Elder Christopher Hines: Ward Conference

December 7, 2014

So I'm not sure if it was snowing this morning in the city of Tongyeong, but it was on a mountain next to it. We left at 5:00 this morning to get to the top before the sunrise, I'll send you some pictures. It was basically a blizzard for a lot of the time we were up there, it was the most snow Elder Suter has seen in Korea before. It was really fun, but I'm pretty tired now.

For lunch today we went to a meat buffet. Meat buffets are really cool because they have a ton of meat set out like a normal buffet, then you go and get what you want. In the middle of the table is a grill and you just cook the meat yourself. They are actually pretty popular in Korea, which is funny because Koreans always think Americans eat a ton of meat, but there are no meat buffets in the US. Koreans stereotypes of Americans are pretty funny. We were eating at a place called Mom's Touch for lunch (chicken sandwiches) and a guy sitting next to us leaned over and asked, "Is that small for an American burger?" It was about the same size, but made me really self-conscious of how much I was eating for the rest of the meal.

I ate a whole octopus for the first time at the meat buffet, when I had it before it was just the legs. It wasn't too bad as far as flavor goes, just really chewy and hard to eat.

Ward conference was really good, we had almost double our usual church attendance, there were 44 people there! The musical number was pretty good. The people singing were pretty off-tune, but I thought the piano part sounded okay :) It was nice to finally be appreciated in this ward, since almost no one else has musical knowledge.

Have you seen the "He is the Gift" video yet? If not, you should watch it, it's pretty amazing.

There are two senior couples in this mission, one in the office, and one at the military base in Daegu. There are three districts in my zone, and six zones in the mission. There used to be five, but Jeju was just made it's own zone last transfer (Jeju is the island south of Korea). We have a gospel art book in our apartment, but we haven't used it for teaching before.

Have a great week, I love you!

Elder Hines