Skype Time!

I'm gonna try to keep this one short since it's already midnight and I have class in the morning. That might not be possible though because today was filled with a bunch of exciting things. I think my body has finally gotten used to waking up around 7am. I am popping awake around that time everyday and it's such a weird experience for someone who's used to not feeling fully awake until night time. I'm actually starting to enjoy mornings now.

That being said, Heavy G wanted some extra rest time so we didn't leave for church until around 11pm. I basically just hung out until then, I wasn't hungry for breakfast. Just left my door open for students to join me, and watched some league of legends on twitch. I got a shower in and we headed out to church looking sexy. As usual, Heavy G got us there after the praise music was over and during the middle of the sermon.

Today was the day that I was to become an official church member. Luckily we got there before they announced that haha. When we got there Heavy G went to the office and did the necessary work to get me signed up I guess. I wasn't aware of what was going on, but he came back and said everything was taken care of.

Every week they post the new members names on the projector screen that usually shows the pastor as he's up giving his sermon. The first name they showed was mine. It was pretty weird to see my American name spelled in Korean up on the projector. The pastor then told everyone who I was and about my JTBC interview. Later Heavy G told me that he had never seen so many reactions to when someone joins the church. He said normally there are no reactions at all. He was really surprised and impressed at the reactions I got, and said they were overwhelmingly positive. I guess people are really taking notice.

Church was having a festival these past two weeks celebrating Easter. Today the pastor did his sermon on John 3:16. Usually I can't understand much of what he's saying in the first service, so I sit there working on my Korean trying to pick out words that I know. Then during the second service I usually have a translator. After the first service we went to the back to wait for some of our friends so we could eat together. We ate at the church today instead of going out. They served a pretty typical soup/rice/kimchi meal that was excellent. They also had green rice cakes, and seemingly unlimited oranges.

After lunch we headed back down for the youth service. The youth congregation is growing, and pretty rapidly. This is exciting! The youth leaders performed the same skit as last week, and I was no less moved by it. If you need a reminder then you can see my post from last week about how intense it was for me. I had another good translator today, and really enjoyed the pastor's message about Christ's unconditional love, and sacrifice for us.

After that we had some ice cream and did some clean up duty, then it was time to head back to the dorm. Heavy G and I had planned on getting an all you can eat BBQ dinner with the other RA's but that ended up falling through. By the time we got back to the dorm and had an hour or so, we weren't really hungry anymore. So we ended up resting until it was Skype time!

Wow, Skype was quite the event. We actually ended up using Kakaotalk instead because I believe Concordia's campus doesn't allow Skype. Here's a link to the video. Hopefully everyone is able to watch that. Feel free to add me on Facebook if you haven't already. Unfortunately we had some issues on the other end with the video, but the audio is still all there!

This was a MONUMENTAL event. This was the first time in the world (that we know of) that special needs students from different continents have been brought together via video conference. What an incredible experience to be a part of. (I think both Sam and I have to thank Dr. Carol Burns for this idea). As you'll see in the video itself, things turned out pretty well for a first time. We hope to improve on things in the future.

Since the time difference is so great, I don't know how many live meetings we will be doing, but we plan on passing videos/pictures/letters back and forth so that time isn't such an issue. (Good thinking Sam!) I'm so grateful to God to be a part of this process, and all the lives we are touching and changing. I look forward to more adventures in the months to come!

Thanks so much for tuning in guys, next week is the last week before a week long break so it's going to shape up to be pretty crazy I anticipate. Join me everyday for new breakthroughs and exciting things! 잘자요!

Korean Word/Phrase of the Day:활동들 (Hwa Dong Deul) This means "Activities" I had to look this one up during the video conference.

TL:DR I'm in Korea.