I am having a great time here in SK. The flight was long and fairly boring, the movies weren't that great (but luckily the return flight will have better movies like rush hour 3 and ratatiulli?) We arrived at the Icheon/Seoul Airport on Thursday night and went right to the Seshin
Methodist church in a suburb city of Seoul at about 10. The next morning we got up at 5 because of the jet lag, got ready then went to breakfast at 7 (24/7 Mcdonalds across the street, just as crappy as they are in America). 8 o'clock we left for the church's brand new retreat center.We worked with a weekend youth event happening there with youth from that church, about 130 of them. When we got there we went right into doing worship (barely had time to tune and make a set list), we had activities with the kids as a whole, and did some teachings. Then we had lunch, my first time with Chop Sticks in SK, I had several kids show me how to properly hold them. Then in the afternoon we had more worship, then we split the kids up into 4 different groups and had them go to different activities/games that would help them work on their English and have fun. I helped work with one activity where we gave them all a picture and they had to make up a story about the picture and what they thought was happening. Then we had dinner, pork cutlets, it was good. After dinner we had one more worship time, a teaching and then a time of ministry. That night we had 5 come to Christ for the first time, 13 rededicated their lives and many other we prayed over, but those are Just statistics, we are praying that was really what was in their heart. we finally went to bed at about 10 that night......a.k.a. 8 in the morning back home......bla!
Saturday we had some more worship then broke off into small groups and talked with them in smaller groups(9 people) about what they thought about the weekend and what God had done with them. Then the program
ended. That afternoon we went back to the church and stayed there for a little while until we split up and want to host homes.It was amazing to me getting close with these kids really quick, usually outsiders are not as welcome into such groups. The kids/youth were amazing and fun to hang around with, and very cute. One kid kept calling me Chris Jericho, a WWF wrestler who has a pony tail and goatee like mine. There were a bunch of people who were calling me Legolas.......it took me a day and a half to figure that one out.
Last night I spent my first night in a host home. I got there and used the Internet, then took a shower. That night we spent 2 hours sitting in their living room talking and working on English.
Today we went to the church and participated in the services. at the Youth (high school/college) service I gave my testimony(last minute idea), which was great because it fit right in with Josh's (our leader)message. then we played one of our worship songs for them, my whole group finds it funny because I get so into the music and I start moving around to the music. We went to the park after the youth service and gave out traks and did our skits......I hate doing tracks.....its lame.....and NEVER WORKS!!
Tonight for dinner we had Pizza...........it was not like the usual Za.....it had a TON of toppings on it includig slices of potato. We had some time off before going back to our host homes for the night so a bunch of us went to a local coffee shop (Seven Monkeys Cofee) and chilled there for a bit.
We worked with a DTS this week, and now we are working at one of the churches in Icheon for an English camp. It is kind of like a VBS.I am loving this country, the people, the city, the culture. I think I might come back after college to teach English.
God Bless
-Ben Collins
