Sending off new missionaries and their trainers!

Here we are sending off our new missionaries and their trainers to jundo(proselyte) with each other, switching partners four different times in the afternoon. The next day they were assigned their trainer for the next12 weeks. No rain this time! Great weather.

Ben had off of school this past week for Fall Break. We had Transfer week with training meetings most of the week so we could only do some sort offsite seeing on Friday. We visited the Busan Tower which has a Buddhist temple nearby, some park areas for sitting and visiting, art sellers little shacks on the way up these may stairs, statues, and a gift shop at the base of the tower. We took the elevator up (I don’t know how many levels up we were) and saw a great view of the city.

The temple is quite high, to be seen at the different levels as you climb the many stairs, and can be seen at the top. Along the way there is a place to stop the jets out to the side for small park area with exercise equipment that older people often use. It will be fun to visit.

The site seeing we did on Friday was in an area called Nampo. We went there before to the Fish Market. There are other areas of shopping so we found a baking supplies shop. It has some items we can’t find in the regular stores or Costco, but the prices are high. There are outside little vendor carts and restaurants to eat at so we chose a second floor Italian restaurant. This is a picture from their menu. I don’t know if you remember Bear making Nasi-Goreng, fried rice with a bunch of chopped up vegetables and seasoning that she served with French/garlic bread. I always thought the name Bear called it came from Malaysia/Papa’s mom when they lived there. I thought it was a native rice dish from that part of the world. I have never seen it on a menu before but here it is, on an Italian menu. We had a great view to watch all the people out on the streets. There was a young man working as an ad man holding a SALE sign. I say holding when really, part of the time he was flipping and twirling the sign, throwing it up into the air. He would step out into the street and block traffic doing spins and dodges and dancing of sorts. He kept that sign moving the whole time we were seated for dinner. But I don’t think a single person entered the shop because of him.

While we were eating I saw this advertising on a building; two or three or more stories tall. I thought it was interesting how the sign says³American Sports Classic with a model holding a paddleball paddle or handball paddle which is not a Classic American sport.

We are at the train station right before the train arrived to take the outgoing missionaries to Seoul where they went to the temple on Tuesday. The Koreans went home that night. The foreigners flew home the next day.

Saturday night we attended a district choir concert and we have a stake choir concert to attend this upcoming Saturday night. This must be the time of year for the music/concerts. The district president is young with three young children. This darling little girl recognizes Ben from when we have come to this district before. She would come up as close as she dared, smile coyly, and then run away. If Ben wasn’t paying attention to her she would come closer and closer until he would wave to her and off she would run. I think her mother said she was three, in American years. I don’t know how they figure age in Korea (where the cut off is) but generally Koreans age is a year older than Americans age.