email 2013.02.17

Okay, letter time!

Gotta use a different computer next time. Almost out of time already.

So, first off, some explanations. Last week P-Day got moved to tuesday. Sorry if that threw things off. I forgot to mention it before.

Anyway, we're back though. And last week was super fun. This area is beautiful. I've learned that I love the look of hills in the mist. Super cool, and we can see it a lot here, just out of the city.

Anyway, I've grown a lot this week too. Mostly learning how to overcome too high expectations. I forget that progression takes time, so I get frustrated when I don't feel like I'm good enough. But I'm getting there. This language is insane, but I'm slowly inching towards recognizing more. Understanding is so hard... I can usually say what I want, but when they talk I get lost so easily...

Anyway, learning though. And I've gotten so much better with my planner and organizing things. I looked at my first one, then my set up now. So much more effective. That makes me happy. Still want to sort a few things out though. But the Lord's house  is a house of order. ^^

Also, I've becoming somewhat of a Student of Pride lately. Fun phrase, no? Heavenly Pride though. You see, pride is trusting yourself and not God. That means if you think you can't do anything, it's forgetting that the Lord is on your side. So, I've been looking back at how He's helped me. And He's done a LOT. For time reasons, I won't go into it. Maybe later. Snail mail? Who knows.

 Also, FSS (Family Scripture Study): (I forgot last week! I wrote it on a snail though) Jacob's tree chapter was so fun. I love it. I had a great diagram of it back home. Seminary notes. Super good explanation. Also, this week I realized I'm a scripture nerd. Omni and WofMormon were so great. So much foreshadowing. :D But you see the people of Limhi, Jaredites, Mulekites. You see SO much more than you see in the first few books of the BoM. The plot just explodes!

Anyway, super cool.

PSS: Helaman's 2000 had such great families. I want to build a family like those.

^^ Also, fun Korean lessons for you. First. Want to see God's influence in your life? Remember the five keys "기"
기역 Remember
기도 Pray
기대 Expect
기다리 Wait
기족 See Miracles

Fun, isn't it? There's a couple fun things like that. Like the word for comfort literally meaning "upward".

So much fun. Also, we had a lesson with a Jehovah's Witness and some guys from 신전지 교회 (Kind of similar, pretty smart people) Haha, good times. Learned that member lessons have risks. Saw a bible bash, understood very little of it. Man they can talk fast when they're excited.

Played 촉구 (foot volleyball) again with an investigator. Man it's addicting. I'll miss it when I come home.

Crazy realization: It's been six months already! Time flies out here... It feels... Nah, not going into the "time flux" tangent. You know what it feels like. A day, an eternity. I can't even tell.

I love you guys so much. I think I'll try to get more pictures sent.
Have fun, enjoy! Thanks for everything!

~Elder Robarts

(note from Mom - pictures going up on Facebook)

(Elder Robarts again)

That's it for now. ^^ Hope you enjoy. I've gotta clean out my camera if the memory is going to last. I forgot how many pictures I take...

Haha, should be fun.

In the meantime, sorry if I forget about questions you ask. I try to write them down. But I still lose track sometimes. I love hearing about life. I forget how long it's been sometimes. It seems like I was just home. But when I think back to my first day in the MTC, it feels like another life. When I get back though, we need a couple things though. Camping, climbing rocks, swimming, and baked things. People don't bake much here.

PS: the Korean culinary student journals continue. 김치 복음밥. Fried rice with kimchi. Think it's spelled rice. Super good. Lot's of stuff you can throw in. Also, 짜장면. Black noodles, orginally china based. Tasty, but it uses a special mix. Not sure how to make it. Good though.

I hope people don't hate me when I get home. I'm going to miss kimchi... As long as there's 김 (seaweed) though, I think I'll be okay. 김밥 Kim bab is so good...

Love you! Times up!

