Church Singing Competition

In one of those WTK (What The Korea???) moments, Brian and 4 other friends from our church here entered and competed in a singing competition at another church yesterday. It was another very bizarre experience...

Korean style, no one really had any idea about what was going on, or what was going to happen. All that they were told was there was a competition, they needed to put a band together,  they should sing an English worship song, and they will be performing at another church on Sunday night in some form of a contest... 

After some quick practicing Sunday afternoon, we (I was the band's roadie/groupie) headed over to the other church. They served us a delicious dinner of bibimbap (mixed rice) and then they had sound check. With the language barrier things were a little difficult to understand, and everyone seemed to be a little worried and nervous about how this 'competition' was going to turn out... 

We found out later that the was actually all to promote international missions for the church. They estimate that in a few years there will be at least 6 million foreigners in Korea... So this church figures, why focus on sending out mission teams outside Korea, when there are so many foreigners here. So this competition was to raise awareness of the foreigners in Korea...

Anyways, after sitting through an hour long Korean church service, it was finally time for the competition. And once again, it was a wide mix of 'talents' (I will use that term lightly...). Groups sang, there was dramas/skits, interpretive dance, taekwondo, you name it someone probably did it (and probably not that well either...)

Our group- The waygooks were in the band (stephanie, ben and jason, - missing heidi) and the two Koreans standing on either side of Brian are elders from our church and the rest of the Koreans were from the church the competition was being held at.

Long story short, Brian and his group ended up getting 2nd place!!!!! They won 500,000 Won which is about $500 Canadian! So they were pretty excited! And of course, me being the good groupie that I am, I videoed their whole performance for your viewing pleasure:

 

(P.S. Brian probably won't be too happy when he sees I put that video up, he says they sound awful and didn't deserve 2nd, but I'm still proud of them!

And for your amusement, Another group that performed (Dancing Ajummas):