Leanne's Mission Blog

Re: 10.2 Weekly letter4

· Leanne Noelle Chun <leanne.chun@myldsmail.net>

Jan 7 at 4:37 PM

신기하지 않아요_! We saw this poster in the subway and just had to take a picture of it. _)

Do you see that moon_!

Wednesday night, street contacting with Sister Lee, we saw this huge cheese moon over the Seoul skyline. Wouldn't it be cool to see this in the Joseon Dynasty from the window of a palace_ (1)

Wow! This past week was a little more eventful than others, I think. Wednesday was transfer day, so Sister Choi got to her new area safely and Sister Lee (이세인s) got here safely. We had a lovely time walking around and proselyting that night, and then in the middle of our lesson the next day (Thursday) we get a call from President. That was scary. He and I are talking on the phone, and he basically says, "We have a visa-waiter, we want to put her with you and Sister Lee. Can you be at your house in a couple of hours to receive her?"

😅

Long story short, welcome to SinDang, Sister Kim! Hehe Sister Kim Hyo Ryung (김효령s) is going to be serving in the Philippines, but she'll be here for a transfer to fill some visa requirements. This also means that I'm training. But, actually, that's not totally accurate. It's more like I have two companions and one of them happens to be a greenie. Hehe Or Sister Lee and I are training (which makes sense because Sister Lee is a really good missionary). Either way this transfer is going to be really fun.

Hurray transfer day! And elevators. Hurray elevators.

Sister Kim on the left, Sister Lee on the right. It's kind of fun to see so many Korean names lined up in a row (Kim, Lee, Jeon). Yay Korean companions!

We had sort of an interesting run-in with racism yesterday. We were supposed to meet this lady to teach her English and share the gospel, you know, the usual, but when we were talking on the phone I couldn't seem to understand her. The Korean was fine, I understood everything she was saying as far as grammar and vocabulary, but what she was really saying didn't quite get across until she clarified it with one of my Korean companions: Apparently she didn't want to meet us because two of us are Korean (which makes sense, she wants to learn English) and the native speaker (me) is not the kind of "American" that she wanted. Basically, she didn't want to meet because I'm not a white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed American.

That was a little stunning, mostly because that had never happened to me before. It was difficult not to be sassy to her. In English, just to prove my point. My companions were struggling not to be sassy, too. But, you know, one of the first things that I thought of was 2 Nephi 26:33. ㅎㅎ I hope that sister can read that sometime.

I didn't think that I was offended until I realized that my reading the Book of Mormon today sort of soothed my feelings. I read 2 Nephi 9, which talks a little bit about how Jesus suffered for all men's sins, including Sister Albi (reference to Flight of the Concords' "Albi the Racist Dragon"). How true is that! Who am I to judge? I have so many faults and weaknesses that I cannot count them all, so who am I to judge another?

That experience was good practice for Christ-like charity and love. In the future I would hope that loving the person who does me wrong is more of my first reaction.

No worries, my companions and I helped each other feel better after that phone call. And we also ate cream jelly roll, so it's okay.

I love you all! I hope you have a good week! Go out there and fight the racism! (Okay, maybe I'm still a little sore about it. But I'll work on that.)

Love,

Sister Chun