Transfer 13, week 3 (?) - Christmas! (December 29, 2014)

안녕하세요! (Annyeonghaseyo!)

 

메리 크리스마스! (Meri Keuliseumaseu! [Merry Christmas])

 

I feel like since I Skyped with everyone this week, there's not too much to write about... but I'll do what I can!

 

This week was really crazy with Christmas stuff going on. We ended up going to 3 Christmas parties, which ate up a lot of our time.

 

We had our official mission Christmas party this Tuesday which was literally a whole day long; we woke up at 5 and got back home around 8 at night. The meeting itself was pretty good; we had kind of a more spiritual part with talks given by President Barrow and Sister Barrow and a few missionaries and members interspersed with musical numbers. The topics were pretty diverse, ranging from Christmas to Christ to "light" to "more important than praying for investigators is praying to meet a good wife" (my personal favorite talk; it was given by on of President Barrow's counselors, and it was really really funny). Then we had lunch together (chicken, potatoes, salad, rice, rolls), watch clips from "Remember the Titans" to learn about companionship unity, then had a talent show put on by various missionaries, and finally we watched Ephriam's rescue. It was fun, but I was kind of ready to go home by the end; the meeting was almost 8 hours long!

 

Wednesday was the 상인 (Sangin) ward Christmas party, which, like I said, was pretty crazy. A lot of members invited friends, and we had like 3 investigators show up, but we were so busy couldn't spend a lot of time with them. The party was supposed to start at 7:00, but we started decorating at 7:00, so we started 20 minutes late, and then we got a phone call from the 2nd counselor asking my companion to go ahead and start and conduct the meeting until he could get there. I didn't really do anything but I was really really stressed anyways, haha. The actually meeting went well once the 2nd counselor got there and all the performances were really good. I think the members enjoyed all of it. The pinnacle was Elder 박 (Bak)'s magic show though; he's been learning magic as a hobby since middle school, and he did a really, really good job. The next Sunday, all the members came up to him to say thanks.

 

Oh, and we did a song and a short skit... that we started preparing about 6 hours before the meeting started. We were really busy and Christmas seemed really far away so we didn't prepare that much. The skit too though, in the end, turned out okay. I think the members liked it and didn't realize how much time we didn't put into it.

 

Then the meeting wrapped up and everyone gathered to eat delicious food which we missed because it was too late and we had to get home. Some members were nice enough to wrap up some food and give it to us, so we got to eat it together.

 

Then on Thursday, we went to another Christmas party, because the bishop asked Elder 박 (Bak) to put a performance on there. The meeting was pretty good (I honestly think that 상인 (Sangin) had better performances though, haha) but I was just there to hang out so it wasn't a problem.

 

So that pretty much wraps up our Christmas schedule, and things are setting back down.

 

One investigator who showed up to the Christmas meeting, Brother 이주영 (I Juyeong) is doing pretty good right now; he's not actually an investigator yet, since we haven't taught him any lessons, but he's shown up to English class twice (he really, really, really loves foreign languages. His dream is to master English, Japanese, German, Spanish, and like 2 other languages), came to the ward barbeque, Christmas party, and the young men's activity we had after English class. Hopefully, we can invite him to learn more about our Church, and we can start teaching him.

 

We had another investigator who came to the party Brother 김재수 (Gim Jaesu), but he's a little bit further from taking the lessons. He's said he had interest in our church; he lives nearby and so has seen our church a lot and said that he thinks our church seems different from other churches. He showed up to the party, but then left partway through and came back and then left early, but I wasn't able to talk with him (I spent a lot of time with 이주영b (I Juyeong)). But he said that he doesn't like being pushed so we'll have to take things kind of slow and keep inviting him out to activities and English class and stuff.

 

We've got a few other potentions, but those are the main people we're working with.

 

We had Zone Training Meeting, MLCM, and SPM in the next two weeks, so we'll be very busy for the next few week taking care of all that.

 

Here's a few pictures - one of us with our "Magic Class" students - a couple of super active young men (if we ask them to come out to an activity, they always always come; Elder 박 (Bak) has been here for close to 5 months now, and he says they haven't missed a magic class yet) plus a member, Brother 배경태 (Bae Gyeongtae) who showed up because we told him we would be having a party. And I'll send a picture of us eating our after-Christmas feast, and of us testing out a "selfie stick" that we got.

 

Alllirghty I think that's about it for this week... Until next week then!

