Brian and Sister Neff and I attended two wards yesterday. The Manhattan 1st Ward and the Riverside Park Ward. Elder Robert and Sister Lorraine Hansen happened to be the speakers in the Manhattan 1st Ward. They serve as the Self-Reliance Missionaries in our mission and are from San Diego, CA. They live in Kew Gardens, Queens but were invited to speak in that ward yesterday. So we were so glad that we were able to see them and hear them speak. The mission president and his wife, Lance and Robyn Taylor, happened to attend the Manhattan 1st Ward yesterday too, so we got to visit with them for a few minutes. We also got to attend the Manhattan 1st Ward’s PIE linger longer before the Riverside Park Ward started. I had a piece of Chocolate Pecan Pie!! It was a good day.
We also met the EQ president of the Riverside Park ward and his wife. He, Kim Yee Young, is from LA and his parents are from Korea. His wife, Chung Ye Sol, is from Cheongju and Seoul. They have three young children and he works for Google. His parents are the new mission leaders in the Seoul mission and her parents are in the Seoul temple presidency. I enjoyed speaking a little Korean with them.
Speaking of Korean connections, today we took Elder Kwon (from Seoul) and Elder Brewer (from Idaho Falls area) to Korean barbecue lunch at K-Pot, not far from Times Square. They are serving in the Union Square wards where the employment center is located, so we see them a lot. We all enjoyed Korean barbecue. We discovered that Elder Kwon is from the same church building (adjacent wards) as Moon Han Neul, a missionary from Seoul who served in the Washington DC South mission. Elder Kwon even had a photo of her. We met her in DC and her mother in Seoul.
One other connection: I met Brother Yoo Hee Je yesterday while he was waiting in line for pie. I mentioned that to Elder Kwon, who told me that Yoo Hee Je was married to and then divorced from Elder Kwon’s sister. Small world between Manhattan and Korea. One other possible small world connection: Brother Yoo’s parents grew up in the Seoul 8th ward and are four to six years younger than I am. They may have been at church when I served as zone leader in that ward 47 years ago.
