Bonus post: On Seoul soil

Monday was a great day for the Newton family. It started with an 8 a.m. phone call from Salt Lake City International and ended at 1 a.m. Tuesday when Mom saw on the flight tracker that Elder Newton's plane had landed at Incheon. (Where it was 4 p.m.) When the alarm went off a few hours later, here's what we saw in our inboxes:

He took off his badge for the immigration photo and forgot to put it back on for the photo with President and Sister Sonksen.

We're expecting a very newsy update in a few days; email day is Monday in the Korea Seoul Mission. The good news is that because Seoul is 15 hours ahead of Salt Lake, we probably will get that email Sunday evening. In the meantime, here's a bonus post from a letter we received from our favorite elder yesterday.

So I said I'd tell you about my other clarinet performance. I will do that now.

It all started last Thursday when I auditioned to play as a special musical number person. By the way, no one told me I'd be auditioning for all the wives of the MTC presidency. It was intense. But there's not much to say about that, mainly because it went well, and they said I was good. Then I went back to class to study.

That night I got a little letter that I've decided to enclose because I cherish it, and I think I might lose it. Keep it safe. Now you can read it and see why I was really excited.

I got to play for Old People! Well, senior missionaries. Either way, they're very nice. I could play any piece with very little skill and they'd love me. It's just their nature. Luckily, though, Sister Coon and I were near flawless! Like in my Sunday sacrament meeting performance I was OK. But this performance was marvelous. Like I nailed all the arpeggios. The only thing that happened, really, was at one point the tone got a little gurgly. Just on the high B♭, but I knew how to handle that. And that's the story of how I blew into the side of my clarinet midperformance. I may have looked silly for a moment, but I sounded good, so it's OK.

Well, I love you, next time I'll write you about my surprise talk or something. Hopefully that'll be soon.

Your son,
Adam Newton