Wednesday, December 02, 2009

skinning the mission blog

I served as a missionary in Korea in 92-93, pre-digital era. We didn't have cellphones or digital cameras. A lot of things have changed since then.

There's now a Korea Daejeon Mission blog, kept by the current mission president's wife (Sister Perriton), where she posts pictures from conferences and comings and goings, and other events.

(The country switched to a different Romanization system, which means that the Taejon mission is now the Daejeon mission. I'm still not really used to this.)

I was looking at the blog recently and saw that she was using a background from The Cutest Blog on the Block. Nice, but pretty generic. So I wrote and asked if I could make a custom background and banner. I spent a day or so fiddling around and came up with something that seemed to me both appropriately Korean and mission-y. I sent it to Sister Perriton with instructions, and she was able to get everything installed properly. (I had to look up some information about working with the widget layout, which is what led to me redoing my own blog with widgets.)

Here's the full view. What you actually see will vary depending on your screen size and resolution.



Sister Perriton posted about her new background, and even dug up an old picture of me from the mission files. Whoa.

The words down the sides are from Doctrine & Covenants 4:6: "Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence." We used to recite all of section 4 at zone conferences. It's different now.

In 2005 they changed the name of the church in Korean. I, being rather out of the loop, did not find out about this till some time later. Just a few months ago I heard that they had re-translated the Book of Mormon. So when I was working on this I double-checked and discovered that yes, they re-translated the D&C too.

Talk about things changing.

Looking at the pictures of the missionaries on the blog makes me feel a bit nostalgic and homesick. I hope they're appreciating every minute. It goes by faster than you think.

7 comments:

skgberry said...

My goodness! You look like a child in that photo.

Helena said...

I was 22! It was a long time ago, certainly.

Deb said...

You are so talented. And missions do go by in a wink!

Kathey said...

I really enjoyed looking at this. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

I stopped by to see you at 22. I'm nosy, but you already know that. You looked (and continue to look) great! You did a great job with the background, too.

Expatriate Buckeyes said...

Wow! Your talent never ceases to astound me.

Wingnut said...

It looks FABULOUS! What a talent you have and what a generous heart to work so hard and give this to them for their use. It is perfect!