Spring!

We've waited for such a long time for this. But finally, spring has arrived!!

Teachers' Retreat

The weekend of April 6-8 was the annual SDALI teacher's retreat. The retreat was at Yangpyeong English Village, about an hour to an hour and a half (depending on traffic) from our institute. Even though it was only an hour from Seoul, the English Village was quite in the middle of nowhere. And strangely, it was built to look like a Virginian city with brick buildings, Virginian street and building names, and, for some odd reason, a small-scale Statue of Liberty and a British royal guard. It was quite a peaceful place, though, or would have been had there not been 200ish people descending upon it for three and a half days.

Our schedule for the three days was pretty packed full of meetings. Our institute, Seoul Main, was in charge of the first song service of the weekend on Friday night. We were also in charge of the Sabbath afternoon communion ceremony. Let me tell you, I have a newfound respect for deaconnesses!  I always thought their communion ceremony jobs (and that of deacons, also) looked rather complicated. Now I know it is. It was good to learn a little bit more about the ceremony, though. We got the emblems ready after Sabbath lunch and then helped to pass them out as well. Fortunately, there were no big mishaps and I didn't drop the trays or anything silly like that. Phew!

All in all, the weekend was great! The two speakers, Randy Skeete and Stephen Bohr, who had taken time out of their busy evangelism schedules to be there for the whole weekend, were quite amazing and I learned so much from both of them. I especially really enjoyed Pastor Bohr's sermons on the Sabbath and on the similarities between John the Baptist and Ellen White. I took tons of notes throughout every meeting and by the end of the weekend my right hand was wishing for another weekend to relax and rejuvenate before going back to the textbook office to grasp my collection of colourful correcting pens. I wish I could tell you more about all the meetings, how uplifting and inspiring and education they were. But alas, this post would be miles long and you would stop reading hours before you would be close to the end if I did. So I'll just say that if you'd like to learn more, feel free to message me or Jonathan on Facebook or e-mail us if you have our e-mail addresses, and we'd be happy to try to condense it all into a few paragraphs for you. Or you can just wait until the next time you see us and take a peek at the multitude of verses scribbled throughout the notebook I used to take notes.

Hope you enjoy the pictures of another new place for us in South Korea.
- Ali (with photo captions by Jonathan)

The "Airport" where registration (umm, I mean immigration) took place as we arrived

Yangpyeong English Village passports and boarding passes for when student groups come to use the village

Dillon, our Seoul Main coordinator for this term, trying to hand Ali a Yangpyeong passport

When we first got there, we hung out in a gym for a while while our rooms were being cleaned

I decided to try some new tricks with my camera while some of the other teachers played basketball

It was really dim in there, so my pictures are a bit blurry

I caught some pretty good moves though

These pictures are the first time I've tried sequence shots

Pouring the wine for Sabbath afternoon's communion service

Seoul Main teachers helping to organize the emblems

Breaking the bread into smaller pieces so there would be enough for everyone (don't worry, we washed our hands)

The finished communion table

This is the auditorium where we had all the meetings

Each song service was lead by the teachers from different schools

It was nice to all sing hymns together

On Sunday, it finally warmed up, and we had some free time to go outside

Ali getting acquainted with the British royal guard on duty

The campus was made to look like a city in Virginia, complete with... the Statue of Liberty??

Documenting the English village

One of the buildings

I think this was one of the largest buildings there

A cool wall

The South Korea part of the wall painting

Looking back down the main "Street"

Capturing the picture above

Up the hill, we found a huge chess game

A horse for a horse

Ruminating

Carnage

Ali hopping

Our great speakers, Stephen Bohr and Randy Skeete, during a question and answer time on Sunday afternoon

Goofy picture of our current Seoul Main crew (minus two) :) Four teachers are leaving/transferring at the end of the term on
Thursday and some new ones should join us by next week for the start of the new term. (photo courtesy of teacher Ellen)