Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Dear Family,

It was really nice to talk to all of you on Christmas. Sorry I'm not as exciting as you probably think I am and apparantely I have gained a British accent. (Although I'm still not sure where that came from). I also got some goodies that mom sent through a kid in our ward so I made my companion an almost authentic American chicken-stuffing casserole. She was amazed. We then got 6 inches of snow so after our snow fight with some members I showed her how to make snow angels. All in all a pretty fun Christmas.

This week I have been thinking a lot about New Years Resolutions! Since 2010 is almost over and 2011 is about to start I spent some time with my companion and went over some things we want to accomplish next year (and in our lives in general).

Here are a few things I was thinking of:

• Always help pay for a missionary (there's a lady in our ward who talked about how she helped pay for her husband's younger brother to go on a mission and during that time how it was one of the most spiritual times in her family's life.. I want that. Even though I can't always be a missionary I'm still too selfish to let everyone else have all the fun).
• Join a book club
• Create a Korean drama watching club where people can come to my house and I will make rice/ a main dish, they can bring side dishes and we will spend time watching Korean dramas
• Listen to the Book of Mormon in Korean
• Do family history for a couple hours 3 times a month
• learn how to quilt
• take voice lessons
• baptize Natasha (you can't avoid it Natasha, it will happen eventually)
• Go to the temple every month

It was really fun, so I thought I would encourage you to write down some of your goals and send them this way. Or you can examine some of the goals you set for this year and see what you were able to accomplish, that is also fun.

Anyway, I hope you all have a great holiday season, love you lots.

Rebecca O'Bryan

Daejeon PO Box 38

Daejeon-si

Chungcheong bukdo 300-600

South Korea

Policemen and news crews

Dear Family

Remember last week how I said that we reported a sex offender on the bus? Well it turns out that Korea is a lot smaller than I had once imagined. About a week earlier there was an incident on a bus, except it was a lot worse with the bus driver being the sex offender and it created a buzz in the news scene. So after we met with some undercover policemen and gave our story some news crews started to call us. There are three main News companies in South Korea: MBC, KBS, and SBS, we were on two of the three and then on some local one. But since we didn’t really want to be recognized we had our faces blurred and voices changed. All of our members still knew it was us though—I guess it kind of gives it away with how tall my companion is as well as the fact that it was two girls, wearing dresses, one Korean and one American… you don’t see that very often. Things that I learned from that experience: even the News is business. They have to make money so even an incident that wasn’t very big, like us being on a bus and reporting a creepy man, can become news.

Last Saturday our branch had its branch Christmas party which was a lot of fun. We brought an investigator with us and I think she really enjoyed it. Mostly she loved all the kids. She just graduated from High School and is the youngest of two daughters so probably doesn’t see kids very often. But in our branch there are LOTS of little kids… running around… adorable chaos… She was so cute, she looked at all the kids then looked over at me and asked “can I touch them?” I gave her free leave. In our branch it really is just like a family, everyone’s kids are everyone else’s kids and they run around like bandits and anyone might run up to you at any moment and plop themselves down on your lap or try to take whatever neat trinket is in your hands.

Not a lot else has been happening, except that yesterday we had some more baptisms. A couple of little boys who are the kids of members, but their parents wanted us to teach them the lessons anyway, so we did. They are not “convert baptisms” but they are still way cute and I love them, Juhyuck (강주혁)and Hyundo (김현도).

I love you lots, I’ll hear from you in a couple of days. I have no idea about what is happening though, who is calling, what time you are calling… so… feel free to call and let me know. Otherwise I will probably just be sitting in my apartment waiting….

--
Sister O'Bryan
Daejeon PO Box 38
Daejeon-si
Chungcheong bukdo 300-600
South Korea

It's a very Merry Christmas

Dear family,

With the arrival of our first snow—albeit small, the $3 purchase of classic Christmas carols, and the 2 ft Christmas tree we salvaged from the closet of “missionaries now long past”—it looks like this Christmas is shaping up to be one of the best yet. My companion never celebrated Christmas before; it’s not really a Korean holiday, so she had a hay day decorating our small tree with random ornaments including disco Santa, one eyed reindeer, those furry Christmas tree wreath things and the like. We even scrounged up some blinking Christmas lights that seem surprisingly well coordinated with our Frank Sinatra/Louis Armstrong. I never really considered myself a Christmas junky, but being the only one to experience real Christmases with trees, caroling, fat men in red suits, having endured hours of TV specials, mindlessly propagated cartoons, turkey, fruit cake, chocolate oranges and all the other things you can’t find in Korea I feel somewhat obligated to bring in Christmas cheer.

