Letter 1/5/2014

Coming on my mission has made me realize what a baby I am. There were things that I thought were so horrible before that seem so silly now. In my first couple of weeks here I was having 'woe-is-me' thoughts about the cold, particularly because my area is one of the coldest if not the coldest in the mission and this year is extra cold all over the world. But I talked to a sister in our ward from Russia and she to

(New Year's Sunrise on the hike)

ld me that she moved to Korea because she is allergic to the cold so she moved here because it's so warm. Yeah - "it's so warm." So I think that every time I'm mad at the cold. Some people have to live in the Siberian dessert, rather than just have to deal with it's winds. She's actually from an island between Russia/China and Japan.

I tried to buy some thick skirts last P-day but I don't fit into any of them (because Korean sizes are so small). Love my life. But my clothes are sufficient. I only wanted a couple so that ward members would stop scolding me (maybe because they thought she wasn't dressing warm enough). I just have to plan my wardrobe wisely on days that I will see our ward.

(The name Soo-Ji (Susie) carved into the curb.)

I realize that I don't talk about missionary work very often and I've been trying to talk about it more. But as I talked a little bit about last week, there just really isn't much going on. We have one progressing investigator who put off her baptism but we're still going to teach her regularly because we know she'll be baptized someday. She also wants us to teach her English (I have some words to say about English later). We have received one referral since I've been here but we've only seen her once. She'll make plans to see us but then cancel the day of. But she only wants to learn English. Oh, English. We have two more investigators who only want to learn English. Everyone assured us that their schedules would free up come winter break but everyone is actually busier. No one will meet with us. And the streets are empty. We think maybe a lot of people go to Seoul for their break becauseon Saturday afternoon/evening we walked for 4.5 hours and only talked to 6 people. We finally went to the bus stop in front of the busiest train station to talk to people. We're working on updating the less active member list right now but no one is ever home! We visited 12 people in one day everyone had either moved or they weren't home so we don't know. Ansan (the area she is in) is dwinding. Everyone wants to move away because it doesn't have a lot of opportunities (sound familiar?) We had two young women move to Incheon and one move to Icheon last month. We had two young women come to church yesterday and I was really excited because we haven't had anyone come in almost two months! (she and her companion are in the young women presidency) But a less active family that we've been helping has starting coming back to church and the husband bore his testimony yesterday!

Last P-Day we met up with some of the sisters in our zone and ate sushi! I don't know why I didn't think I'd like it before (the baby problem again) but it's so good! It's expensive so we don't eat raw fish very often but it's so yummy! We're going to an island today and we should be able to find some cheap and super yummy raw fish!

My comp likes the pajama pants. She wears them a lot. I keep meaning to take a picture together but it hasn't happened yet.

Thank you for a Christmas cards! I hung them up as I think I told you. They make me so happy! The kidlings are so cute! I like emails but I can only look at them for an hour a week. I can look at letters and pictures as long as I want (..during my free time at night).

And I know everyone at 1830 Parley has been anxiously waiting to hear what became of the hair styling products dilemma. They have really good styling products here. It's totally fine. Their hair is more caucasian like Mia and Noah's hair.

We got a notice on our front door the other day telling us that we hadn't paid our electric bill in three months and if we didn't pay it within a couple of days everything would be turned off. We were freaking out. We have a senior couple that works in the office and pays our bills for us. He was a teacher of efficiency at Virginia Tech. So I called him in a panic asking if he had been paying our bills. We couldn't figure out the problem. But we looked at the map of Ansan and saw that down the street someone had the exact same address as us but we had one additional number. phew. The addresses here are kinda confusing. I'm holding onto the hope that I will someday get a ipad and I can better navigate myself around the city. We waste so much time backtracking and getting lost while we try to find the addresses of inactive members homes.

Its really hard for me to type because I can't see the keyboard. The computer rooms have lights so dim that my monitor blinds me.

Susie's (Susanna Grace) in luck. Soo and Jee are both feminine sounds for names and Soo-Ji is actually the name of some popular figure (a pop-star or something) so everyone knows the name. Mia is obviously feminine. There's a train stop named Mia and I want to take a picture of it but we're not allowed to take pictures during our proselyting time, for fear of looking like tourists. 

It's Korean tradition to go hiking on New Years day or go to the ocean to see the sunrise (in Japan it is a tradition to see the first sunrise of the new year too, rather than stay up late on New Year's Eve, and our family likes that tradition). The young men planned a hiking activity (too much hiking!!) and we were invited even though no young women showed up :(

When we got to the top there wasn't a sun so we thought it was too cloudy for it to show through but then it came and it was SUPER PRETTY!

In Korea children are one-years-old when they are born (like Japan) and then they turn a year older at the new year, rather than on their birthdays. So I'm now 22!!

On Tuesday night I taught a practice lesson to a ward member because I need practice.