Week 69: *Gusteau Voice* I Have a Son?

We studied and my fountain pen and lemonade were aesthetic

Discover Green

Write and Rise

Clean energy but muddy Ogre

Stop the Problem

How?

Wait for your cows

The proof is John

Green

This week has been pretty fun. The transfer ended well I guess. Last week Elder Lee's hospital trip went swimmingly, for all those who are curious. As I say that, it reminds me of a Spanish joke about lazy fish whose punchline lies in the similarity of the word for swimming, nadar, and the word for nothing, nada. You see, by the time we got to the hospital, Elder Lee was almost completely better, and so his doctor didn't believe he was sick at all. But it's chill, because Elder Whiting, our mission nurse, took us out for ice cream.

Elder Lee was tired

The rest of our week was spent in our kingdom by the sea. It was a good time. We got kimchi from a member, learned what an idiolect is, and had an earthquake.

Oh yeah, there was an earthquake this week. Forgot about that one. So on Wednesdays we have district meeting, as missionaries are wont to do. And as I am wont to do, we had a bit of a creative twist as it were. See, in order to learn about sharing talents and spiritual gifts we had the district share talents with each other. I taught everyone how to make a balloon bunny. But anywho, right near the end of the meeting our phones started to beep, and before we could look to see what was going on, the church started to sway a bit. It was rather surreal, but the epicenter was far away so we were pretty fine. The Korean SAT got pushed back a week because of it though, so that's cool. 

The pictured Elder Huilett (at right, with Elder Lee)

And yeah, the week just went on. We had an exchange with Elder Huilett (pictured), and that was pretty fun.  After that exchange we ran into an investigator of ours whom I hadn't seen in all my time here. We were actually going to try to visit him to give him a snack. It was decently cold out. Something like 3 degrees in degrees. So we were all bundled up, and we had almost gotten to the gym he works at, when out of nowhere, well I guess out of the gym, come running a pack of people in rather normal, thin, exercise clothes. I was a little concerned for them. But yeah, as they passed us, I noticed one without a shirt on. Before I could comment on how cold he must be, he ran past and I heard Elder Pulsipher say, "Oh, that's him, we'd better come back in a bit."

We did go back in a bit, but we still didn't manage to talk to him. We did meet a few Canadians, though. They were so nice. We talked for bit with them, but by far the best part was the end when the exchange ended a little something like this:

Canadian with really long blond hair and cool mustache: "So what are you doing here? Are you students?"

Elder Newton, who is blond and needs a haircut but his hair is still not close to that long: "Oh no, we're missionaries."

Canadian: "Spreading the good word of the church, eh? Well thanks!" 

*Canadian gives a salute, turns away and walks off*

Joon has a kimchi-making tub on his head

Joon is a model

But enough of all that, it's probably time to get to the subject line of our email. There's really not a lot to it though. See, we had a fun Saturday. We went to Sokcho for a baptismal interview with our lovely Joon and got home in time to buy some ice cream for transfer calls. The call came not too long after 9, thank goodness. It was a fun one. First we sent Elder Lee to be zone leader in Nokbeon just in case he needed to go to the hospital again. Then we got Elder Pulsipher a South African zone leader companion. That will be fun. And me, I got a Son* for Christmas. So sorry that I don't know his name. We're expecting him on Wednesday. 

And Sunday was just fantastic. It was the Primary Program† and the whole branch participated. We all talked like children. The members even said I did a good job, but no one did better than 시환, our beloved 4-year-old. He's so good. We even had an investigator come, and he was impressed at how the children were able to believe. We talked about becoming as a little child and baptism because of that, and it went really well. 

But yeah, that's it from Gangneung. See y'all around!

Best Wishes,

Elder Newton

My desk is fun

We did tracting and the light looked cool

Artsy

 * When a new missionary enters the field, a veteran missionary is assigned to train or mentor him or her. They frame these relationships in terms of parents and children (and sometimes grandparents and grandchildren).

† Once a year, the children between ages 3 and 12 sing and speak in the main Sunday worship service to share what they have learned that year.