We arrived very late last night and while I was tired, the intense heat was somewhat difficult to sleep with. I was on and off and decided to get up before our set alarm to have a shower. A cooked breakfast of dirty rice was made for us, I have not yet figured out if this is a regular custom; we will find out tomorrow.
we walked to the church to meet the pastors and our 2 fellow teachers from England (we hadn’t met them before even though we all live near bournemouth, UK). the church has a congregation of about 1000 people, which is roughly 950 more people than i’m used to in a church.
the building they have is like a school!!! they have classrooms.
there is a main sanctuary where the service happens (on the third floor). A smaller chapel which is still larger then my last 2 church buildings combined, which is where the young adults have a separate church service at the same time. There are classrooms for every age group of kids where sunday school chapel takes place, also at the same time as the other church services (on the first and second floors). there doesn’t seem to be any chance for everybody to be all together for a church service. the 4th floor has function rooms, meeting rooms, and prayer rooms (all separate things). it’s a big building.
during the morning service we sat in on one of the younger group chapels, they sing and dance and pray (the younger kids are taught to always pray kneeling). it’s nice how different the youth ministry is in korea to what i’ve seen in the uk. the kids are much more well disciplined however so i cannot simply suggest that we adopt some of their practices. they are able to have the bible events discussed to them on their level in different interactive ways, none of them seem to decline participating. they read scripture together in english because it’s different. they are rewarded for reciting memory verses in english. and they have songs of praise for young people which involve proper dancing (google K-pop) as opposed to simple gesture actions which we use in the west.
Lunch was rice, and kimchi.
we met some Korean folk with English names. I don’t know how they choose their names. one girl didn’t haven’t one so I chose one for her, I hope it works out.
dinner was noodles in black sauce, black sauce is a black color sauce.
we went over our schedule for the next two weeks.
then we sat through a normal evening church service, it was in Korean so i nearly drifted off being unable to pay attention.
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