Sing, pray, and hug

                Our week ended with two consecutive days in Seoul. On Friday, we met with our zone of missionaries at the mission home for training. The topics ranged from drinking enough water, showering every night, budgeting money, keeping a clean apartment, to working with members in their missionary work. The missionaries were encouraged to sing and pray together every morning and night and follow the prayer with a hug. Hugging your companion is one of our favorite things to do but we also sing at least one song every day together in Korean before our prayers. We thought the missionaries were given wonderful advice!

                Saturday was our monthly visit to the Seoul Temple. We had five soldiers join us plus one of our Africans—a record number from our branch. We enjoy seeing other senior missionaries and sharing experiences with them. Both days hit record high temperatures so we were always totally wet when we were outside even though there was no rain. We are thankful for air conditioning.

                Most of our week was spent at the USO either at the front desk with our Korean friends or in the dining area where we met in small groups or one-on-one tutoring soldiers. While we had two of the soldiers from the class who scored extremely high stop us on post to report their success, others have come to us asking for a little more help to edge them over the magic number of points to get promoted.

                We made a trip to the Education Office to check out the materials left by previous teachers and compare our data on class participation and homework with their promotion test scores. We were happy to see a direct correlation.  The increased success rate of the class prompted a request from the education office director to increase the duration of the class by another day.  This was unexpected because the director had told us previously the commanders had requested a decrease in the length of the class to minimize the time away from duty assignments.  She thought the data would help her sell the longer class time.

                The daughter of the grandmother (harmony) who kidnapped me in July stopped me in the elevator today. She has been worried that I thought she was rude when she didn’t invite me to come in to have tea with her mother. She has been watching us and concluded that my caring for harmonies was genuine. It’s not always easy to judge the impact of our behaviors and service.

                Three of the people Sister Rhodes invited to church today were there. Four of the people I invited who promised they would be there were not. When I was thinking about whether to be disappointed or patient, I thought about the Savior’s patience with me. How many times do I try and fail or promise myself I will do something for someone else and get sidetracked? I have no way to look into someone else’s heart, but I can change me.

                This week I’ll try hard to appreciate all the things my companion does to help with the household tasks. I think the song and prayer and hug twice a day will help me remember my goal.