Many Hats

                 

               I stopped to visit with the civilian director of all the support programs for the post while he was visiting the Education Center on Friday. Our paths cross frequently and he was very gracious in offering his thanks for our service to the soldiers. I told him that we were training our replacements so he probably wouldn’t even notice when we returned home. He was quick to rebut that statement and made a comment, “Everywhere we go, you’re there.” I reflected on the many places we have served and they have been varied.

                Wayne is now a regular entrant at the holiday races. Columbus Day it was a 5K. The young soldiers see him as a role model for health and fitness beyond their days as a soldier and the sergeants thank him for his participation with their soldiers. Wayne still manages to edge out about a third of the field even in his Z-Coil shoes. This soldier is in our LDS group. The woman behind him works at MWR and the blond is director of the Red Cross here in Area 1. We see and work with them often.

                We wore our teacher hats as we started a new class to help the soldiers review/learn math, reading, and vocabulary. The spread of skills from about a junior in high school to almost third grade is a challenge, but the joy in helping them learn what they need to navigate life is amazing. We fell in love with these soldiers very quickly. One soldier came to the front desk at the Education Center the first morning with his paperwork to be in the class. The administrator informed him that he was not in the class because that paperwork was due last week. I thought the man was going to cry so I told him to sit in on the class today in case someone dropped. Before class began, a soldier did call and drop the class. That wasn’t a coincidence. He’s the young man looking this way with the pencil. A few days later he confided in me some family problems that were weighing heavily on him. He needs some extra love and support right now with more than his academic skills.

                We still tag team the math and the language instruction so we only teach an hour at a time, but we also have Elder and Sister Bowman with us to provide extra help with the math skills when the soldiers are working independently with the problems. Sister Bowman helps with reviewing the language homework and they see things we are unaware of as they observe our teaching. We are learning as much from them as they are learning from us. We’re thankful they have decided to continue to teach these classes after we leave South Korea.

                We put on our missionary mentor hats to support our young sister missionaries. This was exchange week for the young missionaries and our Sister Rhodes was transferred to a new area with a Korean companion. This will be a great opportunity for her as she hones her Korean language skills, but it was a tearful farewell because this is her first transfer since she arrived. We have become very attached. As a reward, we added Sister Fryer who needed me to call her Mom the first day she was here because we can’t take them onto the post without their Social Security number and Mom’s are the keepers of those important documents.

                Sister Engebretsen needed some documents scanned and emailed to the states so they were here two more days working on that task plus registering Sister Fryer as a volunteer on the post. They taught Korean on post to four soldiers and Elder and Sister Bowman and are already an integral part of our church and military community.

                Elder Bowman volunteered to tutor the one soldier scheduled to meet with us on Friday evening giving us our first evening off for many weeks. Sister Bowman went to the yoga class with the soldiers.

 

We were able to put on our leisure hat and take time for a little hike into the hills before sunset. We found a hint of Fall in the trees. It was a luxury to eat a relaxed dinner and enjoy a big bowl of popcorn unhurried.

               We went to Soyosan and made the hike to the Buddhist Temple on Saturday. We haven’t been there for a year and I wanted to see it one more time before we leave Korea.