~Elder Robarts
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2013.02.11 email

Dear Home,

Anyway, not much time this week, so I'll be brief. We've got a
district activity later today so we've got to meet up with the others.
Maybe walking up to a Budhist temple here. :D It's snowing at the
moment though, so I'm hoping it doesn't get canceled.

Anyway, this week was 설날, (New Years) so things have been a little
different. Missionary work was crippled, so we mostly just cleaned our
appartment and had meetings. (No one on the streets, can't go door to
door, everybody is busy with family... It was rough. But we had some
good times. I wrote a little in a letter I'll try to send this week.
We had a deep clean day! Super fun.

Anyway, that's it. I've really gotta go. I'll do a letter to Pres, and
see if I can do pictures or something later. Just know, I've got lots
of fun pictures and things to talk about, I just can't do it yet...
Love you though!

(from Mom - there are some pictures - I'm putting them on Facebook)

2013.01.28 snail mail

Dear Home,

One more crazy week.  I kind of blew through everything in the email, but not in much depth.  Sorry about that.  Missionaries seriously don't have much time.  And there were people waiting for the computers.

Good news, the work is awesome.  I've been learning a lot, I've been finding ways to streamline using time, and we're seeing a lot of people start to build an interest in the Gospel.  As a foreigner, it's a very unique experience.  How do you build good relationships in a foreign language, when there's a lot of culture you don't understand well.  Things you learn with time.

Anyway, I write that every letter.  Must be boring.  Learned some fun things about Korean though. You know "the grass is always greener"?  They have an expression like that, "His rice cake is bigger than my rice cake."  =D  Also, there are some things that just don't seem to have a translation.  Like "could".  You can say 

"the ability existed," but it sounds weird.  Even to me it sounds weird.  They just don't say could much.  There's also no verb for "to dry".  There's "to be dry," but no "to dry."   Apparently you can't dry something.  You have to "towel" it or something.  So fun.  ^^  No "depends" either.  Funny ittle things like drive me crazy.

But at the same time, the opposite is true, too.  Like 

to compare.

But more than compare.  That would be

This one is judging differences between things, which is better.  Fun words like that.  But I'm terrible at remembering all the ones I learn about, so that's all I'll say for this week.

Expressions are fun though.  In Korean, they don't learn many English expressions.  And in Korean there really aren't many, so they're fun to teach.  (writing on the go again)

Anyway, I love it here.  Our river froze up again and Sunday we had a little snow.  I just love how clear it got after that first big stretch of rain.  When I first got here, there was a lot of haze on the horizon.  At first I thought it was the humidity.  But a big part of it is pollution.  Lots of dense cities here.

But after the rain, I finally got to see what this area is like.  Lots of mountains/hills around here, beautiful landscape just outside the city.  Maybe I'll get to check it out sometime.  I miss nature.

But as always, there's never much time, especially here.  

missionaries actually have to shop here.  And not living in our area, appointments take a lot more travel time.  Between food and travel expenses, it's been fun rebudgeting things.

Not too bad, but I'll never understand why people like to order food so much.  There are lots of cheap places in the city for when we're far from home, but why order something that costs close to $9 a person just to eat it at home? So many cheaper ways to do things.  But in a country where almost every companionship is Zion, there's a lot of give and take.  Sure makes budgeting erratic, though.  =D enough of that for now.

Life is good.  This week I'll have a split with a greenie, got here two weeks ago.  So I'll probably have to take lead when we go to Zone Conference and unsplit.  Traveling isn't too bad, but it'll be fun.

I'm really looking forward to Zone Conference, it should be fun.  ~ and P-day is over.  Sorry guys.  We had an appointment -- had to cut P-day shorter.

Love you!

snail mail dated 2013.01.21

Week 13
01-21-2013

Dear Home,

It feels like ages since I've sent a decent letter home.  I guess I always expect that someday I won't be as busy.  Not likely to happen for a while.

It's okay though.  And this new area is great.  I guess from the materialistic view, it's a step down from (something in Korean) Pyeongtaek's Lotte Castle, but as a missionary you don't really care much about that. 