 

Have a happy New Year's~!

 

Love,

- Elder Luke

Here's a few random pictures that Elder Maccarthy sent to us....

Transfer 13, week 2 - Merry Christmas! (December 22, 2014)

안녕하세요 (Annyeonghaseyo)!

 

Merry Christmas!

 

I think we've got things arranged for Skype on this side, and so I'll be seeing you all in a few days!

 

This week was pretty crazy... I think I wrote about it last week but Elder 박 (Bak) got sick, and he was starting to get better, but then had too much food before he completely healed and so he got sick again (in retrospect, the seasoned steamed cheese chicken was probably pushing it after he spent an evening throwing up...).

 

We went to a doctor's office, and the doctor said to not eat anything for three days, and so that's what we did (the doctor is a total quack by the way; they took his blood pressure, Elder 박 (Bak) talked to him for like 3 mintues ("I threw up and got better and then I ate chicken and I don't feel good anymore"), and the doctor diagnosed him with an "inflammed stomach" without doing ANY kind of test whatsoever... Korean medicine seems kind of not sound at all), and so we got medicine.

 

He actually wasn't feeling that bad, but since he wasn't eating, Elder 박 didn't have a lot of energy to go outside and walk around and stuff. He's much, much better now by the way, so I think it's a good thing we took things kind of slow.

 

So that means we had to spend a lot of time this week at our church or house kind of doing busy work/stuff we can do without moving too much. I think I mentioned the Christmas cards our mission made; we spend a good deal of time preparing those (printing off and gluing messages onto them) and we gave out a bunch yesterday. We're supposed to be giving out like 10-15 cards a day, and we definately have not been doing that, so we have a bunch of cards that need to be given out before Christmas.

 

We spend maybe an hour to an hour and a half giving out the cards (one of us held a board that basically said "Take a card! Merry Christmas!" and the other gave out the cards as we wandered around 대구 (Daegu)). To be honest, it's pretty easy missionary work; there's not a lot of thinking we had to do, but it felt really good to finally step out, do something, and be able to count the numbers to prove that we worked (we gave out 105 cards this week, with some 90ish yesterday. We really need to be giving more out though).

 

Other than that, we've had a lot of planning an practicing (well, not as much practice as we need) for various Christmas meetings and other meeitings we have planned, so again, kind of a slow meeting.

 

We met with Brother 변수환 (Byeon Suhwan), a member, this week. To be honest, we were with him for a super long time because he said he wasn't ready to hear our message (he instead demanded our wallets and then spent like 20 minutes checking them out. He's kind of a funny/strange man (probably would be funnier if I could understand his jokes), but that was kind of weird). The message, however, went really well. Brother 변 is kind of a jokester, but he seemed to think really hard and he was really serious during the message. Have you seen the video "Heavenly Father, Earthly Father?" We showed that to him, and talked about the role of fathers.

 

Oh! I had actually planned to send a Christmas package, but that didn't work out, and so I wanted to send a bunch of pictures as a Christmas present insead, but that didn't work out super well either; I had hoped to have saved a tooooon of cool pictures but I'll send what I have (I thought about it, and I'm basically not giving the pictures I should have send earlier and then calling it a present, which is a pretty lame present). It's not much, but enjoy!

 

Talk to you on Christmas!

 

Love,

- Elder Luke

So here's a few pictures from 이기대 (Igidae) a couple of transfers back. I tried to save the cooler pictures for this...

Here's a few more from 이기대 (Igidae)...

Here's a picture I took in 남포동 (Nampodong, a big shopping district in Busan), along with some random rainbow stairs we found in 광안 (Gwangan). The stairs are pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but they were pretty cool so we took a few pictures on a pday when we had time.

The first picture is me with Elder 홍의택 (Hong Witaek -- Andrew's first companion in Gwangan, from the latter part June through the first part of August last year)  - he had to come down to Busan to do military stuff, so we got to hang out with him during lunch after a district meeting. The next is our district picture, and the last is just to say, "Merry Christmas!"

Transfer 13, week 1 (December 15, 2014)

안녕하세요 (Annyeonghaseyo)!

 

Last week was transfer week, but nobody in our house got transfered, so everything will be pretty much the same here in 상인 (Sangin). It's Elder 박재훈 (Bak Jaehun)'s last transfer, as well as Elder 허신행's (Heo Sinhaeng) last (I don't know what to call him... roommate? fellow 상인 (Sangin) missionary?), so we'll definately see some changes next transfer. Until then, things will be pretty quiet.

