Today has been a long, but enjoyable and even a productive day. It started with an English service, a Korean service, lunch, translating the first sentence of the Lord’s prayer from Korean into English (still trying to figure out what to do with the difference in Korean grammar, like where it says that God’s hallowed name is received), hiking, dinner at home, watching a Korean movie, cleaning my apartment, and filling out my district license renewal application.
The first thing on my list of things to do was to participate in the English service at one of the churches I am involved in. I had more responsibility today because I preached and I did the things I usually do (confession, reading the scripture, leading the congregation in confessing the Apostles’ Creed and giving the benediction. One person told me she feels inspired when she listens to my sermons. Another person told me I spoke slower today than usual which is a good thing I think. After this I waited for two students who have been missing the class the last few weeks because of schedule conflicts or tests.
At 11:00 I went to the Korean service at the same church. I was going to do something to keep myself occupied and then I decided to write down as many words as I could make out during the sermon. I came up with 150 or more and was told they were mostly right (nobody told me exactly how many were wrong). I found this to be much less frustrating than simply listening to a sermon where it seems that most of what is being said doesn’t make sense to me.
Then I ate lunch with two guys I know and get along with rather well. We didn’t talk real long because the people responsible for cleaning the room where we ate asked us to leave so that they could clean the tables. This doesn’t quite seem hospitable to me but it is common at this church for people to do that sort of thing.
After that, I went to the other church where I am involved. The Korean name means “Grace” when translated into English. I think this is much more of a “grace place” than the church I went to this morning. I don’t know how intelligible my thoughts were about the first sentence of the Lord’s prayer were. This was complicated by a word or series of words in Korean that mean to receive. It seems questionable whether the person praying or God is receiving.
After this class, I played around with some children at church, one of which goes to the class I taught. When we left, his mom asked if I am busy (in Korean). I wasn’t quite sure what she said and I ended up being invited to hike with them at a mountain nearby. The truth was that I needed to grade some mid-terms but I wasn’t sure I would get anything done at home. I most certainly didn’t want to spend hours at home getting nothing done so I decided to say yes.
This was an interesting time since only two people could speak a little English and the other two could only speak Korean. I made the youngest person laugh when I called the children “grandma” or “grandpa” in Korean. After we came down from the mountain, the mother who invited me bought ice creamish snacks for all of us. When we got to my apartment (officestel) building I said goodbye and made some dinner.
I watched a Korean movie while I ate rice, tofu and kimchi. This was another interesting movie that started with a proverb about making branches move with one’s spirit and mind. I tried to listen to what people were saying in Korean but since the subtitles were in English I paid more attention to the story line than learning the Korean words that were being used.
After the movie was over I decided it was time to clean my apartment. I tend to let it get a little dirty before I clean it. Then when I realize that the clutter is distracting me from doing my work, I do a thorough cleaning. I’m guessing this happens once a month. I think the last time I did this was when my ex-girlfriend came over here and I basically ruined the relationship. Several hours later, I was done with the apartment and now I have the satisfaction of setting my mind to do something and actually doing it without spending several hours convincing myself that I can really do it. I was interrupted by this exciting activity by the same woman who bought ice cream for all of us after hiking when she brought me kimchi. This was another kind gesture on her part.
When I came back, I sent a text message to one of the people leading the English service asking her if she was okay. She called me and we talked about the service. I was aggravated by the fact that the senior pastor wants to continue the English service without helping us find people to lead it in a way that is better. One person suggested that we include the sermon in Korean in the bulletin. I think that if we do that we might as well have the service be in Korean. It is frustrating to me that people seem to think we should be to blame when they can’t understand it. I don’t notice anybody trying to make a Korean service simpler just because I am there. But I guess that is to be expected since I am the guest.
An hour after that I finished cleaning my apartment and then I decided to check my e-mail and found information about applying for the renewal of my district license. Even though it was quite late by then, I decided to finish the application tonight so that I can focus on reading tomorrow. I have a ton of work to do to catch up on the research I’m behind on. So now it is 1:35am and I think I am ready to get some shuteye.
The highlight of today was definitely going hiking with the people from “Grace Church” and then reading the text message from one person who asked me if I needed kimchi (in Korean of course) and later brought it to me. This is in spite of the fact that she can’t speak much English. It seems like the mothers of these children are really trying to look out for me. This makes it very difficult for me to complain about Christians being hypocrites. These people seem to be interested in practicing what they preach. If I could do anything I think I would back off of the church where we are trying to have an English service and just go to Grace Church. But it is difficult because I wouldn’t be able to do anything in a church service if I didn’t participate in this service, at least not in a Korean church. But I think we need to do some major planning if we decide to continue, and it seems that none of us have time to really plan for it.
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