We have a baptism coming up this week! Woo! Hwang Gi Seok is still doing great. He accepts everything we teach him without question, and he even said he will stop smoking to join. We were teaching him with a member yesterday, and Hwang Gi Seok said that he's been thinking of joining a church for a long time, even before his stroke. His younger brother is a pastor at a Catholic church down south, and he said that when he talked to his brother, his brother said to join a church. Normally in Korea a pastor would say to join their church, but Hwang Gi Seok's brother didn't--he said it didn't matter which church to join as long as he joined one. That and a few other events in Hwang Gi Seok's life have really prepared him to accept the gospel, and it was way cool. If he can keep from smoking this week, we'll baptize him on Sunday!
I love the kids here in Gangneung branch. There are three or four full families that make up the branch, and they have one or two kids each. They are hilarious! I'm pretty sure all Korean kids love rock, paper, scissors; we play that all the time with them. Yesterday the adults were in a meeting before a branch dinner at the church that they invited us to, and we got there a little early. So we played with the kids. They are from ages two to maybe age 12, and we had an awesome time having races. I rode one of their bikes around the church, and one of the boys pushed me because my legs were so long that I couldn't pedal. A couple of the girls chased us and ended up catching us because I had to dodge cars and low walls on a bike meant for someone 15 years younger than me. It was awesome! Korean kids are extremely energetic and loud, which is funny as long as you aren't responsible for them. :D
This week i learned that goals are really awesome. I read something in a language book about language study plans, and I realized that mine could be helping me out a lot more. Before, my plan was "Spend 10 minutes practicing to myself for the days' lessons, 30 on getting random vocabulary and grammar, and 15 reading the book of Mormon in Korean." That's good if you want to learn a whole bunch of Korean that you probably won't use. But now my plan has goals aimed at helping me teach better specifically in upcoming situations, and also at shoring up my weaknesses in the language. I'm excited to try it out. You know you've been on a mission for a long time when you get excited by things like new language plans. :D
The food of the week is omerice, which is the korean phonetic combination of the English "omelet" and "rice." It's basically just an omelet filled with rice. We had it yesterday at the church dinner. The rice is more like the "chinese" fried rice that you get in "chinese" restaraunts in America. Korean has a lot of words borrowed from English that are now accepted as Korean words, kind of like how we don't really think about the word "spaghetti" being an Italian word rather than English. In Korean you have "wa-ee-shyeo-che" (y-shirt: Western-style dress shirt, so called because of the Y-shaped neck), "beo-se" (bus), and other things that are really annoying to Romanize so I'm going to stop now. :D Anyway, I hope you all have a good week, and I'll keep you posted on the baptism. Annyeonghikeseyo!
Elder Matt Dean
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