Sunday, December 29, 2013

Letter 12/22/2013

We got a nice snow storm on Thursday. It was snowing off and on all day. Thankfully it was never snowing hard while we were walking. We planned a lot of visits and our service project on this day so we were wandering around in it all day. The buses were inching forward like snails. It was fun and scary. There wasn't an inch of road or sidewalk that wasn't covered in ice. The city was a giant ice rink. People were falling everywhere. We linked arms (as we usually do) and saved each other from some close calls.
The next day was still pretty icy. My companion & I were running late for an appointment because another investigator wanted to talk longer t
han we were anticipating. My companion got on a bus but the bus driver started driving before I could get on. I don't believe I've told you about the bus drivers here but they're crazy. If you take too long to get off or on they'll drive away and they yell at people a lot. Be warned. I tried to run to the door but the road was icy and I couldn't catch up. My companion was accelerating away from me and we were late for an appointment. My companion told the driver to stop and he saw me in his mirrors but he didn't want to stop. So I hopped back onto the sidewalk and ran (on the ice) to the next bus stop where I found my companion.
 
I have a giant michelin-man coat so I stay pretty warm but my feet are always numb. So annoying. But thankfully we have an underfloor heating system so them can warm up pretty quickly. It's so nice. It doesn't blow annoying, dry, stinky air all over our house and it keeps the coldest part of the apartment warm: the floor! My feet need warmth, people - not my airways.
 
So we have these cards called T-Money cards that we use to pay for our transit. We load money onto them at train stations and convenience stores and we just press them up to the station gates or monitors on the buses and it will charge us. If you get off and bus and transfer again within 30 minutes it's free. I suggest you get some. You can pay with cash on the buses but he train station don't sell regular tickets like Japan.
 
You can expect the grocery stores to be pretty much the same as Japan. They have Costcos, convenient stores, giant super markets, Mom&Pop stores, 'crazy stores', little Y's Mart-type stores...
 
Our Young Women don't attend church. We plan lessons but the YW don't always show up so we end up just sitting in the empty classroom. Two came yesterday but because President Morrise (mission president) was visiting yesterday we combined with the RS and Priesthood and he taught us about feeling the joy of the gospel.
 
A lot of public bathrooms don't have toilet paper. Sometimes they'll have a giant roll outside the stalls and you have to plan ahead and follow your heart as you gather as much as you think you'll need. I always take a pack of tissues with me everywhere and it's saved our lives sometimes. Prepare ye.
 
The Koreans have the same way of thinking as the Japanese when it comes to hymnbooks. Everyone has to have their own. Our ward has more hymnbooks than we do members. They're everywhere.
 
The Koreans also like their cute little cakes like the Japanese. The afore-mentioned bakeries all sell cakes and during the Christmas season they'll sell several hundred a day (keep in mind that these shops are on every block).
 
One of our investigators (kind of - she's an English-investigator) asks us the weirdest questions. She asked the alien question, she asked me if my family or God is more important to me (that's a loaded question - I said God, sorry). And in our last visit we spent about 10 minutes just discussing the 12 apostles because she wanted to know the names of everyone in Da Vinci's Last Supper painting in both Korean and English. Let's not get hung up on unimportant details here. We've met with her five times and we haven't been able to get to the Great Apostasy yet. We'll do that and the restoration today (and hopefully the BoM + prayer).
 
One of our investigators is getting baptized next Sunday! She's super wishy-washy and said she wanted to push her date back but our primary program was this Sunday and it made her decide to stick with the 29th. She was worried about the WoW (she drinks 8 cups of coffee a day) but the kids talked about the WoW and it helped her. We're hoping to get her a piano-playing calling because she likes to play the piano. It feels kind of weird because my companion did most of the (pretty much all of the) work with her. I really haven't done anything. I just share my little memorized portions. I had no idea how she felt about anything. I didn't know how she was progressing until we gave her the baptismal commitment.

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