, so that was kind of weird. It was pretty boring, I just slept for most of it. 

The language stinks, almost as much as the food. People talk way too fast, and I can never think of anything fast enough to reply if I could even understand them. I've eaten some crazy stuff, I've already tried octopus, and I'm not really sure what most of the other stuff is. It's just usually some kind of vegetable/noodle/rice/sometimes meat and it's all super spicy. 

It's Busan or Pusan, in Korean you say it with an in between a 'b' and a 'p' sound, so it's written both ways. Busan is huge compared to anywhere in Utah, so many people, all packed into a little area. Look on google maps, there are plenty of wooded mountains (more like hills), since it rains so much there are a ton of trees anywhere that there aren't houses. Which isn't very much, but it's there. 

Yes, I am in the Changwon stake. My ward is Tongyeong, we have an average of 20 to 30 members who come each week. My companion is Elder Suter. [He] has been out for 18 months, so he does almost all of the talking. I usually feel pretty useless, but the bishop was really excited to hear that I play piano, so I'll probably get to do that in sacrament meeting quite a bit. Sunday was pretty fun, my companion and I passed the sacrament, and then gave a short introduction talk. Everyone was really impressed with my Korean, but whenever they complimented me on it I didn't understand, so that was pretty embarrassing. 

I've taught one lesson, and that was the first day I was here. It was to a 17 year old boy who wants to be baptized but his parents won't let him. 

I've been super tired during the day from jetlag, hopefully it won't take me too long to get over it. 

I haven't really noticed any of the trees changing colors, it's still pretty hot here though, 80s maybe. 

We exercise every day except for Sunday, and we get a ton of walking in, Tongyeong is a pretty big area. It's considered "countryside" for Korea, but you'll see some pics, it's bigger than any city in Utah.

For P day today we went to a restaurant for lunch, I had Kimbop, it's like sushi but no raw fish. One was vegetables and the other one was beef. Then we went to this "wall painting village," and got some pretty sweet pictures there. At the top of the hill that this village was built on was a Buddhist temple with some people performing for money, it was pretty cool. Korean rock concert!  

It's been pretty fun here, we teach an English class on Thursday and Saturday nights, and that is super fun. It's the only time that I don't feel stupid around the Koreans, so that is pretty nice :) It is really hard to find anyone in this area, there hasn't been a baptism for a year and a half, and the elders who were here before us apparently didn't work very hard, so it gave a bad impression to the members. But don't worry, my companion and I are here to change that :)

Other than that, not much has been going on. If you're still awake, any questions?

Love you!
Chris

Flight path to South Korea

Warm welcome at the airport

Elder Hines with President & Sister Barrow

Elder Suter and Elder Hines

Scenes from the bus ride from the mission home to Tonyeong




Home Sweet Home




Elders Hines, Trentman, Hamilton (?) and Suter

Kimbop