 

It's been kind of snowy in 대구 (Daegu) - it's snowed like twice now I think. Nothing major; it snowed maybe half an inch once, but that melted by noontime. It's pretty cold though - I'm going to have to buy warmer socks because my feet are always cold, haha.

 

This last week was really good. Well, actually Elder 박 (Bak) got really sick and threw up and had to rest a lot (don't worry, everyone else is healthy. I'm pretty sure whatever he has isn't contagious. Or at least, nobody else has got it yet. It was probably something weird he ate, but we had lunch with the district and then dinner together, so maybe he's just super unlucky) , but other then that, I think things are slowly starting to pick up in 상인 (Sangin).

 

To be honest, we really weren't busy the first like 4 weeks here. Well, we were busy, but it was a lot of planning and meetings and other stuff that zone leaders have to deal with. I wrote last week about how excited we were for this week, and while it didn't turn out exactly how we wanted (partly because Elder 박 (Bak) was sick and pretty much couldn't eat food), things are still going well.

 

We started meeting with Brother 배경태 (Bae Gyeongtae). He's a less active that was baptized like a year ago, but was reactivated by a missionary coming back to 대구 (Daegu) to visit members and friends. I think it was his 3rd or 4th time coming to church when I first got to 상인 (Sangin), so he's been to church for like 10 weeks in a row now, so he's not considered less active anymore. New coverts are supposed to meet with the missionaries to learn more about our church (we've got a program called the 90 day program that we use), but since Brother 배 (Bae) didn't recieve those lessons, we've decided to go over them again with him. So while it's not a new investigator, he's someone new that we can meet with, plan for, help and teach, which is really really awesome. :D

 

There's another recent convert of about 6 months, Sister 최진영 (Choe Jinyeong) who's most of the way through the 90 day program, but the 상인 (Sangin) sister missionaries were taken out of our area before she finished all the things she needed to learn. We kind of put off meeting with her since she's a woman, and we need a man to meet us with her, but we meet her once this week. We only need to meet with her one or two more times to be done, and then I'm not sure what we'll do after that (her sons and husband aren't members, so that's kind our big goal with her, to help her family be baptized as well).

 

We've also got a new person showing up to English class - he's a high school student who is super into foreign languages (his English name is "Fieheieht" or something. It's apparently German for "freedom." I probably would have thought that that was super cool when I was his age too...). He's only shown up once to English class, but I'm preeeetttyyy sure he'll keep coming. We had a party at the church after English class last Saturday, and he stayed and hung out with our members for a few hours. I don't think he talked with a lot of people or made bunch of friends or anything, but I don't think he felt super uncomfortable or anything, and he's probably come out to other ward activities if we invite him.

 

Other than that, we've got few potential investigators here and there (a few contacts we've forgotten to recontact, a guy who called wanting to know about English class (who actually came to English class after the class started, and came up to the door that we were having it, but didn't go in because it was closed. Noooo~!)), and it feels like we're slowly pulling together a group of people we can work with. If we can continue to work like this, I think we can find investigators and be teaching a lot more by the end of the transfer.

 

Mom asked me about whether I like being a zone leader and doing zone leaders stuff or being a normal missionary and doing that; it's hard to say, because it always feels like the grass is greener on the other side, you know? I think the area I'm in is hard until I transfer, and then I look back on it with like fondness or something - I looked at leaders and thought that they were so good and important and stuff, and then when I become a leader I realize that it's just more work, haha. Well, it's a different kind of work in any case. I should just be happy with where I'm at, right?

 

Oh, and I'll try to get Skype to work for this Christmas. We're allowed to call our Christmas day, so your Christmas Eve. I've emailed Dad a little bit about the details, so hopefully everything will work out by the 25th.

 

Talk to you next week~! (Oh, email will be on the 24th, and not that Monday, so it'll be late because of our Christmas meeting).

 

Love,

- Elder Luke

Transfer 12, week 6! (December 8, 2014)

Hello~!

 

Oh, Elder 박 (Bak) and I are super excited for this next week; it's pretty much the first week this transfer where we don't have any kind of major meeting or thing to plan for, which means we get to have a pretty much normal week! Things have been working out really well, and we've got quite a few appointments (mostly with members, a few with some less active-type people), so we're going to be busy (especially compared to what we've been doing recently).

