Happy New Year!
January 27, 1990 (Saturday)
Once a year, there was one day in which it was nearly impossible to proselytize, and that was today: Lunar New Year’s Day, the same day the Chinese celebrated, always during a new moon.
New Year’s was a day of celebration and being with family. In the old reckoning of age, this was when everyone’s age incremented. That is, when a person was born, it was their first year. And at the next New Year’s Day, they would become two years old, and so on. Such as, “this is the second year in which I’m alive.” It’s just a different way of looking at things, and the gist is: it is like a big birthday party.
We had to wake up early, because we were invited to New Year’s breakfast, and we had to be there by 9AM. As per our usually strict schedules, we were supposed to be studying scripture and Korean, and preparations. But we had special permission so we could fellowship with the members on this special day.
“Come on, Elder Benjamin! I need to get in there, too,” said Elder Riley, waiting for his turn in the shower.
“Okay, I’m hurrying!”
Elder Shumway asked me, “Is this your first New Year’s?”
I said, “Kind of. I was here a year ago, but no one invited us over. So, we missed most of it.”
“You’re in for a treat. There’s going to be so much food, it’s crazy! What about Elder Benjamin?”
“Oh, first time for him, I think. He’s younger than me.” In this context, I was actually saying, “He’s been on his mission less time than I have been.” We missionaries had the weirdest slang.
We arrived at Brother Kim’s house at 9AM and they already had food laid out on a table in the middle of a big room. They also had three children and their families in attendance. We all sat on the floor around the table, and began the feast … eggs, some kind of vegetable pancakes, and also fried mandu, the Korean version of Chinese pot stickers — only deep fried to a wonderful crisp.
We ate and socialized for a couple of hours, including singing hymns and … well … eating more food.
We had another appointment at 2PM at Brother’s Han’s house … a New Year’s Lunch celebration. This was a noticeably larger celebration with two large tables filled with food, and again we all sat on the floor. Sisters Anderson and King were also there.
We thought Baek Ho-sung would invite us to his place, with all the money he had. It would have undoubtedly been a larger shindig. Though, lately he had been very busy with work and wooing his potential fiancé, Soo-jung, … but probably mainly his work. Just yesterday, he had promised to bring some expensive root beer to our district meeting at the church, but he didn’t show up. Needless to say, we weren’t making any progress with him.
Brother Han, the second counselor in the bishopric, was more than happy to have us over. He placed us near the center at one of the tables. On the most part, it was laid out much like the Korean BBQ we had with Ho-sung, complete with many small bowls of kimchis and condiments, our own bowl of rice, but it wasn’t just BBQ ribs — already cooked, but several main dishes, which ended up being passed around, including pulkogi, sweet and spicy meat; chapchae, a mixture of clear noodles and vegetables, meat & vegetable skewers, and more mandu. There was no way we were going to go hungry today.
Caught up in all the excitement, I actually tried some octopus. It wasn’t all that bad. Glad I tried it, but I was certainly happy other foods existed.
We also got to drink a kind of rice punch … very interesting and sweet — with cinnamon?
Brother Han’s extended family seemed very interested in our lives in America, and we told all — the room full of excitement and laughter. I had no idea that Sister Anderson was the only church member in her family, and had to raise the money, herself, to go on a mission.
Somehow, somewhere in there, Elder Benjamin got in an uber-spiritual tidbit. He said, “You know, this feast reminds me of a story I read about in General Conference.” Everyone paused to listen.
“This sister’s family was taking care of sheep, and there were many lambs. But then one day, a storm came and killed all the mother sheep. The surviving lambs were small and didn’t know how to eat. So, the family would have to catch the lambs and feed them milk. However, this was very difficult. The lambs liked to run away and they were very good at it. Even when they were starving, they wouldn’t come to the humans. And many got eaten by coyotes.
“So, the sister was devastated. The lambs were so close to the food, but refused to eat. Many of them died. She asked her father, ‘Who can feed our sheep?’
“Such is the Word of God. It is a feast just like this, and there are many sheep out there who could eat this food and be edified. But they don’t know that it exists, or they just refuse to acknowledge it. And that’s our job — to find them. One by one, we must save these lambs, and show them the way.”
Everyone nodded in agreement, and then the joyful conversation continued.
After dinner, we played a game called yut (윷), or in English, the Four Sticks game. It involves a board with spots laid out in a square and an X. People split into two teams, and we each got tokens, called horses — white or black. And for each move, we would toss four sticks — decorative pieces of nearly cylindrical wood with one long side flat and the opposite side round. Depending on how the sticks landed — curved or flat-side facing up, we got to move our horses in a certain way.
Okay — to be honest, I was totally lost, but it was fun throwing the sticks and watching everyone cheer. My team won, so we must have done something right.
If the day had ended there, it would have already been a lot of fun — so much food and camaraderie. Even with it being a holiday for families to reunite, they still invited us into their homes and included us, showing off their ancient traditions.
However, the day hadn’t ended. We still had one more appointment.
Remember Kim Bo-yeon, our college student friend? He invited us to his apartment at 6PM to celebrate New Year’s. Since he was saving money for his big America trip coming up, he couldn’t afford to go back home to celebrate, and he was also studying for a big test the next day. It would be just us four Elders and him.
And as Koreans always did, Bo-yeon was going to cover all the costs of the celebration. This was one thing we never took away from them. Even when poor, it would hurt their pride for us to offer any kind of compensation.
You may also notice that Bo-yeon’s surname of Kim was the same as the family we had met in the morning. So, yeah. Kim is the most popular surname in Korea, kind of like Smith in the Americas.
We showed up, and Bo-yeon welcomed us in. Rich houses and poor, the celebration was the same — us sitting on the floor around a table. Only, this time, the table was some kind of portable fold-up thing, and there was much less food.
The main course was a soup called Tteokguk (떡국) containing circular rice cakes and green vegetables. It had a creamy chewy consistency - very unique and tasty. The boiled rice cakes were shaped as coins to promote prosperity. It also represented growing one year older; in fact some people believed you couldn’t advance in age without eating this soup.
After dinner, we played more games and socialized. But we had to be done by 8PM so he could get back to studying. We talked a lot about school and his upcoming trip to America. We didn’t teach any discussions, and didn’t press yet again for a baptismal commitment. Rather, we were just friends having fun.
Toward the end, Elder Shumway turned to Elder Benjamin and asked in English, “So, what did you think of your first New Year’s Day?”
“Wonderful! I’m stuffed! Crazy fun day!”
Bo-yeon said in Korean, “I hope you’ve saved room. I’ve got dessert.”
“Are you kidding?” said Elder Riley. “Well, I guess I could eat some more. What is it?”
Bo-yeon brought out individual bowls of fruit salad, and we ate it all.
After we left Bo-yeon’s apartment, I said to the others, “I can’t believe how exhausted I am. So full and tired.”
And sure enough, we all ended up going to sleep early that night.
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