Sorry I haven't written for a while, the past two weeks were more busy than usual. (actually it's still a little busy so I'll have to keep this email more on the shorter side of things)
THE REFILL:
Transfers happened. I'm here with my man Elder 이해성 "Jack" Lee. We had a ton of meetings the first week as we always do and none of them went according to plan but that's alright because the Spirit was there for all of it. Dropped off the "dead' missionaries (including my beloved follow-up trainer Elder Seely; I miss him deeply) and picked up the new missionaries. I'm sure other first-week office shenanigans (not actually 'shenanigans' but after being here for three transfers it feels like it) took place but my mind only holds one week's worth of information so that history has mentally expired (sorry again). The week after that consisted of Elder Lee and I learning finances from our mission finance secretary Elder Colton, who will be returning back home to America sometime in the middle of December. We were trained on a lot. It was all in English (which is difficult for both me and my companion at this point), and saw a lot of numbers and bills and other financey things. We don't know how to completely do it ourselves yet which is why this week is dedicated to practicing it all on our own while he watches it, and the next week with us doing it completely all on our own. Neither of us really expected this to happen during our time in the HQ, let alone during our mission but with something as exact as numbers, we figure that if we make any mistakes it will be pretty dang hard to miss. We're going to conquer the financial beast for the next transfer and a half~ Also we went to Jeju Island for the Jeju Zone Conference this week! And for the first time in HQ history, the office assistants came with us! They had to come this time around for some choir practice and a service activity we did while we were on the island. FUN FACT: Jeju is famous for it's tangerines, and we were able to help a member who happens to be a tangerine farmer with his farm while we were there. It was fun because if you made a mistake while harvesting the tangerines, you had to eat the ones you messed up on. I messed up a lot, but my failures were delicious.
SPIRITUAL TIME:
While secluded in the depths of a random tangerine orchard on Jeju Island with my companion plucking tangerines from a tree, I had a lot of time to think to myself. I learned two thinkings during my time plucking: 1) I appreciate tangerines a lot more than I used to 2) one black tangerine ruins the whole batch.
Why do I appreciate tangerines a lot more? Because I didn't know that for each tangerine I used to eat, that some guy had to plant, grow, wait for the perfect time, pick the orange off the tree carefully with some clippers, and then carefully store it with a bunch of other tangerines before it's shipped off for ungrateful people like me to carelessly devour them. It's a lot of work. And with 12 people in 4 and a half hours, we were only able to finish 6 trees in an orchard of over 100. We have a lot of stuff in our life that can seem just a meticulous as picking oranges, but if we're going to finish an entire orchard, it needs to start with one tangerine at a time. I think I learned a little more about the worth of my small, daily efforts as a missionary and grew a little more in patience this week.
And why does one bad tangerine ruin the whole batch? When plucking the tangerines, I mentioned that we use little clippers. The clippers are sharp and the tangerines stem connected to the tree is very short so you have to be careful when plucking from the tree. When you're not as careful you can scratch the tangerine, or cut too far into the stem and the tangerine comes out wounded. Before we even started picking these tangerines the farmer told us, that if the tangerine suffers even a tiny scratch, you need to toss it to the side, because it cannot be mixed with the rest of the healthy tangerines. It doesn't look that bad but later while it's being shipped, that scratch turns into rot and the surrounding tangerines all rot in turn. I made a lot of little scratches on tangerines that day and a lot of times it looked very innocent and easy to justify keeping it with the rest of the bunch. But NOPE, you gotta either eat your scratched tangerines or throw them away to keep them separate from the rest. Like President Uchctdorf has taught about the direction of a plane, even a degree off at the beginning will send you to a completely different and undesired location if it's left uncorrected. We can get a lot of "scratched tangerines" as we live life but we need to make sure we're into the habit of getting rid of them in the moment so they don't grow into rot later. I'm a missionary but I still make a ton of mistakes, but I'm glad I'm able to realize those mistakes and change through the gift of repentance my Savior has given to me.
The Atonement is amazing and so are these tangerines. AMEN.
That's all the time I got! I'm gonna go try and finish up college application stuff now~ BYE BYE!
-Elder Metcalf
PICS
MORE FIRST WEEK STUFF
1-3) Dropping of dead missionaries at airport
1-2) Airport parking lot poses 3) More dead missionaries (this time at a train station)
1-4) Pics at Gupo Train Station
1-4) The crew for this transfer; Elder Oh, Elder Lee, Elder Reiley, and myself
1) New missionaries! 2-3) Spying on the trainees during their proselyting activity (someone threw away one of our passalong cards on the streets right in front of us ㅠㅠ)
1-3) The Coltons prepared and fed a full-on Thanksgiving dinner for us this week and it was AMAZING. I forgot how delicious American stuff is
1-2) The day after Thanksgiving we were fed a bunch of meat from President's house; I showed off my famous food child 2-3) The way over to Jeju Island
1) We fit six people in a small apartment room in Jeju the night after Jeju ZC 2) On our way to the tangerine service activity (if you look close there's a rainbow *whoa*) 3) This is apparently a delicacy in Korea but it's a cold ball of shredded beef topped with a raw egg, it wasn't too bad but the texture was weird
TANGERINE PICKING
1-2) We only had four hours to pick because a storm was coming in (look at the dark sky in the background) and we stored all of our picked tangerines in that ancient looking cement shelter 3-5) They fed us 김밥 gimbap while we waited for the farmer guy to show up, and the weather was perfect (until it started pouring later)
1-3) Elder Lee and I (if you look close enough in the air , you can see flying tangerine slices that are being flung at us while Elder Lee tries to catch them with his mouth) 4-5) The "fruits of our labors" (SO PUNNY)
We ate meat in that ancient shack after we were done, served by our member farmer friend and then packed up ourselves into the van and headed back home (also I was reunited with Elder 설진영 Seol Jinyeong for a bit, also my old companion Elder Kim)
Heading back home to Busan~
A final bonus picture of Elder Reiley's foot
