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
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