Monday, January 18, 2016

I Hope They Call Me on a Mission

January 17, 2016

​Dear Family,

Normally, we just work individually as companionships, but sometimes we'll do stuff together.  We have an area meeting each week to plan things that we do together. 

We haven't been able to meet any of the foreigners we met the other day, but speaking of foreigners, yesterday some Chinese people stopped by the church after our meeting was over.  They didn't know English or Korean, so we couldn't communicate with them, but one of the young women called a friend she has who knows Chinese, so we were able to translate over the phone that way.  They came to Korea a few weeks ago, and are looking for a church to go to.  We got their contact information, so now we just have to find someone who speaks Chinese :)

I've never seen a bird like that before.  My guess is that it is from a different part of the world that someone smuggled there, got lost in a storm and ended up in Utah, or it's some kind of mutant.  My bet is on the latter.  If you asked Jonah he would know, no doubt about it.

Sounds like everyone is pretty busy.  That sounds weird to think of shoveling snow, I think I forgot what snow looks like until I saw that picture you sent.

We don't have a regular service project that we do in Gimhae, like we usually have in other areas.  I heard that the missionaries used to work at a rest home, like cleaning or something, but because of the MERS epidemic last summer (did you ever hear about that?  I think it was only big news in Korea) they had to stop.  So we're actually in the process of finding a service project right now, but haven't had much luck so far.  Our mission leader suggested we go to old apartments and ask if we can repaint the walls for them...we'll see what happens.

As far as I know, missionary-run English classes are always at the church.  In other areas we normally have all the students in one class, but since we have three teams here we divide into a beginning and intermediate class, and the sisters teach a kids class.  Elder Yoon and I teach the basic class.

Lately it's been a struggle to figure out what to eat.  None of us, including Elder Yoon, know how to make very many different Korean foods, and if you want to eat American food it's kind of expensive.  So we've been living off of four or five different meals for the past transfer and a half--bokkeumbap (the fried rice stuff that's really easy to make), dongaseu (Japanese, they call it a "pork cutlet" but it's just like a patty of ground pork that we make sandwiches out of), curry, or ramyun (Korean Ramen).  And then cereal for breakfast usually, which is really expensive in Korea btw.  "Cheap cereal" is like 5 bucks here for a normal box size, or you can get a big bag for 12.  Koreans normally eat soups for breakfast, which none of us know how to make, or want to eat, so we live off cereal.  Sorry, I probably shouldn't have told you what we eat, now you're probably going to worry about our health.  You don't need to worry, I think that missionaries have a special blessing that they can eat whatever they want and it doesn't affect them very much :)

Yesterday after church, we did a proselyting activity with the ward to advertise our English class.  We invited everyone, and about 20 people came, mostly young men (which is a lot more than I expected).  We had some boards that said "free English" and passed out fliers to people who walked by.  It was really fun to see all of the YM helping us and trying to talk to everyone who passed.  The weird thing was seeing how much the YM and primary kids look up to the missionaries and watch every little thing they do.  I remember being in their place, and I never imagined what it would be like to be where I am now, as a missionary.  And now that I am a missionary, it's so weird to see them and know exactly what that feels like.  But anyway, we had a really fun time :)

Today for p day we are back in Nampo (if you remember, that's in Daeshin area where all the shopping places are) because a member that Elder Aurich knows keeps bugging us to come visit her, so we decided to just hang out in Nampo while we're at it.  It's so exciting to show my old area to Elder Yoon, it's like I'm a dad or something...weird.

Anyway, that was the gist of my week.  Thank you for all your support!

Love,
Elder Hines

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