The Rumors Are True

Yes, indeed they are. But which rumors you ask? I will tell you of two specific ones...later. First let me tell you about my week!

So, nothing too terribly interesting happened until Wednesday. Every week on Wednesday we have our Missionary Coordination meeting with our branch president. (because the branch is so small, we don't have someone who is specifically assigned to be our mission leader, so the branch president doubled up and does it in addition to his other responsibilites). So, we were having our meeting and I was understanding about 65-70% of it. For some reason though, my companion kept translating things for me at random intervals. I didn't even ask him to, but he just decided to do it. Anyway, after he did that like 4 or 5 times, the branch president just stopped, looked me straight in the eye and (in Korean) said "Do you need me to speak in English. This is a coordination meeting, not language study" (side note, he is an English teacher and speaks English almost fluently even though he is 100% Korean and has never been to America) I told him that I was fine, but I felt kind of frustrated because I didn't want him to look at me like a useless foreigner missionary. I know my companions intentions were good trying to translate for me, but in the end it just made me look worse. So I was a bit frustrated. Not at my companion or the branch president, but at myself. Despite all the progress I have made in the language, situations like that make me feel like I'm at about 1% language ability. I have learned from MANY past experiences though that that kind of attitude won't help anything. So I just tried to put on my happy face for the rest of the meeting. Afterwards, there were some other men from the ward who had come to the building because they have a meeting with the branch president right after we do. Elder 류 and I were about to leave when they called us back and asked us if we wanted to go out to dinner with them. Being poor missionaries, the thought of free restaurant food sounded much more appealing than ramen and rice, so we decided to tag along. This is where the first rumor comes in. Some of you may know where I am going with this. When I got my mission call, a lot of people tried to warn me, "They eat some really interesting stuff over in the Orient. Be careful" And I believed them. And to an extent, I have already seen that rumor become a reality. (cow foot soup anyone?) But when we got to the restaurant, one man ordered for all of us. He ordered something called 보신탕 (bo shin tang). Take a wild guess as to what that is.

 

Yep. That my friends is dog meat soup. Sorry Takana, I ate one of your fellow kindred. So the rumors are true!! They eat dog in Korea!! Not everyone, in fact from what I have been told, it is mostly older men who like to eat it, but it is eaten nonetheless. *Spoiler alert* I am going to describe it, and while it's not going to be anything crazy, if any of you want to protect your innocence and pretend puppies never get eaten, feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph. Okay, so really, at first when I got my bowl, I didn't even believe it was dog meat. To me it just looked like, well, meat. It was a little bit darker brown and kind of looked like steak, but just a little bit different. The smell wasn't bad at all, although I have been told that if it is not cooked properly that it can smell quite rancid. The taste? Well, again to be honest there wasn't anything too terribly special about the taste. It wasn't very strong independently and the soup that it was in had a ton of spices, so that is mostly what I tasted. The aftertaste (like, an hour after the meal) was kind of gnarly and my breath kind of made me want to gag, but I think that was more of my mind than the actual food. So all in all, eating it wasn't a bad experience. There was only one part that really got me. That was when I ate what looked like a dumpling or something. Yeah... it wasn't a dumpling. Just a big, white, squishy glob of fat about the size of a ping pong ball. Oh my goodess that was so disgusting, strictly because of the texture. It's not even that it was from a dog, (although that didn't help). I think I would have reacted the same no matter what animal it came from. So yeah, that was gross. When I bit into it I started gagging. Of course, I had to save face in front of the other guys (they weren't really paying all that much attention to me. They were having their own conversation and eating this soup is kind of a run of the mill experience for them). I knew though that if I heaved all over the table, it would kind of throw and awkward wrench into the otherwise happy atmosphere. So I tried to compress my gagging. It was so bad though that tears started welling up in my eyes and my glasses started fogging up. I couldn't see, I couldn't breathe and I thought that possibly the end was near. I didn't want to die like that though, so I mustered all my self control and just swallowed it whole. Sick Nasty. From that point on I avoided anything in the soup that I could not clearly identify as meat or broth.

