Independence Day

August 17, 2015

Z actually came to church yesterday, it was pretty surprising. Earlier last week, Z called us and asked if he could meet with one of our church leaders to discuss a personal problem. So we had him meet with our old bishop, since he can speak English decently. So through this, they have become friends, and our old bishop invited him to church, so he came. It's amazing to see the difference between the effect of missionaries versus normal members on other people. I've definitely come to see the importance of member missionary work on my mission. There's only so much the missionaries can do.

This week was Korea's Independence Day, and there were a bunch of festivals in the downtown area of Daegu. Elder Mitchell and I happened to be riding the subway a little before one of these festivals since we didn't know that it was going on. I don't think I've ever seen so many people in my life. The subway was packed to the rafters, we were squeezed cheek to cheek, and there was an endless line going up the escalator of people waiting to get on. It was so crowded you could barely breathe.

Have I told you about B yet? The guy who works at the coffee shop? Well we met him again this week, gave him a Restoration pamphlet, and explained a little bit about it. He told us that he wants us to come by often, and that as soon as he has time he wants to come to church. He has a lot of interest, so it's really exciting. People like this don't come around very often :)

That's about it. This week is the last week of the transfer, and since I've been in the same area for three transfers, I will probably leave. Hopefully it's a good area and companion :)

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines

Another Week in the Books

August 9, 2015

Dear Family,

Actually, I feel less adventurous now than when I first came to Korea. When I first came, I was basically willing to try any food, but now that I've tried a lot of Korean food, I don't really branch out as much. But I had to try dog meat, because you can't live in Asia and not eat it, right? :) So I don't think Koreans totally look down on eating dog meat, but a lot of people think that it's weird. I asked Sister Park about it, and it's mostly just older people who eat it because they think that it's healthy. A long time ago people ate it when there was nothing else to eat, but now that part of their culture is starting to die off in the younger generation. No, they don't just kill stray dogs :) They actually have dog markets where they raise and sell them. They're not very common, but I think there are a couple in Busan. Lots of Koreans have dogs for pets, but I haven't seen too many Koreans with cats for pets. Mostly just stray cats.

Sister Park's companion is pretty fun, but they never do anything with us. They are always studying since Sister Cooper is a trainee and thinks she needs to be studying all the time. Elder Mitchell and I and the two sisters are all assigned to Jungni Ward, and that's it. Normally Elders only have one ward to worry about, but it's fairly common for Sisters to be assigned to two wards or branches.

The weather here has actually been pretty weird. In Jungni area, it hasn't rained for over a month now, but in Suseong (which is the next area over and part of the same city) there was a major downpour. My companion was on exchanges there at the time, and said it felt like he was just walking through a swimming pool because there was so much water coming down. Luckily our apartment has AC, we would literally die if there wasn't. It's interesting, because for some reason when you use the AC and the temperature of the room goes down, the humidity almost completely goes away. Maybe it's just not noticeable when it's cool. Yeah, Koreans don't use deodorant, and deodorant is basically impossible to find here. But Koreans actually have a reason for not using it. For some reason, they just don't have body odor. It's really weird, because I haven't really smelled body odor since I was in the MTC. Koreans also don't sweat as easily, so maybe that's why they don't have body odor. They sweat when they eat though, which is kind of weird, but that's besides the point. So no bad BO smells, just kimchi and sewage :)

Not much happened this week, we weren't able to meet very many people. On Wednesday, our mission leader took us out to lunch, and after that we were planning with the sisters when another member came to the church and wanted to play ping-pong with us. So that day was shot. Thursday we had Zone Conference all day. And on Saturday we had a ward picnic all day. It was really fun, I'll send you a few pictures. We went up in the mountains and hung out by this river and just ate and talked and stuff for most of the day. We got quite a few non-members to come, so it wasn't a total waste of time :) So like half our week was taken up with other stuff, and the people who we had time to meet cancelled on us, so that was kind of depressing. We don't really do much together with our district or zone, so I don't really have anything to say about that.  Today we had a zone p-day though, we just hung out and had lunch together. Nothing much, but it was pretty fun.

I think I got off on a lot of tangents there, hopefully I answered your questions. Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines

Sushi Buffet

Daegu Zone Conference

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