Monday, August 3, 2015

Bo-shin-tang

August 2, 2015

Normally each transfer has a theme to it, like Christ-like attributes, commitments, the Book of Mormon, etc. So then all the district and zone meetings are focused around the transfer theme. This transfer we are learning a ton about the Book of Mormon. I actually really like reading it fast like this, because the full story connects in your mind better. I'm in Alma right now, and it's felt like I'm reading a movie script or something lately, it's so entertaining :) I've never heard of 'My Plan' before.

We met with Z again last week, and asked him about the Book of Mormon. He just read the introduction, but he seemed to find it pretty interesting. Yesterday we got a pretty good discussion about religion going. I don't know if I told you this, but the Islam seems a lot closer to our religion than any other Christian religion does. It's just hard to get him to realize that he's basically living our religion already. He gets too hung up on the idea of Christ being the Son of God, since he believes that there is only one God.

We met with KH, and he took us out to eat Japanese food. He left last week on a vacation to Osaka, Japan, so he wanted us to try his favorite Japanese food. It's called Okonamiyaki (or something like that, I'm not sure how to spell it). It was super good, it's like a bunch of fried vegetables and seafood with a really good Japanese sauce on it.

We've been low on people to teach lately, but in the last couple days we found a few potentials, so hopefully they work out. We have an appointment to meet a new investigator tomorrow who wants to learn English. As far as T goes, we weren't able to meet him for the past two weeks. He said that he believes that you need a spiritual witness to know that it is true, but he just wants factual evidence as well. If he would just read it, I'm sure he would think it was true, but he's just too lazy to read it, so there's not much else we can do.

We haven't done much for P day lately. Last week we just played ping-pong and stuff with the Suseong elders. I don't know if I told you this, but Elder Porcaro transferred to Suseong, which is the other area in my district, and he is the district leader. It's pretty fun. This is the third time he has been in my district, not counting the MTC. Weird, huh? It's pretty rare to be in the same district as someone more than once. Today we went to Costco, and that took up a good chunk of the day since it's like an hour away. Then we're going to get haircuts and then p day will probably be over. The next two p days are planned to be a zone p day and a district p day, so that means we'll probably just hang out and play games or something. 

Want to hear the best part of this week? It had to do with food, bet you couldn't have guessed. Yesterday, Sister KY (Elder J's mom) invited us over for dinner to eat "bo-shin-tang," which is dog soup. It was pretty exciting, I've always wanted to eat dog. And it tasted pretty good, Elder Mitchell and I both thought that it tasted almost exactly like pot roast. So pretty decent, I would say it's above average for Korean food. And they used just about the whole dog--meat, skin, stomach, intestines, just about every part of the dog was in the soup. Koreans definitely don't discriminate when it comes to food. The sister missionaries were invited too, but they wussed out on us. One of them is even Korean, and she still won't eat it. It seems like Koreans are about half and half on thinking it's okay to eat dog meat. One of the daughters didn't want to eat it, but the other daughter loved it  Quote of the day: "'Mommy, can I have some more dog meat?' 'Of course, eat as much as you want.'"  Never thought I would hear someone say that, it was pretty hard not to laugh :) And also, during dinner they told Elder Mitchell and I all about the history of eating dog in Korean, it was pretty interesting. 

Biggest challenge of the week was probably eating the piece of dog stomach without showing any negative reaction. Just kidding, it wasn't that bad. The real challenge has been not dying in the heat. It's been upper 90s, and like 100% humidity. It's like I'm walking through a sauna when I walk outside. It only takes two minutes of being outside before I'm swimming in sweat. Pretty gross.  

My biggest concern is finding people to teach, pretty much everyone ignores us. But I think it's going to start getting better this week.  

I love the members of this area. There are a bunch of members within a year or two of my age, and they are super friendly. And all the other members are really nice too, they like the missionaries a lot. This ward just feels like a big family.

Koreans value family a lot, but it's just like anywhere else in the world. People are starting to care more about themselves and less about family, so younger generations don't value family as much as the older people do.

There isn't any one thing that is hard to teach people about, but the most common obstacle for Koreans is pride. One of the most common things that people say when asked about God is "I'm the God of myself." If they're not humble, there's no way that we can teach them anything.

That was a super long email, hope you enjoy :) Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines

Elders Hines & Mitchell with soon to be Elder Kim - Called to serve in New Jersey

Jungni Ward


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