 

So there it is, another check on my Asian bucket list. Let's carry on with the rest of my week. Thursday I went to another one of our proselyting areas called 단양 (Tanyang) for the first time. It's gorgeous too! Gosh, I love this area so much! We spent the day getting to know the area and then in the evening had dinner with our members who live there. When it was time to leave, we went to the bus stop (Tanyang is about an hour bus ride away from Jecheon). We waited for our bus. And waited. And waited. An hour and a half later, at 9:00 (when we were supposed to be home) our bus arrived. I'm not really sure what we would have done had it not come. It did though, thank goodness and we arrived home about 20 minutes before lights out (10:30). It wasn't really a big deal though. It could have ended a lot worse :)

 

Friday was super great again. We had an ice cream party at our English class. Everybody had a good time and 2 of our class members invited us to have dinner with their families in the upcoming weeks (they aren't members), so hopefully that means we can get some new invesitgators from English class!! Also, since our class knew that transfers were coming up, they have kind of been worried about what is going to happen. For whatever reason, I guess they really like me. Not really sure why, but I won't complain. Anyway, they slipped me a little envelope when Elder 류 wasn't looking and said to me "It's for later". I opened it when we got home and inside was a little owl shaped piece of paper with a note written on it. Here is what the note said "To: Fund, We are all loving you very much. Will you please keep staying with us? Please don't go away". Oh my poor heart! It just melts every week because of these people. It was especially cute too because even though these are all adults, most of whom could be my parents, this note, while the penmanship was beautiful, sounded like a child had written it. It was really hard to wipe the giant smile I had on my face off before Elder 류 noticed anything. It was kind of obvious that he had not received such a note and if he knew about it, I think it would just make him feel worse. (He doesn't really connect with people all that well, and really doesn't like people in general. As a result, there aren't many people who are dying to be his friend either. Except me!! Because I love my companions^^)

 

Then the rest of the weekend was good. The missionaries are in charge of the "Teenage Meeting" each Saturday. (it's basically mutual and seminary combined into one meeting and it lasts 3 hours) For the activity we played basketball. Now, because I am American, they all assumed that I would be some sort of Basketball legend or something. We played, and quite frankly I was doing terribly. I played basketball a little bit in elementary school, but other than that it was never really my sport of choice. I thought for sure that they would give me a hard time about not being as good as they thought I would be. Not so! Even after how terribly I played, they still were like "wow, you are so good!". You would think they were just being nice, but actually, no offense, by Korean standard I still was pretty good. That's not to say that no Koreans can play basketball well... just most of them. Anyway, that was Saturday.

 

Sunday... WE GOT A NEW INVESTIGATOR!! Finally. After 12 weeks of searching, we still didn't find an investigator. She found us. Actually, she was a referral from one of our members. He brought her to church and afterward we taught her a brief introductory lesson. She says she plans to continue coming to church each Sunday, and since she already has a friend in the branch, I see MARVELOUS potential with her :) So that was really nice to be able to finish off the transfer with a new investigator. Our only other "investigators" right now is a family of four. The Dad never listens to our messages, the kids only want to learn English, and the mom is really the only one who listens to us, even though her interest is not that strong. On top of all that, they cancel on us almost every week for one reason or another, so it's been a pretty difficult couple of transfers. But we have a new investigator now!! Wahoo! And guess what! I think I may have just found ANOTHER one. When I sat down at this computer this morning, a girl sitting next to me spied my Book of Mormon and started asking me questions about it. So, I taught her the first lesson and she says she wants to meet again. Nothings totally solid but I'm still really excited about it :)

 

Now, about rumor number 2. So the mission is getting kind of crazy. What with the enormous amount of new missionaries coming in and all. There has been this rumor going around though that I will be a trainer next transfer. I know a lot of missions, including foreign missions have their missionaries train right after they finish their own training. I was assured though by my mission president that because of the steep language barrier and the lack of need, that none of the Korean missions do that. In fact, missionaries here generally don't become senior companions until a transfer or two after their year mark, let alone becoming trainers. Like I said though, things are changing and we now have a new mission president. So guess what, I AM TRAINING next transfer. That's right, little old Jake Fund is going to have to not only take the lead as a missionary in Korea, but I have to teach a brand new missionary how to do it as well. In Korean. So yeah, everyone start doubling up on your prayers for me :) (by the way, that was the big news I mentioned last week. I know it may seem anti-climactic, but to me it's crazy. I didn't want to say anything though until it was official. Sorry if y'all were expecting something bigger like a baptism or something. Believe me, I would have loved for that to be the big news too!)

 

Holy Hannah I have written a lot this week. Sorry if some of you fell asleep halfway through that. If you made it all the way through, I sincerely congratulate you. Furthermore, if you made sense of all of it, then I doubly commend you. You deserve a trophy or a foot massage or something. Oh! One more thing, I also ate eel this week. It was... interesting. Sorry, I know that's not a very descriptive word, but really that is my first reaction to all of the new foods I try here. Unless they are really nasty, in which case I can give you a rich description of just exactly how badly my taste buds have been offended :)

 

I love you all. I'm serious about you doubling up on prayers for me. I am going to need it, and probably my new companion will as well :) Have a fantastic week!!

 

Elder Fund

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