Three Months!

May 26
It's my anniversary today! I've been on my mission for 3 whole months now! Crazy how time flies on by when you are doing the Lord's work. This past week really wasn't too jam packed with anything special. But yup.. it still went by super quick. On Friday we had service at the community center and this old 할먼이 (grandma) was telling me I'm pretty and a bunch of other things I didn't understand. I think she even did a palm reading of my hands haha. While serving she said lots of things to me like asking if I have a husband and stuff and then she gave me money! It was only $2 and she kind of scared me when I had tried to decline it so I just told my companion and then she gave money to her to!! haha so we tried our best to explain we can't keep the money and we will give it to the mission office. She got super upset so we just smiled and took the money haha. Aren't old grandma's so fun? haha I am always laughing because they compliment me or they just make me feel so dumb cause I have no clue what they just said haha.

I also started to have a cold so my companion decided to let me sleep the rest of the day hoping i'd get better faster. It didn't help much. I woke up Saturday morning feeling much worse.

I got to see my awesome MTC district that day though. We had a fun 12 week follow up. Everyone seems to be doing so great in their areas and liking their companions. It made me happy to be able to see that they all were still themselves. I missed them all a ton! So it'll be so great seeing them again this Saturday for the Joint Mission Conference with the apostle Elder Cook coming to speak. It's with Seoul mission and Seoul South so it will be like 400 missionaries! crazy!  I can't wait :)

Now, every time I've written home and then logged off the computer I start having things recall to my mind what I wish I would have mentioned. So, this past week I decided to write things down so I WOULD NOT FORGET TO TELL YOU!!! haha 미 친 사 람이 예 요 means you are a crazy person. Ryan asked me to figure it out so there you go! It's actually pretty rude to say this to just anyone. People just say to people they are close with like friends.

I have eaten korean every single day this past week. I think I liked everything I ate too. One was just ramen, another is a rice burger, and then I had something that tasted like meatloaf. sooo good! So I won't starve here haha.

So not this Sunday but last Sunday, My companion and I decided to attend primary with all the little kids. I ended up getting asked to teach "follow the prophet" chorus in english to all the little kids. It took some effort because it's been a while since I was in primary so I had to remember the words. Sister Chao helped me though :) And the little kids loved it!! And Yesterday at church the primary president asked why we didn't go to primary that day. Instead, we went to relief society because I had to give a short spiritual thought. I wasn't sure what to do it on so I chose Jacob 4:7 from the Book of Mormon. I think tried my best to explain that not knowing how to speak korean is my weakness. and it's only with the Lord's help that I am able to learn and understand korean.
So that was that.. but anyway, the primary president really wanted us to come back to primary from now on because the kids actually remembered what I had taught them and they want to learn more songs in english haha. Cute right? So that will be fun.

Now I've also been meaning to add to my emails the strange or weird things about korean or the things korea has. so here's what I've got so far:
1. pimple bandaids. Everyone wheres them. They just are like a small skin colored sticker that they put over their pimples. lol Supposedly they really help heal the pimple. I haven't found them anywhere yet to buy some and try them out.

2. face masks. Just look at my pictures.. They aren't like face masks in america where it's a cream and it hardens hahah
3. 잔도사 's are crazy bold!! So other churches always are giving out free tissues or hand wipes with their name on it. But there was one experience I will never forget. Last Sunday we went to a park. I think it's called central park and everyone goes there! IT WAS SO CROWDED!! It was a huge park they have little water fountain for kids to play in so lots and lots of families have picnics there on the weekends. So we went there to try and talk to people and when we left me noticed that these 잔도사 's were on different corners every where just reading out loud saying repent! and a bunch of other things like you must be baptized! and then it just made me feel uncomfortable. But at the same time I just smiled at them and said hello whenever we walked by because they know who we are so i want them to know we are friendly. but yeah it's always an interesting experience when people mistake us missionaries as 잔도사 's.

4. STUDENTS! So they are just like the plastics in mean girls. Each group has a leader of their little pack. So Sister Chao and I are always laughing as we try and guess who is the leader when we see them on the buses and on the streets.
5. COUPLES!! couples always match their clothes. Like if you aren't matching then that means you really don't love them. so a lot of teenage couples match even down to the shoes! haha Sister Chao and I just laugh every time we see them because it's so cheesy.

Alright, that's all I have for now! I love you all so very much!! I get to go to the Seoul Temple this Thursday so that will be so awesome! I can't wait because it will be in ENGLISH!! yay!!! Yup you read correctly! Sister Chao told me that they have a session at the temple just for foreign missionaries. Sweet huh?
anyways, I love you!!
Talk to you all next week!!
Sister Kelly

I love McDonald's!!

