A Typical Week: Sunday

Loyal readers!  We've made it!  One whole week of posts, huzzah!  Read on to find out about Sunday, it's a good day.

Sunday

10:00am-12:30pm Church

Every week we attend Hannam University Church (한남대학교회).  For those interested in how similar their services are to ours, I've put a normal service order of worship at the end of this post.  We attend the first half of the service until just before the sermon.  To see what this is really like for us, see the descriptions in that schedule at the bottom! 

Just before the sermon, there is a section called "Time for Young Disciples (TYD)."  TYD is a time for a three-minute 'sermonette' in English.  It serves to both introduce the theme for the youth group study that day and to give the congregation some practice at understanding spoken English; and it hopefully also gets a meaningful thought or lesson or story across.  Anna S., Anna Curl, Uncle Simon, and I take it in turns to prepare and deliver a TYD.  This is great practice for those of us who don't really like public speaking (read: all of us except Uncle Simon), but it's also stressful to have to make and email a powerpoint on Friday night (whoops, I guess that should have gone into my Friday entry, but it's only once a month…) and to decide what exactly to say on Saturday night.  Also, we have to plan what to do with the youth group because...

Anna Curl unveiling her specialty, unfortunately melted
to the foil a little: Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Pizza.

Directly after TYD, we leave with the youth (middle and high schoolers) to do our own lesson.  It's mostly in English (because that's mostly what we speak…) and whoever gave the TYD is usually in charge.  We've had discussions, team building games, not team building games, Bible trivia games, and even a cooking lesson!  It's a great group of kids, about half of which can speak English very well.  With them as translators and our own Korean language abilities growing all the time, we get along better each Sunday.

At 11, the service gets out and we go to fellowship time!  There's a lobby/entryway place where they have about six little tables all decked out with snacks!  We just greet each other and eat and chat for about half an hour or so.  After all of this, everyone goes off to Bible study.

The building that the church is in is also a classroom building for the school, so the Bible studies are held all over in different classrooms.  We're studying Moses with Uncle Simon and Haejung 이모, us YAVs, and the occasional other churchgoers who like to join a study in English.  We each take turns leading this study as well.

12:30pm-12:00am Everything else!

Another free afternoon!  But usually, we don't actually have it free.  We've done such things as: eating lunch with Uncle Simon and Haejung 이모, going to a small farm owned by a church member with our youth group where we dug up sweet potatoes and had a delicious meal, going to a 'sports competition' with the college students from church (this is code for a wacky games time (like you'd imagine at a presbytery youth gathering) with teams and relays and everything), etc.  Today, for example, we went ice skating with the college group, then visited the grave of Uncle Simon's grandfather, then had a delicious duck dinner as an early Thanksgiving meal.

The ice skating crew, or most of it!

The National Cemetery.  This is the soldier part, not where Uncle Simon's grandfather is, he's much higher up.

The Thanksgiving spread!  Quack.

After all our activities are exhausted, Sundays are the time we have to study the most in preparation for the week to come.  Shopping and lesson planning and blogging are also productive goals for Sunday which happen sometimes, but get self-cared out sometimes, too.

So there you have it!  One full week of blog posts!  The funny part is, I originally thought of the "Typical Week" idea as a stopgap to explain why I wasn't blogging very much… hmm.  I hope it got across that we're busy people, and if it seems like we have plenty of free time, even that can be filled easily.  One thing that has surprised me is just how exhausting it can be to live in another culture with a different language.  I might be doing the same things as I would do at home, but here every little thing requires more effort, and it adds up sometimes.  Still, I'm enjoying my time here immensely, and often find myself in awe that I'm here and doing the things that I'm doing.  I've been trying to just go with the flow and experience every opportunity that comes my way and everything that is happening around me, which can be tough for someone like me who lives in his head much of the time.

Thanks for reading, from now on I think you'll understand more about what I'm doing day to day.  I've got grand plans for blog posts about the things that happen outside of the routine, and I'll get to them whenever I can!

Church Service Order of Worship: 

Praise and Adoration - The church sings the same songs together before worship begins every week.  I miss the variety from home, but it is nice to come in to the service and be able to sing along without looking at the screen all the time.  The church uses a book that is a combo of a Bible, a hymnal, and a collection of responsive readings; it's all in Korean.  So during this time, we shuffle through this book looking for the hymns, because they have a number of where they were in the old hymnal, which has both Korean and English, and of which we each have a copy. 

Call to Worship - Seems like more of an opening prayer -- I think, it's all in Korean -- but there's no congregational response.  That comes later. 

Choral Response - I'm hoping to join this choir next semester, as I've been tagged as the musical K-YAV, and I enjoyed being in choir at Covenant so much this past year.  Hopefully I'll be able to follow directions and read the words fast enough by then… we'll see. 

Invocation - Another prayer, we just follow those around us and say "Amen" at the end. 

Hymn of Praise - We sing from our old hymnals.  I sing in English to get some meaning out of the hymns, but I think one or both Annas try it in Korean sometimes for practice.  The hymns here seem to always have pretty high notes, so I'm working on hearing and singing the bass harmony. 

Apostles' Creed - We say it in English, they say it in Korean. 

Responsive Reading - Here's where we flip to the correct page in our do-it-all church book, and then stand astounded as everyone reads Korean SO FAST.  I can pick out the beginnings and endings of sentences, but that's about it.  This seems to follow the same pattern as the Call to Worship at Covenant: leader speaks, people respond, leader, people, …, everyone together. 

Confession of Sin - Same as our unison call to confession. 

Assurance of Pardon 

Passing of the Peace - I need to keep a sharper eye out for what the church members do to the pass the peace to each other.  I awkwardly shake hands for about 10 seconds, and then everyone is sitting down, it's very fast. 

Announcements

Hymn 

Intercessory Prayer 

Proclamation and Response - This is one of several times the choir sings a responsive song that is the same every week.  Like our doxology, I suppose, just no congregation joining in. 

Scripture Lessons 

Time for Young Disciples - I've already described this above, but one of us YAVs or Uncle Simon gets up and gives a short message in English with a powerpoint presentation as backup.  After this, we leave, so I'm just copying the bulletin from here on out. 

Sermon 

Hymn 

Offerings 

Benediction