5 Months...

No, I am not five months pregnant! Don't get your hopes up--it will more than likely be a few more years before we attempt to try for that. :) No, today marks the five month point in our lives here in South Korea. The time is flying by! I guess that's what happens when you have fun, right? This move has been so good for us for many reasons (with the exception of the fact that we are far away from our family and close friends). God has truly blessed us in so many ways, even ones we weren't sure we would see. We knew that in coming to Korea, we would be able to save money for the future (and maybe use some to pay off school loans). That is an awesome aspect of living here. We are able to save half of our income and live on the rest very comfortably, while getting to go places and see things that we would normally not be able to do. Part of my goal in coming here was to be able to save up enough money over the course of a few years so that if and when we do happen to return to the States, and maybe "settle down" somewhere, that we will be able to better afford me staying home and hopefully having a baby. I know it's not what a lot of women want to do these days, but I truly desire to be a stay-at-home mom and raise my own children when the day comes. I really look forward to that day, and I know that being here and kind of sacrificing my desire to have a baby now, will help that be a bit more enjoyable for me in the future. Plus, I know it's not God's timing yet. :)

We also knew that we would get to spend more time together, which has been great (most of the time ;). It's been nice to get to see and spend more quality time with each other a lot more often than we did when we were working in the U.S.: Michael as a full-time minister and me as a full-time elementary school teacher. Those were both pretty life-consuming jobs that seemed to take up all our time and energy. Though we both have jobs teaching here, it is soo different from teaching in the U.S. and we can pretty much get all our work done at work and not have to bring things home with us. That has been awesome.

It's interesting how living in Korea as a foreigner is for the most part a very laid-back lifestyle. Now, don't get me wrong--the Korean society is not laid back at all--we find that most people here are very last minute with things, but then there is such an emphasis placed on image and appearance, which makes for a very stressful environment. It's no wonder Korea has such a high suicide rate. However, as a foreigner, you learn to quickly deal with last-minute changes to your schedule and such, and the rest of the time, life is pretty chill. You know, sleep till 10 or 11, get up, lazy around and get to work by 2:30 or 3. I think I can say that the last five months have definitely been a "restful" period on our lives.

We have started to get busier though, especially this last month, as we have started to get more involved with things, particularly with our church and people there. We were soo blessed to "stumble" across Life Church Korea after being in the country for only 4 days, and have had the privilege to get to meet and know some really amazing people with hearts for God and ministry, and just make some awesome new friends! Life Church is a fairly young church, probably between 2-3 years old, that was started as a ministry of a church in England of the same name. The pastors, Jack and Jenny, are supported as missionaries to Korea, and the church is very focused on missions and sending people to unreached areas of the world, particularly India, Nepal, and other places. There is a good combination of Koreans and foreigners that meet together for worship--probably about 2/3 foreigners and 1/3 Korean. We meet at the campus of an International School in Suwon, GSIS (which, consequently, I am thinking/praying about us applying to teach there next year). Jack and Jenny also just recently opened up a coffee shop (which doubles as a church office), called the Mosaic Cafe, in a nice area of another city not too far from us, so we have been frequenting it often for jazz concerts, art mingles, and bible studies. Michael and couple of other guys started a men's bible study on Wednesday mornings at Mosaic, and in a few short weeks it has grown to about 5 or 6 guys that have been meeting regularly. I had been meeting with some ladies at the coffee shop to just chat and have good coffee/dessert (though Michael swore it was gossip meetings :), but now we've actually started doing little bible studies as well and are going to hopefully begin doing a Beth Moore study soon (thanks to my mother-in-law being willing to send us one from their church!). I have been working with the children on Sunday mornings, teaching once every month or working in the nursery, and Michael has filled in for the youth minister once when he was out of town. We are confident that God has placed us here for a reason and are seeking to know what that is, besides just saving money and having a good time. We feel like He is slowly showing us what He might have planned for our lives in the future, if we can just figure out how to listen well enough and obey His call.

One wonderful note of praise is that I have now gone for I think 3 weeks without having any kind of flare-up of my colon! I had been struggling for the past few months with a flare-up of my disease, since about when we hit the 1-month mark of being here, and was starting to get very frustrated and down about it. I was going to the doctor weekly to get more medicine and try different things, but now it seems to have finally calmed down, at least for a little bit. I have pretty much cut milk out of my diet and am limiting my spicy food and caffeine intake, and it seems to be helping. One thing I am having to deal with is the realization that this is something I will most likely live with and suffer through for the rest of my life. I know the Lord can completely heal me, if He so chooses, but I also have to face the reality that He may choose not to. It's been hard, as a person who has really never been sick much in my life and could barely swallow pills without gagging, to sometimes take 25 pills a day (that is not my normal dosage, just extra during difficult times)! I just keep leaning on the Lord and trusting that even in this, He will be glorified. So, I praise Him for calming my colon down this month. :)

I know a lot of people are probably wondering how long we plan to stay here in Korea. Our contracts with our current hagwons will up the first week of June, and we are thinking that we probably will not renew our contracts with them for another year. We do like our jobs, as I said, they are seriously some of the easiest jobs we've ever had. However, we REALLY want more vacation time, and we don't get much of that working at a hagwon (we get 1 day off for Christmas this year--bummer!). So we are exploring our options right now. We are not opposed to staying another year or two and trying to either get jobs at public schools, or possibly an International School as I mentioned before. We definitely feel that this is the best place for us to be right now, and we are happy with that! Of course, God may tell us to go, and if He does, we will. But, more than likely, we will return for another year after this first one is up. We do plan to make a trip back to the States next summer, though, in June or July probably, to get some good Mexican food and see all of you! We will keep you posted, though, as that is still about 7 months away.

I will leave you with a couple of photos of us from the past month, and I promise to update next with more photos and details about our fun adventures as of late, including our trip to the U.S. for my brother Karl's wedding, the Andong Mask Festival, my 28th birthday, and a visit to the orphanage.

~Leslie

at Black Angus for my birthday steak dinner!


Haha, for some reason this photo is cracking me up.