Meeting Daddieo, Someone stole my Bike!!

So in the almost eight months that have passed I hadn't met my girlfriend's Dad. Weird you say? I thought it was weird too...a little. I mean, in Canada if you were serious about your girlfriend you would probably have met her Dad in the preceding 8 months....but on the other hand not really that weird....I mean he lives in a different city and they aren't close and I think she's seen him like 2 times during that same span of time....so not really that weird.

Plus, apparently normally in Korea you only meet parents when you're like serious about planning the wedding so again not that weird. (And no, the fact that I met him does not mean we're planning the wedding....the phrase 'normally in Korea' doesn't really apply to us ok?)

We had planned to go on Saturday so we could visit and they could see their Granddaughter....but I was really sick...so we changed the plan to just go on Sunday morning in time for his church service. Anyway, sickness not withstanding (more on that later), we went Sunday morning and drove the 2.5 hours to get there in time for the service.

On the drive there it surfaced that there may only be 2 or 3 people in attendance at the service...and now I have a much clearer picture of what her Dad actually does.

It goes like this....his main job is being a travelling chaplain to prisoners in Korea. So that's what he mainly does. He also has a small church building (which doubles as their house, now that Jenny's Mom has sold the cows and gone to be with him). So every Sunday they have services (yes I said serviceS) at this building as well. For the prisoners who have been released to come to, as well as a couple random other people from what I could gather. There was more than two people actually.... a veritable full house of 10 or so including me, Jenny and Seo-Yeong....

So when he got sick and left the hospital instead of going to Seoul for dialysis -saying God was going to take care of him- he was going back to his prison ministry, and the little church he has.

His health by the way was decent...seemed weak, but was walking around and preaching and singing so he was doing pretty good.

The church service in itself was interesting....as in it will interesting to read about. Because it wasn't interesting to sit in that's for sure. My Korean is good enough to sing along with the powerpoint (not knowing most of the words) and understand um.... 5% of the sermon....("um...ok, he's talking about his family.....um....now he's talking about smoking.....um um....") Like that.

The music was Karaoke style canned music (including canned organ prelude) with dramatic pop drums and the whole bit. I imagine most Canadians would have been laughing at the cheesiness of it, but I think I'm immune to cheesiness now....I spent half the time wondering to myself why I didn't find it as funny as I would have one year ago.....

Um, after services in Korea churches always serve lunch....so we did that....and then, even though the number of people had dwindled down to 3 (as in the three of us that came from Wonju)...they were still planning a 2nd service....because that's what you do in Korea....

Luckily (on the one hand) my stomach was going crazy and we were granted discharge papers (no pun intended). I'll write more next time...gotta go to work.....