안녕하세요?
It's now been six weeks since I've been in Korea! That's kind of a long time. Tranfers came, but as expected, I'll continue training here in 영도.
I can't remember if I've already mentioned this, but 조 장로님 is very, very old. He's been in 영도 three months before I came, which means he'll have been here six when this next transfer is over. Now that means that I'll likely stay as he leaves, and so I'll have to be responsible for showing my new companion around as the area senior. That's scary! I need to learn a lot more. I can take the bus to and from church, and can walk to the local supermarket, but that's about it. :D
As far as letters go, I got 2 today. Haven't had any time to read them. I'm not sure if the people at the '부 (one elder in my district likes to call it "the 'Boo." I don't know how to actually say "mission headquarters" in Korean...) actually mail letters to apartments, or if I've just happened to visit the mission home frequently enough that it wouldn't make sense to mail.
I guess I've said in my past emails that we don't have any investigators, but that's not really true. We've been teaching one 이상남 ("Ee-Sang-Nam," not sure how to translate Korean names into English). He's around 8-9, and is a nephew of one of the sisters in our ward.
It's been a little weird teaching him - he's a bit antsy, and we have to keep lessons super short to keep his attention. It's not like we can go into a lot of depth anyways, but that's fine, since teaching really basically is all I can do for now. We're planning for his baptism next week.
I don't know if he's messing with me or not, but it seems like he can't understand my Korean. When I taught him last, he kept repeating my sentances with a question mark at the end. His aunt would then translate my Korean into good Korean, and then he could understand. His aunt knew what I was trying to say though... maybe she has more experience with foreigners trying to speak Korean...
But then again, I told him that the Word of Wisdom teach us not to drink nose-blood, so there's probably a very good reason why he doesn't understand me (apparently, "kko-ppii" is "coffee", while "ko-ppii" is "nose-blood". 이상남 thought it was pretty funny though, once he figured out what I was trying to say). Understanding is hard for him in other ways as well - we taught all the commandments in one go, since we figured he wouldn't have any serious problem with any of them. We asked him some questions afterwards to double-check to see what he learned. We asked what "commandments" were, and he said "alchohol, coffee, tobacco." Closeish, but not right. :D Oh, we also asked him what the Sabbath was, and he said it's where we don't eat food for two meals. We probably should review commandments some more.
We met this man on the bus who spoke a litlte English to me (I remember the man very distinctly because he was a smoker and had terrible breath. I could smell it when he so much as looked at me. Ugh. And boy, when he talked... anyways...), so I asked him in Korean how much English he spoke. "영어 얼마나 하실 수 있어요?" (well something like that. Not sure if it acutally makes sense in Korean, but in my head, it should be right). He looked at me blankly for like 5 seconds, and answered. "O, I amu fiftee years oldu!" Maybe he just didn't hear me... my companion seems to understand my Korean at least mostly okay.
Speaking of Elder Jo, for some reason, a lot of people keep asking him if he's Korean. I don't know if it's because he's with me, or if it's because he's from Seoul so his dialect is a little different, or Elder Jo's theory - that he's spent too much time speaking English with foreigners, and it's corrupted his Korean. We had one day where like 5 people in a row asked him that, usually one or two sentances into the conversation. I think it frustrated him a bit. :D
Anyways, need to wrap up soon...
Missionary work is hard. There's a lot that I'm struggling with, but the Lord promises to give His help with everyone who tries. All he asks is that we're faithful and that we do our best to not doubt Him. We're not perfect, and the things we do aren't perfect, but the Lord can take our imperfect works and make them good enough. Through obedience and dilligence, He turns our work into His work.
Keep praying, keep doing what He asks, and we'll all be blessed.
Thanks for everything! Keep it up!
- Elder Luke
Notes:
"Transfers" happen every six weeks (typically); each six weeks there is a possibility of a missionary being re-assigned to a new area. It's when the new missionaries come into the country, and those who have completed their service go home, and others may or may not get shuffled around as needed to fill in for those who leave and find places for those who come, or maybe to just shake things up a bit. When Andrew says Elder Jo is "very, very old," I assume that's slang for "he's been in this area for a long time." I infer that his mission president likes to move missionaries around frequently, and that six months is an atypically long time to be in one location for his mission. Anyway, so when he says "1st transfer," what he means is "the first time I might have been reassigned (but wasn't)."
부: "bu" = a (non-native, missionary-specific, certainly) abbreviation for (probably) 선교본부 = seongyobonbu = "mission office."
영도: Yeongdo, his area.
조 장로님: Elder Jo, his companion.
According to Google Translate, Andrew's sentence to the guy on the bus would be "English how can you?" Hopefully Uncle Jim will weigh in on how close to real Korean it really was.
Also thanks to Google Translate: "coffee" is 커피 = "kkappi", while "nosebleed" is 코피 = "kkoppi"; the difference is the vowel, "a" versus "o".
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