May 11 (Mother’s Day)
It was so great being able to talk to you today! I love you all so very much. I wish I didn't have to end our phone call, but 45 minutes was up unfortunately :(
Since I talked to you I really don't have much to say.. so I will just share what I will be doing today. After emailing I will be going shopping with some sisters in our zone. They are hilarious. Sister rose and sister wright. (hopefully I spelled her name right) but yeah then we will go eat and then we go out and talk to people after 6pm. I'm hoping to practice some new phrases I learned. Like "How is your day" "i like your shoes" whatever like that haha
I sent you lots of pictures so I hope you have fun looking at those. By next week, I'm sure I will have lots of more fun stories to tell you. I love you all so very much and please please please send me pics of all your adventures too. I love seeing things from back home!
take care till next week!!
Oh and Happy Mother's Day mommy!!
Love,
켈리자매

May 18
Well, here we are again. Can you believe it's been a whole week since I last talked to you? Does it go by fast for all of you or is that just me? I really don't know what normal time feels like outside of being a missionary now haha. I guess that's okay though. I'm always keeping myself busy. I think this week went by super quickly because we had our monthly zone conference. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me just start from the beginning of this weeks adventures haha.
So,on 5/13 I went on my first companion exchange!! Yay for those!! I went to 금 천 시 to be with Sister Hales, the sister training leader and Sister Lyman came and was with my companion in Anyeong. It was weird but good at the same time. I really really missed Anyeong though and my huge apartment. They have 4 sisters in one small apartment so it really made me appreciate how lucky I have it in Anyeong. Except they have a dryer and an actual oven, unlike me soo that's the only advantage they have over me haha.
Then Thursday 5/14, I came back to Anyeong and had lunch with 김 용 희 who is a young single adult less active in our ward. She is also a return missionary. She is way cool! Super nice!! She took us to lunch at a Korean BBQ place. I ate some pork and actually liked it. Cool right??
Oh and before my exchange on Wed, we had a dinner meal at a member's house. She is super nice. Her name is 전 종 숙. She is an older lady in the ward. She is so excited and willing to help us not only with Korean but with teaching. So we will most likely go over there weekly. I took pictures of what she fed us. (Pics 101-1955 through 101-1960 hopefully you can figure out that.) 1956 is octopus. I tried one piece... not much of a taste haha. then 1959 is garlic root.. man did that leave our breath smelling bad!! We seriously brushed our teeth that night a ton and it just wouldn't go away. By lunch the next day it was thankfully all gone haha. She also fed us each like 3 servings of spaghetti. We were so stuffed!!!
After our lunch with the ysa less active we had to do weekly planning so we went and did that at McDonalds. YAY! I love McDonalds!! It's so fancy and clean here haha.

On Friday was our Zone conference, we went on a hike to a fortress. It was the only fortress not conquered by the Chinese( I think??) I understand why too though. That hike was literally all up hill. I was so tired!! But it was nice being in regular clothes for a change. Being in skirts and dresses every day is fine, but it was just a really good change haha. So, have fun looking at all the fun pictures I took. One of my zone leaders, Elder Kasparian, is in a majority of my pictures. He is also in my district so that's way cool.
After the hike a lot of us went back to the mission home area and ate dinner there. I remembered to take pictures of what I ate. (101-2127 I think) I am nicknaming this meal as "worms" because it looks like worms coming out of soggy mud. Doesn't it? It's really called 들 ㄱ개 칼 국 수. I actually liked it too. It wasn't super delicious, but I had no trouble eating it. According to the other missionaries, that was the choice I'd most likely be okay with eating everything at that restaurant was cold noodles. They tend to serve cold noodles in the summer because it's just so humid and hot.
In my pictures I also included some random pictures of the city or weird art they have around here in Korea. My favorite is the lemonhead, icecream and poop hahah. Random to see that in a park haha.

