Spicy Chicken Feet (August 2)

I apologize that all he seems to be writing about is food. I know he is learning and experiencing so many different and more interesting things. 

So I missed a bit from last week. I had two dinner appointments I forgot to talk about. One was with a member family at Asheley's. It is a Korean take on an American Buffet. It was really good and I thought I ate fishes eyes. But my companion disappointed me by telling me that it was some fruit, that makes more sense because it was in a fruit salad, but I think I will go with fish eyes. Anyways after 4 plates of dinner, I decided to move on to 4 plates of dessert. It was really good, but I felt sick afterwards. 

Also last week we had a dinner appointment with someone who I call Dog tattoo. I forgot his name and we met him right after he got this tattoo of a dog, hence the nickname. We had octopus and vegetables with the all to common apron of protection. It seems that anytime we end up going to a restaurant, we are given aprons to protect our white shirts. Sometimes they work... 

Speaking of dinner appointments... Whoever prayed for me to have some might have needed to specify a day... We met a really cool Irish couple this last week. They just moved here and are going to be teaching English here. They were super friendly, hopefully the other elders will meet them... 

Then just a little farther on down the road a man tells us to follow him into a 약국 or pharmacy, here in Korea they are all over the place. Then he buys us this vitamin drink and makes us drink it. Then he beckons us to continue to follow him saying that we look like we need to get something to drink. We go into a convenience store and he goes 'let me buy you some coffee.' we go 'no we don't drink coffee' he says 'don't worry, I wasn't going to get you hot coffee, We are going to get cold coffee' Eventually, we convinced him that we didn't drink coffee and he bought us a blue raspberry lemonade iced thing and started talking to us. It was a weird conversation, but after he was satisfied that we looked ok, he dismissed us to our dinner appointment. 

Before we saw him we had each just had a bottle of Gatorade so I don't know why he thought we needed a drink. But now that we are full of liquids we ran, more super speed walked, to our dinner appointment. Luckily we only had one that night. It was on the army base so we got stopped by the guards and they wouldn't let us through till the Special Forces Cornol came and got us. (We were eating with him) He served in Japan and he was super friendly. After making us finish the two serving dishes of some sort of chilighetti, we had a huge bowl of ice cream. Then we watched as he and his wife filled 3 bags full of meals and snacks to take home and have this coming week. Yep, pretty awesome, they even drove us home!

Well because transfers (A transfer is six weeks. Missionaries stay in their assigned areas until they are transferred. The mission president is the one who assigns the missionaries to their areas.) ended this last week we got a call from the AP's (assistant to the president. Also young missionaries like Colten, called to serve for a short period of their mission in a leadership position to assist the mission president with a variety of tasks). 

I got transferred! 

I am going to 일산 or ilsan! Now I get to live with the celeberties! 

I have no Idea who my companion is, we were not told this transfer. My companion is also leaving, he is headed for 의장부 uijangbu. Should be fun I guess. With this new information, I am now filled with dread because we have to eat all the food that the Cornol gave us before Wednesday... I don't think it will happen.

 Sunday came and we were told we were going to eat dinner with a really nice family, but before we could eat dinner with them, we would have to take the sacrament to someone in their home (The sacrament is the formal blessing and administering of bread and water representing the body and blood of Christ to Church members, usually during a Sunday worship meeting. It is the equivalent of communion in many other Christian churches.) . The old lady we went to visit was really nice and even feed us food. The only problem  with this is after the dinner she feed us we were going to be going to another dinner appointment. So we finally finished the chicken that she gave both of us and the vegetables that went with it and then the yogurt that followed, and ran to our next appointment. 

The directions we had were not very good so we got lost and were 30 minutes late, but they made sure we ate a lot, I think I gained 10 pounds yesterday... I also was told to try the spicy fried chicken foot, had I known it was chicken foot, I probably would not have eaten it. It was ok, but it didn't taste like chicken. 

Next week I will be writing in a new city, but I am still super excited.

Love

Elder Brown

Sunshine through the Rain

Ok, so this past week has been really great. Sorry about the build on the jelly beans. I thought I saw a sign for 100g of jelly beans for 250won so that's about a fourth of a pound for 25cents. Turns out it was 10g for 250won... oops, but I did get gold fish for a dollar! 

Our American dinner appointment was great. We had Hawaiian haystacks, I forgot how much I missed them. Then we taught a lesson on baptism because the oldest son was getting baptized. It was so awesome. Service was a lot of fun this week, although I now have a funny story... language barriers, got to love them right... anyways for another time. After service we always eat at this sandwich place called tospia, actually really good and really inexpensive? Anyways, the lady is super nice and always gives us a free lemonade with our food. She also gave us a huge plate of 떡 or rice cake. 

