Part of the fun of living here is the new people that you get to meet. Especially Westerners.
It gets lonely, sometimes – days at a time roll by and everyone around me is very much the same race, speaking the same language. I talk to myself a fair amount purely for the pleasure of listening to English outside the classroom (happily, I am an excellent conversation partner – I share all the same interests as myself! What a happy coincidence). So, imagine my joy when, a few weeks ago, walking home from school, while waiting for the light to change so I could cross the street, I saw a pair of Western men standing outside the Japanese steakhouse.
They were both very young – late teens or early twenties – and very well dressed. They wore dark slacks, white button-down shirts with ties, and a nametag each. And, significantly, they were a pair. The light changed and they started across the street towards me, as I started towards them. As our paths crossed, I asked them, “Mormons?”
And so I met Elder Meeks and Elder Hanks.
Elder Meeks and Elder Hanks are two Mormon* missionaries living in Gwangju – old hands in Korea, but new to the city. Now, it is well-known that Mormon men, when they come of age, are highly encouraged to do two years of missionary work in the service of God, spreading the Good Word, teaching, and generally doing good works in His name. Meeks and Hanks were good Salt Lake City boys doing their bit to make the world safe for the Latter Day Saints.
We drew aside to the sidewalk and had a good talk there on a random Gwangju street corner. Their church is very near my apartment – in fact, I’ve inadvertently posted pictures of it before – and they operate all over my area. They were impressed with my knowledge of their faith – which, believe me, is no great shakes, but I know more than the average layman – and I was eager for friends I could speak English to. So, we made a dinner date.
I met Elder Hanks a few weeks later at a pretty nice pork cutlet restaurant just a block or two from my apartment. Elder Meeks had by then moved on to other pastures, but in his place was Elder Han, a young Korean man from Seoul just starting the first month of his new missionary journey. There are about 30,000 practicing Mormon Koreans, it turns out. Han had okay English and a charming habit of starting every utterance with the phrase “Actually…”
“Actually I’ve studied English for about four years now…”
“Actually you know quite a bit about Mormonism…”
“Actually, what do you think of the food?”
The food, for the record, was delicious. Pork, chicken, and fish cutlets, all manner of noodles, pasta, salad, and, weirdly enough, pizza – including pizza made using a fried chicken cutlet as the crust! Wonderfully decadent, I can’t believe that little innovation hasn’t made it over to the States yet.
Good as the dinner was, the conversation was better. We talked about religion, about how we came to believe in God, about history and Alexander the Great and Jesus of Nazareth. I learned about Hans’ life, about what it’s like to be a Mormon missionary.
I think there are still some groups that people unconsciously feel totally fine with being prejudiced or bigoted towards. People from the South. People who live on farms. And, largely, Mormons.
I mean, I get it. They’re pretty much all squares – clean cut, conservatively dressed, decent living, no drinking, no smoking, no swearing. They hold true to their traditions, which are often out of step with the quickly changing fashions of the wider world. And they’re determined to save as many souls as they can by spreading their faith as widely as they can, which many find obnoxious.
But I always have a soft spot for people who live true to their principles, and I have a soft spot for Mormons, too. In truth, while I don’t find Joe Smith’s archaeology convincing at all, I admire them.
By every measure, Mormons are one of the most successful religious minorities in the United States. It’s been a while since I looked at the statistics specifically, but in general Mormons have higher rates of education than the public at large. Lower rates of poverty. Lower rates of divorce. Lower rates of substance abuse. Lower rates of suicide. Lower rates of mental disorders, including depression and anxiety. Mormons are a disproportionate amount of our successful intellectual class – famous authors like Orson Scott Card, Brandon Sanderson, and Stephanie Meyer, whose books have sold millions of copies. Many of our most prominent elected officials – Mitt Romney and Harry Reid, for example. At Harvard Business School, female students note ruefully that attractive male classmates are invariably associated with one of the “three Ms”: the military, the management consultancy McKinsey or Mormonism. People who reach the tops of their professions are often Mormons – Stephen Covey, the author of 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, for example, or Andy Reid, head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs and probably the second best coach in the entire NFL (behind Belicheck, of course).
Look, I’m not trying to convert anyone to Mormonism here. I’m not a Mormon myself. But I do find them genuinely kind and decent people, and I really enjoyed my dinner with Hanks and Han. They live nearby and we’ll do it again. They only get one day off a week (Monday), so I won’t see them too much, but their primary amusement is playing board games, so I have that in common. We’ll do a board game night soon. In the meantime, I look forward to sharing more good meals and good conversation with them.
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
– JRR Tolkien
*They prefer their church be referred to as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; however, that is quite a mouthful to type and the demonym is quite difficult to wrap my head around. Purely for sake of brevity and clarity to my audience, I shall continue to use Mormon, with the understanding that this term is for convenience only and reflects no judgment on the truth of anyone’s religious claims whatsoever.
Gwangju Dreaming 