Reason number 205 of why I love my companion, Sister Jung Ji Yun: she is brave. We were riding the bus to one of our appointments the other day when we saw a Pilipino girl in front of us get up yelling at the man next to her “I told you! Don’t touch me!” We were a little perturbed, but there are a lot of older Korean men who buy wives from the Philippines or Mongolia so we thought maybe she was just having a spat with her husband. But then this creepy man starts coming back towards us on the bus. So my companion and I look at each other and head to the front of the bus to sit next the Pilipino lady. Turns out the man was some completely random fellow who sat down next to her, pulled down his pants and tried to touch her. Oh for creepy. He soon came back up to the front of the bus and just acted like he was crazy. The Pilipino was scared so she quickly got off the bus, but my companion laid the smack down. Actually she was surprisingly more polite than I think I would have been. She said “Why did you do that? That’s really horrible to try and take advantage of people who are weaker than you and can’t defend themselves because they can’t speak Korean. Why would you do that?” He started speaking badly and then my companion called the police on him. She gave them our bus number, informed them of the situation and thankfully there was a camera on the bus. The other man I think felt really afraid so then he called the police to say that he had done nothing, but then got off of the bus. When we arrived at our destination we talked with the police, but without the witness of the Pilipino lady they could do nothing, just get all the other evidence. They told us if we happened to see her again to give them a call.

It was a little bit frustrating. How were we going to see that lady again? We prayed that night that we could find her and the next morning as we were rushing to catch another bus we saw her. It was completely random as she doesn’t live in our city and was just transferring so we only had about 3 minutes to exchange phone numbers, but it was still pretty miraculous. Yeah for the law!

Other exciting news:

I gave a talk in church. You’d be surprised how nerve racking it is to give a 15 minute talk in another language, but I think I did okay. I also had to randomly give a special musical number at a fireside with about 20 minutes of practice and for the last month I have become the temporary ward director since the lady who actually has the calling has a huge test so she wasn’t able to come to church. I think when I get back I will be content with a nice calling like… Relief Society greeter… or ward librarian. How pleasant.

I also decided what I want for Christmas/next year. If you could send letters to my companion, she doesn't get any because no one in her family is a member and all her friends before her mission basically dropped her once she became a missionary. Sad day, huh? Anyway, just like a letter, she can read English (or what she can't read I will help her out with, so no worries).

I love you lots.

Also... My phone number: 010-9697-2426. I don't know how you want to do the Christmas phone call, but whoever is in charge probably knows how to call Korea by now so I'll just leave the rest up to you and let me know. I can call to set up the call a couple days before Christmas, you just need to tell me what time works for all of you (and then translate it into Korean time so I know). Thanks ^^
--
Sister O'Bryan
Daejeon PO Box 38
Daejeon-si
Chungcheong bukdo 300-600
South Korea

It's coming--not the war--CHRISTMAS

Dear Family,

Jon said something that I guess I didn't mention in my last email. So North Korea attacked South Korea a week or so ago, some islands up north. It was kind of big news, but since we are missionaries we didn't really get to see too much of it. But then when I asked people about it they basically said it was kind of big a deal because there were civilians who died as well, but at the same time Korea has never really not been in war, the war with North Korea never technically ended-- that's why every boy has to go to military service. Also it doesn't really effect me, I'm not that close, maybe like three or four hours away from the place where it happened, in America that is close, but in Korea it's not. It had something to do with the big G20 summit in Seoul where the top 20 biggest nation's leaders came and talked, I think there was something about rice and then after the attack America said they would help us out. How does it effect me? Not at all. It does probably mean though that Dad's original plans of coming to pick me up and then trying to drive through North Korea to China are probably a lot less likely though...

I realized today that it is December, which means that soon it will be Christmas. I taught our English class last week about Advent calendars and with my companion we have also been doing one that our mission president's wife gave us with scriptures and then suggestions of songs we sing for companionship study. In Korea Christmas is not really a big event, so I haven't seen any real decorations or anything. No worries, I still have every intention of Christmas carolling and bringing Christmas spirit!

