Well what can I say about the past couple of days??? So much has happened!
Learning to understand different accents and languages has taken some doing, and that’s just the Australian! I’ve learnt that the basic rule is to shorten the word and add an ‘o’ on the end, so for example, today we had “rego day” commonly known in English as registration day! It’s amazing to think that these people actually think they speak English!!
Of course, Korean is a whole different story, and needless to say, very difficult to learn. But as half my class are Korean, I am trying to learn some basic words, and more importantly, how to pronounce their names! But we have an amazing member of staff who is helping with all of our translation, so we are very blessed. The Korean members of our group are incredible. So loving and servant hearted, and they have always been the first to help me with my crutches or anything else that I have been struggling to carry.
As for rego day! I now have all my class books, all my forms filled out and most importantly my house key! We also had a base tour, so I now (theoretically) know where everything is, and then we had the all-important fire drill!! Rego day ended with family games in the park followed by an amazing dinner and the biggest piece of carrot cake you have ever seen!
Tomorrow we have family chores induction at 8am, and then lectures begin! And so does all the work. We have book reports, journals, research projects, group projects, talks and memory verses to learn! Not to mention the daily chores, work duties and reading that needs to be done. So I’m going to be kept pretty busy these next couple of weeks.
Being on crutches has been pretty frustrating. Not being to go into town to explore, walking at a much slower pace than everybody else, and the fact that our classroom is upstairs have all made things more difficult than I would have liked. But people have been very gracious and helped out wherever possible. As of this morning I could pretty much straighten my leg, although it is still visibly much bigger than my other knee. But hopefully it is now on the mend and it won’t be too long until I can get out of the knee brace.
Living in such a big community has been interesting. I absolutely love it, and it really is beautiful to see, but those of you who know me will also understand how difficult this is for me at times. I am absolutely exhausted and there aren’t many places that I can go to get space from people. But God is proving faithful and has helped me along the way, so I am trusting that He will give me all that I need in order to faithfully live in this community that He has called me to.
That’s it for now! I will attempt to upload some photos of our house in the coming days so you can see just how crazy life is here! This week’s lectures are on hearing the voice of God so I’m sure I will have some exciting stories to tell too!!
In the meantime, for those of you who pray, here are a couple of prayer points that I would really appreciate prayer for!
1) That God would help me with learning some basic Korean! Hard ask I know, but I believe God is able!!
2) That He would help me in the times when I am feeling completely overwhelmed with people, and that I would be gracious when sharing a house with such a big community.
3) For energy! Walking around on crutches is hard work, but when your days work starts at 8am and is pretty intense throughout as everything is so new and unfamiliar it is exhausting
4) For continued healing for my knee
Much love
Jo x