 

Let's see... so this last week, our big meetings were SPM and MLCM. SPM is the Stake Presidency Meeting (which I wrote about last time), and we spent most of the first half of the week preparing for that; so calling people and organizing all the information into a document. The meeting itself is pretty easy; the Stake President looks over our files and basically asks questions or suggestions based on what he sees. We don't actually do much; we just have to be ready to answer questions about investigators if he has any. Basically what happened at that meeting is that that stake president asked us to help missionaries to try and visit with members more, andt also told us that the one branch in our zone not doing a Christmas party needed to make one. We'll talk to the zone leaders about missionaries visiting members, and we already made the called needed about the Christmas party, so everything's pretty much in order from that meeting.

 

We also had MLCM, which is a meeting where all the zone leaders and sister training leaders gather in 부산 (Busan) to have a meeting about concerns and focuses for the upcoming month. We talked alot about leadership and planning and goal-setting, and also about the "He is the Gift" missionary project/initiative (no idea what it's actually called). Have you seen the video yet? It's kind of a big social media push, but the church made a Christmast video about the birth of Christ, and I'm pretty sure it's a big worldwide push to try and use the video to find investigators. The church produced a bunch of pass-along cards with a QR code linking to the video, and we're supposed to pass them out during the holiday season. Our mission printed 29,000 cards, which is pretty insane. Looking at the paper we got regarding the "He is the Gift" video, we're each supposed to get like 15 cards a day to pass out; the AP's said 500 per team for the entire mission. Honestly, that's kind of hard to do, especially for busy teams (which we aren't.......), and on top of all that, we haven't recieved the cards yet (the project kickoff strarted on the 28th of November I believe, so it's been some 10 days since we were supposed to get the cards and pass them out)! So we're going to have to work super hard to try and pass out the cards - like maybe 20 a day?

 

So hopefully things are running a little bit more smoothly over in the US and you've gotten that card from the missionaries and have seen the video and are sharing it with your friends and stuff. How are things in the US? It it as big of a deal as the MLCM made it out to be?

 

So that's kind of the main things that went on this week; it just takes a couple of meetings and preparation for said meetings to fill up our schedule and keep us busy!

 

Something fun though - a member invited us over for lunch (she owns a restaraunt) and so we and the B team headed over to meet with them. We though we were just going to eat together and share a message, but it turns out that they were making 김치 (kimchi) and for some reason didn't tell us. Actually, I have no idea if we were called to help make the kimchi or not, but one way or another, we were roped into making kimchi (not that we didn't want to, but we probably would have worn less nice clothes had we had known). So I'll send a few pictures of that.

 

Most of the work was done for us; they had a mountain of cabbage and a bathtub full of red sauce ready for us. One person kind of cleaned the cabbage and took off bad leaves, and the rest of us slathered said cabbage with the red sauce (I'm not sure exactly what it is - I think it's mostly hot peppers with some other sliced vegtables and maybe some seafood). I was on the slathering team, and so I had kind of a tray in front of me, and one of the members poured a huge spoonful of red stuff on my tray, and I would then take the cabbage and put the sauce all over it (with my gloved hands, no other special tools), making sure to get it between all the leaves and stuff. Then when it was done, put it in a bucket, and got another head of cabbage. It was pretty simple, and we finished in about an hour.

 

It's actually my first time in my time in Korea making kimchi, so now I can say that I feel that my mission is complete, haha.

 

I think the members want us to visit like every week, so we'll probably end up going over to help out with odd jobs like that - making kimchi, doing dishes, cooking, etc. We don't have anything down for sure, but one of the members was reminicisng about the days when the missionaries visited every week and did random stuff for him, so we'll see how that goes...

 

Alrighty, as always, it's kind of short, but that's pretty much what went down this week! Thank you so much for your letters and love and prayers! Until next week!

 

Love,

- Elder Luke

Transfer 12, week 5 (December 1, 2014)

Hello!

This week was kind of similar to last week.... I don't know, but work to do just seems to crop up. Elder 박 (Bak) and I talked about it a bit, and we both decided we need to do something to try and do more missionary work (find and teach investigators that is). Haha, but we have a couple of big meetings we need to prepare for this next week, plus exchanges, so we'll see what happens.

You might have to send me some questions for me to answer because I don't really know what to write about...

I guess I was kind of sick this week so that didn't help in our efforts to do more work in 상인 (Sangin).