It also means that in a couple of weeks you can call me! I know usually you have nothing to say, I'm a weird missionary who's life has nothing relate able or interesting, however, I thought maybe if I gave you fore notice then you could prepare something cool to tell me or you can think of a question you want to ask (although you can also do that every week when you email me).

Don't worry about sending me anything, I've been here for a year and if I've lived without it this long I can survive the last three months (shipping is so expensive, why did I ever ask you to send me anything...) If you still feel an innate desire to show your appreciation for me through some sort of monetary donation-- feel free to send to Mama and she can put it in my bank account ^^.

Something I would really love, I think I mentioned this before, but your conversion stories. How did you come to know the church was true?

--
Sister O'Bryan
Daejeon PO Box 38
Daejeon-si
Chungcheong bukdo 300-600
South Korea

It's so cold my bones are frozen

Family,

Another week and things are going pretty well, it's too cold for us to go do anything exciting or fun, so instead we just went to the public bath houses and had old grandmas scrub us clean. I always feel so clean afterwards, probably one of the few things that I won't be able to get when I go back to America (which is WAY in the future so no need to keep telling me about it....)

This past week we met with some of my favorite dental technician investigators and played a really fun game. You take a bunch of post it notes, write famous people's names on them and then put them on everyone's forehead without them seeing. This way everyone can see who everyone else is, but not themselves, then they have to ask questions to figure out who they are. It's great for learning English, or just if you need a fun game. I also made them draw turkeys with their hands as an outline on a piece of paper and write things they were thankful for-- I told them it was an American tradition. I mostly said that because I couldn't really think of anything else that we do besides eating massive amounts of food and watching football-- two things they couldn't do. Plus they don't really know the difference so instead of just thinking I was weird they just thought I was American. It works out great.

On Sunday something cool happened. We got to church and there were two people just standing outside. We unlocked the building where we have church and they came in and we started to talk to them. I guess the girl had come once before with another friend and so decided to come again with her.. boyfriend? They stayed for all three meetings and were nice... except I thought there was something a little funny with them, we asked them where they went to school and other things and thought it was odd that they were in High School but neither of them could really spell. I just chalked it up to them being from really far out in the country, but I guess it turns out the school they go to is for people with mental disablities. Oh well, if they want to come to church, I'm not going to stop them....

I hope that you all have a great week! I love you all.
--
Sister O'Bryan
Daejeon PO Box 38
Daejeon-si
Chungcheong bukdo 300-600
South Korea

Under the weather, but not out of the race

Dear Family,

I've been feeling a little sick this past week, first off with my eye then I just got a plain old cold. Ugh, but not bad enough to keep me from doing missionary work, just enough to make it a little uncomfortable. And then I remembered that one saying. It was an apostle. Or a prophet? It was someone important who said that most of the work done in the church is by people who feel sick or tired and just get out there and do it anyway. People who feel like there's something stuck in their eye so it's hard to concentrate during Zone Conference. People who think they are going to have a mental breakdown. People who have fevers and sore throats and aching backs, arthritis, chronic pain, fake teeth and running noses.

It's the people who have broken hearts and who have lost children and wondered how they could continue. The ones who struggled and fought to go to church, but whose children hardly ever say thank you or even appreciate the sacrifice. The people who are a little too forward or outspoken.

Jesus said: "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick"

And what was Jesus' advice to all of us sick people? Follow me. Love one another. Feed my sheep. Serve one another.

So they keep going. They find the medicine they desperately need- not jut to help with their physical and emotional pain, but to cure their spiritual diseases and bring a happiness and peace that relieves the aching soul.

They are the ones I have seen here in Seosan, the ones I saw even back in America who at the end of the day Jesus can look at and say "Be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole."

Last week at our Halloween party we had a blast, but it was exhausting so I am glad I don't have to do it next year. We also got transfer calls so my beloved companion is leaving. Sad day. However, I am getting back another beloved companion-- Sister Jeong Ji Yeon! We served together in a threesome in Jeonju a while back, she's the one who used to be a model, does yoga and is a vegetarian. I'm pretty excited.

Not a lot else in the way of news. I hope you all have a great week, love you lots.

