Fun Travels!

 It has been a blessing to have Sister Morton transfer to our mission. Many hugs have been given, especially this past week. Next Transfer Day our Area Medical Advisor, Dr Hansen, and his wife will come to our mission and present their information that they are sharing with all 12 missions in the Asia North Area. They are wonderful! Earlier today these sisters and myself were standing around my kitchen asking Sister Lee questions about cooking-fun cultural stories/lesson. Sister Patton, Sister Lee, Sister Morton, Sister Graham, Sister Beazer. Today was Transfer Day, so Sister Patton has just six more weeks to serve before her mission is complete. Sister Lee made a delicious Korean dinner for the outgoing missionaries. The day was filled with meetings so Sister Lee had some extra help (along with responsibility to ³entertain".). Sister Graham is married to Elder Graham, the area mental health advisor for the Asia North Area. The Graham’s are going around to each of the twelve missions with their presentation, so they spoke at our transfer meeting today. Sister Beazer spent a couple hours in the afternoon translating Sister Lee’s Korean recipes/ways of cooking into English for Sister Graham. Then when all of these sisters gathered together in the kitchen it was fun listening to Sister Lee talk about "in the old days" how a new bride would need to prepare food for her new inlaws for a traditional Korean holiday like Chuseok or Chinese New Year.

This is as we boarded a plane to travel to Jeju Island a week ago to speak at their district conference. The number of members is small but they are good people. Some are characters; like the Jeju Branch district president with his long hair and attitude. But we met a young couple who recently graduated from BYU Provo and came back to Korea to find work. They have a cute little boy about two months older than Kelly with another due I August. The mother translated my talk for me as we spoke on Sunday. One of our elders translated my talk sentence by sentence in just a short amount of time/not much notice and gave it to one of our sisters to read/study so she could stand and translate for me‹but then this young sister just walked up and displaced our sister missionary, who had worked so hard from the night before to study in order to be prepared. I felt bad but the district president must have prearranged it. Someone spoke about Family Search and also mentioned the booklet My Family. It reminded me of the preparation Dad and I did in gathering our family information just before coming on our mission. It also reminded me of one of the articles in the March 2015 Ensign titled Grandpa, Father. It reminded me of the work Karl is doing to gather information, memories, and stories about Grandpa Reichenbach (I just forwarded you an email from him). Dad and I each have wonderful fathers and mothers who have blessed our lives with their sacrifice and service. We are so blessed, more than we deserve. We should be grateful always.

After the district conference meeting, on Sunday, all the people take down the chairs, put up tables, and then put up chairs for everyone to eat lunch. The numbers of people are small enough that lunch is provided for all. We ate bibimbop, the famous second round/season of Jeju oranges (this season of them has thin skins and are super expensive whereas the easily season oranges have thicker skins-they are all small like Cuties- and are called cules), and these huge grapes!

On P-Day we met with our missionaries in Segwipo, on Jeju Island, at the church. Dad was able to play a quick game of ping pong with Elder Todd. The Koreans have two different styles of paddles and therefore ways of holding their paddles for playing ping pong; kind of serious. It’s been a while for Dad to play but he still beat Elder Todd. Then we did a surprise check of the one set of elder’s apartment, which is right next door to the church. Good thing we did and I asked questions! They need new yos to sleep on along with a new rice cooker. These are great elders; so humble and good! We rode a city bus to the waterfalls, which Elder Godfrey has visited before (he’s been here on the island the longest of these elders). It was fun talking and getting to know these elders a bit better. As we were about to climb the steps to the Cheonjeyeon Falls it was fun to hear/see the excitement of other visitors talking about the emerald lake/waters that were so calm.

This bridge was rather high up, making Dad a little nervous to stand by the edge with the rocks and waterfalls down below. The fountain was fun to watch the elders throw a coin in trying to get it to land in the center; rather deceptive. The blessings reminded me a bit of Papa’s New Years wishes for health, wealth, and luck. Ben chose to sit in front of the dragon, for honor.

