Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Care package

Over the weekend I received a care package in the mail from my college Bible study group back home. Opening it with the guys in my group home gave the same sensations as Christmas morning. The first to come out were the large bags of Trolli Sour Brite Crawlers & Sour Patch Kids. To some, the candy was the Sour Patch Kids were the sourest things they've had (Korean sour candy is really tame). They had a lot of fun popping them in their mouth and puckering their face. The Sour Brite Crawlers were a treat that they all enjoyed because they're much better than the Korean variety and they have a nice tangy sweetness to them
that you don't get in regular Korean candy. Those were gone quick. 

The guys freaked out upon seeing the cheese crackers (the ones with the red plastic stick to spread the artificial cheese whiz on the crackers). They're a tough find around here and in Korea cheese in snacks is always sweetened to a point where it looses its cheese flavor so it's hard to find anything that actually tastes like cheese. Under the crackers were lots of cans of spam which around here is a delicacy. Foreign spam can run up to $8 a can when in the states it's not too hard to find it for a little over or under $1.

And finally there was the nicotine gum. Earlier in the trip one of my guys told me he had thought about quitting for a while, but it's so hard and nicotine gum is very expensive. The main reason I asked for the care package was for this nicotine gum that my college group willfully pitched in for. I think it came as a shock to my student when he had realized the option to stop an addiction that had followed him since the age of 10 sat right there in a short little box. I explained to him that it's not much cheaper in the states, but my college group back home really cared for him and they really want to help in any way they can. He paused reading the box in silence and the only thing he could utter was "...really?" We opened the box together and I read him the instructions in plainer English. I needed to know if he was serious or not. I prayed over him right then and there. Please pray for my friend as he seeks to break his addiction.

-Jeffrey