--
Sister O'Bryan
Daejeon PO Box 38
Daejeon-si
Chungcheong bukdo 300-600
South Korea

Turtles

Dear Family,

This week we went to a baptism of our elders. It is a mother and father who have taken 10 years to get baptized. How did they first meet the missionaries? About 10 years ago the wife was really depressed, so much that she wanted to kill herself. So she went to the balcony of her apartment intending to throw herself over, but when she looked down she saw two missionaries in white shirts. She recognized that they were servants of God and suddenly all of her desire to kill herself vanished.

Then throughout the years she met Mormons and realized there was something different about them, they had a light about them that she thought was so amazing. However about a year ago when she started to start meeting with the missionaries she was really confused. She was attending two churches, ours and another, and every time she would go to the other church they would say bad things about us that made her really confused as to which church she should go to. Suddenly one night she had a dream and in it there was a bright beam of light above her head. She woke up and mostly forgot about it, but that day someone called and invited her to our Branch District Conference where a member of the seventy was speaking. She said it was suddenly like there were all these pieces of a puzzle that the missionaries had been giving her over the years and they suddenly came together. Afterwards she went up and said "I want to be baptized".

Miraculous, huh? So sometimes it takes a while, but our good example is always worth it.

I also read a traditional Korean folk story about a boy named Turtle and his friend-- Stone. Stone was very rich and Turtle was very poor. Then one day Turtle's parents died and he was inconsolable. Feeling sorry for his friend, Stone asked his father if he could come stay with them, but he refussed saying they already had enough mouths to feed. Stone thought about it for a long time and then came up with a plan. He took his father's chopsticks and rice bowl and hid them in his back yard. Then he went to Turtle:

"Turtle, you have to do what I tell you do. I hid my dad's chopsticks and rice bowl in the backyard and you have to go find them."

"Why?"

"Because I will tell my father that you found them by sniffing them out and he will be so impressed that I have a friend with such a good sense of smell that he will let you come live with us."

So they did like Stone suggested and it worked out just like how he thought. But of course everyone in the town heard about Turtle and his amazing sense of smell, so the word got out and the king heard about it. The king had lost his royal seal and so he called for Turtle. He told him if he could not find it he would kill him-- Turtle was way scared and not certain what he could do.

Anyway, the day came that he was supposed to go find the royal seal in the royal treasury and as soon as turtle went inside he heard a knock on the door. When he opened the door there was a theif who said that he had stolen the royal seal without realizing how important it was and that if he was caught he would be killed, but instead he wanted to give it to Turtle as long as Turtle didn't turn him in.

So Turtle took the royal seal and gave it to the king who was really happy and gave him lots of rewards. As it always does, the word spread even farther until the king of China heard about it. He called for Turtle to come and told him that his daughter had lost her ring and he needed Turtle to find it. He would give Turtle a month to figure out the smell and then let him go find the ring (or something like that) So Turtle said the he was going to fast, only drinking water, until then. Except secretly in Turtle's belongings there was a huge stash of meat, so everyone else when they saw him was so surprised that he could live off of nothing but water for a month. The day for the ring to be found came and Turtle went into the princesses room. As soon as he went in there was a knock on the door.

Surprisingly enough, the ring had been stolen as well, but the theif thought Turtle had super powers, because he hadn't eaten for a month and was still alive, that he confessed his crime and gave him the ring.

Wow, lucky Turtle had been saved again! He received lots of riches and glory and headed back to Korea. When he came back to Korea though he was attacked by a theif who came up to him and said "Give me all of your money! Also, I am going to kill you unless you can solve my riddle. I have a stone, can you tell me what is underneath of it?"

Turtle was really surprised and more than a little terrified, but he had no idea what the answer to the question was. So he told the theif he had no idea the answer. This is where I got really confussed, for some reason he didn't kill him... And the answer was that there was a turtle under the stone and then they all laughed about how the stone was going to kill the turtle-- haha..?
Anyway, whatever happened, Turtle learned a good lesson from it so when he went home he told everyone that because of nose bleeds he no longer could smell things out and so to stop asking him and he lived happily ever after with his friend Stone.

Oh how I love Korea.
--
Sister O'Bryan
Daejeon PO Box 38
Daejeon-si
Chungcheong bukdo 300-600
South Korea