UN Cemetery 7/20/09

RoseE writes:

"Dear Mom & Dad,

Aaaaaaahhhh shortest piece-of-crap email ever! Dad's fault.* I went (with my two American cohorts and the newly-christened third American cohort, Sis. Musser, plus my district leader and the district's new greenie) to the U.N. Memorial Cemetery. It was amazing, but it took a lot of time. But the garden was beautiful, and I was glad I got to pay respects to all those men who lost their lives holding onto South Korea's freedom and future. So the sacrifice of my e-mail time wasn't in vain. I also got to see the first U.N. flag used in the Korean War; it was in Gen. MacArthur's personal collection until he donated it to the U.N, who sent it to the Cemetery along with a plaque the Koreans had given to the UN thanking them for their help, but that the U.N. had to take down because the USSR threw a hissy fit. It's astonishing how often politics interferes with doing what's actually, like, Right.

I went on an amazing split** with Sister Beckstead this week. We're both American Juniors***, but we did a LOT. We found people and taught people and visited people and made a new member book and taught English class and made cake (thunder cake#; I snuck the recipe off the internet and have made two this week. I seem to have finally found a winner. Koreans love this thing. Even my companion, who has to beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. She wants me to make three more) and answered the phone and got ourself a member meal at Pizza Hut. It was a huge confidence-builder for me. Trailing behind a Korean, you tend to do nothing because there's nothing you can do that they can't do better. So you don't know how much you actually CAN do. I can do a lot better than I thought that I could.

I've been to Costco actually twice this week--once again today for Sis. Musser's sake. And to have another chicken bake.

I thought about Emily's## wedding the whole day. I want to read the whole account again, and tell about everything I did that day, but I can't because I have to run to the other end of town to meet our companions, who will eat us alive if we're late, even though they just called and told us that THEY would be fifteen minutes late. Sigh.

I love you.

RoseE"


*Dad's fault: Todd has ingrained into our children that you don't go anywhere without visiting a museum or a war memorial or a military cemetery or a battlefield. Thus, her visit to the UN Cemetery.

**split: sometimes for variety or for teaching experiences, a companionship will split up for a day and pair up with another companionship. So Companionship AB will go on splits with Companionship CD, so that A and C go out and teach for a day, and B and D do the same somewhere else.

***Juniors: Each companionship has a senior companion and a junior companion, the senior companion having more language skills and missionary experience and making the decisions.

# Thunder Cake recipe, about the book

##Emily: RoseE's best friend got married on Saturday