My little women and me

Oh, if I could count how many times over the past few days I have questioned my decision to pack up our crew and head to Korea!  Every time I start to feel this way, right after shoving those thoughts deep down inside me to keep my brave face, things work out.  So here I am, smiling and hoping that things will work out.  Hoping I am not scarring my kids, hoping they have a good experience here and hoping that we come out of this closer than we were heading in.   I know there are reasons why we came here and why we're supposed to be here for this extended period of time.  I just don't know all of those reasons yet.  I will tell you that sweet and wonderful wang Halmoni has been waiting for us to return for two years.  She saved our water bottle, my scale, the girls' brush and my 4 hair curlers.  If we had left a bobby pin, I think she would have saved that too.  And every older lady in the apartment building that we have talked to knows all about us and that Halmoni was waiting for us to come.  I am glad that we were able to give her something else to look forward to. (and hopefully she won't be looking forward to us leaving in December!)

Yesterday we went back to our little branch in Gyeongsan.  There were 20 people in attendance minus us and two return missionaries that were visiting. (siblings who both served in Korea...I love when that happens!) So the five of us now make up ⅕ of the attending congregation.  It felt like coming back home to see old faces. After the second hour, we realized that church was over.  Somewhere in the past two years, they have cut their meeting time to two hours and added a yummy lunch afterwards.  I'm not completely sure what their reasoning was, but I think it really does lessen the burden on individual members of such a small congregation.  When you have 3 hours of talks and classes, someone has to prepare that material and often one person has to prepare 3 different talks/lessons in one Sunday.  It makes sense and it seems to work for them.  Lilly loved primary because instead of just her and another boy, they have 3 lively junior primary kids that she gets to play with.  After church, Rachel and I scanned a bunch of Halmoni's pictures.  Among the treasures was this picture of Chris' mom.  Before this, the oldest picture I had of her was as a teenager.    I'm so grateful that Rachel found this album and made me sit down to scan them. (I'll post more later because they're pretty spectacular.)

Rachel and Collin heading back up to Seoul today to finish off their trip.  We loved getting to play with them and adventure about but as soon as they left, things did start to feel a little more routine.  Chloe and I rode the subway to the grocery store and brought home just enough that we could carry. (Emart had the nerve to close their location right across the street from our apartment!)  We went with dear sweet Mrs. Hwang (Halmoni's weekly helper) on an adventure to take a Korean test.  My Korean is so lovely that I thought she said that the girls' school didn't have a class anymore. The girls were happy to see us get on our very familiar bus, go on our very familiar route and end up getting off our very familiar stop.  The school had moved locations, which is what she must have said when speaking at the speed of light in Korean.  The girls start class tomorrow after being sorted into their houses via a pretty intense placement test.  Surprisingly enough, the two that said they guessed when they got frustrated are in the lower class.  And then we came home and made a routine Korean dinner.  All in all, a pretty routine day that we survived.  And topped off with popsicles.  Why? Because Emart may have shut down but a new Popsicle shop opened up around the corner.  It is a whole shop full of so many different types of ice cream.  Oh, and because the humidity is trying to kill us.