A beautiful day to all as I sit enjoying barley tea and spicy tuna kimbap, and feeling much love as I laugh at particularly amusing and appreciated emails this week. Thank you as always for your love and support. It's a good day to be alive. Due to the massive holiday today, the streets are absolutely deserted, and so we had a missionwide deep cleaning of our houses, which was su(uu)per fun, and then studies, so I'm a bit late with emailing today. We're going over to our bishop's house later to celebrate Chuseok and make traditional delicious rice cakes flavored with nuts and pine needles. The sister's recent convert and her husband, both refugees, will be attending as well, and we're very excited. Someone also just called and said they wanted to meet tonight, which we don't really get ("Hey, it's the biggest holiday of the year, how about meeting two foreigners who can't speak my language?") but hey, we'll take it. There's a lot to be grateful for.
We had a Chuseok conference and combined zone meeting this past Saturday, which was a lot of fun. We had traditional drums and the kayageum, and good food and friends and talks. It seems like we won't have any more combined mission conferences in the future, so we are grateful for the fun we've had in the past! We discussed prayer, and its role, and its deep significance, which was very meaningful to me, but 뭣보다 더 we watched a video with one of Korea's national songs, essentially a second national anthem, the Arirang. Maybe you can find it, it's maybe called "This is Arirang."
{Editor: I couldn't find that. But here is one version of the song} https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkM_LXUCMeA
Anyway, it's filmed in one of my favorite places that I've been, and it's maybe a silly thing, but as we watched it, I just felt an overwhelming love for the country and the people and everything here. Korea, as you well know, has gotten the short end of the stick, pretty much always. There have been some really, really tough times here, in not too distant memory. But people always fight back, and people always work incredibly hard and remain incredibly loyal to those that they love. It's frankly absolutely incredible that this country is where it's at today, and it's because of the people, their desire, and their willingness to work for it. It's hard sometimes, if people are busy, or won't listen to us because of their friend, or what have you, but those same reasons have built up Korea to where it is today. The Korean people are proud of where they are at, and rightfully so. The humility, loyalty, work ethic, and love that I see and feel here is astonishing, and I have a lot to learn.
Miracles continue to occur. In our zone, a Chinese sister married one of the soldiers in a military base in our zone, both members, a while ago, and the sister's father has been researching the church. He is flying out this weekend to take all of the lessons and be baptized before heading right back to China. Now that's faith. He doesn't speak any Korean or English, so I'm grateful and humbled to be able to spend some time up in Dongducheon this weekend for at least his baptismal interview.
We're getting along well as a companionship, and I'm having a great time. It's a wonderful place with wonderful people, and time just goes by way too quickly. I love you all and pray for you often.
No investigators were at church, and most members were gone as well, already having traveled to their hometowns, so we didn't even have the normal third hour of church yesterday. ㅋㅋWork hard, party hard. Anyway, we talked about Job during Gospel Doctrine yesterday, and he expressed my desire to have no regrets while I'm out here admirably:
"My heart shall not reproach me so long as I [serve]."
추석 잘 보내세요! 맛있게 드세요! ^^
Chuseok well spend! Deliciously eat!
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