Seth Serves Seoul: Merry Christmas to All!!!

Life in the Suwon Mansion! "Grandma" pants are stylish???

It was an awesome week. I seriously don't know where to start. It is actually stressing me out right now trying to remember all of the goodness from this week.

So this week we spent a ton, and I mean a ton, of time doing the 전도! (finding) and still we were not very successful. Dang. But it is still funny to me how the Lord blesses us ways other than the natural man inside of us would like to have received the blessing. I swear He always always is blessing us!

This week he blessed us with some service opportunities rather than with success in "finding." On Thursday (I think), we were leaving the church to go "finding" and we saw this older lady that was pulling around her trash cart (this is how old retired people continue to make money, and it is sooo sad). Anyway, she just started waving us over, so we went over to help and my companion pulled the cart while I held her hand and helped her walk--about as slow as a human being can walk, but that was literally all she could do. The walk would maybe take 5 minutes at a normal speed, but we took 15 minutes to get to her house! It was fine. She was just a cute old lady who needed help.

Ironically, the same thing happened yesterday, with same lady! And this time, she moved even slower! (haha)

Our next opportunity came at night. It was a cold one, so we were walking real fast trying to get home. To be honest, I didn't see this lady when we were passing by her, but I did see the same exact waving motion as the other grandma and I knew I was in for another treat! This time, I put on an EXTREMELY heavy backpack which I cannot believe she was carrying and we walked her to a bus stop, where she proceeded to burst my personal space bubble more than it ever has been before: her face was literally inches from my face while she was just going off trying to sell us her very overpriced kimchi. To make it worse, by the way her toothless mouth smelled, it was fairly evident that she had been eating that kimchi all day (for those of you who don't know, kimchi tastes absolutely amazing, but the smell is not pleasant). But it was still a cool experience serving the crazy old kimchi-selling lady.

The only Christmas decoration in Suwon

AND THEN, we met a random man on the street who I felt was completely insane, but my companion chatted with him for a bit while I gazed off into the night sky--haha, not literally, but he was just talking about the craziest things that I had to clue what he was saying. According to my comp, he was telling us that we needed to "RAISE A CROSS" right in downtown Suwon for all those people who worked in Suwon who got kicked out, who spilt blood and shed tears. Most interesting, he claimed that because God is from Salt Lake, and we are from Salt Lake, we need to just throw that cross up and represent all those ancestors! Imagine like a Southern Baptist saying those things and then translating it to Korean and that is what you would get! CHAOS! But at least he was right about God like being in SLC (haha).

Okay, one more service story. For the next two weeks, we are helping a less active member learn English because his parents are making him buy a wife from Vietnam and she doesn't speak Korean and he doesn't speak English. I really don't know how to react. I'm happy to help the guy, but it is really a freaking weird situation.. Yikes!

And to wrap all of the new news up: this week we did commit one of our investigators to be Baptized!!!!!! YES!!!!! First experience for me! And one that I hope happens much more!

Don't forgot that God seriously is so great! And remember when you have a service opportunity, just know, "When you are in the service of your fellow beings, you are only in the service of your God"--even if it a kimchi-smelling lady who gets in your space.

I love you all! And MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Elder Jenkins

Interesting Fact:
I am like Korean with the way I eat now: I can't use a fork, and I keep chopsticks in my right hand and a spoon in my left. I eat rice with every meal, and for a snack I mix rice, milk, and brown sugar together. It is getting pretty weird actually. I don't even buy American food anymore.

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