Easter in Korea

March 27, 2016

Dear Family,

Happy Easter! I have yet to see Koreans do anything to celebrate Easter. Okay, I guess I've seen one thing--the YW in our ward decorated eggs (Korean eggs are brown, so they just used sharpies to write "Easter" and draw some designs on them) to give to everyone at church yesterday. But other than that, I haven't seen anything. They didn't even sing Easter songs at church yesterday.

It was another slow week, yesterday was the first week in almost three months that we didn't have an investigator at church. Everyone is just kind of dropping off the face of the Earth, or at least seems that way. We met with Brother J though, and he's doing well. Whenever we teach him, he likes spending a little bit of the time teaching us speech since he's a speech tutor. This last week he had us read the "I have a dream" speech, and then had us translate it into Korean. I'm convinced that there are some things in English that can't be translated accurately into Korean.

Gamjatang is probably the most inspired food on the Korean peninsula, more so than Korean fried chicken. You can probably find out about it on the internet, it's pork and potato soup with a few other vegetables that you wouldn't know. They use the meat from around the spine of the pig, and they cook it with the bone, and it tastes amazing.

We've been wanting to go to the Gimhae National Museum, but, just like most things interesting in Korean, it's closed on Mondays. Monday in Korea is like Sunday in the US. Thanks for the list though! We actually got a tourist map of Gimhae that has a lot of interesting things on it, so we'll have to check it out.

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines

Gimhae

Still in Gimhae

March 20, 2016

Dear Family,

You make it sound like I'm having a really hard time or something. It's just our investigators who are having a hard time, not me. It's just frustrating that they can't meet, that's all :)​

Well, I was completely expecting to get transferred, but it didn't happen. Looks like I'll be here in Gimhae at least until May, making it a total of 6 months here. It's so weird. I've heard that missionaries stay in the same area for a long time in some other missions, but for Busan, 6 months is kind of a lot. Not unheard of, but definitely not very common. My companion didn't change either, so I'll be with Elder Johnstun another transfer as well.  It's pretty exciting though, I'll tell you why.

I told you about Brother J having the baptismal interview last week, right?  It was determined that he had to have an interview with President Barrow, so last Wednesday we went together to the mission home to meet with him. We were a little bit late, we got there at 6:30, and President Barrow had a meeting at 7, so we were worried it was going to get cut short, but we ended up waiting outside of President's office for over an hour and half while they did the interview. After they finished, President told us that he's really impressed with JHB's faith and testimony, and feels like he is ready to be baptized. We talked to Brother J to see when he wants to be baptized, and for some reason he wants to wait until April. Thinking I would probably transfer, I was really disappointed that I wouldn't get to be here for it, but now it looks like I will :)

Brother P is busy preparing for tests for school, so we couldn't meet him, and Brother O just dropped off the face of the earth. Not sure what's going on there.

Yesterday we tried inviting all our investigators to church, and none of them even responded, except for Brother P, apologizing because he was too busy. But in the middle of Sacrament meeting, we got a call from a man who calls himself "Mr. K" who we met on the street last week.  He said he was on his way to church, and would be there in an hour. So he showed up in the middle of Gospel Principles class, and stayed through Priesthood as well, and seemed really interested. He said that there isn't a religion that he hasn't gone to, and he really likes learning about different religions. It was really cool, but lives really far away in a completely different city, so we'll have to refer him to the missionaries there (it actually happens to be the place Elder Yoon is serving right now, cool, huh?).

There's milk here, it's just more expensive, like two bucks a liter. I guess I'm just too used to cheap Utah milk :) I haven't had Korean jerky before either, it's also really expensive. I have had hanu meat though, and it's pretty good, but definitely not as amazing as Koreans make it out to be.

There's a list of top ten things to do in Gimhae? What else is on the list? Now that I'm going to be here another transfer, I need more fun things to do for P day :)

When people call because you're in the "target demographic" what do they do? Do they try to convince you to follow them over the phone or something?

I hope you have a wonderful week!

Love,

Elder Hines

Gamjatang

Difficult Questions

March 6, 2016

Dear Family,

​

As far as rock paper scissors goes, the spirit actually doesn't help us know which one to choose or confirm it. Contrary to popular belief, the Spirit actually doesn't usually guide people through telling them what to do. Doing rock paper scissors is just to help us make a decision of which way to go, and we let Heavenly Father take care of the rest. Seems to work ok :)

PSH is doing really well. This past weekend we had stake conference, and he came with us to it. (By the way, the main speaker there was the area seventy, Elder Kim Chang-ho, or however you romanize it. He gave some really good talks about the Atonement.) After conference was over we were able to teach Brother P, and we got LGD to come with us to help teach. It was probably one of the most difficult lessons I've ever taught. We started by teaching the Restoration, but he had so many questions that it went all over the place. And the questions he was asking were really hard, things that are hard enough to explain in English, not to mention in a foreign language. For example, he asked, "If God promised in the scriptures to bless us with knowledge if we lack wisdom, why was Joseph Smith the only one to receive an answer like that when he prayed?" And there were way more questions like that which were really hard to answer. But they were are really good questions, he has a really sincere desire to learn. And the questions I was able to explain, he seemed to accept them pretty well. He was really curious about how you can pray and receive an answer from God, and I think it was a little hard for him to believe, but he said he will try, so pray for him to get an answer! :)

The hamburger restaurant wasn't very busy, only two other people when we went, but we also didn't go at a normal meal time. Koreans like to eat Chinese and Japanese food, and sometimes American food, but they usually seem to stick to Korean food. The Korean missionaries always talk about how their two weeks in the MTC was so hard because they don't have rice or kimchi to eat.

We still haven't been able to contact the guy we met after the Shinchunji members. We've called him close to a million times by now, and his phone is always either off or he doesn't answer. I had a feeling when we met him that he didn't know how to use his phone very well, and it appears that it was a correct feeling.

Elder Later has been trying to learn Arabic for the past month or two (don't ask me why, I thought Korean was more than enough language learning for one person) and has taught us a couple things in Arabic. And the other day, we were outside and some bearded guys in Muslim-looking robes walked by, and I said hi to them in Arabic, and they actually responded. Turns out there's a reason to learn Arabic :)

Today for pday we had a zone activity, going to the beach in Gwangon (which is right by Haeundae). It was super fun, we played soccer and frisbee on the beach, and it was really warm, maybe 60s or so. I'll send you some pictures.

Well, have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines