August 11, 2013
Dear everyone!!!!
Alright. I don't have heat stroke. Yet. But today is apparently the hottest day in Korea, and they celebrate it. By eating chicken soup and dog meat. Yum. But it really is so hot here. I can't even express how hot it is here. Take 95+ degrees plus almost unbearable humidity and you have the lovely Keumjeong area. Sister Lee got sick from the heat yesterday, and I've just been praying not to A LOT. And it's seemed to work so far! ^.^ But I do love it here. And our ward is AMAZING. The Korean people are so loving, and the Lord is truly beginning to work miracles in our area.
Alright, but before the miracles, some random things about Korea:
Couches are totally decorations. You don't sit on them. Ever.
The buses are freaking terrifying.
My first meal with ward members, they took pity on me and gave me a fork. Whoops. My white girl is showing.
I've eaten raw fish. As in killed 5 min ago, barely scaled and gutted. And it was actually kind of good! I was so surprised.
There are at least 2 karaoke places on every street. Wonder if that's where Psy got his start....
And speaking of Psy, the Korean question of the ages seems to be, How the heck did Gangnam Style become popular in the United States?
Our area has no foreigners. I see MAYBE another non-Korean a day. I finally know how those three black guys in Utah feel...
The Samsung obsession is real. We have a Samsung washer and a Samsung air conditioning unit. Solid.
Hawking loogies is totally acceptable. Wear shoes.
All our inactive members live on the top floors of apartment buildings. It's statistically impossible, and yet it's true.
Koreans don't have church basketball. They have church ping pong. How endearingly Asian. ^.^
But we are doing the Lord's work. Even though there are days when we walk for hours in the heat and all our appointments fall through, the Lord is using us. A short time before, our area was "dead". We couldn't get contacts and the members had a hard time working with us, but the Lord is working miracles. This week we had SO many. One of our miracles this week was Jane. On Friday, she texted us totally out of the blue. We didn't even know who she was, but she said she had moved to Korean from the Philippines about a year ago, she was a member, and she had been inactive but wanted to come back to church. We called her and asked if we could visit her, and she said yes. She lived in Yangsan. Yangsan is 1 hour away by bus. And we had to walk half the way. In 100 degree heat. I thought I was going to die, and I seriously prayed NOT to pass out on the side of the road. But we found her house. And her husband, Brother Kim. And he is amazing. He has such a firm testimony of God and that He loves us. And he was really interested in the gospel. He had a long discussion with Sister Lee that I really didn't understand, but the Spirit was so strong! Jane kept smiling, and Brother Kim accepted a Book of Mormon. Turns out, he doesn't believe that God only sent Jesus to Israel. If God loves all His children, He would have sent Christ to other places as well. Amazing. Finding him was such a miracle. And we already have our next appointment set up! I feel so honored and blessed that the Lord is using us to bless Jane and Brother Kim's lives.
The work is real! We are doing it! Even if only by small and simple things. The Lord loves His children so much, and He manifests it in so many ways. I love Heavenly Father, and I know He lives.
Love,
Sister Bonney
