So when we got to Gunsan we had no idea where the church was located. While we were still in the states, I went to the church's website and searched for churches in the Gunsan area. I found an address, and through Google earth I could look at a picture of the church. I thought that I had solved the problem of finding the church, but when we got here, we found that most people have only a rudimentary knowledge of English (Hi, how are you? What is your name? etc) So knowing the address of the Church in English did not help us out much.
We thought about asking Jennifer were the church was, but we decided that we did not want to tell her that we were "Mormons" until we got to know her better. So on Saturday afternoon we decided that we had to find the church. By that time we had a pretty good idea of what our immediate neighborhood looked like because we had walked around quite a bit. We live in a tall apartment building, and there are three more buildings just like it, all of them right in a row. There is also a huge store called E-Mart right across the street. We have been there several times, and it has just about everything, like Wal-Mart, only better.
So I found the church address again and went to Google earth and found the church again, then I panned out until I found our neighborhood. It took a while, and we weren't quite sure that we were looking at the right place, but we decided to try and find it anyways. We found the church without hardly any trouble; it takes about 35 minutes to walk there. We still have not figured out the bus system yet so we had to walk.
We didn't know what time church started, but I figured that it would start 9am like most wards. We left at 8:15, and got there after 8:45. The church was open, but we could not find anyone inside, so we went exploring, we looked in all of the classrooms, and the bathrooms. We wanted to check the bathrooms because we have found that public restrooms here are the squatting over a hole type, and we hoped that the church's toilets would be better, they were. The Sacrament room is upstairs and we went up there, but it was pretty hot and stuffy, so we decided to wait outside where it was cooler until someone showed up.
It turned out that church started at 10am, but the missionaries showed up at about 9:15, so we talked with them until church started. There is an American, Elder Truhaft, and a Korean, Elder Kang. We found out that there is an English branch on the air force base, and they invited us to go there after the Gunsan ward meetings. We said that we would like to go.
Church was entertaining; we sat on the right side of the room, and it just so happened that that was the side of the room that the women and kids sat on. For some reason the men all sat on the left side of the room, and the women all sat on the right side of the room. During Sacrament some of the kids were getting out of hand. Whichever adult was closest, regardless of whose child it was, would discipline the kid. One little boy kept moving from row to row trying to find somewhere he could misbehave, but on every row someone would try to keep him still. Another boy came to church wearing his Sunday best, and his soccer cleats. I asked the missionaries why, and they said that it is a Korean fad for the young boys to wear their cleats to church.
There were only about 25 members in the ward, and about five of them speak English. We really liked everyone, they were so warm and loving, everyone came up and introduced themselves to us and made us feel right at home.
When we were talking about coming to Korea, one of the things we discussed was the probability of having more missionary opportunities. While we were in church, I felt that the Gunsan ward would be a good place for us to help the church grow. During priesthood on of the brothers asked me if we were coming to church next week, and I said that I didn't know because I figured that Christina would want to go to the English branch. On our way to the base Christina told me that she wanted to go to Gunsan ward, I guess the Relief Society sisters really made her feel welcome. There is on sister who is Christina's age and she speaks English fluently, she spent some time in the US. She teaches English at a private school like us, and has the same teaching schedule, 2pm-9pm. Her name is Sister Oh, and Christina told me that she thinks they will become good friends. I also felt very welcome in priesthood, and made several new friends. We have decided that we want to go to the Korean ward, even though we will not understand much unless we work really hard at learning Korean.
After church we went with the missionaries to the air force base. I really like the Elders here, they are working very hard. While we were waiting for the bus, they stopped nearly every passerby, and on the bus they contacted nearly every person. When we got to the base, we found out that we couldn't go in without our passports, which we did not bring along, so we had to come back home. We are planning on going to church on the base next week, but after that, we will probably just go to the Korean ward.
On Saturday after we found the church we went to the downtown area to look around. While we were there, we found a street vender selling some type of larva. I tried one and it tasted kind of woody, Christina decided she wasn’t hungry. We also found a place that has a bunch of military tanks, planes, and ships that are no longer in use. We got to go on some of them, but they closed the place down before we could see everything. We are planning on going back there as soon as we can.