Pentecostals, Presbyterians and progress

Sometimes my progress in Korean, though not as rapid as I would like it to be, is a little better than I've thought it to be. I have been making a habit of writing new words in a notepad in hangul. Before I came here, a Korean-speaking colleague advised me to just learn the hangul and not rely on English romanizations of Korean words. I've found this advice very useful. Since I can at least read hangul and pronounce words, as opposed to not understanding it at all, I actually find it more convenient to learn a word. The only time I really depend on romanization is when I'm looking up words in my Korean-English dictionary, and even then I try to keep that dependence to a minimum. Also, having a chance to read hangul here in so many different types of fonts has helped me "discover" my handwriting. It's been freeing to not have to write hangul exactly as it appears in my textbooks, which I have found difficult and actually not very enjoyable. I can now write more simply and know that my writing will be understood. Once I write the words, I show them to Korean friends to make sure I've done them correctly. I don't consider my Korean penmanship very good, but everyone has complimented me and some have gone so far as to say that I write better than they do.

One of the teachers got me a copy of a textbook that follows one of the many local Korean courses at the universities here. I would write the title here, but it's in Korean and I may butcher it by trying to romanize it here. Though I plan to focus on self-study for a few months before taking formal classes, this textbook is excellent. It’s exciting to have access to materials that I wouldn't have been able to find back home. There are some aspects of Korean sentence structure that are slowly becoming coherent. This could not happen at a better time. Nothing gives me momentum like a little progress.

Today I visited the 10 a.m. IWE (International Worship in English) service at Youngnak for the first time. All of the services I've visited so far have been at 3 p.m., which is more "contemporary." 10 a.m. is more "traditional." Pastor Bill preached a powerful message about imitating the character of Christ. Being in a Presbyterian church has amounted to a strange cultural shift for me after being in a more charismatic church setting for so many years. Pastor Bill's hospitality and help have played a great part in me joining myself to IWE/Youngnak. At times it's a little quiet for me, but as I sat in the back while the group sang out of hymnals, I had strangely warm memories of my teenage years when my parents dragged me to a Presbyterian church in New Jersey every Sunday. If my father was alive today, he would probably be overjoyed to see me attending a Presbyterian church instead of one of those crazy Pentecostal fellowships. Ha ha.