Land of the morning calm and the excited greeny

Dear family,

The plane ride was wonderful and I got to sit next to a man from China who was very curious about the gospel. If you can believe it, he still wasn't ready to be baptized even after our 12 hour plane ride together. However, he was still interested in learning more so I gave him the Mormon.org URL since there aren't any missionaries in China where he lives. (aka, he doesn't live in Hong Kong).

At the airport I was picked up by my wonderful mission president and his wife, President and Sister Perriton. Sister Kelley and I then stayed at the President's house for two nights where we received a lot of training about all the fun things we get to do and we even went down to a bus station in Daejeon and jundoed (proselyted). It was wonderful. Korea is a lot different than pretty much all of America. There is a lot of city, a lot. It reminds me of San Francisco, except for more buildings and Koreans. Also there are more street vendors. Actually, it kind of reminds me of some of the European cities we traveled to last fall, except with less neat architecture. In fact, I can't really think of much to compare it to.

My trainer, Sister Jung, is Korean, and is from Souel. She is absolutely wonderful and I love her. She doesn't speak much English, but she speaks more English than I speak Korean, so with our forces combined we have been able to get around and basically understand each other. I still have a long way to go before I will be carrying on many conversations with Koreans. I smile a lot and introduce us "Anyunhaseo! We are missionaries from the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! I know the Book of Mormon is true!" and then at this point Sister Jung takes over because I can't really understand their response. Just about everyone is nice though and most of them are interested because I am a foreigner. Believe it or not, there are almost no white people here. The only ones I have seen are the other missionaries. So usually Sister Jung will say something about the church, ask them about their religious background, I will keep smiling, and then she will mention the fact that I just came from migook (America) a couple of days ago. Then we will give them a pamphlet, maybe a Book of Mormon, get their number if we can, and tell them about our free English class.

Tonight we are going to teach our English class and meet with the ward mission leaders from one of our wards (we have two). I am quite excited. It is mostly a blur, but a very happy blur and if nothing else I am super excited to be a missionary in Korea telling people about the church (even if it is only through my smile).

We ate at a neat Korean restuarant yesterday that had heated floors and on open pit like thing where they grilled our steak. I got to eat dunbuggee (pickled silk worm cacoons) and lots of kimchee, rice, and other splendid Korean dishes.

My trainer is wonderful, we have two baptisms lined up for within the next couple weeks, a few more that we are going to commit soon and she is just amazing with the people. Sure I have only known her for about 6 hours, but I can tell that she is amazing and if I can be half the missionary she is then I wil be a success.

Mail from the U.S. to Korea only takes 10 days, so feel free to send anything you like this direction, or if you prefer giving me money, you can give it to Anna who can put it in my account and then I can just withdraw it here. Again, you don't have to, but if you feel so inclined, feel free. I love you all.

-Sister Rebecca O'Bryan