The recipes were very exciting. (I sent her some gluten free recipes using rice flour or no flour) I got them as I was walking out of our apartment building for the last time, on our way to 신도림 station for transfers. We made the banana pancakes on our first night together. If you have more recipes..... we would REALLY appreciate it. Even stuff like the cauliflower buffalo wings, soup recipes, pudding recipes, flourless choco cake, quinoa recipes (we have a nice stash of quinoa), anything.
We're in the 목동 (Mok-dong) ward. It's a little smaller than Ansan with maybe 40~50 people. Our inactive list is larger than our member book, which is very common. We also have a gigantic binder full of people's records and we don't know who they are. I think some of them are inactive or they moved and their records were lost. We know they exist but the church doesn't have their records anymore. They're like the lost tribes. My area is super teeny tiny compared to my last area. We live on the border of our area and we share our apartment with the sisters in our neighboring area (화곡) (Hwakok). I really like it so far.
I've been here for five days and I feel like a completely different person. Completely. Part of it may be the new area. Part of it may be the ability to eat food that doesn't hurt me (her new companion has celiac, so they can eat gluten-free food together). Part of it may be that I don't dread meal times. Part of it may be a new, American companion. Part of it may be living in a four-man house. Part of it may be that the transfer was inspired. Inspired. There were a lot of things that were making me really sad but I didn't recognize it and didn't know how to deal with it and now that I'm out of it I can see that I don't have to be that way and I'm SO MUCH HAPPIER. So much. But really. My journal entries have made a 180 turn. My anxiety is much lower. It's just good.
So I'm excited to be in this area. And I love Sister Kei so much. One of the first things I thought was; "I CAN EAT FOOD NOW!!!" We can cook together! We can look out for each other and give each other advice. We can buy food together. It's one of the most exciting events to take place in my life. Sister Kei and I were both born in Glendale (Arizona) in 1993. Her mom remarried a Korean man so she has four half-Korean siblings.
There's a gluten-free bakery in the Daejeon mission (that's where we are). I don't know where it is, though. There's a lady in the English branch (they actually have like a couple hundred members) that meets in 영등포 (Yeongdeungpo)(there are actually two) whose family has celiacs. We is super nice and gives us food! Her name is Angela . She likes to talk and I'm sure she would love to give you advice. She has one black daughter and two Korean boys as well as biological children. I don't agree with all of what she says (because you CAN buy gluten-free soysauce and gochujang in Koreans stores).
So we went to yeong-deung-po on Saturday morning to help them clean the church (as a service project for us) and to meet up with her to get food she bought for us (SO NICE!). She even made us a chocolate cake. You can add Sister Kei's mom too. But I don't know here name.
The only people we have to teach are English Investigators (ENGLISH!!!!!), a mother and daughter. So we spend a lot of time finding, or trying really hard to find. Sister Kei has been helping me to talk to people and get over those issues. We also try to serve a lot, teach practice lessons to members, and visit/heart-attack our Less Actives. There is one Less Active that the sisters had never been able to meet because she was always gone when they stopped by. But she opened the door to us last night! Miracle! She said she didn't want to come back to church because she hasn't been in 7 or 8 years but I asked if we would teach her practice lessons because we need practice and she said maybe (there may or may not have been truth behind that) so have hope. It may still require some time.
There's a super nice man who sells strawberries in our 시장 (market) and we try to talk to him and we purposely casually walked by with the elders after English class on Saturday night so that they could meet because we see a lot of potential in him. And he gave us a reduced price on strawberries. So we ate them with yogurt and brown sugar yesterday. So yummy.
The elders used to live in our apartment until the sisters moved in in December. andddddddd it's gross. I haven't seen any yet but they're had problems with cockroaches. Yeah. Super cool. So I put a little DE (diatomaceous earth) down in the places where they saw them.
I really like my life.
Our ward mission leader is super on-the-ball. He and his wife have a little baby and he's going to medical school right now. One of the elders in our ward is a greenie. I like little baby greenies. They're so cute and baby.
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