Oh, we had Zone Training Meeting this week (where our whole zone gets together and has a meeting). It was really stressful to be honest. Normally, I would go to those meetings and listen to the talks, but this time around we were busy and worried about other things so I couldn't enjoy the meeting...

As far as Zone Training Meetings go, kind of the hardest part is to think about our zone and try to discern what it is that they need, and then base the meeting around that. The actual execution is pretty easy since we give assignments to the district leaders (well, we normally prepare a talk or do some part of it), but anyways, it takes a long time for us to think and prepare the different topics. And of course, at the actual meeting itself, we as the zone leaders are in charge of making sure that everything runs smoothly, and so we spent the meeting running around mostly. I think the second zone meeting we do will be better now that I kind of know what we're doing and how things go though.

Other than that, we had do a lot of preparation for SPM (Stake Presidency Meeting), where we report to the stake how the missionary work is progressing in our zone. Basically, we have to call all the missionaries in our zone and ask them about progressing investigators, recent converts, English class and ward mission leaders. So we had to spend a lot of time in the church calling people, and then we put that information in a document to present to the stake. That takes a lot of time as well; the calls take like 15 minutes if people don't have anything new to report, and then like 40 minutes if people have a lot of new investigators and stuff. And we have maybe 14 teams in our zone and then we lost our old SPM documents as our ward computer got updated so this week's been pretty crazy.

Oh, and both of these meetings are monthly, so it's a really time-consuming affair unfortunately.

I don't have much to write, so I'm probably going to have to start writing down some of my thoughts and things I'm learning....

This morning, I was reading an old Liahona magazine, and there was an article in there by Elder Faust I think, about testimony. Now, missionaries have a lot of chances to bear their testimony, and so every fast and testimony meeting, or testimony meeting after a meeting, I think about what kind of story or experience I can share.

The Liahona article contained a list of things a testimony isn't, and in that was a story or experience. It then went on to explain that a testimony is a statement of belief, and while we can use a story to help illustrate what we believe or how we became to believe it, a story or experience alone is not a testimony.

So what I learned is that the most important part of a testimony is the testimony. I think that I focus too much on the story or whatever, and then not spend enough time on what actually matters. I've had times where I didn't have a story so I didn't share my testimony, so there's a lot of room for me to improve.

Preach my Gospel says that one of the best ways to help investigators feel the spirit is to testify frequently, and so that'll be something that I will be trying to improve on!

I think that's about it for this week; until next week!

Love,

- Elder Luke

Bonus info: I asked him about social media in Korea, as a follow-up to his letter last week, and here's what he said:

Facebook is really big in Korea (probably everywhere on earth, really) as is something called Kakaouto (I think? I have no idea). Basically, I heard that it's a free text messing service, but that and Facebook are by the biggest social media giants. I don't think people use twitter at all.

And yeah, smartphones are huuuuge in Korea (America is probably similar...), so I think most people just use those.

President Barrow mentioned that they're planning to roll out iPads in Japan (like in all of Japan), but that they don't have any plans for Korea yet; he says we shouldn't wait to do social media stuff either, so we're just going ahead with it. He said that it's pretty distracting though; a lot of missionaries have to spend a lot of time going through their history and deleting unmissionarylike things and then they look at pictures and old posts and stuff and apparently it's kind of a mess.

We'll see what happens to our mission though!

-Elder Luke 

Transfer 12, week 4 (November 24, 2014)

안녕하세요 (Annyeonghaseyo)!

 

I can't believe how fast this transfer has gone! It's already halfway over! What!? We haven't even done anything this transfer yet...!

 

Life in 상인 (Sangin) is pretty good - as expected, we did a lot of planning this week. We have a zone meeting this week (a monthly meeting that we have to plan for all the missionaries in our zone (obviously)), so we spent some time planning that, we had a meeting with the stake presidency (which we had to plan a bit for), our weekly planning, and some other stuff that I forget (oh I remember; we had to go down to Busan for a meeting). On top of that, Elder 박 (Bak) got sick this weekend, and so he slept for like 8 extra hours this last Saturday, so it's been a pretty slow week overall, but we got done what we needed to.

