Monday, May 18, 2015

In which Sam doesn't get married but does meet the US ambassador--May 10, 2015



Hello, and especially a big thanks to many wonderful mothers in my life. May the roses burst forth into softly perfumed shouts of praise when you walk by and the drifting clouds bring back memories of the best of times of motherhood- it's not an easy job, that's for sure.

I will be brief this week but will just share several fun stories from this past week. Congratulations too to Caleb on Princeton- it turns a new page in our family, and I'm looking forward to visiting. We've had a great week, and have had wonderful weather. We went to Seoul Forest on Children's day as a zone and had a good time. The next day I had a sunburn right around the borders of my shirt that looked pretty funny, but it went away quickly. Some other elders weren't so lucky: "Elder Huckvale's bad, he's like a baby pig pink." We have had some pretty late nights as transfer calls were this week, but those are done and transfers will be this Wednesday.

We brought our suits to wear after we got back from Seoul Forest as we went to a lesson, but as we were changing in a hair shop after the owner's friend tried to set us up for marriage here in Korea (longer story)  I realized that I didn't have my tie with me. I was running around proselyting for the first 30 minutes or so after P-day ended without a tie until I found a place in the subway station to pick one up.

President and Sister Christensen were in Japan this week for three days, so more burdens fell on us this week than normal. The first night that they were gone some elders {elsewhere in the mission} got back an hour and a half past when we're supposed to as missionaries, but it ended up being all right.

We met several people this week that had terrible stereotypes against the church, and some we were able to talk with, and some not. It's hard because you know it's not their fault, it's just what they've been taught. I'm trying to get an article into a newspaper talking about my time here and what I've learned and just talk about trying to do what we can to help, but we'll see if that goes through. One person with whom we talked had some interesting comments:

"몰몬교 이단이라고 해요-"
"I heard that your church was a cult."

How'd you hear that?

"교회에서 가르쳐 주시더라고요."
"They teach it at our church."

We had great gorgonzola spaghetti with a new investigator at Hongdae, a fun cultural part of Seoul. On Friday, I saw a foreigner and asked if I could introduce myself. He said sure, and we chatted for a while. It turns out that he was Mark, I don't remember his last name, the American ambassador to Korea, still with bandages but looking well {Mark Lippert was slashed by a knife-wielding, pro-North Korean attacker in March}. He was very nice, and was fun to talk by a palace in his Stanford jacket. I was a little flustered at first by who he was and by how much he knew about us, but we had a great chat, and it turns out that he knows President Christensen. He was surrounded by three bodyguards. He saw me looking at them, and said "These are my friends." Countless people tell us that they're busy everyday, but if the American ambassador has time to stop and talk with us, I know that {other} people can- we just need to be more interesting than whatever else they're doing.

We met with brother Kim and Sister Maeng from Sanggye that night over dinner. they are doing very, very well, holding callings in the church well, going to church institute classes, and sounding like members. We really felt the Spirit as we talked, and they shared some really cool stories that I hadn't hear before, like how alcohol and coffee, which had been hard to give up before he was baptized, just had no appeal after Brother Kim was baptized. Meeting with them just helped me to realize how worthwhile this work is, and how valuable the message that we are sharing is.

With abbreviated stories but infinite love,
Elder South

No comments:

Post a Comment