We arrived in Seoul Tuesday night and were met at the train stain by the Christensen’s, mission president for the Korea Seoul Mission. We ate dinner together before going back to the mission home where we spent the night. It was fun to tour their home and see the differences. They finish their mission this coming June so it was interesting to talk and hear how they’re winding things up. Wednesday morning we got a ride over to Camp Kim/USO to catch a bus that took us to the DMZ. Then we took another bus to the different sites (like the peace talks building that had delegates from Sweden and Switzerland in attendance mediating, or the observation site overlooking the small village of residents whose families owned the land and lived there prior to the war). We were given specific instructions about how to walk in single file/two rows, do not point, stand facing a certain direction, stand a certain distance away from the ROK (Republic of Korea) soldiers, do not speak to them-not even talking about the North Korean soldiers, take pictures only in a certain direction, etc. We met an LDS family before boarding the bus so Dad tended to sit by them on the bus. They took this picture of us when we were allowed to use our cameras. We could only take a picture in the direction facing North Korea. In this picture we are facing the building we just exited in order to stand facing the North. The building we just exited had tons of surveillance cameras on the roof facing the North.

We entered a building where peace talks were held, for 11 1/2 hours straight. Nobody wanted to be the first to get up to use the rest room for fear of showing their weakness. We were instructed to gather around to listen, but do not touch the furniture. You could not point or gesture toward the ROK soldiers. You could not stand within six inches of them and could not touch them or speak to them. You could not walk near them; had to walk the other way around a table. You could take pictures with them but only while facing North Korea (even inside this building). We were hustled through the picture taking process before they shut it down. Ben and Dad were actually standing in North Korea here. We took these instructions from a young man soldier who looked like a kid-he must have been only 18 or 19 years old.

Ben is looking out over North Korea from an observation point we were driven to and given a short amount of time to get off the bus to take pictures. Ben is standing to the side of a monument set up where the Panmunjom axe murder incident took place-the killing of two US Army officers by North Koreans in the Joint Security Area in the DMZ by United Nations Command between a checkpoint and an observation post. Three days later the US Army set in motion Operation Paul Bunyan (taking place in 1976). In the background is a huge tower/flagpole the North Koreans built, which was 160M tall, after the South Koreans built a tower/flagpole to hold their flag, which was 100M tall.

Because of limited seating on the bus I sat by a woman, Heba Madi, who is from Manchester, England. She looks young as she is a doctor. Heba came on the tour by herself because her father had taken ill and was admitted to the hospital so her mother stayed with him instead of going on the tour with her daughter. It was interesting to have a coupe across the aisle of the bus from Ireland-sounding out their different accents for me.

We had to pay extra money to go inside where the platform was as if we were actually going to board a real train to travel to North Korea. It was a beautiful facility. Too bad the North isn’t willing to make things work so that it can be used.

Right after we left the tour of the DMZ we walked just down the street to the Korean Wars Museum. Notice I said Wars. It was a history of all the wars from the early years (before the year 1,000) down to more recent times. Our timing was perfect as we walked by a car with who we thought must be an ambassador or somebody of importance since there were so many body guards or security around them. It turned out to be Her Royal Highness and His Royal Highness the Princess and Prince of Sweden. Sweden and Switzerland have play important neutral roles in the politics of both North and South Korea. We could not get very close to actually see them (I wanted to go get their autograph but long before getting close I was being directed away from them). In the second picture Her Highness is dressed in white which makes her really stand out (like in the movie The Natural when Glenn Close stands up at the baseball game while wearing a white dress). The museum was very well made, fun; just so much information to absorb. I wish we had more time to look at the outside planes and exhibits and stuff, but we had to leave in order to catch a subway to meet the Morrise’s for dinner. The Morrise’s are the mission president and wife of the Korea Seoul South Mission. It was fun to eat and talk with them. We ate at a ShabuShabu restaurant but it tasted different from the place we eat at near our house back at home. It was spicy and good; fun. After dinner we walked over to their home and saw the office, meeting his assistants. Seoul is huge compared to Busan; more people. But the streets are wider and cleaner; seem to be more safe while driving. It actually felt more like Washington DC to me as we were site seeing.

Just outside of the museum Ben sat next to this statue-which took a little time because he didn’t really want to sit next to this ³harmony² or elderly grandma type of woman.