 

I've been trying really hard this transfer to memorize the names of people in 상인 (Sangin) (so the members) - last transfer, I didn't know the names of most of the single relief society sisters, and the youth of the ward until the end of my last transfer, and I felt pretty bad about that, so I'm trying to fix that. Sangin is bigger (70 people), so it's a bit harder, but I was looking around in Priesthood meeting last Sunday, and I knew the names of everyone except one brother, so I feel pretty good about that. There's a bunch of children here though, and they're kind of hard to try to get the names down for, but I figure I'll just memorize them last. It's really hard to memorize people who I've never talked to. If the members invite us over for a meal, they're the easiest to remember names for, haha. I think the extra effort I'm putting in (I made little flash cards for everyone and I study them when I have free time) is paying off though; my goal is to memorize everyone's (or maybe everyone - the really young kids') names by the end of the transfer, but we'll see about that.

 

Our investigator Brother 김태한 (Gim Taehan) didn't come to church again - he was out somewhere travelling with his family. He's really hard to meet it seems.

 

We got a referall from a member this past week - he's the son of a less active lady. One really really active sister in our ward has been visiting the mother for some time now, and the mother wanted to come out to church with her son. I'm pretty sure she didn't tell her son that they were going to church, but well, he showed up. He didn't like church that much though (maybe because he didn't know he was going), and so he left right after. Anyways, he's a potential investigator. Our ward mission leader asked us to try and do some basketball or do something fun with him to try and be friends with him before we talk too much about church.

 

Other than that... the kind of big news for the mission is social media missionary work. I'm not sure at all what's going on in America, but there's been a lot of meetings and firesides to try to encourage members to share the gospel through the internet. That's one thing that we as zone leaders have been asked to do - present social media member missionary work to the missionaries so that they can encourage the members to do it. There's a lot of problems to that (like we have really restricted access to the internet), but I guess that's the kind of things we need to do as zone leaders.

 

So real quick, here's an experience I want to share...

 

This last General Conference, someone, I think Elder Richard G. Scott, gave a talk and talked about prayer. He said prayer should be a conversation with God - we can talk freely about our experiences, fears, concers, thanks, questions, pretty much whatever we want. I heard this and felt that my prayers needed improving - we always pray every morning and night, but I'm usually really tired so the prayers aren't that good. Anyways, so what I decided to do (this is in 광안 (Gwangan)) is to not pray on top of my bed (to warm and soft and easy to get sleepy) but to go to a separate room and pray. It was kind of hard at first, but being in the different room helped to be able to think more about what I should pray about, I could pray out loud, and it felt a lot more private, so it was really good. I think my prayers improved a lot from that.

 

So in Sangin, since there's 4 people here, it's really hard to pray by myself in a room (there's the kitchen but the kitchen is always suuuper cold), but I've been feeling that my prayers weren't as sincere as they should be. In the end, I just decided to try and try harder when I prayed. I haven't done anything hugely different, but I think the difference has been huge. I can't really explain it, but I think I feel more peaceful now, and I'm able to really think about what when on during the day when I pray. I also think I pray more now - whether it's at the house during study time, or one the street walking somewhere, or whenever, I think I turn to prayer more now.

 

There's a scripture in D&C where God says something "Seek me and I will find you" and I've been able to feel that through trying to improve my prayers. As I've tried to pray more earnestly, I've been able to feel more peace, and more love from God.

 

Thank you for all you do! Have a great week!

 

Love,

- Elder Luke

P.S.

Here's a picture of me with Elder 박 (Bak) that I took the other day.

Transfer 12, week 3 (November 17, 2014)

Hello!

How is everyone? Things have gotten pretty cold over here in Korea, so being outside a lot is kind of hard. I heard it snows sometimes in 대구 (Daegu), so we'll see if that happens this winter...

I got to teach my first lesson in 상인 (Sangin) this week! We met with Brother 김태한 (Gim Taehan) (can't remember if I wrote about him, but he was baptized, then got in a car accident, and hasn't been confirmed yet) this Friday (if I remember right...). We just had a short lesson about the importance of the gift of the holy Ghost. Brother 김 (oh, he's like 27ish) is kind of quiet, but he's really kind and actually understand the gospel really really well. The lesson went pretty good, and he promised that he would come to church to recieve the gift of the holy ghost.

Unfortunately, come Sunday, Brother 김 is nowhere to be found. We called him and texted him, but he didn't pick up, no replies or anything. It's been maybe a month now since he's been baptized, so while it was really good that we were able to meet him, he really needs to come to church.

