We went to our Zone Training meeting with the young missionaries on Wednesday. We appreciate their dedication and enthusiasm! We've been reading the Book of Mormon as a mission for the past few weeks. We plan to finish by December 1st. Four or five chapters a day. Some of the missionaries mentioned how they were able to have the right responses to their investigators since they had just recently read those verses.
We also got news that day from the US about the election. God bless America.
There have also been protests here in Korea over the past several Saturdays. We live close enough to the city center that we heard the protests going into the wee hours of the night / morning last night. It started getting quiet about 3 am. It is kind of unsettling to hear the unrest. While we were out, we noticed that the police were gathering and redirecting traffic, so we headed home early in the afternoon. We heard there were 1,000,000 people at this protest. But there were few signs of it today. Only about 10 protesters were still out when we went home from church. To balance it out, there were about 14 police on either side of them. Keeping watch.
One afternoon this week we left the office early to spend a little time with our friend, Jake. We visited Namsangol Hanok Village. This park has several older homes that have been restored and relocated here. They think they are dated from the 1800s.
I saw these girls dressed up and posing for a photo. I thought I could sneak a picture too, but one girl spotted me and posed for me!
We're seeing more fall colors this week. This tree was especially beautiful.
This is the famous chicken soup restaurant with people lined up waiting to go inside. We pass by on our walk home from the office. There's almost always a crowd here. We ate dinner with the missionaries here last week.
It was beautiful Saturday morning. We went to the Seoul Museum of History. These are samples of the reconstruction of the palaces. These are concrete, but the originals were carved wood.
We could get a closer view of the flying monkeys or whatever they are.
This gives the explanation of the symbols on the Korean flag. Four of the eight yin and yang symbols are on the flag
The white background symbolizes peace. The red and blue center is for balance and harmony. The blue part represents Yin (in Chinese) for the negative aspects of the balance and red is Yang for the positive. The trigrams at the corners also represent balance. Top left is "Heaven", bottom left is "Fire", top right is "Water" and bottom right represents "Earth."
Also, the white represents the "Land", the circle is "People" and the trigrams is for "Government".
Inside the museum, the history of the Seoul area is displayed. At the end of the Korean War, people flocked into Seoul and set up shanty towns. The government started building high rise apartment buildings to house them all. They had to build bridges across the river. The older missionaries who served here back in the 1970s tell us there was no subway system then and only a few bridges. They have made tremendous changes here in the last 50 years.
This is an amazing model showing the city's growth. It fills an entire room.
There was also a display of Korean fashion designs.
Next door is Gyeonghuigung Palace originally constructed in 1618.
We had a change of leadership in our branch today. We have the same branch president, but two new counselors were called. There is a fair amount of change due to work and military assignments. It's a little melting pot of wonderful people from all over the world.
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