Sunday, October 25, 2015

Staying Busy

October 25, 2015

Dear Family,

Things are going well here, we had another super busy week...I guess that's just life in Daeshin Branch :)  I went on exchange with the zone leaders, and I went to Haeundae.  It was really fun actually, I met a ton of really interesting people. One of them was a member named BY, he's like 80 or 90 and living in a rest home right now. He has Alzheimer's, but is still really good at English. It's so impressive, I've never met someone so old like that who can speak English. Anyway, he is kind of famous in Korea, he was one of the first leaders of the church in Korea. When the church was brand new here in the 60's, there was one branch for all of Busan area, and the meeting house was the Daeshin church. President Hinckley was here overseeing the church, and called Brother B out of a crowd and asked him to be baptized and become President of the Busan Branch, all at once, and he accepted. So that is Brother B's conversion story, pretty cool, huh?

Besides that, we've been spending most of our time preparing for two big activities, one in Goejeong, and the other in Sujeong, for Halloween. We were originally going to just help with the one in Goejeong, but the Sujeong elders needed more help, so we've been helping them too. At the Goejeong activity they are going to show a video, the missionaries will do a skit, and stuff like that, it's more of a show than an activity I guess. The one in Sujeong is going to be way more fun though, they are going to do Halloween games and have a haunted house in the upstairs of the church. The missionaries are basically running the whole thing there, so that's why they need lots of people.

Do you remember KH, the Bible-basher? And the lady that he brought the first time to translator? When we met her, we weren't able to get her phone number or give her ours, so we were really disappointed because she seemed really prepared. But just a couple days ago, I think it was Friday, we were walking down the street, and she was waiting at a bus stop. I didn't recognize her at first, but she stopped us, and we were able to get her phone number. She said she lost the Book of Mormon we gave her, so I gave her a new one. She wanted a new "Joseph Smith the Prophet" pamphlet, which we didn't have with us at the time, but she told us to drop it by her husband's barber shop, which is fairly close to the church. It was an amazing miracle, and just shows how this is God's work, and He is in control of what is going on. He won't let little things get in the way of prepared people hearing about His gospel. And a funny side note, I need a haircut super bad, and have been trying to find a good place. Isn't that amazing how that worked out?

And to answer your other question, the song we are singing for choir is called "우리의작은섬," "Our Small Island." It's about an island in between Korea and Japan called Dokdo. It's basically the Jerusalem of the Orient, Korea and Japan have been fighting over who owns it for a long time. But the song is supposed to be a patriotic song or something. The branches don't usually combine for meetings other than Stake Conference. The choir isn't even really a combined branch choir, it's mostly Goejeong members, and like half of the choir is missionaries.

Love,
Elder Hines

Monday, October 19, 2015

American Koreans

October 18, 2015

The choir isn't Daeshin choir, it's like four different branches combined. So I don't have to play piano for that, but I do play piano each week in Sacrament meeting. 

Honestly, the visit to Nampo and Busan tower was kind of boring. It was fun, but just too expensive to be worth doing anything. It was five bucks just to go up the tower...yeah right  I can see the exact same view just by hiking up the mountain a little ways, which I do anyways because the houses and roads go up the side of the mountain. I'll send you some pictures though :)

I don't have any new stories about KHC . . . I think he got tired of trying to tell us that we are wrong, because he suddenly stopped contacting us after that last appointment a couple weeks ago.

Sorry, I haven't written a letter yet, no time, but if I have time, I will write one for sure :)

Yesterday in Sacrament meeting, we had 17 people in attendance, like double what it normally is. I don't know if I told you, but there was an inactive member of the branch who passed away a couple weeks ago, and so her son and his family came from Provo to visit, and came to Sacrament yesterday. It was really weird talking to Koreans who talk and act like Americans, it kind of threw me off :)  

I don't have anything that I need, but I really enjoyed that popcorn you sent :) I do have one request though, hold off on the ties. I have way too many, and you can buy them here for like five bucks anyway :) thank you!

Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Hines

Elders Hines & Lee; Sisters Yang & Nielsen

Busan Tower



Tuesday, October 13, 2015

General Conference

October 11, 2015

​This week we have been really busy, and have had almost no free time. Just since the missionaries do everything here, we've been trying to get things ready for people to watch General Conference at the church, cleaning the church, and then Daeshin Grandma had a ton of errands for us to. But anyway, general conference was really good, but we haven't watched all of it yet. Yesterday we had to go to choir practice in the afternoon, so tonight we are going to watch the Sunday afternoon session. I don't understand why we had choir practice during general conference...for some reason a lot of the members in Korea don't seem to think that it's very important. No one came to the church on Saturday to watch it, and on Sunday a lot of people left after the morning session.
 
Sorry, I'm just really not in the mood for typing a long email today, but I'll tell you one story from this week. It's with Kim Hyeon-Cheol, the guy who is trying to convert us. My new companion thought it was really entertaining. He like took us out to eat, shared his conversion story with us, and bore his testimony even. I feel like an investigator when we meet him. Then we went to his church with him, where he showed us episode two of seven preacher videos that are two hours each. I tried asking if it was okay if we shared something about are beliefs since we haven't been able to yet, and they just said that we can after we watch the videos. So basically they have no interest. After the video ended, we kind of got into a Bible bash with them. They think that the Garden of Eden and heaven are the same place, that Adam and Eve were happy in the garden, and because they partook of the fruit, we can't be happy. And then the infamous scripture at the very end of Revelations that says if anyone adds to this book, God will curse them.  Nothing they said made any sense, but they wouldn't listen to anything we said. There is a scripture in Deuteronomy that says the exact same, so if that means what they say it means, then all of the NT is a lie. But they just denied everything we told them. There's no way we can teach them anything in that kind of environment. My companion and I talked about it, and we're going to try and meet one or two more times and see what happens, but we will probably be avoiding them in the future.

The last two weeks for p day we had the fitness day and transfer meeting, so we couldn't do anything. This week we are going to go to Nampo and Busan Tower with the district.

Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Hines

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Fruit or Vegetable?

October 5, 2015

Dear Family,

Everything is going really well here. We just started a new transfer. My old companion, Elder Seo, left and went to Haeundae, Busan, and is my zone leader now. So that is kind of fun. My new companion is Lee Hak-gon, he is from Seoul, and the area he just came from is Tongyeong, my training area. So that is really fun too, we've already talked about it a lot, especially how awesome LYH is :)

I heard about General Conference news like the morning of. President Barrow send out a text announcing who the new apostles are. Something interesting that he told us is that we should not only pray for the new apostles being called, but also for their families. The reason being is that when a member of your family gets called to be a prophet, it can be really hard because they are just normal people to you and you know all of their weaknesses. So sustaining them can be difficult. I've never really thought about that before, so that was really interesting.

Thanks for the conference review, I can't wait to watch it. It feels so nerdy, but as a missionary, GC is one of the most exciting things ever. It makes me wonder if I will feel the same way when I get home :)

Oh, and thanks for telling me the Chinese animal thing. Don't worry about being a pig, at least in Korean (maybe in China too) pigs are good luck. Sometimes Koreans say "Dream of pigs," as a way of saying goodnight. And if you have a dream about pigs it means that something good is going to happen to you soon. As far as dad being a goat, I think he's just out of luck, I don't think there's any upside to that... :)

We had a 'Potluck Party' for English class on Saturday for Elder Seo and Sister Kim since they were both leaving. We played jeopardy together, and one of the questions was "Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?" just as a fairly easy question under the science column. It wasn't quite as easy as we expected. Koreans are thoroughly convinced that tomatoes are vegetables. You know that it's a fruit, right? Or is it just me? Anyway, the only Korean who agreed with me was my companion. One of the people there tried to argue with me, and when I asked him how you tell the difference between a fruit and a vegetable, he said that fruit grow on trees. I asked him what about grapes and watermelon, as well as tons of others. He kind of hesitated, and then said that the real way you can tell is how you eat it. Fruit you just eat plain, but you use vegetables as an ingredient with other foods. But the funny thing is that Koreans eat tomatoes plain way more often than Americans do. Not to mention, if that were true, that means that humans can change the nature of fruits and vegetables, just by how we use them. So just start putting strawberries in your lasagna, and it will become a vegetable. Cool, huh? I never would have guessed.

The best part of being a missionary is being able to devote all my time and energy to one thing, and not have to worry about anything else. And also knowing that the one thing that is your focus is the best thing you could be doing.

Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Hines


**Tomatoes are a fruit. Fruits contain the seed of the plant, which means cucumbers, bell peppers and pumpkins are also fruit.**