It was unnatural to begin with American food, fancy sinks, being able to request specific American foods every week.  weird

Also, I love our river.  Didn't realize it before, but I've missed having a good river nearby.  And the subway is nice, too.  Its incredible how much is underground in Korea.  In Pyeongtaek there was a 6 floor deep parking basement.  Very normal.
And all these little shops on the street have at least one story underneath.  crazy. deceptive.  I can't even describe the apartments.  Walls of apartments, easily 20 stories high.  Not even uncommon for them to be higher.

From our apartment, we can see the homes of thousands, tens of thousands of people.  Mind blowing.  America is big, but spread out.  I miss that, but it's cool to see this way of the world.

Also, here in the city, so far from our apartment (usually 40-50 minutes away with subway) we stop by restaurants a lot for dinner.  Some really nice places here.  You can find a filling meal for 3,000 wan $3 here.  Plus, I've seen the Korean equivalent of fast food now.  Also cheap, but they put it in these little leftover carton like things.  Pretty good.

Good thing, too.  We use about $2.50 (odd, for America that's not bad)  a day (sometimes more) on transportation, so that's a good chunk of our budget.  Usually at home we eat rice, eggs, onions, and when we have it, kimchi. (out right now)

These members are great.  I met a lot of them this week, and I just love talking to them.  Patient with the language,  great stories, and they encourage you a lot with learning new things.

One fun thing though is seeing what's the same here and in the US.  For example, E-Mart and Homeplus seem pretty similar to Costco, maybe a tad smaller.  But the cafe is almost the same.  (That's where we are now)  As missionaries, you don't buy much, but stores like these are pretty nice.

There was more I was supposed to talk about.  What was it?  Oh, one fun thing: Here they do little introduction cards to put up on the board when a new missionary comes.  I still need to make mine, but I might play off the fact that our name sounds like robot.  Picture later maybe.  (see 2013.01.27 pictures http://benjaminrobarts.blogspot.com/2013/01/20130127-pictures.html )

Anyway, I should wrap up.  Love you guys! Enjoy!  I'll try to get something more interesting if I can think of it. 

2013.02.03 (home) or 04 (Korea) email

Dear Home,

Wow, I'll have to talk to the Hruby's again and let them know, that's
crazy! Brother Hruby was pretty sick this week, so he wasn't able to
make it to church. Maybe we'll try to visit later.

Speaking of which, lot's of fun stuff this week. But first, the spiritual.

FSS(Family Scripture Study): Isaiah is a pretty cool guy. But one thing I love about him is the fact that his writings are so hard to understand helped protect a
lot of prophesies about the restoration, time of Christ, and even the second coming. Cool, huh? Chapter 27 in 2 Nephi is particularly fun. Too bad a lot of it got cut out of Isaiah. Still a good chunk there. And luckily for the harder chapters of Isaiah, Nephi has some good insights. Great reading them together and comparing things. Also, Nephi 31 and 32 are great missionary scriptures. We use those guys all the time. Good reading this week.

PSS (Personal Scripture Study): Right now the mission is studying Alma for an upcoming mission tour, so I've been in there a lot. Lot's of great stuff. But I just love Alma the younger. He's incredible. Alma 29: 1, 6, and 9 is particularly good. That's a consecrated missionary. Humble too. Alma 36:24 He never stopped working. If you look at where he started, his story is just plain incredible. I've enjoyed reading again.

Also, in Zone Conference we learned about our responsibility to the Holy Ghost. Namely, being worthy, listening, and following. Interesting thought though. A quote from David A Bednar. What doctrines and principles of the Gospel, if understood, would help us more quickly follow the spirit? Study those, look for scriptures, compare examples, and practice. Good challenge.


A little bit of the fun stuff now.
 First off, transfers threw me off, but I was supposed to say happy birthday to Patrick. Could you find him on facebook or something? Or Andrew could say hi. I told him last year I'd say something.

