Week 14: Happy Halloween!

Discover spoop

Jump and Fright

Shortened word, and even less sense

Stop the Problem

How?

Blast the cannons

The proof is piñata

spoop

Happy Halloween everybody! I hope it's great for all of you, who are maybe receiving this before Halloween. I'm bad at time zones. It's pretty good here, but it's not like a huge holiday. I'm wearing my pumpkin sweater to celebrate in my own little way though. 

But yeah, this week has flown by, probably because we procrastinated our exchanges and did both of them this week. So that was cool. I basically never saw Elder Brown. It was kind of sad. 

So on Monday I had to get my foreigner card* on my exchange with Elder Gildea. Then he had to go to another area to meet up with the other zone leader, and so we spent very little time in our area that day. We had a dinner that night with a member I guess. They had this spread that the sister said was cream cheese, but I'm pretty sure it's whatever they eat in the Celestial Kingdom. It was glorious. 

Then Tuesday I was back with Elder Brown, but it was Temple/P-day, so we went to the temple, and right after we went with some members to Costco for Halloween prep. It was great. We went to Seoul Nam† for a second on accident. Whoops. But Costco was great. It felt real American, but was filled with Koreans. They still used American Express cards too. Also it was underground.

Wednesday was my exchange with Elder Remington. We just tried to visit less-active members and give them cookies, but no one was home. We met a Korean kid from Georgia though, so that was cool. Also we just happened upon a place with a pretty sick view, but that was the day I forgot my camera, so there is no evidence of this. 

Thursday was 12-week follow-up, so we went to the office like all day. We had lunch, and since all the Subway stuff had meat, Sister Sonksen made me eggs, and they were delicious. She is a good temporary mom. 

And then on Friday we finally were back in our area, and started off the day with me running to the church in my pajamas. It was pretty fun, we had to open up the gate for someone, and I hadn't the time to change. So that was cool. Then we spent like all day prepping for Halloween. 

We spent Saturday almost exactly the same way. We finished the piñata for the party though. It was a giant pumpkin the size of a 5-year-old. Like, I'm sure one could fit inside. It took like a week to construct. But it was glorious.

Then we had the Halloween party, which was way fun. I didn't see any of it (I was running the fishing game, so I was behind a vertical ping-pong table the whole night), but there was bobbing for apples and facepaint, and lots of American-style autumnal games. I hear that all went well. Speaking of things I heard, "The Monster Mash." That was fancy. 

I did get to see the destruction of the piñata though, and I must say, it was the most beautiful thing I've seen here. For like 2 minutes there was a crowd of children surrounding this pumpkin that was bigger than half of them, and they were just smashing it. They only had rolled-up newspaper, but they were using it with such ferocity, I was glad they didn't have anything harder. Of course, the newspaper did nothing, and when the pumpkin broke, the top k. just broke off and the carcass fell to the floor. Then there was a half second moment of absolute silence before the children swarmed the pumpkin. It was a little scary, but also I couldn't stop laughing. 

So yeah, unqualified success. 

Hope that gives a vague idea of missionary life as a party planner missionary in training. I'll write again next week. There's no party coming up though, so we'll see what we do. 

-Elder Newton

 

* "Like my visa so I don't have to have my passport."

† A neighborhood in the Seoul South Mission.