What's crackalackin? [week 27]

My BUDDIES! heh-hehe-HEH-hello! What's crackalackin? Hey you want to know a secret? Well too bad I can keep a secret, so you don't get to know my super juicy desirable secret. 

OH-KAY what did I do that was worthy of noteworthyness? Let me cogitate for one second. OK last Saturday we had ourselves a party. We played high-school assembly-esque party games. Like the put your hand in this cardboard box and tell us what cold spaghetti feels like game. And we played some get to know you games and some charade variants. The people that came is what made it weird. Because if your with a good group of friends you could play candy land and still have a euphoric experience. We had missionaries of every age rank and gender, and teaching friends of every age rank and gender. So there were like mini cliques within the event, but it still ended up being fun. I got to know a cool yet different teaching friend named Makenzie. She is an English teacher from America, she likes theater and ice cream, and she was absolutely incredible at charades. Good job Makenzie. And I got to be better friends with 이선현. (Elder sun hyeon.) It was a success. 42/42 for sure and for certain. 

There is all the party people on the gym on the green floor. It was lit. 

I have a neighbor Harmonie (grandma 할머니) who had kids that lived in America, and they were taken care of by their neighbors, so she wants to return the favor by feeding any Americans on her floor. She made us some delicious curry. It was so good. 

Guys help me out. Is "lip service" an English phrase? A Korean said I was giving'em "lip service" when I was brown nosing. If it is an English phrase then its going to be used at every possible opportunity because it's the most incredible thing I've heard in my entire mission. If it's like a konglish phrase, then I will also still use it all the time, but with a Korean accent. 

It's good to be able to speak well enough to laugh with Koreans. That's my love language. LAUGHING. So it's nice to be able to laugh and get to know some people here. I think it's the first step in missionary work. Making friends. 

Alllllright I love you guys, you have a jolly fan-flippn-tactic week. Watch conference! I'm going to next week because thats when the Korean version comes out. I'm still watching it in English though. OK love you bye.

PICTURES!

My new best friend, "Lil Aang." He has all the answers. I got him at the Buddhist temple last week. Maybe I'll take more pictures and send them on over in another email... OK that's what I'll do, but that means I'm going to make this email the "reply all" type because it takes 30 minutes to add all my many faithful followers the other way. So be careful of what you click. 😚

The next picture (Well who knows what order these will be in after I send them?) Is some scrumptious cold meat sticks. I live Korean food, but so many fast foods and really tasty looking stuff is served cold or at room temperature. I always take most street food home to microwave it before consumption.

There is a picture of what appears to be a hot dog in a large bun with some frosted flakes and cheese on it. It's GRRRRREAT!

Then there is a selfie of me being super cheerful and patriotic. God bless America 🇺🇸 and South Korea too

Zone Conference Happened [week 24]

Well salutations my besties~

Welcome back to another email from the greatest missionary (whose name is Elder Truman Renfroe) that ever sent an email. 

This week has been dandy, marvelous, peachy, keen, swagalicious, and just a big heaping pile of swell, glorious, goodness. 

I went to a 삼겹살 (sam gyeop sar = meat buffet) with a recent convert and he was just the nicest guy I have ever met.  I feel like Bear Grills in Man VS. Wild, when he says "this has got to be the most dangerous terrain I have ever set foot on!" Every episode. It is possible only if the episodes get progressively more dangerous, and he is not, in fact, a big, stinky liar. 

What I'm trying to say is: I need to stop adding "est" to the end of all those descripty words. 

Anyway we met a super nice guy at a meat buffet. We ate meat and talked about his life. He is the oldest (I guess that "est" is ok) sibling like me, and he works at a Bible factory. What a cool dude. His eyelids sort of drooped in a way that made his pupils be at the border of his upper eyelid which made him look like he was always looking upwards in deep thought, but in actuality he is making direct eye contact with you. It was a neat optical illusion. The way your brain recognizes where people are looking is mega fascinating. 

We also met with Jashua 정. He is super cool. He works for Samsung and is pretty high up in the company. He seems to know what we are teaching is true, but he isn't quite ready to commit. That is actually a bit of a theme in this area. Lots of people seem to like the missionaries and what we are teaching, but baptism and tithing and giving up smoking or coffee is all a big commitment. That's cool they can take their time. We will keep on teaching. 

What else happened??? 

OH! Zone conference happened. That was fun. I met some cool missionaries, such as a super cool guy named Elder Liu. He is third-generation Chinese and is just the coolest guy named elder Liu that I have ever met.  Just a chill, laid-back, but also level-headed fellow. I like him. 

Today is Preparation Day (obvi) and elder Carter and I are eating at a 돈 가스 restaurant. Don Kas is a super delicious pork dish. Imagine chicken fried steak but then use pork and then stuff the pork with cheese. Yum. 