There is also a picture of Sister Chao laying on the floor with her face down. This was when we got home from just being rejected by a girl who works at HomePlus (kind of like a Walmart). Whenever we would shop there we would go and say hi to here and she was so nice to us and loved talking to us. We always felt so bad talking to her while she was at work though, so we decided we wanted to ask her to hang out sometime outside of work on her day off. Unfortunately through our bad Korean, she thought we were wanting to make an appt. to teach her about our church. I mean gladly we'd teach her if she wanted us to, but she was just so nice and really close to our age so we just wanted to be friends. So, we haven't gone back since.. we were seriously really sad. But sometime this week we hope to just try again. She is going to be moving to Daejon so we just wanted to hang out before she moves. Is that so bad? We just want her to have a good opinion of missionaries so that if she were to see the missionaries in Daejon than maybe, just maybe she would be interested in learning more.
So, that's that. On Friday we also were planning a big meal for our two young investigators. One is 12 (the girl) and her brother is 10 I think. So we have been really trying to help her have a better experience at church. She comes every week because her parents make her, but she doesn't have any friends. So this meal was the best opportunity. We asked the young women's president if we could have a meal at her house with them there. Her daughter would be there too so that'd be great for them to possibly become friends. So, that was all great. All we needed to do was make sure that she and her brother could actually go. She told us a maybe and that she'd ask her mother. We were so nervous I immediately told my companion that we need to pray. So.. what did we do? We prayed!
And while on our way to dinner that Friday night after our zone conference, we heard that she could go!! Amazing right? We were super excited! We just knew this was seriously a good opportunity. Then we told the young women's president and she ended up having to cancel on us because she found out she has a stake young women's presidency meeting or something like. So ughhh! Just our luck right?! What were we to do?
Well, through lots and lots of prayers and thinking, we came to the conclusion to call the bishop's wife on Saturday asking her for help. And I am happy to say that last night we had such an amazing dinner at the bishop's home with all the young women, and our two investigators. It was great!! It's a good start to really helping them progress in forming friendships in the ward I think.
Anyways, I will try to answer your questions really fast cause I don't have much time left. My ward is about 65 people coming weekly. That includes children, youth, and adults. Sister Chao's family is small. She has an older brother and younger sister and two lovely parents. She speaks mostly in English to me. but also in Korean too. It just depends on what we are doing. The buses really are very clean and the trains too. Everything in Korea is super clean actually. We didn't have service this week because we had zone conference instead. The vocab daily varies.
anyway! I love you all! Talk to you next week!!
Sister Kelly

Octopus

Garlic root

Lemonhead, Poop, and Ice Cream art

Amanda's new favorite food in South Korea

Rejected

"soggy worms"

First Email From South Korea!

First day in South Korea with mission President and Sis Chao

Hey everyone!! Korea is awesome! I am serving in 안 양 시 (on-young city). I have to write quickly because I spent a great majority of my time reading all of your awesome emails! Thanks though! I loved all of them! My companion's name is Sister Chao. She is NOT a native like you might think haha. She is from Utah. I don't know where exactly, but she is Chinese. My first few days here was a big adjustment. At first when I got here I was way exhausted. The plane ride was super long and I couldn't get any sleep. We actually had a lay over in Dallas from Salt Lake City. It was only suppose to be an hour but something was wrong with the plane and ended up getting delayed for 6 hours!! It sucked! But I at least got to call home and talk to my mom for that whole time. That was way cool. The mission home is WAY nice on the inside. By the time we got there it was 12am so they left us go to bed asap. I love my mission president and his wife. They are so nice and welcoming and pretty funny too.
My first area I've been assigned  looks a lot like L.A. in my opinion. Lots and lots of old looking buildings everywhere. My companion is Sister Chao. She is 24 I think. She is way nice, but I'm still getting to know her. My first days here were so hard and weird having to adjust. I couldn't understand anyone and I was already having to go out trying to talk to people. It was way hard. I still don't know what I'm doing, but everyone gets so excited when they see me, especially the old 할 머 니 들 (grandmas) haha. There was this one time we were walking through this outside market and my companion overheard these teenage girls saying they want to talk to me. So I turn around and say 안 영 하 사 요 (hello) to them. It was like I was some famous person haha. They got all excited and giggly and started to practice their English and asked me where I'm from. It was pretty weird, but helped me feel better about being in Korea. Just as those girls walked away, a couple of 할 머 니 (grandmas) grabbed my arm and just started saying a ton of stuff in Korean to me that I couldn't quite understand. I know they called me pretty a lot. They were all so happy about me being there and they said thank you in English. Then one of them even asked me to kiss her cheek. Weird right? haha
Anyway, we only have a couple of investigators so we are going to be doing a lot of finding here. Which means I will have to learn Korean fast! Boy oh boy I hope I can. Just yesterday I gave an older man a English card about our free English classes on Wednesdays. I even talked to him about the book of Mormon. The speaking isn't so bad, but the understanding what they say in response is what the problem is. I know I'll get it eventually though.
I'm having a hard time adjusting to the food as well. I've tried some things, but didn't like it. So I'm praying I'll be able to get used to it all or find something I like. I'm just grateful that my companion allowed me to order McDonalds one night. That was the best meal I've had so far. I will continue to try the foods though.
Today we are going to a Buddha temple because it's his birthday or something so that'll be way cool! I'm so sorry. I actually have to get off now. But I will tell you more next time and use my computer time better. Church was way weird. I wish I had more time to explain but I got to go. Sorry! I love you all! BYE!!
Sister Kelly<3