Well, it was wake up at 6:30am, which turned into waking up at 6:55am. :P
We had a brief ‘prayer meeting’ in the sanctuary. Pastor Park revisited the Johari Window again… Then showed us two rocks. He asked us to find the difference between them. We made some guesses (and I really was about to say the right answer), but essentially, one was rounded, and the other was not. The rounded one was from the stream, and the sharp one was from the road. The rock symbolized us as a person, and the roundness symbolized the affinity of the rock’s ‘personality.’ The water symbolized hardship and social situations, and I guess just interactions with people altogether. As a person is subjected to more of those things, their personalities become more ‘round,’ meaning they can fit into more social situations and are easier to get along with, are more mature and the like. Obviously, the rock on the road just ‘avoids’ social things, and as a result, does not round out. Then he showed us another rock with sharp edges. It was also from the stream, but it was ‘hiding,’ so it did not round out. Again, the analogy had mostly to do with being ‘open’…
The 'hiding' rock, the rock from the road, and the rock from the stream.
After, he dismissed the others to go eat breakfast and held David and I behind. The three of us talked and discussed what was going on, our points of view, etc. Pastor Park’s presence was very good as a moderator… And David had slept on things, and I had as well, plus, we had prayers from the others. Essentially, we all apologized and things worked out. David’s mood was already better. He admitted to being wrong, and we all had a better understanding of each other. My issue was that I had been avoiding him because I was afraid of conflict with him, but he interpreted that as me not caring for him. Altogether, there was a large lack of communication and assumptions… Still, we all apologized and prayed together. After the others came back in from breakfast, we all told the others what was going on and then apologized to them. And after, things were as new. David and I can be comfortable around each other and there is no hint of remorse from either of us. Truly a work of God…
Now that that was over… We could enjoy the rest of the retreat and the trip.
The next bit was on being ‘lost and found.’ We read Luke chapter 15 and then watched a video about seven adoptees. We had to write a reflection comparing ourselves to them and determine the issues they struggled with the most and also how they were lost and found, and also how they had issues with forgiveness. Well, between the translation (the video was in Korean) and the format of the video, we kind of had a tough time getting much out of it, but we wrote anyways. Honestly, I didn’t get a whole lot out of it, but I was still ‘letting out a big sigh’ about the whole thing with David.
After, some of the host family mothers, Elder Kim and some of the kiddies drove up the mountain to surprise us with a big lunch. It was pretty awesome.
They even put little flower-in-glass things on the table...
They made awesome food...
They hung out for a good while, and we took to playing some games with the kids… First just slapped a ball around, then playing dodgeball and eventually Yoot-nori. We had a lot of fun, and everyone was amused at Ju Eun’s (my host family sister) shrieking.
The rest of the day would be more of the same… We’d watch videos about other adoptees and get their perspective on how they view Korea/their birth parents, the issues they faced, how they coped, etc, etc. A lot of these videos had Pastor Park or Yoonju SMN in them, or were about adoptees that Pastor Park had worked with. Considering most of these were aired on Korean TV, they were something significant. After each bit of video, we wrote reflections similar to what we did in the morning.
Dinner... Spam and dukbuki! Mmm... Comfort food, alright.
It’s been raining like crazy up here, but team morale seems to be higher than ever. We all meet up in the group room and play cards and hang out whenever we have a bit of free time… Life’s good.
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