Gyeongju Part 1

This is our latest favorite place to hike/visit. We went here with Caitlin and Billy, and then again with Ron Bartholomew, and recently with Ben. It is an amazing place to see.

It looks like this big guy is doing the shot put!

On the way to Gyeongju we stopped by a couple of burial mounds of former kings and queens. I liked the way the little blue flowers looked against the backdrop of the rice fields.

Last week we traveled to Gyeongju, about 1 1/2 hours drive away, for Dad to interview a baptismal candidate. Dad has conducted these types of interviews before but this time was different. This candidate was a woman from Viet Nam who was deaf. She is married to a Korean man who has partial hearing loss so he knows Korean sign language. Vietnamese sign language is different but her husband has learned enough to communicate with her. They met in Viet Name but now live in Korea. He has been less active so this has been a process. Anyhow, Dad said the actual interview went as follows: Dad looked at the woman and asked her the questions through the wife of the branch president because she knows Korean sign language, who then signed the questions to the husband in Korean sign language, who then signed the questions to the wife in Vietnamese sign language, who took some time to think and respond back up the chain of communicating. Dad asked why she wanted to be baptized with her response being, Oh, there are so many reasons,So the whole interview took about an hour and 15 minutes. Wow! And then Dad wanted to interview both sister missionaries who taught the candidate, while he was there. And then Dad wanted to interview each of the elders serving in that branch, while he was there. So it was a long process.  Before we went to the church for the interviews we went to this Buddhist temple that is nearby since we were the far away from the mission home. This was a beautiful spread out campus of a number of buildings. There were a number of individual buildings with their own statue for prayers to be given to, along with monks who I think serve/tend to the duties of that individual temple, with people inside praying to the statue. There are so many candles and incense burning in each temple. There was music playing/rhythmically playing/sounds mixed with sounds/noise from outside like the cicadas and large groups of people walking by. Walking by an older man who noticed our name tags he asked Dad a few questions making his point that he knelt down and respectfully prayed at the front walkway site. We thought we were respectful all throughout the grounds; more respectful than his wife who talked and joked in loud tones.