Sunday, October 27, 2013

안녕하세요~! (October 28, 2013)


Hello!

Not too much to report on this week.

We started this week with no real investigators to visit, and 지금도 없어요... That's alright, we'll find them though. We had a loooot of time to have to fill, and we spend a good 2-4 hours a day looking for really old less-actives. Physically, it's been pretty hard - we've been hiking up the mountains of 영도, then down the mountains of 영도, and then getting lost and repeating the process. I'm understanding how to use a map better though!

My new companion is pretty cool. Elder Harris (was in my MTC district) said "he's pretty chill", and Elder Platero is indeed pretty chill. I should have no trouble getting along with him!

It seems like he's seen and done some miracles in his last area, so hopefully we'll be able to make things start happening in 영도.

Anyways, back to the less-actives. We haven't been really been able to meet with the less actives - a lot of people not home, so we just have to leave a note on their door. We'll likely keep at it though - the branch president mentioned that he's been continually setting high goals for church attendance, and I really want to help him with that goal.

Other than that, just making a lot of phone calls to former investigators. There's a lot of wrong numbers and number that no longer exist, but we've been working through a huge stack of people that we might be able to work with.

Sure, it's a little boring at times, but it's work that has to be done, and if we can meet even one person, then it's all worth it, right? Looking back at working with Elder Cho, I can't really remember what we spend all our time doing; it feels like we've got more time to fill this transfer... it seems like we tried to visit members a lot, but then they weren't home.

Uh, I'll write a bit about our church meetings I guess. As missionaries, we show up a little early, and just check all the classrooms to make sure they're okay. Pick up garbage, vacuum if needed, set up chairs, put away books, that kind of thing. Then we prepare for the sacrament. 

First hour, we teach Aaronic Priesthood, which only has one youth show up (and he's the son of the Branch President, he's like... 13? 14?). He's kind of a quiet kid, and probably doesn't really want to be taught by two American missionaries, which is understandable. Kind of reminds me of me at that age - we've been talking about how to make things fun for him. Food? Yeah, food most likely.

Then we "teach" a gospel principles class. We can't really understand the manual we read out of that well (it took up like 45 minutes to read and understand the maybe 3.5 pages of last week's chapter), so the members help us out. Honestly, I don't know why we teach the class - all we did last time was say, "Hey, will you read this part?", and the members took it the rest of the way.

Finally, we have sacrament meeting. One Elder blesses the sacrament, and the other gets to just sit with the members. We don't seem to give talks that often, which is fine by me. 23 people came to church last Sunday, which is the 2nd lowest I've ever seen so far.

So that's what church is like; we're pretty busy, but that the branch needs our help, so we do it.

Anyways, I should get going soon. I love you all! Pray for us to keep working hard!

- Elder Luke



Oh, and this too.

I forgot to send this in the email, so...

Thanks for the package!

Thanks for the ties, the normal food, and the junk food! We'll probably eat then when we have something to celebrate. I'll be looking forward to that day!

- Elder Luke


Notes:

안녕하세요~: Annyeonghaseyo, the standard Korean greeting.

지금도 없어요: jigeumdo eobs-eoyo. Google Translate says this means "I do not even now," so I think what he's saying is, "we started with no real investigators, and we still don't have any."

영도: Yeongdo, the area of Busan that he's in. The island of Yeongdo looks like it has three or four mountains/hills that are too steep to build on, as seen in Google Maps here. You can't really tell from that, but based on his comment it sounds like even the built-up areas are quite hilly.

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