RoseE writes:
"Dear Mom & Dad,
Wow, it was good to talk to you on Sunday. It's a lot nicer to call home two months before your fly day than it is to call six or fourteen months before it, as I can now state from plain experience. 'Cuz you hang up and take a deep breath and say, "Okay, two months. I can do this." And then it's okay.
Just workin' on hanging on that long. It's been an up and down week, but some good ups and no downs too drastic, really. The biggest, coolest thing is that on Sunday a woman named Oang Ga Jeong, her mother, and her 3-year-old son Dorian came to the 2nd and 3rd hours of church. Sis. Oang's uncle and younger brother are both members, one in America and one in Taiwan (their whole family is Taiwanese, by the bye). She and her husband & little boy are back in Korea after the dad lost his job, recession and all. We met her on Monday and taught her about prayer . . . she's kind of excited to get into this whole 'religion' thing, but was annoyed/frustrated that there was never anybody around to explain to her who this Jesus person is and why he is important. When we told her that, um, that's our job, she was all like, "Really? Oh, cool!" We thought it was pretty cool, too. We also thought it was cool that Charlotte, our token American member sister, served her mission in Taiwan and speaks Mandarin, and is very excited to help us teach. She speaks only English/Mandarin, us only English/Korean, and Sis. Oang only Mandarin/Korean, so this is going to be a language party, right here in a little bit.
And today for P-Day we all went to a reptile museum. Really. It's a museum full of snakes, lizards, iguanas, tortises, turtles, and more snakes, in what used to be an elementary school but got remodeled into an interactive museum/zoo. Since nobody else was there that day and the workers were bored and they wanted to be nice to missionaries, they let us in for free and let us pick up and play with just about everything. It was SO cool. My favorite was a little gray-and-yellow king snake. He and I were buds. I'll try to send some video in a bit here.
Inteviews were this week . . . Prez seems to have implied that Sis. Yoon is leaving (and possibly going senior . . . have fun!) so that Sis. Linford can train on her last transfer. The rest of the time was spent by all of us hanging on Sis. Jennings' every word as she talked about children's literature . . . she was a librarian in her former life, and we haven't had new stories in forEVER. She also bought us a block of cheese from Costco (yaaay!) and vitamin pills to see me through to the end of this adventure.
Oh, got news from Sis. Pak Sung Hee (who, like Sis. Pak Min Jeong, is from Kyeongi province, which donated the peace park thing) that Sis. Jin Mok Hwan, who I'd been mistakenly informed about, is in fact going to the temple this week. She's going to the temple. Oh, gosh. Have you even the slightest idea how deeply, abidingly happy that makes me? SHE'S GOING TO THE TEMPLE!
So this is all good news stuff . . . the hard bit is that we've kind of been at loose ends for a while 'cuz I've kind of forgotten what missionaries do all day when they're not madly riding busses back and forth all over the entire city. I have a lot of time that used to be eaten by transportation and not much idea of what to do with it. The Elders are trying to organize an "Okay, which people on the list of members ACTUALLY live in this city" project, which sounded like a great idea to me, and then they took the project book and hid it in their apartment, so I am annoyed. I don't deal well with being at loose ends. It freaks me out. Sis. Culver is being very even-keeled, bless her.
Trying to be trunkie in only healthy, productive ways. Not sure I'm succeding, but I'm trying. When Sis. Jennings was divvying out the vitamin pills, I let slip "I only need sixty," and was met with condemning stares. Yes, I know the number of days left, all right? Quit judging, y'all. I didn't come on this adventure to be SuperMissionary, just to be A Missionary. I've already far exceeded my own expectations. I'll know the number of days left if I want to. Any time I feel defensive about this I can just snap at Sis. Culver, who has to take it 'cuz she's my greenie. And she's even-keeled so she doesn't care.
Love ya! And not to be trunkie, but we're in the single digits of 'number of e-mails I have left to send'. Weird.
Stay out of trouble. If I didn't specifically forbid strokes, surgery mishaps, or broken tailbones**, I'm forbidding them now.
RoseE"
*trunkie: eager to pack your trunk and go home.
**strokes, surgery mishaps, and broken tailbones: All three of these things happened to the (extended) family this last week.
No comments:
Post a Comment