August 24, 2015 (Week 36)

August 24, 2015

Bowling

This week was a good week.  Monday we went and did some yard work at the presidents house, since he had a lot of weeds. That was fun. We did that, had hot dogs off the barbecue (soooo good) and played some basketball. One of the best P-Days so far I've had here.  After P-Day we went and jundoed.  We met a guy who wanted to sit down at a cafe and talk, so that was pretty fun.  Had a sweet strawberry smoothie and talked with him.  Hopefully we can meet him again. We met a guy from  Central Asia, one of the "-istan" countries (I've met like 6 different nationalities this past couple weeks, it's weird).  He was pretty good at Korean, which was interesting. We talked with him, then set up another time to talk with him.

Tuesday was nuts. We had a lot of weird people we met.  It started with meeting Kim Min. 김민. He is like 37, and is pretty cool. He met us at a cafe, and since he is older, he bought for us. That's the best part of being younger in Korea, everybody buys for you. We sat with him, taught him and talked, then next time he said he would buy us lunch!! He's a cool dude. Later, while jundoing, met a guy who showed us his office. It turns out it's in the sketchiest part of our area, and he works in the basement. I guess he runs an alcohol business from down there. We were both a little scared about something happening, but luckily we got out pretty quick. We headed back to the church, and some guy was there and said "I got locked out of my house, and so I took a walk around and came to see this".  So we asked if we could talk with him, but he just said no, but that he needed 11 dollars to make a new key for his house. Elder Saunders got his number, gave him 11 dollars, and agreed to meet the next day.  He didn't show up, so he got swindled out 11 bucks, it seems.  Later that night, I was talking with an old guy, when a drunk guy by the edge of the street fell over and smacked his head.  Elder Saunders went to help, and I figured I should go help. We thought he was just throwing up, but nope, he was bleeding pretty bad on his head. We got him to sit up, but blood kept rushing up, so he eventually passed out from blood loss. We got the blood to stop with some socks, and held him there until the ambulance came. Let me tell you, it was a scary picture. Seeing a guy with blood all over his clothes and shirt. So yeah, that ended our crazy day.
 
Wednesday I went to Jang Wi. It's a tiny place, which combined districts with us this transfer, so we are one big district. I was with Elder Pelina.  We had district meeting, then he and I took off. We jundoed around for a bit, then had English class... They only had one person there... it was pretty weird. Their area is the smallest, and since college is out, there isn't really anybody to talk with, so not much happened.

Thursday we met with Angel, our baptismal special-needs guy. He is set for the 30th right now, as long as he remembers to come to church. I want to help him, I'm just scared of him getting baptized, then going less-active because he forgets a lot. I'm not sure how much sticks in his head, but the bishop seemed ok with it, so we are going with it. We then had dinner, and were about to meet with someone, when Elder Bean came up yelling from across the street.  We came back, and he told us to get personal emergency money out, and go to the house. Sounds like North Korea and South Korea had a little spat, so all the missionaries went in their houses.  So we chilled there for the night.  That was exciting.

Friday we went back to normal. We jundoed and met a couple cool people.

Saturday we met with Kim Yoon Hyuk.  He left for Germany on the 23rd, so that was our last time meeting. He told us about the speakers, and the conference that was going down. That was interesting news to us. Sad to see him go, he was cool.  Later met Bek Joon Sang, the 72 year-old. We talked about priesthood, and the authority it has. He talked about what scores people get, and their rank in the church... that upset me.  Religion is not some ranking system and competition... I just wanted to smack him for a second.  English class followed, then taught Angel again. He accepts everything with no problems, but not sure how much he remembers.  Later we ate dinner with the ZLs, and watched some news in the restaurant about North Korea.  I guess nothing too big is happening. Kinda sad, kinda good. I want to stay and work, but it would be fun to say we got sent somewhere else because of the war...

Cool Wall Art

Sunday we had church and jundo.  Not much happened there, except our ward mission leader is awesome. He is moving our usual meeting to Friday and will have pizza there at the church. He's a great guy. It's sad to hear people didn't understand him more.

We had a good week and met some cool guys. I guess our zone did great all across the board. The APs called the ZLs this morning, and asked what we did this past week.  Slowly figuring out the mission. Sorry it took so long, but I finally feel like I'm starting to put the pieces together, and have a good time.

Hope you are all doing well,
Love,
Elder Mortensen