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.**