HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The MCM leader bought me peanut butter for Christmas!

The bird took my name tag off! 

The Ocean New Years Morning.

Bird Park last P-day...Christmas

Hey everybody!

Happy New Years and Happy Birthday!!!! In Korea everyone turns a year older on New Years, not their actual birthday. Birthdays are actually not even that big of a deal here, but woah is New Years a party. So heres for turning 21 before even turning 20!

I dont know how I keep ending up with like no email time, sorry family. But Christmas week has been a busy one. We spent our Christmas Pday at this huge bird park! Its seriously like a bird version of sea world. We spent like 6 hours there and were still not ready to go, plus met Santa and his pet parrot, whose going to be giving Rudolph a run for his money. This place had everything, snakes, (Elder Paul saw his first real life snake-ha New Zealanders) alligators, huge fish, sharks, penguins, dogs to play with, turtles, parrots, all the kinds of birds that look like parrots, ostriches, ducks and just everything inbetween. I mean when growing up you always thought you were going to go somewhere more exotic with lots of cool animals on your mission, but then you go to Korea, where the only free roaming animals are cats, bird parks is where its at.

We did soo much this week. Starting with I got to skype my family, obviously making this week the best ever. Since the wifi at our church was out we had to skype at a cafe, yes that was kindof lame. But hey, thanks to all the people in the cafe if helped me avoid tears. Ha thats one way to do it. 

This week our RC was in the hospital, so we spent a whole lot of time there. And the thing that shocked me was how hopping the hospitals here are. There are so many hospitals and literally theyre the place to be, so many people. In Korea they dont really have doctors offices, just hospitals, and everyone goes to the hospital for everything. You have a cold- go to the hospital. You have an excessively stuffy nose- go to the hospital. You stubbed your toe- go to the hospital. You get the point, aka there are so many people there! We decided if we just proscelyte in the hospital instead on the street, there will be more people and they cant ignore us as easy.

This morning we were able to get special permission to get up insanely early and take a bus with our investigator and the Elders and their investigators (our investigators are living together) and go to the beach to watch the new year sunrise. Its a huge thing to do here. Everyone does it! It was absolutely beautiful and so much fun. But ignore how warm it lopks in the pictures because it was actually freezing! Another fun different new years thing, here instead of a ball drop type thing, they do a big bell ring at midnight. We were talking about the ball drop in English class and tryingto explain it out loud made me realize...well its kindof weird. Haha.

We also got to do exchanges this week with our 방어진 sisters. (Bangojen i don't know, spelling is something like that!) I was able to go to 방어진 with Sister Coon and learn all kinds of great things from her. We got a last minute phone call from this well known kindof crazy member in the ward saying he wanted to take us and the Elders to sing to the branch president in the hospital because he got random nose surgery no one knew about. (Mmm maybe supposed to be a secret? Oops) So we went with them thinking it would be a short little thing, until we're driving...driving....driving. Finally we get there, get out and realize he took us to another area! (He's not a fan of rules) We sang super quick, get back in the car and he says "I buy you American Pizza!" Types Costco into his phone and off we went...going into another area of the zone. The whole time we were driving i was thinking, hmmm safe to say Im fired! We got to Costco, and ate so much pizza I was sick. (Dear family and friends, please dont ever make missionaries eat more food than they can/ ever want to!) Going to Costco was fun though, its literally like stepping into a mini pocket of America. Smells the exact same! Anyways great first exchange of the transfer...and possibly the last. ;) 

As for the rest of the week we spent meeting investigators and actually met a couple new investigators, all in their 20s and one of them seems super golden. Its been a week of more miracles in our cute little corner of 경주, thats for sure! Gotta love Christmas miracles.

Love and miss you all♡

Love

Sister Stout