Also, I've been studying the area here a LOT lately. This area is huge. Maybe five times the size of my last area? Not sure. But there are four sister missionaries splitting the same area. We get it all though. Plus, we live outside of our area, so I've got to get our local area figured out too. LOT's of ground to cover. I'll try to get a picture of one of the bus maps. (There are 8 that I'm studying right now.)

Lot's of smaller area names to memorize. Crazy. Luckily, there's a new address system they're working on inplementing. I may have mentioned being scared of it before, but it's actually really good. The roads have names now. Most Koreans don't use them, but they're helping me place landmarks and get bearings. The hard part is roads that have names change.

Anyway, I'm slowly building a map in my head of where things are.

Also, there's a favor I wanted to ask. Could you guys find some Tongue twisters? They're good for english class, but most of the ones we can think of they've already heard before. We need less common ones if you can find them.

Weather. Kind of weird here. It warms up, rains, stays warm for about a day and then drops like crazy, snows, and slowly gets back to normal. And rains again. The dropping part is weird though. Yesterday it was colder in the afternoon than it was in the morning. I got to hear a new sound: the sound of trees and bushes freezing. Kind of fun. =D Lots of crackling.

Also, Solar is coming up. New years, really big here. Makes missionary work impossible, so we'll be deep cleaning our apartment for a day. Looking forward to it. Also, I forgot to mention this. The missionary I replaced died this transfer. Finished his mission and went home. Well, he left a lot of stuff, so I've been going through it. Some of it is pretty useful, and my companion doesn't want any of it. So I've gotten some more stock of toothpaste and deodorant, a nice coat hook
to put on the back of a door. (Surprisngly useful.) A couple other things too.

This transfer we've been having the hardest time meeting investigators. They're always busy. And with Solar coming up, where people all travel to their hometowns and such, three day holiday, missionary work is going to tank. It aparently does that every year and they spend a month trying to catch up again. Looking forward to that. We've got a few people we're excited about though. Just have to hold on. :)

Anyway, fun times here. I think that might be all I've got. I've got to email president and I'll try to send pictures later.

Till then!
~Elder Robarts

Not a great picture, but I wanted to get an example. There's ALWAYS something underground. Pretty sure that's the case any time you're walking outside in the city here.

So this is one of eight that I'm working on learning. Not counting the subways(those are easy). Korea is a dense place, but when you can use the public transit well, it's pretty easy to get around.

2013.01.26 email

Dear Home,

Our investigator in 평택 was baptized!!!! I wrote about her a while back. She's the student that lived in for a foreign exchange program for a year or so. Friend and roomate there introduced her to the church. Anyway, my Elder 박 called me Sunday and told me. YAY!!!! She was a miracle from the start. We saw a lot of those in my first area. The Lord definitely answered my prayers, and I was saying a lot of them. Those first few months, I didn't think I was doing anything right. We weren't having much success my first transfer. We had investigators, but they weren't moving much. I couldn't really build relationships with them in Korean.

It was really hard to 전도 not being comfortable with the language, and no one wanted to talk. I didn't really know what I was doing wrong, how to improve. But I realized something. There isn't a perfect way to do this. Sometimes, a lot of the time, people won't want to talk to us. There's a little we can do to try to change that, but so often it's out of our hands. All we do as missionaries is invite. We work hard everyday, face a lot of people who reject our message, and wait diligently for the day the Lord puts the right person in our path. If we're working hard, he'll do it. My first transfer, I couldn't do anything. But the Lord practically threw investigators at us. It was humbling really. I struggled to feel like I was doing enough. I didn't want to waste those chances He'd given.

But this work is real. It's bigger than us. I can't speak Korean. I can barely communicate. But there's a lot of help. Good companions, and a Father in Heaven that's eager to see His children come home.

Anyway, I've been feeling a lot more like a missionary lately. Realizing things that are important. Before I get off the spiritual part of this letter, I wanted to mention something I noticed about Korea. They treat the Sacrament very sacred. I want to remember that. When they prepare it, they use a kettle and slowly pour it at the table itself. When they pass, at the end, the passers and the blessers both bow. And I mentioned this before. Some buildings use the same room for chapel and activity room, so when they aren't using the chapel, they close it off with curtains. If the curtains are open, you treat the room like a chapel. Very special.

Family scripture reading: Figures I'd join just in time for the Isaiah chapters... I mean, yeah! Isaiah is my favorite! To be completely honest, I actually do really like Isaiah. There are some nuggets in there if you look. One of my favorite chapters is 22. It speaks to me so much sometimes. Absolutely love it. I found a good time to read too. Breakfast. usually a little spare time. Not enough for a real deep look that you need for Isaiah, but nice.

Anyway, lot of people here today, so I can't waste much time. LOTS of culture this week.

Dog soup, already talked about.

Cooking: butter is expensive for missionaries, but I've learned that oil works pretty well as a sub. Been using that a lot. Even found baking powder, so I made some Lembas. Not everything was a success though. Don't make alfredo for a Korean. Kind of plain taste, especially when you don't have many ingredients. To them, /no/ taste. Opposite of all korean food. Haha... 

Also, fun thing I saw. Our toilet has instructions. Little stick figure pictures and everything. so fun. =D

Sandals in the Bathroom. Makes sense here. Drains in the floors, no shower curtains. Keep your feet dry when you walk in.

Also, Some things that aren't common in Korea. Bathrooms. Outside you don't find many. At gas stations, restaurants, 없다. Go before you leave. Garbage cans. Not many. Hard to pick up liter on the street sometimes when there's no place to put it... Drinking fountains. All water has to be filtered. Not much public water. Stop signs. Don't exist here. Tried to explain it to my companion, he thinks they're dumb. Different driving culture here.

Different ways you tie scarfs change how warm they are. Makes sense. Didn't learn that in California though. I've found a couple favorites I like to tie. Scarfs are nice.

Thanks for the pencils Mom! I use them to add color to my life. Matching ties and pencils when I leave the house. Little things missionaries can change. On that note. There are ties here! Or in 대전 anyway. We're going there for Zone conference, so I may have found a use for some of the christmas money you sent. Looking forward to that.

Also, met somebody this Sunday. The Hruby's, a family that lived in America for five years. Husband is American. Fun part: They lived in Rosemont/Brighton Wards. They knew a lot of people I did as we were talking. Not much time to talk at the time, we had a lesson, but I'm looking forward to getting to know them. Anyone recognize the name? Should I say hi for anyone? The wife is a really awesome Korean woman. And they should have had a baby shortly before they moved. Named Ben. Small world, no?

Holy cow that was a lot. Didn't go into depth much, but I'm still out of time. Love you guys. I'll try to get a letter written to give more details, but it's not super likely. Just know I love you!

~Elder Robarts 로바트 장로 (found a keyboard shortcut to switch keyboards. I'll try to use it more. [Does it copy okay?])

2013.01.27 pictures

Dear Home,

First: pictures.

1 You know those walls of apartments I was talking about? This is a taste. And These are the relatively small apartments. (The kind missionaries live in.) Korea is impressive.

 

 

2 This one is just outside of the university here. We can't 전도 (proselyte)  there, but english fliers are pretty effective. Just a small glimpse of the city.

 

3 Well, it took three months, but it happened. Last district meeting we went out to a place that had dog soup. Surprisingly, it wasn't too bad. Smelled a little weird, and I definitely prefer it when dogs are breathing, but at least now I can say I've tried it so members or investigators won't always try to get me to eat it. There are lots of new missionaries in our district right now, so we all got to experience it together. Korea culture time.

 

 

 

 

4 For the most part, you guys probably won't be able to read this, but this is the 인사   (introduction) card I made for this new ward. Fun tradition, and it was nice taking a couple minutes to make it. Haven't sketched in ages.

 

 

Alright, now that that's all done, I've got tons to write about! Different email though. I want to get these pictures sent.