On Wednesday I ate with a bib at a restaurant... they gave them to everyone, but it was a weird experience for me. The food was really good, 짜짱명  a really good Chinese dish. We only ate out because our district leader had to leave a week early before transfers, so we joined the other district. It was basically a district zone meeting... 

On Thursday we tried to visit a possible investigator, in our mission, we have to meet the person twice and have a return appointment in order to have them qualify as an investigator, but he was busy. He is so ready to hear the gospel though, I wish he would see how much this could change his life. We also got asked to check on a new member, a member was found living in our ward that hasn't been to church, he lives on the very edge of our area, about an hour away. We didn't find him, but we talked with the people up there, they are super nice and have never seen a foreigner. It is really funny because when the kids see us they go 와국인입니다. or 'Its a foreigner' Sorry, I never learned how to spell well. I sldo experienced what happens when your sister forgot to pray for you...

 It started pouring, and I mean raining. 

Thankfully we brought umbrellas.

 On Friday, we were supposed to go meet with another possible investigator, but he cancelled on us. Claimed he was moving to Germany that day for business related issues and was at the airport. I found it funny that he decided to move over night, but oh well, guess the next set of missionaries can talk to him in three years. Hopefully we can meet him some other time. 

On Saturday we decided it was time to move out of the cloud that we have been living in for the last week or so. It started pouring very hard. I think by the end of the day, my brown shoes were closer to the color black than brown. Then we had another dinner appointment. It was really good. I still can not get over the fact that I am eating octopus sometimes...Anyways, This week has been a blast. I hope it has started to dry out back home, just remember that even if there is is rain outside in your life, There can always be 'Sunshine in (Your) Soul Today' this weeks theme song.

 Anyways Hope you are doing well. How has God blessed your life this week? I know He has and I can not even see you!

Love

Elder Brown

July 19th

Wow, this has been a great week! So last week P-day ( Preparation day: the missionaries have one day a week, usually Monday, to do everything that they need to do to prepare for the week.This includes grocery shopping, writing emails home, laundry, and some sight seeing and fun. This way they can focus all their attention to studying and teaching the rest of the week.) was a little weird... We emailed on Monday, but had P-day on Tuesday. This is because we went to the Temple! It was amazing! I really liked the artwork. It has a really interesting Korean touch to it. 

After the temple we went to a fun pizza buffet which happened to be on top of another resturant on top of a store on top of a different store. We had to ride a maze of escalators... Its how we do it in Korea! The pizza was really good. I really like this sweet potato pizza that they have here. It is really good. They also had this really good fruit salad with a fruit that is white, but it has a bunch of black seeds in it. Kinda looks like cookies and cream Ice cream in a cube. It was super good though. 

Sorry I forgot to take pictures... but they had really good Ice cream! I think I have been eating a lot of popcicles lately... they are really cheap and it is really hot. Speaking of popcicles, I tried a corn flavered one. Never Again... It was like a frozen milk bar with corn kernals inside of it... now I know why there were so many in the freezer... I also tried this really good one. It is half Chocolate covered ice cream bar covered in milk, half cookies and cream ice cream bar. Super Amazing. 

We also got our first investigators! They are a married couple that met the missionaries a few years ago and they are really interested in the church. You can just call them the Choen family (전) They are really awesome and they took us out to dinner. 

FUN FACT: if you know nothing about Korean culture, it revolves around food. (Which is probably why his whole email is practically about food. I bet he forgot to bring his journal or was ready to eat lunch so naturally he talked about food.) An appropriate way to ask how someone is doing is by asking if they have eaten They got us each these big bologna things, basicaly really really tasty super thin very large hamburger. But it is seriously, amazing. Really hard to eat with chopsticks...but super fun. 

We have been walking a lot especially because WE LIVE ON THE SIDE OF THE SOUTH MOUNTAIN but that's ok, it has been a lot of fun. We also streetboarded this past week, we stand on a corner full of people and ask people to put a sticker on our board which contains questions. Then we ask them what they think the answer to the question is I.E. Where are we going after we die? Then we can start teaching, it is pretty awesome. Afterwards we ate at this place that is better than McDonalds, but not super amazing. They had this european burger that was really good though. It was a regular burger with all the works (except ketchup) but it had an extra cheese pattie. Seriously it was a fried slice of strange cheese, really good. And because one cheap ice cream cone is not enough, I had three. Can't think of anything else, but I maybe getting jelly beans today... a lot of jelly beans. we will see

Lots of love from Korea,

Elder Brown

Oh! we have an American 식사 tonight! I am so looking forward to this! 

식사 = Dinner appointment