Hey all,
The weeks seem to be flying past, but when I get to the end of another week and look back, the past Monday seems so far away! There's a lot of truth to the missionary saying that the days seem like weeks and the weeks seem like days. I remember experiencing that in the MTC, except in the last stretch the days felt like weeks and the weeks felt like months. :D Korea is so much better than the MTC.
So, here's a cool miracle for everybody. Last Sunday night, we met a guy smoking outside of his tattoo parlor. He was fairly cordial but obviously not interested; however, when we asked if we could meet again later and talk more, he said we could come by his tattoo parlor the next day. So we said ok. Then last Monday after Pday, we were walking over there to go see him in the dusk of evening. My companion Elder Larson said, "Are we really going to do this?" I felt a little sketched out, but I was like, "Yeah, whatever, it'll be ok." So we walked a little longer. There were no people on the street. We got to the corner where the tattoo parlor was, and I started feeling really weird. So was he. We kind of just loitered in front of this tattoo parlor with blacked out windows and sketchy pictures of skulls with snake bodies coming out of them, and we didn't really know what to do. I definitely was sketched out.They should take a picture of this place and put it right next to the definition of sketchy in the dictionary. So we were standing there torn between going in and just leaving, and then the cell phone rang. It was our next appointment, a college kid whom we were going to meet in a cafe. He said to hurry because he was waiting. So I looked at my companion and we both said, "Yeah, let's go to that instead," in relief. And literally right then, an empty taxi pulled around the corner! This was in a place where it's normally really hard to get a taxi, and one pulled up the instant we decided to skip out on the creepy tattoo place. Later me and Elder Larson were both like, "Yeah, God really didn't want us to go in there." :D It was a cool testimony that God really looks out for us and protects us as missionaries. We saw the guy again later, but we didn't talk to him again, needless to say. :D And don't worry, Mom, that was by far the sketchiest thing I've ever done on my mission, and it wasn't even that bad.
Our investigator with a baptismal date, Hwang Gi Seok, came to church wearing some sweet shoes that he bought just for church! He had also dyed his hair and was wearing a nice shirt. For someone who lives in a social welfare center because living in the hospital for a year straight because of a stroke, we figured this is a really big thing for him. It shows that he really is committed to church life. We were wondering if he was just meeting us for English, but this eased whatever concerns we had. He is doing well, and he accepts everything we teach him without question. This week we learned that his dreams are to translate in English and Chinese at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in Korea and also to be able to speak English to his neice's spouse if she ends up marrying an Australian (she lives in Australia right now). It's so good to be able to teach prepared people.
The food of the week is budaejjigae. This one doesn't involve fermentation really unless you count the kimchi. :D You get this packet of spicy soup stock from the store and dump it in some water, and then add ramen noodles, sliced hot dogs, little rice cakes, kimchi, onions, and beans, and boil it for a few minutes. Done. It's so good! A little history behind it: budae means "army base," referencing the American army bases back in the Korean War. Poor people that lived around the bases didn't have enough money for food, so they'd go begging at the kitchens and get scraps to eat, which they would boil up in a stew. Hot dogs, beans, and ramen noodles are not Korean foods, but they are really delicious, so Koreans still eat budaejjigae today even though you don't have to beg for it anymore. Cool, huh?
That's about all for this week, Love you all, have a good week!
Elder Matt Dean
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