Heart and Seoul: September 28, 2014 - Bertybottseveryflavoredbeans. Yum.

So you know that scene in every movie where the girl is walking in the rain, musing at the beauty of her surroundings, you know all dreamy or whatever, and then a car comes out of nowhere and sends a wall of water her way, soaking her and leaving her totally miserable?

Now just place me in the part of "the girl" and substitute "leaving her and her companion unable to breathe from an excess of laughter" for "leaving her totally miserable" and you just watched the opening scene to my day.

This past week opened on a rather bright, sunny day in Seoul (on an exchange with the Sister Training Leader) which was a lot of fun. We also had a "Sister's Conference" in our zone which was wonderful. It's always inspiring hearing older missionaries experiences and testimonies.

But it was all too good to come back to this happiest city of Chun Cheon. The work here is hard, there just aren't as many people to talk to, but we're keeping our heads up. We have had several appointments cancel and potential investigators drop, which is always disheartening. But, just like the rain, we manage to find things to laugh about and keep our heads up. We did, however, meet with a certain 서혜정 (Soh He Jung) who is not only the Asian doppleganger for the actress who plays Jim Carrey's wife in "Liar Liar", but (more importantly) has so much potential to progress in the gospel. She's so awesome! And we set up several appointments for this upcoming week with past investigators that we're looking forward to.

And guys, guess what! Heavenly Father totally answers prayers. In lieu of the above paragraph, and our current status of 0 progressing investigators, I have been saying some pretty fervent prayers for Heavenly Father to bless me with "opportunities to teach His gospel". Well, He answered.

Yesterday I had the hah, "opportunity" (so it's called) to teach gospel doctrine class and teach young women. Mind you, this was all in Korean. It was stressful, but I learned so much in preparing and teaching that I truly was grateful and it really was an "opportunity". But that's not the end. On top of that, yesterday was my angel of a companion's birthday yesterday which called for some seriously super speed apartment decorating done in the short time I had while she was in the shower. That, and we had a girl from Utah come to church so I had the "opportunity" to translate for her in sacrament meeting. Whew.

Needless to say my companion and I gobbled up our homemade cake completely guilt free.

Heavenly Father is answering our prayers and we are seeing miracles everyday. So obviously, life is good. That, and my companion happens to be one heck of a cook so I'm not only in the process of learning Korean, but learning the art of Korean cooking. Sometimes I feel like Dumbledore (no, I'm not growing a beard, Quinn) in the first movie when he reaches into the bag of "Berty Botts Every Flavored Beans", pops one in his mouth, not sure what to expect and then says, happily, "Mm. Earwax!" Only in my case it's something more like, "Mm. Cow's blood!".

Not sure which is worse.

Keep smiling, keep praying, keep breathing.

Love you all,

Sister McCloskey