Cherry Blossom Festival

April 5, 2015

No, I didn't get to go to the baptism, I decided it wasn't worth paying for a bus to get there . . .  Yeah, I'm kidding, they didn't have it this week. It's kind of a weird situation, apparently LYH didn't talk to the missionaries about it at all, he just went straight to the bishop and said he wants to get baptized. And since the bishop there doesn't have very much experience with being a bishop, he was just like, "sure, let's do it next week”. So the missionaries found out, and he hasn't been taught all the lessons yet, so they need an extra week to finish teaching him. The baptism will most likely be next Sunday, between general conference sessions or something. I think conference is just delayed a week because of the language, but I'm not really sure. I will watch it in English, just at the same time as the rest of the ward.

I help with dinner sometimes, but Koreans are "I can do it myself" kind of people, and don't usually like very much help. But honestly, we don't make dinner too often, we either eat at a member's house or eat out, or order food to our house. This area doesn't have too many expenses, so we have more money available than normal.

Things are really good with my companion, he's really funny, and a really hard worker. The language has been feeling a lot easier the past month or so. When I speak Korean with my companion, lots of the time I can just say things without having to think about it very much. It's so nice, it's finally starting to feel more comfortable.​

Something happened this week that was pretty fun. One of the less-active members (we teach his kids English every week) took us to the neighboring town of Jinhae to see the Cherry Blossom Festival. It was really cool, the trees covered in these pink flowers, and they're all over the place, I'll send you some pictures. He played some pretty fun Korean songs in the car for us. You should look them up, the names of some of them are "Buster Buster" and "Bom Bom Bom." He also took us to an island that had a Korean Navy Museum.

Something else that is fun is Elder Powell, one of the other missionaries in my house, has been teaching me to play guitar the past couple weeks.  Right now I'm working on learning "Puff, the Magic Dragon" :)  

It's been cold and rainy all week. I can't believe how much it rains here, I didn't think it was possible for so much water to come out of the sky.

Have a great week, I love you!

Elder Hines