Our friends

Okay. So, we want you to meet a few of our friends. You met the Callaways, kinda, last post. But, I want you to see who we are hanging out with over here... They are awesome by the way. (and guys if you are reading this.... none of it is fake.)

As you saw in our last post, orientation was a blast. We had a great time and it was the perfect way to start off our time here in Korea. While we where there we got to know a bunch of people that are also teaching in Daejeon. We met two young married couples in particular that we love. We thought we had fun at orientation, but getting to know these guys outside of the "college-life-like" scene has been amazing. We have been able to hang out with them individually and all together. We are all Christians, young, married, internationally minded, and wanting to be like Jesus and not the 'church.' Oh, and we all teach english to kids who don't understand anything we say (which makes for some funny conversations.)

Anyway, let's meet them.

The Mullen Family

So, since you have already seen the callaways in our last post, I'll start with the Mullen Family. This first one is Matt, me and Linds at EXPO park. (Jenn was the photographer). Without too much detail, Expo park was made for the '93 international science expo. There is a lot of cool stuff, but most of it was outdated, still great 'spacey' architecture and a fun day. Matt and Jenn are from Wyoming and are super cool people with a lot of great stories. It is crazy to see some of the pictures that they have, they love to hike, camp, fish, hunt, raft, and pretty much anything outdoors from what I can tell. Matt was an art major in college... we have yet to see his portfolio, but if it is anything like the rest of his life I'm sure I will be in awe.

This second photo is Jenn. Like I said, she had the camera most, so this is the solo shot of her. I love this picture cause it shows a lot about her fun personality. They both are the type of people who are going to have fun, no matter what the situation. (We have a lot to learn from them). Ha. I have to comment about the... sheep/cow??? that she is riding. They are part of the 'outdated' expo stuff. 1000 won for a ride around the big courtyard. They have an assortment of animals you can chose from... as you see in the back, I'm checking out a giraffe and thinking about you Mom. ....Jenn is a 'jane of all trades' (including baking) and a coffee connoisseur.

The Callaway Family

The Callaways are so cool. They are the people that you try to hang out with to tell everyone else that you are 'in.' Although they would never see themselves as that. Kolt and Holly are from Oregon/California. Long story short, they went to College at APU and met there. They have so many similar things in their story as Linds and I. It was crazy our first conversations with them, it was pretty much like we should have known each other before. We even know some of the same people. They love to do international 'love' work. Kolt has some really interesting stories about working with an org who does work with Human trafficking women and helps them start new. Pretty heavy stuff. Anyway, we share many interests and passions

with them.

This first picture is from orientation of Lindsey and Holly. I know that Linds is pretty stoked to have Holly in her life. Holly has an honest quality about her that is hard to find. I think that is why linds loves to talk with her so much. Anyway, this picture was a orientation (no they don't dress the same all the time), from our field trip day. This is some nice Traditional Korean art... aka creepy smile stick.

This other picture is of me, Linds, and Kolt. Well, all of us were there but we are the ones in this pic, so, yeah. This was from the night we all toured around to see each other's apartments. We stopped at a place by our apartment to eat some Korean food. It was awesome... You know it will be a good time when you have to remove your shoes, and sit on the floor to eat. This is a Korean type meal. Everyone sits on the floor, no shoes, and eats a meal out of a common tray. In this case, they cook the food right there so, it is even cooler. This was so much fun and pretty cheap too!

So, I'll finish it off with some more pics. Most of them are Expo park, but yeah... enjoy.

EXPO Park

Those are some big arms...

Art Museum

So, this is outside the Art Museum. Pretty sweet and funny art stuff. Ha. Good times.

Love you all so much!

Luke and Lindsey

Epik Orientation / First week in Korea

An young haseyo, (hello)

Ok, so we are finally updating you and filling you in on our new lives here in Korea. We want to start at the beginning with our first week in Korea. As you know, we came to Korea to teach english, as you also may know, we were not teachers before. - ha - But, as English teachers with our program, EPIK, we were sent to a college campus for 10 days to learn everything we could possibly cram in about Teaching and Korea. Things like classroom management, Lesson planning, task-based learning, Prezi (my favorite), the Korean school system, Korean culture, Korean History, and just about anything else you could think of!

I want to share a few photos to help you take part in our adventure. So, let's do this.

Ok, our 10 day training, lovingly called "Orientation," took place at Jeon-ju University. It is a beautiful campus and we had a great time getting to know this area. The slogan of the University is classic: 'The Place for Superstars." This is, as we have begun to realize, a common Korean trend. Stealing old phrases from english and plastering them everywhere. A lot of

commercials/ads, songs, businesses, people, and yes... universities use cheesy English phrases. It is comical. We just laugh and thank God that we can read something without a Korean-english dictionary.

Ok, so as I said before, we don't have a reliable camera, so there are some shots of us (borrowed from our friends - thanks guys) but not many. So use your imagination a little.

Here is a picture of the dorm that we stayed in on campus for Orientation. Like I said, beautiful campus. We even got to watch some famous Korean movies on the rooftops of one of the buildings. A kind of open air theatre with subtitles in English. We actually loved the movies and are looking forward to getting a DVD player so we can't rent more Korean movies.

During our time at orientation we also got to visit a traditional and historical town Jeon-Ju

Traditional Village. We got to see a lot of cool things and learn a lot about Korean history. I think we went to 3-4 museum type places that was rich with tradition and history. Really interesting stuff.

Jeon Ju is famous for their Bibimbap. Bibimbap is mixed vegetables, with chili sauce, sesame seed oil and some ground beef, all on top of rice. It is usually served cold, as a refreshing lunchtime meal. Korea is famous for it's communal eating. Most meals are shared. Something my family has been doing for years... except that this is a whole new level.

