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

Downtown Foreigners

January 10, 2016

Dear Family,

Yeah, Koreans don't stay up really late for New Years, just get up early the next day. Jachigi is fun, but it just makes you feel like you should be living in a dirt-floor house and eating a handful of rice for each meal.

Not much happened this week. The other day we were proselyting in the downtown part of the city, and there were tons of foreigners. It was really weird, because most of Korea doesn't have many non-Korean people, but in this place there are almost no Koreans--I've never seen any place like it before in Korea. There were tons of people from Southeast Asia, Japan, China, Philippines, Russia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. So we didn't expect much to happen since they all speak different languages, none of which we know.  But it turns out most of them can either speak English or Korean decently, and we were able to talk to a ton of people, some of whom were pretty interested. It was really cool because Koreans tend to be pretty prideful and either ignore us or make fun of us, but all of these foreigners were really nice and would at least hear us out. We'll see what happens, but we might be able to get some investigators out of it :)

Love,

Elder Hines

New Year in Korea

January 3, 2016

Dear Family,

That guy that the member invited is doing his military service at a local air force base right now, so he doesn't have very much time. So no, we haven't been able to meet him yet, but hopefully something will work out.

It's actually kind of funny because Elder Yoon's older sister just went to San Diego this past week. What a coincidence :)

For New Year's, the ward mission leader invited us to something called "Haemaji" with his family, which is climbing a mountain to see the first sunrise of the new year. It was super fun, I'll send you some pictures. After that, we went back to the church and played a game called "Jachigi."  It's kind of like baseball, but you use sticks, and it feels more 3rd-world than baseball does. Maybe you can find it on the internet. It was kind of weird--I felt like I was a kid in the middle ages playing with sticks to entertain myself--but it was really fun :) So New Year's was really good here in Korea. How was it for you?

The other elder team found this guy who seemed really prepared on the street the other day. He said that he had been looking for a church to go to for the past three months, and his life has felt really empty. He has been going to Bible study classes, but hasn't found a church that fits with the things he's learned. He originally when to some protestant church, but had a problem with how the preacher was doing things, so stopped going. Then he met Elder Aurich and Elder Later on the street and got a really good feeling from it, so he said he wants to come to church. Sounds like a golden investigator right? It was so exciting, I thought that finding really prepared investigators like that only happens in fairy tales. It just seemed too good to be true. And it was. He sat through fast and testimony meeting, didn't really say much, then went to gospel principles class with all the missionaries, didn't say much through that either, and then after the class was over, he asked us if he could talk to us for a little bit. He said that he doesn't think we know how to pray (apparently we can only pray about Jesus, praying for ourselves is selfish and shouldn't go into a prayer), we don't know how to testify (I can understand this one, a lot of the people who bore testimony in sacrament just told stories about their lives--looks like it's a worldwide problem), God doesn't really have a body, Adam and Eve weren't the first human beings, just the first to believe in God, the Book of Mormon is blasphemy because it's an addition to the Bible, and that this church is completely false and can't go to heaven, among many other things, I could go on forever. The best part was that he doesn't think we deserve to serve as missionaries and teach the gospel since we don't have a "perfect knowledge" of the Bible. He just left after that, telling us he would come back for English class so he can teach us how we are wrong. Anyway, it was a pretty fun experience, I always love getting an honest opinion of what other people think of us :)

That was the highlight of my week, not too much else happened.

Have a wonderful week! 

Love,

Elder Hines