Helloooo~!
This week was really really good.
We were pretty busy. Since Elder Boome just got to the area, we decided to start by visiting members. So we just dropped by people's houses (like with no appointment or anything) but people were really nice, let us in, gave us food and everything. I was able to meet with a couple of members that I've never really been able to talk to before (of couse, we see each other at church, but being able to talk with someone in their house, or at least somewhere more quiet makes a huuuge difference). Actually, we visited quite a few families (as in not just like single people), and it was just really nice to see these happy cute families all together. Hopefully we'll continue to visit people and work with members and all that. :D
We also had to help out our sisters kind of a lot this week, haha. Something was up with their house and they didn't have any gas, so that meant no heat, no warm water, no working stove, so they kind of suffered for the first 3 days. We called our leaders and they got everything worked out and there's gas in their house now, but that kind of had a rough start to 상인 (Sangin). I keep forgetting that they don't know where anything is, so I'll say like "Can you meet us at so-and-so station?" and they'll be like, "Umm.........."
But we've gone through a week now, and so I think roughly got a hang of how things work in 상인 (Sangin), and they've been to most of the important places that that need to know about. It'll still be hard for them, but things will improve for them.
Do you remember 이영숙s (Sis. I Yeongsun) I mentioned a few weeks ago? She didn't come to church, but here two kids did for the 3rd time this week. We had plans to invite them to formally take the lessons with us, but things didn't really work out, but our ward mission leader is pretty close with them now, and we're all working to start teaching them starting next Sunday. Oh, and we were trying to figure out if we should contact the two (이예진s (Sis. I Yejin) and 이진산b (Bro. I Jinsan) are their names), and in the end, nobody invited them to church but they showed up anyways (we didn't want them to feel like we were really push hard for them to come to church), so that's a really good sign. I think once we just start teaching them, things will go really smoothly!
It's kind of weird, but now that Elder 박 (Bak) left, I feel like I can work better with the members. I kind of felt the same thing in 광안 (Gwangan) when Elder 홍 (Hong) left, but if the missionary that's been in the area the longest is Korean, the members kind of tend to talk with them the most. But now that there's no Korean missionaries in 상인 (Sangin), and I'm the only who's not new here, maybe it's less scary for me to talk with the members than with the others? I'm not sure, but I feel really good about this transfer; I think we can work well with the members.
We're trying to start up a music class here in 상인 (Sangin). There's been some kind of "class" here for a long time; magic class, math class, breakdancing class, etc., and so our young men wanted to keep doing those. I kind of half-joked that I could teach them piano (!), and they decided that they wanted to do that. Elder Boome plays guitar as well, so we figured between those two (oh, and one of the sisters plays piano as well) we could do something for the young men. The attendance for magic class was always 2, so we figured it would just be the same two boys coming, but after announcing it in church, it seems like there's a lot of people interested. We had a member come up and ask us about learing the guitar, and he said he could round up several more members, and then one of the members we visited mentioned he'd be interested as well. The young men want to learn piano still though, so it looks like we'll have a guitar class with Elder Boome, and a piano class with me (and possibly just one or two students, hahahaha). But the reaction from the members was really good (is reaction the right word here...?), and so we're hoping that many people will come and the classes will turn out really well. Even if no investigators come, getting to spend time with our members will be worth it.
Let's see... we also started making phone calls for SPM, and had a district leader training meeting this week, so there's that as well.... next week will be pretty busy as we wrap up SPM, visit a few district meetings, go to 부산 (Busan) for a meeting, and then start preparing for Zone Conference the week after next. We've been pretty much completely busy every night with phone calls and stuff at night as well. We've just had so many people to call and so many things to take care of that there's no personal time a night. :( I don't remember it being that bad with Elder 박, but maybe it's just that the district leaders are getting adjusted to their positions and so they have a lot of questions. Part of being any kind of missionary leader though, is those nightly phone calls, haha.
Here's a few pictures from our last Sunday - I guess "goodbye" pictures for Elder 박 (Bak) and Elder 허 (Heo). And a picture that our ward mission leader made to advertise our "Winter Festival." He wanted to make a huge poster, but he just ended up posting it online for the members to see. It was printed out in our ward newsletter, so we all took pictures of it.
Other than that... Elder Boome and I got to teach the children's English class for the first time last Saturday. Elder 허 (Heo) and Elder Maccarthy were kind of charge of it for the last three months, but they're both gone now. The sisters are fairly young missionaires, so we left them with the adult class since they need to use less Korean there. The children know a little English, but the class is kind of crazy so somebody who knows Korean needs to be there to control things. We did English for like 30 minutes maybe (and they payed waaay more attention than I expected!), and then things kind of broke apart (30 minutes is the limit for learning English) and we played games for the other 40 minutes or so. We played "mouth ping-pong" where you try to blow a ping-pong ball off of your opponents side of the table while your oppenents do the same. That was kind of crazy too, with problems ranging from kids kind of messing with the table/stealing the ball, to the older kids telling the younger kids to go away because they were going to play "seriously" (the oldest is maybe like 10 or 11), to one little girl who really wanted her own table so she could have a "puppy show" with the toy dog she bought.
So it was all pretty wild, but soooo much fun. Korean kids are absolutely adorable, haha. We'll get to do this every week too probably, so Elder Boome and I will be partying it up every Saturday. I'll miss the very very normal English class (the people in our English class are really nice and they're really friendly with each other. Pretty much everyone is like a 35-40 year old mother, and so they're kind of on the youngish side; the kind of atmosphere (that's what you would say in Korean anyways... I can't think of the English word right now.... feelling?) is really good, so I'll kind of miss that. Oh and we had like the most children we've ever had this Saturday; there was maybe 10-12ish, when we usually average maybe 5. Anyways, I think i'll be a lot of fun. :D
So that's it for this week! We were able to have a lot of good visits with members, and start to figure out exactly what we'll be doing in 상인 (Sangin). Next week will be busy as well! We're doing good over here in Korea!
Thank you so much!!!
I'll write to you next week!
Love,
- Elder Luke
Just a few more from last week's Sunday.
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