Anyway, I love Bibimbap. This is how you make it for a group of 600 people. Stir it in a huge pot with wooden spoons that look like Ores for a boat.

This was one of the museums that we saw. It has some really cool architecture. One of those things that you have to see in person. But, a picture does help. We were in that group somewhere...

This is at a Buddhist Temple near the traditional village. This was a unique experience. It is crazy to see how their culture has been so much effected by religions. In this picture we are with our friends Colt and Holly. They are from Oregon, but kinda from California too. They both went to APU which is really close to both BIOLA and CBU. One of the other major Christian Universities in So Cal. They are super cool and share a lot of interests... including Settlers of Catan.

Anyway, that is it for now. I need sleep. But, we will be sharing about some other things sometime this week so stay posted.

We love you all and miss you greatly.

Luke and Lindsey

Pictures of Hawaii

Aloha/Anyoung haseyo/Hello,

Here are the pictures that Lindsey promised in the last blog. She gave a pretty good run down about Kauai. But, pictures are worth a thousand words, so I'm apparently contributing about 11,000+ words...

This first picture is of me and my beautiful bride on the beach in Kauai. We went to the beach a lot, but rarely brought our camera. (We have the worst camera on the planet so we had to borrow from my parents... yes that is one reason why we don't have too many pictures of Korea. We have to barter and trade pics with our friends here. They actually bring thier cameras places...).

Here is a quick glimpse into a very fun and kinda difficult (for me) game that Lindsey designed for the ::i'mPASSIONED:: missions small group.

So fun. We had to role play these 3 completely conflicting cultures and try to engage each other.

We had a nice little get away in the middle of our time in Kauai. We stayed at the Aloha Beach Resort. They have some really cheap rates for a pretty nice room. It was nice to spend some time alone with my bride.

I know these are all out of order, but i don't really feel like switching them around... it is late.

This is Lindsey packing for our trip home/ South Korea. It was an exhilarating day.

This is lindsey in the rain!!! It was such a beautiful day.

We got to go hiking to Hanakapi'i... this is most likely our favorite hike in the world (so far).

There is Ke'e in the background.

I don't think I need a comment. Except... You should have been there.

Cool huh??

Hanakapi'i Falls. It is huge... we are about 100 yds away when we took the pic. We literally couldn't get any closer for a full waterfall shot. It was awesome.

Well.... to sum it all up... We had a lot of fun and got to enjoy my family. Our internships were amazing and the people at CCK were/are so warm and loving to us.

We are excited as we look to the future to see what God wants to do, and see how we can join with Him.

Love you guys!

Luke and Lindsey

Kauai and our island life.

It’s been way too long since we updated. Sorry. The last month has been crazy. We’ve been in Korea now for just under a month. But I tell you about Kauai first.

So, I (Lindsey) had a great time there. I ended up working at Duke’s. It’s a great restaurant and probably the busiest on the island. The first couple weeks I worked 3 times a week (sometimes 8 hour shifts) and that was a little too much restaurant for me. So I cut back to 1 or 2 shifts. All in all, really good job- but I didn’t move to Kauai to work at a restaurant- I really wanted to focus more on the internship.

The ::i’mPASSIONED:: group I started went really well. I had so much fun planning for it and teaching it. We ended up having between 9-15 people every week (which is really good for Kauai- and people sort of tend to run the opposite way when you throw out the word missionary). Most of them were very new to subject of missions, but all were interested. We ended up focusing a lot on unreached people groups (the Joshua Project is an awesome resource for this) and contextualization. Each week I would teach a little on a certain subject and have a discussion, plan some sort of activity to reinforce that, and watch a short 3 minute video on an unreached people group (after that we’d spend some time praying for the people group). It really helped open up their eyes (and mine!) to how big the world is and how much need is still out there.

I mean, there are 16,351 people groups in the world, and 6,641 of those people groups are currently unreached. This means they have probably never heard the name of Jesus and/or there is no church within their culture. Without the help of missionaries (from all over the world) they will never know the name of Christ! So- 40.9% of the world’s population are unreached. Man! Let’s get busy!

Anyway, my internship was great because I was able to practice doing what I kept saying I wanted to do. Now that I’ve gotten a taste of it, I can confidently say “I want to be a mission’s mobilizer! (or missions pastor or missionary)” And, of course, now I have a lot more to put on my resume and have a lot more to say in an interview.

Luke also had a really great time doing his internship. He was able to lead almost every week after his dad had his surgery. The weeks that he didn’t lead, he got some practice running sound and facilitating. Also, he got to lead the practices. Most of the time when he’s been in charge of the worship there hasn’t been anytime beforehand to hold a practice. So, it was nice to learn how to run them and get a feel for it. This, also, will be good for his resume later when we get back from Korea. He really feels called to be a worship pastor and so we will continue to pursue that when we return. Let us know (over the course of this year) if you hear of any churches looking for one!

Let’s see….what else did we do in Kauai? Well, Luke got a chance to go surfing a lot. Not as much as he would have liked, but more than normal. Since I don’t really surf- I took up body surfing. A couple times a week, we would go down to Kealia (a beach a few minutes away from the house) and go surfing or body surfing.

Also, and I think most importantly, we got to spend a lot of time with Luke’s parents. Although I knew his parents from before we dated, we never have had a long period of time to hang out since we’ve been together and gotten married. So, naturally, moving to Kauai and living with them, made that possible. That was a ton of fun.

All in all, Kauai had its ups and downs, but looking back on it- I’m really glad we made that choice. We were really sad to leave.

I’ll put up some pictures we took in Kauai up after this.