Seoul Chaser: Sokcho Week 6

Dear Family and Friends,

Happy New Year! On New Years Day, we had the opportunity to hike CheongDeSan with our Branch. We hiked to the top and watched the sun rise for the first time in 2015. It was super beautiful. A lot of people in Korea, on New Years Day, celebrate with a morning hike and then eat DeokGook together as a family. It is a big holiday in Korea because every Korean turns a year older on that day. The eating of the DeokGook symbolizes being a year older.

In Korea, ages are really different. When a child is born, they are automatically 1 year old, then on the next New Year, they turn two. So hypothetically, if a child was born on the 31st of December, by the time the child was two days old, they would be two years old. I am currently 20 in Korea but only 18 in America.

Well after the hike, we headed to a restaurant with a member and ate some pretty good Korean food. At most Korean restaurants, they send out a bowl of peppers. The weird thing about these peppers is that some are spicy, while others are not. They all look the same, so it is impossible to tell whether it is spicy or not. Some missionaries refer to them as Russian Roulette peppers. Long story short, I took a chance and ended up in tears. My mouth was on fire for about 20 minutes. I had no idea anything could be that spicy.

Yesterday, I was on exchanges with Elder Herron since Elder Elwood and Elder Lanford spend a lot of time together doing branch administration. Well during that exchange, Elder Herron and I had the chance to visit a 70 year old man who we had set up and appointment with. For about the first 30 min, he spent the time explaining why he does not attend church and why Christ doesn't exist. Then when we finally got a word off, we asked him what he believed his purpose was. He talked about his role as a father and how it was his purpose to raise his children. We compared it to the role of our Heavenly Father and introduced the plan of salvation. It started off a little hectic, but it turned into a pretty good lesson and he agreed to meet again. And Brother Jeon on the other hand has been pretty busy with his wife in town so he wasn't able to meet.

Talking to people on the street went pretty well this week. After weekly planning, we walked around the lake in Sokcho, talked to a lot of the people and had some good conversations. It was super nice because people were not in a hurry, but just walking around the lake for exercise. And last P-day, we visited some ancient huts. The huts are really small because the people were really short back then. I have heard that it was because of a lack of nutrition. The Korean People are slowly getting taller with each generation because of the better nutrition. The older generation here is short because of the Japanese Occupations, Korean War, and other tough situations.

Your Favorite Missionary,

Elder Wheeler