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| The Elders (from left): Elder Alban ft. Stair, Me ft. Smile Badge, Elder DuPlessis ft. South Africa, Elder Pulsipher ft. Ex-Vegan |
Jot and 적다*
Straight lines but scattered writing
Stop the problem
How?
Pick out the chicken
The proof is neglect
Journal
*It
is the Korean word that basically means the same thing as jot but it's a
different language and ㅈand J make about the same sound so I say it's
valid
Well it's been a
pretty full week out here in the 강릉. Since we last talked, we had a
great Family Home Evening before which I found out that I had received a
referral from Sister Jang way back when I was in Nokbeon and she wasn't
a missionary. It was a pretty good referral too. It was a rather pretty
good small-world moment to start the week.
Tuesday
was the best though. It kind of felt like we only had half a day
because we had to head to Seoul for the greenies. After our lovely three-hour bus ride during which Elder Lee taught me about 정 (Jung), we hurried
off to 신촌 to spend the night. Outside the subway station, we met a
French guy who had been in Korea for only 10 months but was simply
fantastic at Korean. He was missionary good, which is saying something.
He even showed us how he studied and it was basically the same way I do.
Sister Seo kept on saying he must be Korean even though, in the
Frenchman's words, "I'm French but I look like a German."
I don't know if that last sentence made sense, but I just really liked that quote.
But
anywho after that fun experience we went up the hill to the temple to
spend the night. For avid readers of these emails (assuming those exist)
you may remember my last visit to the temple was in January, so I was
quite excited. We got to sleep in the temple dorms and have the free
kimchi in the cafeteria. We had about 10 GangWonDo missionaries,
including Elder Gilmore, in the temple and it was just a nice spirit. I
love the temple.
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| I needed a pic |
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| And look Elder Lee came with me! |
The rest of the week flew by though. Wednesday
morning we had to hurry off to the office to pick up the new
missionaries. My new companion is Elder Alban. He's great. He's this
really small 18-year-old kid from the Philippines. He mimics a lot of
the things I do, which was really funny when I was picking out the meat
from my lunch and I looked over to see him doing the same thing. He
really wants to do missionary work and he's already working so hard to
learn Korean. And English. Poor Elder Alban, he needs to know three languages.
Training is
an interesting experience. I suddenly have a lot more time spent on
studying and also there's a bit of pressure to be a model missionary at
all times. But Elder Alban does have the greenie power so it gives us
the energy to get through. Like we were having our little English class
at the college and he bore a really powerful testimony at the end about
his family. It was really sweet.
And yeah. Sunday
was fun too. Elder Alban wrote his talk almost completely by himself
and it was super sweet. The members really liked it. We also had a bunch
of foreigners visit because there's a member from here who is an
English teacher in China, but she just got married to someone from
America and they visited. She was so good at English that she translated
her own talk as she gave it. By the way, that is a little harder than
it sounds.
In third hour we were in the middle of
studying President Uchtdorf's talk from women's session when Sister Kim
came upstairs and asked to borrow me and my companion for the Primary.
They were learning about missionary preparation and so we told them
about all the physical and spiritual things we need to be missionaries.
Sister Jo told a story about a missionary who served here who ran away
from home to serve and so other missionaries got him all the clothes he
needed and the members always bought him food. But he was spiritually
prepared so he was a great missionary.
By the way,
big Primaries are great and all, but nothing will ever beat a three-Korean-child Primary. Two of them are only 3 or 4 and the other is 11. The
dynamic is amazing. Like at the end we sang our hymn and prayed and
everything, but SiHuan still made us sing all three verses of "I Am a Child
of God." And then we had snacks. It was great.
After church, President Sonksen randomly showed up with stuff to use for
#LighttheWorld. It was pretty fun. Sister Sonksen sang the alphabet song
with our aforementioned SiHuan (시환) and it was the cutest thing of my
life.
And yeah, that's about it. See y'all in a few!
Best Wishes,
Elder Newton
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| Charmander plays our piano |
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