We also went to a sweet book store where I bought a nice pen. All my favorite pens from home ran out of ink. I like to write in my journals a-lot. I wish I just got a black one but it's turquoise. It looked nice in the store but it's a loud color for when I'm trying to concentrate. It's a fountain pen which is kind of cool. Just thought I would try it out. It didn't magically make my handwriting turn into old-style English Declaration of Independence Shakespeare cursive like I was hoping. I guess that only happens with the ₩ 160000 pens ($133).

That was a lot about pens. I like pens. 

Moving on! when we were at the bank doing boring bank things, namely waiting for a clerk to become available, a super sweet lady came up to us and started to teach us about her religion.  I think her churches name is 하나님의 교회 (God's Church). She was so super incredibly nice. She smiled a nice kind smile and her voice was kind of sing-song. We read some scriptures about the Passover with her. We didn't try to convert her, and all she wanted to do was read scriptures, so it was a pleasant experience. We told her we didn't really want to meet her later to be taught about her church because we ourselves are religious missionaries. It was just a cool experience, and I think it's good to have love and respect for other religions. 

Oh SPEAKING OF WHICH! last email or the email before I wrote some kind of sort of INCREDIBLY RUDE STUFF In my photos section. I had pictures of some beautiful Buddhist statues and called them false idols and indirectly said I didn't respect them all that much, and that was something a rude, closed-minded idiot would say. So I apologize. I'm not sure why I said those things. (Well yes I am. I was trying to be funny by being a bully, which isn't nice.) Yeah! Other religions are awesome! And we should have nothing but respect and love and kinship for them. Again I am sorry if I said something offensive.

"We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."

Well that's all from me. Let me know how your doing in the comments below. Like and subscribe. All that good stuff. OK I love you guys bye.

PICTURES 

I wish you guys received the pictures in the same order I sent them so I could accurately number them. But emails are strange like that. That's OK I'll just describe them like I like to do.

The giant disco ball was at the mall with the book store. It looked neat so I clicked a quick snapshot of it. Same with the clock and dome. I also clicked a quick snapshot of those.

I ended up buying the octopus crackers that I mentioned in one of my previous emails because I wanted to see if they would work the way I hypothesized. They did not. But they were really good. Actually they were octopus flavor. Yummy.

There is a cool Mr. Thinker statue robot. I like it. 

There are some cool wooden models you can buy and put together that were displayed at the bookstore. I like those things. 

And there is a selfie if me and my companion. Every time I write selfie it auto corrects to selfish. Huh neat.

New Companion, New Area [week 23]

Well hello You lovely lot, how are you all doing on this fine day? I am doing absolutely 좋아요! This week was a jolly good time. So let me tell you what happened. What happened is this: on Monday, my companion and I went bowling and we had some delicious chicken to celebrate a good transfer. and then! 

On Wednesday night (which was the last day of the transfer we got lee to commit to a baptismal date. :)  She is super spiritual and cool. She said that she prays whenever she is happy to tell Heavenly Father "thank you." She said she does this to make Him feel good. What a nice person she is! That was the nicest thing I have heard in all of my days as a missionary. Whoa, she is so nice. 

Then on Thursday, I moved on over to 분당구 Bundang gu. My new companion is awesome. His name is Elder Carter, and he is from Utah, and he is awesome! he is the zone leader, he has been in Korea for 11 months and he was in Oregon for 2 months before this because of Covid or something like that. What a cool guy. This area is super awesome! It's busy, and big and it has a nice big church building and you get to go to in person church. It's awesome! There are cool members and there's a board game night every Saturday for teaching friends and all sorts of cool stuff. I love this area! It's exciting. 

Some nice harmonies (grandmas) took me and elder carter out for lunch. They spoke so fast and fluent, it's crazy. Elder Carter understood 90% of what they were saying and I understood about 3%. Which means Elder Carter is going to be a fantastical language trainer. 

Yuuuuup! It's been a really good time here in Korea. I love you guys. Pray, read the scriptures, Go to church. Those are the keys to happiness. And make Christ the center of your life. 

PICTURES!

The picture of me holding a bowling ball above my head like a mighty cave man about to kill a sabre tooth tiger with a rock is... me holding a bowling ball.

The Picture of the bag of chips depicts a pink octopus holding some of the chips that I assume are in the bag. The flesh colored octopus appears to be kissing the pink octopus. I believe this is a parable or an encripted message to the prospective chip investors. So the pink octopus represents the people who buy the chips. The chips represent the chips. and the flesh colored girl octopus represents attractive human girls. So, if my interpretation is correct, Buying these chips will make cute girls want to kiss you... neat

I don't know if the gifs on my phone are specific to Korea or just having a Samsung phone, but there are some crazy and funny gifs. this one was one of my favorites.