Hyundai Shipyard in Ulsan

Hey everybody! Crazy day today - we got to tour the Hyundai Heavy Industries Shipyard in Ulsan...wayyy fun. They drove us into the facility on a company bus, ushered us into a plush viewing room (with signs and PowerPoint's labeled "LDS Missionaries" :P ) and showed us a movie about the company. Apparently they're involved in all sorts of heavy industrial projects around the world. Then they took us around the HUGE complex in the bus and showed us the dry docks where the ships are being built - some crazy things. HUGE equipment everywhere: cranes, ships, trucks, other weird vehicles, lots of metal things - pretty cool. Our guide was pretty good and spoke English well. I got to talk to him a little about missionary work and why we're doing it. All in all, there were 13 missionaries there. After Hyundai, we went bowling and ate Burger King (not common in Korea). There's also a 5 star Hyundai Hotel outside of the complex. Pretty cool stuff. The guy who set it all up is the man we harvested peanuts for: his son is at BYU right now.

Earlier this week (which was a very cold and rainy week by the way) we went out to a city area on the outskirts. We went to the local office and asked about some less actives. They didn't want to help us at all at first but finally relented and helped us out a lot. We decided to hitch hike out to find two less active boys around our age. We got soaked and way cold, but the mountains were beautiful and the weather dramatic. We couldn't find the house and it seemed like they were long gone. Nobody knew who they were and what not. As we were leaving the little village, we felt like maybe we should try one more house and ask about them. We met a lady who invited us into her house and started making some calls (apparently she knew the area really well). She called a man who was working in the city of Gyeongju at the time and then handed us the phone. He was the father of the two boys and was very nice and helpful. One of the boys is in college in another city (we got his cell phone number) and the other boy is doing his mandatory military service. He'll be home next year. The father had apparently seen us hitch hiking in the rain on his way to Gyeongju that day. ;) It was quite a blessing, we were able to get lots of information on our members and met the angel ladies who helped us (a grandmother and great grandmother). They just kept talking about how crazy it was that we found them in a crazy storm way out in the country (something I love). What a day that was.

We were able to teach Mr. Jung about commandments and we committed him to going one week without Green Tea (against the Word of Wisdom). He agreed, and we took his tea away from him. We gave him hot chocolate. We'll see what happens. :)

At church on Sunday, the former mission president from Pusan, Pres. Song, came to our branch. Pretty unexpected. Very nice man, even though his style is very different from what we currently do in our mission.

This last weekend, we met with our recent convert girl Hyae Jung. We thought it was going to be the last time we meet, since she has to study hard for the next year because she's a senior. It looks like even though she won't be able to go to church much anymore, we'll be able to meet her every now and then. I'm glad. She needs the constant contact with the Church. So many seniors in high school here just fall away forever.

Yesterday we were walking around the downtown and ran into a crazy BreakDancing thing - pretty funny. We got some good videos of it. The crowd thought we were cool. The announcer spoke about us in Korean, pointed us out, and tried to speak English to us - pretty funny. Cool guys, we talked to them later. I love the crazy random stuff we run into here.

Love you! Elder Bocchino