Dad's 50th Birthday!

Missionary work here in Korea is awesome. Here in SokCho, it seems slow, but I love it. We don't teach many lessons, but we're trying to find people. We basically just talk to people on the streets for 6-7 hours a day. The people are super friendly.

There's a guy in the city that owns a small fruit stand/shop, and we were walking by last week when it was super cold and he ran outside and beckoned us in. We made our way through the fruit stands and into his little 5X5 small enclosure where he had his personal stuff and a little stove with tea on it. He basically ripped off our gloves and forced our hands over the stove, and started rubbing our hands and faces, saying, 'You're so cold! Get warm! Get warm!' 

A lot of people use the phrase, 'You've suffered a lot.' It's a compliment, and it's kind of like saying, you've worked so hard! So sometimes when we talk to people and shake their hands, they rub our hands to make them warm and say, 'you've suffered so much!' It's so funny, I love the people here.

Anyway, back to this guy. Back in the old days, when people like him were young, they didn't say things like, 'Have a good day!' and 'How has your day been?' They said, 'Work hard!' and 'Did you eat today?' (because food was so scarce). He asked us if we ate when we were warming our hands, and we said we were on our way home to eat (it was about 8:00 PM). He immediately ran outside and gave us a big bag full of tangerines. He is so nice. He made sure we were warm, saluted us, and said, 'Work hard! Suffer!'

His place is in the path we take to go home, so we saw him again two days ago, and he did the same thing. He took us in, made sure we were warm, and gave us a big bag full of peanuts and two apples.

I told him that he's super nice, like my dad, and he started calling us his 'sons.' He really cares about us, he's super nice. He doesn't want to hear our message right now, but he wants to make sure we're warm and have full bellies. He's awesome.

I love you both!

-Elder Franchina