Week 22 - You Must Go to the 금촌 Area

Title - In "The Empire Strikes Back", Obi-Wan's ghost appears to Luke and tells him to go to the Dagobah System.

Well, this week has been really long and filled with a lot of new things. This week was my birthday! And I also got transferred to a new area! Yeah! On the same day! Anyways, yeah, that was interesting. Monday and Tuesday were just filled with a bunch of goodbyes to the members of the 신당 (Sindang) ward. We had dinner with a member who knows Elder Jeong's father on Monday and then on Tuesday we had our last English class where we said goodbye to all the members. Also, for one last hoorah, Elder Weiss, Elder McFarland, Elder Jeong, and I all went to Pizza Hut again for Pizza Festival on our way to English class. Fun times.

After English class we went back to the house to finish packing our stuff and plus we really needed to take out the trash. When we got home, I opened the package that my parents sent me which was really choice. Then I finished packing and decided to help the other elders take out the trash. We had so much trash. It's just really struggily in Korea because they make you separate it a ton. You have to throw out your food trash in a different bag and you can't let any food go down the sink so you have to clean out this little cup that catches all the food. It's pretty annoying so nobody wanted to do it and thus it was done at the last minute.

 

"Glorious birthday package!"

Gotta send a little bit of Star Wars.

And you can't forget a "bit" of glitter.  :)

All he had left to wear to take the trash out once all his belongings were packed.  Quite the outfit, huh???

The next day was my birthday and we woke up really early to head to transfers which are done at the church building in 신촌 (Sinchon) closest to the Seoul Temple. Pretty much every body just gets together in the church parking lot and meet their new companions, talk with other missionaries, and then head to their new area. It was pretty fun because almost all of the people that were in the group that came to the Seoul Mission were there and also getting transferred/getting a new companion. Most of the sisters in my group are getting transferred all the way out to the boonies. Anyways, I met my new companion, Elder 김태완 (Kim Taewan) and then I said goodbye to the elders that I'd been serving with in 신당 and then we started heading out to my new area, 금촌 (Geumchon). I was feeling a little bit down on Wednesday because it was my birthday and I had just been moved to a place where I didn't know anyone and where nobody knew me. The other elders in my house pulled through though. Elder Kim got me pizza and Elder Bell, our district leader made me some banana bread. Choice!

 "Hey, it's Elder Weiss!!!"

 Elder Huckvale's trainer/companion, Elder Jeong

Birthday banana bread.  :)

Geumchon is the area right above Seoul and it boarders North Korea. Apparently the DMZ (De-Militarized Zone) is in our area so I'm really hoping that we can schedule a zone trip or something to go up there and check it out. Unfortunately, a lot of the museums and other tourist attractions in Korea are closed on Monday because they need to give their employees a day off and they don't want to give them the weekend. It just so happens that our p-day is on Monday so we'd have to re-schedule it. Anyways, Geumchon is way different than Sindang. It's a lot of farms and there are nowhere near as many people. The biggest city in the area is 파주 (Paju) which is where we live and there are quite a bit of people in Paju but not much outside of that.

The rest of the week was a lot of jundo-ing. Elder Kim and his last companion have a lot of good investigators but only a few of them could meet this week. On Saturday we taught English class which was pretty fun. There are only about 4 or 5 people that show up on Saturdays though and only 0-2 that show up on Wednesday nights so it's not as big as it was in Sindang but it's still fun. On Sunday we went to church and I was able to meet a lot of the Geumchon ward members. The Geumchon ward is awesome! Something that I had a really bad problem with in Sindang was that I could never remember anybody's names so I didn't really feel connected to the members of the ward. So in order to remember their names, after would meet them I would write their name down in my planner with some things that I remember about them so I could study the names later and try to memorize them. By doing that, I felt my desire to help the ward members increase and I also felt already a stronger relationship with them beginning to grow. Rad!

I haven't really taken any pictures of Geumchon yet or with Elder Kim so sorry!

 Love and Miss Y'all!

 Called to Serve!

 Love, Elder Huckvale

Kimchi pot Elder Huckvale bought (not sure how you use it... but it's cute) :)