Funny Stories From Sheeby

Many of you know that my little brother Steven aka Sheeby is currently serving a mission in Korea. He emails us each week. Sometimes he has the funniest stories. I thought I would share a few of my recent favorites with you. (I hope Sheeby doesn't mind)

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I went into the bank the other day because my card had been having some problems so I wanted to replace it. So I go in and there's a girl in the lobby there to help people that come in and I told her what I wanted to do. You would have thought a celebrity had come in. Everyone there was so blown away that I could speak Korean. They were giddy and everyone was staring at me and the guy actually making my new card thought I was the most amazing thing ever. I made a joke to him and everyone in the building laughed. It was really awkward for me but now i know what its like to be famous.

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I had quite the adventure last night, My companion and I set out to walk to the church and back to pick up some more copies of the Book of Mormon to keep in our house. We were walking past the train station on the way home and there were a lot of people sitting down outside of it. We kept walking and I had the thought to go sit down outside and do some people watching or Passive proselyting, or say hello to people and wait for people to come and talk to us. But I was just going to keep going then my comp suggested to sit down for a little so I figured it was a good idea if we both had it. So we sit and say hi to some people and then we see this guy who is clearly drunk out of his mind. He can't walk straight and he was trying to smoke and failing due to his intoxication. So we watch him and laugh a little then he starts heading for the street. We started getting worried when he headed for the street. Then he fell of the curb and fell directly into the back of a parked car. It was hilarious. I wish I had a video but we run over there and help him up and he is completely drunk off his rocker. I don't think he even felt the fall. Anyways he take (carry) him over to a bench and sit down and try to figure out how we can help this guy. We have a really weird conversation with him in his drunk Korean then I figure we should take him to the police station next to the train station about 100 yds away. We struggle with him and get him over there. My comp stood with him out side and I ran in and talked to the cops and tell them whats going on. They tell us just to put him in a taxi and the drunk guy will tell us the area where he is from. So we stagger over to a taxi an tell the driver where to go. It turns out that's a really country ghetto area like a half an hour away so we go out there and then the drunk guy doesn't know which house is his. The taxi driver is pissed, the drunk guy is getting violent, and its like past our curfew. Anyways we find someone who knows the guy miraculously. And then it turns out that the drunk guy used to live out here but doesn't anymore but his brother lives back in Kim Chun where we started. So we contact the brother take the drunk guy there and drop him off. It was quite the experience. It felt good to help someone even though they didn't know what was going on. The taxi driver was upset but impressed with us and a lot of people at the station saw us helping him so hopefully they think better of the missionaries in the future.

(sheeb's comp with "the drunk guy")

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In the chapel of our church there are two big holes in the walls. I thought that it would be a good idea for us to fix them and surprise our branch. So if I were in America I would have simply bought a wall patch and then put stucco over that and sanded and stuff and then painted it to match the wall but unfortunately i had to do it completely different. They don't have wall patches in Korea or stucco so I had to figure out how they do things. And here is kind of a funny communication problem story. There are some words where if your pronunciation isn't exact then they don't understand you.

So I said to the woman at the hardware store:

Me: Do you have anything to fix a wall?

Woman: A what?

Me:A wall

Woman:A wall?

Me:yes a wall.

Woman:wait a wall?

Me:Yeah a wall.

Woman:"you want to fix a wall?

Me:Yes a wall.

Woman: Why do you want to fix a wall?

Me(slightly frustrated):Because there's a hole in the wall. Do you have something to fix a hole in a wall?

Woman:a hole?

Me:Yes a hole. its about this big. How would you suggest that I fix it?

Woman: Wait a hole in the wall.

Me (now on the verge of giving up): Yes a hole in the wall.

So she then shows me how they do things in Korea. Apparently they fill the hole with an expanding foam and then cut/sand that. Then she said but it doesn't look pretty. So i asked her how to make it look pretty and she's like I don't know. So we get the foam, fill the hole and start the quest for stucco. And there is a word for stucco in Korean but after going to about 4 different places I found out that no Korean knows what that stuff is even after reading the Korean definition on my dictionary. So on the edge of frustration/anxiety I explained to some guy what we were doing and what i needed so he gave me a small bag of instant cement and said that this would work. We tried it and it was your basic grey gritty cement and didn't work so we tore it out and went back to the original hardware store and found white cement that worked just fine. So except for painting it we finally finished. And then on Sunday the branch didn't even really notice. But the branch president pointed it out to everyone and they all love us now. Apparently none of them know how to do that sort of thing. And so the branch president said to them all how as fathers in our church we should be teaching our children how to do basic household things. So basically we inspired change here in Kim Chun South Korea.

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Thanks for the laughs Sheeby!

We love you and miss you.