Lots of Teaching Going On

November 3, 2014

The church building is decent size; I guess it would be pretty small for American standards. It's two stories, but still pretty small. I bet you could find it on google maps. Have you tried looking at Tongyeong on google maps before? It's in Tongyeong Mujundong if that helps at all, that's like the city district or something like that.

I'm glad my suffering made a good story for you to tell. To answer her question, the first time it was hot enough it cooked the eggs ever so slightly, but the second time it had already cooled off a little, so it was completely raw. Delicious. I guess it was a blessing though, now whenever I come across undercooked eggs in normal food, it's not that big of a deal because I know it could be much worse.

Do you really think it looks beautiful? [Tongyeong] When I first got here, I thought it was so polluted and crowded with people that it was kind of ugly. But after going back to Busan for the 5K and then transfer meeting yesterday and seeing how dirty and crowded it is there, it makes me really appreciate Tongyeong.

So we started teaching a man this week; his whole family is Christian, but he isn't. He said it's because when he was in the Vietnam War, he saw so many people die who were Christian, so God must either not care about them or not exist. Anyway, this was a really scary experience for me because it was the first time teaching that I felt like what I said would actually have an impact, whether good or bad. In all the lessons I had taught before this, they were always really understanding and receptive, so if I messed up it wasn't a big deal. But he ended up coming to church this week, so it seems to be going pretty well.

We started teaching another man, maybe in his 50s or 60s. He is really cool; he was meeting with the missionaries a long time ago, but then stopped for reasons unknown. So he knows a lot about the Book of Mormon. He showed up at English class one day and told us he wants to study the Book of Mormon with us. Well, I guess . . . if you really want to . . . :) The first time we taught him, he kept talking about how it is so cool that we are missionaries. He says that we are "real" missionaries, like Paul and Matthew.

A member took us out to eat last week, and we had something called 삼계탕 (samkyetang). It was really good, it's a soup, and they bring it out in stone bowls so the liquid in it is still boiling. Each person's bowl has a whole chicken in it (a small one, of course) with vegetables. You take the chicken out and pull the meat off and put it back in the soup, and then eat it. It was super delicious, but the weird thing about it was that it had huge pieces of ginger and garlic in it.

We are continuing to teach EYH, and he is just as amazing as ever. Last night when we were teaching him, he kept telling us how he feels like he is not alone. He says he feels like Elder Suter and I are like brothers to him, and he really likes the bishop too. He said that he knows he always has the Holy Ghost to rely on. We started talking to him about baptism, and before we even taught him anything, he said he doesn't want to because then if he goes and drinks alcohol again, he would feel really bad like he was breaking a promise. So he already understood baptism really well. We explained that we don't want him to get baptized before he feels ready, and that we will help him prepare. He always says that he must abide by the Book of Mormon, because if he follows what it says, he can "be successful and make lots of money." He says that it is his dream to become rich and then help all the poor and sick people. The way he puts it is that if he has money and is in a high position, he will be able to "block the cruel people" from harming the "poor and sick people." He's such an amazing person, meeting with him is always my favorite part of the week.

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines