Many roles of senior missionaries

                Koreans know how to celebrate. There was a holiday for Labor Day on Monday; a holiday for Buddha’s birthday on Wednesday; and a holiday for Children’s Day on Friday. Next Tuesday will be a holiday for the election so many Koreans took the full ten days off work. That was good for them, but we needed to register our car on post and get a copy of our insurance form from the Korean company to do that. You can guess that we walked to the post most of the week to serve at the USO. On the way we watched the painters suspended without harness from a single rope from the top of a 16-story building sitting on a little seat. He had a spray gun and just danced from side-to-side as he lowered himself down the front of the building.

                We learned that the students in our class made large improvements in their math scores but almost no change in their language scores. Most of the students started with high language scores so they had little room for improvement. We devoted more time to studying math on purpose because we had a range of about 6^th Grade to 12^th Grade in math proficiency. That’s a lot of math to cover. All of the students were very kind in their appraisals of the class and of us as teachers, but we need to make some changes for our next class.

                We spent several evenings working with students one-one one and sponsored the elders on post one evening so they could teach a Korean language class to the soldiers. Above is our dedicated zone of missionaries. This was our first meeting with them since the last transfers. It’s amazing to watch them lead one another.

                Sister Anderson spent one afternoon getting our new convert started in FamilySearch. Victoria was amazed at the Church resources for family history.

                Saturday was our day at the Seoul Temple. After our temple session we ate some snacks and Wayne attended a District Council Meeting while I went back into the temple to do initiatory work. We love being in the temple but also seeing other English speaking missionaries and members we have come to know. We are pretty isolated in Dongducheon. Wayne is the only High Priest and often I am the only woman in our military branch.

                We met with the mission president and his wife on Sunday to do some planning for this area of the mission and they were very kind in their assessment of our efforts. I guess it’s okay to pause once in a while and feel good about your service and then regroup and set new goals.