HEART AND SEOUL October 16-23, 2005

HEART

Dear Family,
This past week we have experienced a cultural side of Koreans that both touched our hearts and was a humbling experience. We had not realized that when Koreans invite you to dinner, to an event or to take you on a trip; they expect to pay all costs incurred. If you tried to share the cost or did not receive graciously their offering, it would be offensive to them. When Christ washed the feet of His desciples (even though they could wash their own feet) he taught a great principle in serving others. The Korean saints certainly have learned this principle. Receiving graciously of the Koreans goodness in paying all costs: travel, meals, & lodging upon our acceptance of vacationing with them Wednesday thru Friday, was indeed a heartfelt experience that prayerfully will help us to be more Christ-like. "Love one another, as He has loved you."

SEOUL

Though we stated in our last Heart & Seoul, we had no exotic plans for our second week of our temple shut down, had we lived in China with a trip to Korea it would have been equally exotic.
Our week began on Monday morning. We had accepted an invitation to join with the Evergreen Society a tour to the shores of the Yellow Sea (which separates China from Korea) and the county of Buan. Two busloads of members of the society, most of whom are members of the church and temple workers, traveled to this area. We left at 7a.m. and traveled five hours to our first destination, a Korean restaurant where we all sat traditionally on the floor and ate a Korean lunch. You would probably not believe the kind of food we ate but will hint that it included octupus, eels, clams and of course kimchi.
Following lunch, we traveled to the Buan Digital Film Theme Park where serveral movies have been made about Korean history. The one very interesting part of this tour was the seeing the development of a huge project to reclaim thousands of acres of land presently inundated by the Yellow Sea. This invovles building a dike from the Korean mainland to near by islands, which dike when finished will enable them to drain the land and convert it to productive farm lands, something the Koreans badly need since over 65% of their country is made up of mountains. The dike is approximately twenty-two miles and reported to be one of the longest dikes in the world. It is a huge and expensive project and shows the determination of the Korean people to be self sustaining.
This trip enabled us to strengthen friendships and relationships we have made from a similar trip last April. We returned home about 9:30p.m.
Tuesday was preparation day for our trip south. Brother Jeong and brother Lee who are fellow temple workers and have become good friends, had invited us to travel to the southern tip of Korea Wednesday thru Friday. We had so wanted to travel this area before going home but our concern for the cost and inability to communicate had kept us from making such a trip. Even though apprehensive, we truly expected to pay a sizable amount of shared costs with Brothers Jeong and Lee. We later found out, as stated above, that our costs would be very minimal, thanks to the prearrangments with church members in that area they had made. Can you believe our total cost would be $28. while all other costs such as travel, motels and meals, some at members homes and some at restaurants. No expense was spared in seeing that we had the best of everything. Though we did not know them by name, we recognized them as regular temple attenders and they all made us feel very special.
We traveled on the Gungbu Expressway most of the way to the Island of Tong-Yeong and drove directly to the luxuary apartment home where we met Sister Heh Min-Ja. She had one of the finest Korean dinners we have ever eaten. Their home is in a fifteen story building that overlooks the South Sea. From there we could see the many ostyer beds which was a fascinating and beautiful site. Following lunch we toured this scenic island and visited each of eight famous scenic spots of Tong Yeong.
Thinking our day had come to an end, we were surprised to be taken to another Korean restaurant where we were met by Brother Jeong, the husband of sister Heh who picked up the tab. We of course, were not hungary but out of respect ate more than we probably should have. Brother Jeong, also a recognized temple worker was a convert to the church and looks far younger than his years of experience indicate. He has served twenty-five years as Branch President, High Counselor and Temple Coordinator and our encounter with him was one week after he had been released from his Branch Pesident calling. This attractive and properous man bore a beautiful testimony of his love of the church and fully recognizes from whence his blessings come. He and Sister Hey have a beautiful daughter currently serving a mission on Temple Square and have two other younger daughters away to school. He has been influential in bringing many of his other family members into the church.
We were then driven to our motel which they referred to as "Motel Eight" but turned out to be a luxury hotel with marble floors, king-size bed, velvet drapes and a sceenic view of the ocean that matched the best of any Hilton.
Though we would have liked to have stayed longer in the hotel, we were met at 8a.m. by Brothers Lee and Jeong where we again enjoyed the hospitality and the home cooked breakfast of Sister Hey. A Korean breakfast is not too different from their lunch or dinner. Rice being their common staple, much like bread is to us but they know nothing like our bacon & eggs, toast, cereal, hotcakes, etc.
Our appointment with Brother Kim Captain was at 10A.M. He is an employee of Chevron Oil Company overseeing the safety specifications of a huge barge being constructed by the Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Company. He describes this as being one of the largest floating barges of it's kind ever built. We met brother Captain two or three times as he and his wife attended the temple. He and his third wife are parents of three year old twins and he was made the new branch president upon brother Jeong's release last week. It was through him and brother Jeong that arrangements were made for a private tour, to tour the Daewoo shipyards on the island of Tong Weong. Without their help, it is doubtful we could have had such a grand tour of this huge shipbulding facility. Korea has become one of the worlds largest builders of ships, if not the largest. Somewhat smaller, but second in size to Hyundae, Daewoo is an unbelievably huge operation.
Brother Kim, who we refer to as "Captain Kim", personally was our tour guide in a company provided van. Following our tour he treated us to an American style lunch (which by now we were longing for) in the administrative office lunch room. Kim Captain is from Texas and when we offered to pay for our lunch his reply was: "I need to pay, the amount they pay me is embarrasing".
We left brother Captain following lunch having visited one of the main points of interest we had known of and wanted to see. We then went to an interesting museum and were going to take a boat ride but having arrived too late for the tour boat ride we traveled on to meet another Brother Lee in the city of Gyeongju, a historic city which is over a thousand years old and is located in the center of the Gyeongju National Park.
This brother Lee (no relation) is a prominent well-to-do business man dealing in minerals. He has served as a counselor in a past Temple Presidency, Stake President and long time member of the church. He has sons educated in the United States, one of which assists in running the business. We did not meet him the first night as he was in Seoul for a class reunion so his wife met us at a restaurant where we were once again treated to dinner. When we got to our motel expecting to pay, we found it had already been prepaid by brother Lee.
The next morning brother Lee met us after only four hours of sleep as he had returned from Seoul on the bullet train. After buying our breakfast, he escorted us to the local mountains which are historically among the most famous in Korea. We spent most of the morning touring this fascinating park where buildings built by ancient monks still exist in restored condition. In one of the buildings is a huge granite sculpture of a remarkably well preserved Buddha which was made in around 632A.D. All of this historic art is high in the mountains accessed by well trodden foot paths. One of the delightful things about our whole trip was mingling with the school children who came on bus with their teacher by the thousands. Many of them wanted to practice their English on us and were eager to greet us and even have their pictures taken with us. They were in general a happy, intelligent, respectful and physically attractive children. Many if not most, were wearing uniforms of their school.
About one o'clock, we met brother Lee at the bottom of the park where you guessed it, he took us to lunch. He then escorted us to the Gyeongju National Museum and after thanking him for his hospitality, we bid him goodbye. There were far more things to see but the museum seemed to sumarize this historic trip . We left the museum about 4p.m. and headed back to Seoul by the Gyeongbu Expressway #1, arriving home at 8:30p.m to find our email announcement of Tylers mission call to the Madrid Spain Mission, the climax of a wonderful week.