Hello Everyone! I don't know if I've mentioned our favorite restaurant before, but it's called 두끼(doo-kkee) Which translated means "two meals". That's because, after eating a buffet of 떡볶이(rice cakes in a spicy soup?) at a very reasonable price, you put rice into your leftover soup and have fried rice, hence the name "Two Meals". Here's a picture
Anyways, we go there when we can and have a great time. There is also an option to purchase fondue cheese which comes out in a ring around your pot which is delicious, but fairly pricey. However, the manager there likes us a lot so now every time we come, she dares the teenage waitresses to bring us free fondue cheese. We're not complaining~
Other things for this week:
-Fire training: This week in our apartment elevator, we saw a paper that told us we were having a yearly firefighting training and that all the residents were invited to come participate. So of course, me, being both a safety-concerned resident of the apartment complex and proud of myself that I understood the Korean written on the paper, decided that we would go attend the training. After all, it did only happen once a year. So we walked to the courtyard to find that the only people there were the building security guards/caretakers (it's a job for people of retirement age, so they're all 60-75 year old men). As it turns out, I didn't read thoroughly enough and this was actually just a training for them and the residents were just invited to come watch. And we were the only residents in an apartment complex of several thousand people to show up.. But we were already there, so we got to use fire extinguishers to put out some real fires, and we got to watch the caretakers do the same, only to accidentally coat a nearby car in fire extinguishing powder and subsequently give the car a free car wash with the firehose. So glad we went~
-Interviews in our house!: Every 6 weeks, we get to have an interview with our mission president so that he can help us to be better missionaries and reach our potential. Usually they happen in his office or in a church building, but every few years they do them in the missionaries' houses. So, we made sure not a particle of dust remained in our house, and welcomed them into our home, they even brought us homemade lollipops~ And they loved our giant Korean mask
-Lost in translation: We were practicing English with someone that we meet with often, we meet in their home twice a week. I was a little bit sick this week, so she asked if I wanted some lemon tea to soothe my throat. I said "I'm okay thank you", a common phrase in English used to politely decline an offer. But her english-as-a-second-language brain just heard "okay, thank you" and determined that I was indeed accepting the offer. So, she made me some lemon tea of course! I didn't have the heart to correct that English mistake, I just had to let that one slide.
-My Korean name!: A few weeks ago, a family from Suwon that I got close to while living there made a Korean name for me, and this week I got some cool nametags! It's pronounced (Jang-Yeon-oo)
This week we met a nice man that we met on the street a few weeks ago, he invited us into his home. He is a retired Japanese teacher and sells pottery, so his house was full of really cool pottery, needless to say. He likes to learn English and we have a program that we do as missionaries, where we help people learn English for 30 minutes and then teach about our church for 30 minutes, so we told him that we wanted to help him learn English and also share a message that has helped us a lot. He was open to do it, but said, "But what if I don't join your church, what if I don't accept your message? Then I'm the only one benefiting. You would have no results after all your work, what if that happens?" I was glad to tell him, "The work we do isn't about results. The work we do is about inviting. We have grown up and learned in this church and have found happiness that we can't describe, and that's not just because we can't speak Korean. But we don't want to force anyone to do anything, that's not what religion is about. Of course we'll be happy if you accept, but choosing not to accept is fine too because being a missionary means inviting others to come unto Christ, not forcing them" Being a missionary is the best, I love it.
Have a good week everyone!
Love,
Elder Bigelow
No comments:
Post a Comment