We met with a couple of members this week - one of them is Brother 손지훈 (Jiihoon Son; the romanization is really bad...). He's blind, and can't show up to church super often because it's really hard for him to get around. He's really nice though, and he has a lot of faith. I guess he likes the missionaries, and so Elder 박재훈 met with him once every couple of weeks last transfer, so we'll probably do the same this transfer. Nothing too special about the visit - we shared a message, ate some food, and just talked for awhile.

As zone leaders, we do a lot of exchanges (mostly with the district leaders, but Elder 박 (Bak) does exchanges with other I guess "normal" missionaries as well), so I was able to visit the 대명 (Daemeyong) B team this week. It went pretty well - we got pretty badly lost but managed to find the person we were looking for, we gave a presentation about our church to a bunch of old people at a local college with the 대명(Daemeyong) A team (by "we" I mean "the Korean elder"), and then had a lesson.

Exchanges are kind of difficult - it's not hard to spend a day with another elder (it's a little disruptive of our own 상인 (Sangin) missionary work, but that's not a huge problem), but it IS hard to try to spend those 24 hours completely focused on thinking about how to help my temporary companion. I was with Elder Godfrey, who's been in Korea now for like 2 months. His trainer is Korean, and so I think Elder Godrey had a good time serving with a companion who speaks fluent English. We were able to talk a lot, which is really important for exchanges.

Exchanges is one of the most important way that leaders can teach missionaries - that 1 on 1 setting is really important I think. I've learned a lot from my leaders through exchanges, and I hope that I'll be able to help people through exchanges.

I don't have a ton of time, so I'll going to wrap up with some thoughts I've had. I've been thinking a lot lately, kind of trying to solve problems. We, as zone leaders, need to do a lot of planning and studying and thinking to try and help others and make meetings happen, so I'm trying to apply that to personal study. There's a lot of questions - "how can I work harder?" "how do I work better as a missionary?" "what are my plans after my mission?" etc etc, and I think it's really important that we put effort into what we do. I was praying about one of these questions (I hadn't done a lot of serious thinking about it), and a thought came to me, which said "You haven't thought enough about this."

I think God really wants us to learn, and in order for us to learn, we can't expect him to give us everything. Like it says in D&C (I probably should know the reference... section 9?), we need to study it out, and then ask God if it's right.

I think about the First Vision, and I think one of the reasons that Joseph Smith was able to get an answer to his prayer was because he did a lot of diligent study before the prayer. He went to different churches, he studied the Bible, and I'm sure he did a lot of thinking to try and figure out an answer.

One thing I've learned this week is that if we really expect to get an answer from God, we have to do our own part to think and plan, and then if we ask for help, he'll help us.

Thanks for all you do! Sorry that my emails have been short lately... I'll try and think of more to write, haha. Until next week!

Love,

Elder Luke

It's been awhile since I've sent pictures I think, so I have no idea what I've sent and what I haven't, so I'm just going to send a bunch your way.

Here's a few pictures: Elder Lees and I at the 5k, a meal we had with our intermediate and advanced English class students (this is all in 광안 (Gwangan) of course), and then a district picture.

Here's a picture of us at the pop song service activity we did with a group of blind people (I'm not sure exactly how the group was organized - I would guess it's some sort of goverment-based thing...)

Another one of our English class...

And a picture with Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) (whom as far as I'm concerned, has NOT been baptized yet!!!!).

Here's a picture with Elder Boome (I didn't take hardly any when I was in 포항 (Pohang)) and our district went out to a "meat buffet" today, so here's a picture of that.

Transfer 12, week 2 (November 10, 2014)

안녕하세요 (Annyeonghaseyo)!

Like no time to type this week either... I'm really sorry!

So first week as Zone Leader is over! We were super busy this week (actually I think Zone Leaders are super busy all the time, but it's not with normal missionary activities). We had what's called "SPM" or "Stake Presidency Meeting" where we have to report on how all the missionaries in our zone are doing. So we spend my first few days on the phone with other missionaires, asking them about how their investigators, recent converts, ward missionaries and english class are doing. Then we threw all that information into a document so that we could present it to the stake president at the meeting.

Then we had exchanges with 안동 (Andong) (famous city in Korea for having a lot of tradition Korean culture type stuff), which is ridiculously far (took us 2+ hours to get there from our house which is another 2ish hours from the mission home, and then we had to come all the way back), and so we spend a lot of time towards the end of the week on a bus.

But SPM is over now, so we should be able to follow a more normal schedule. Zone Leaders also have to do a lot of planning, so we have a few more exchanges (my companion says he usually does them once a week) to plan, as well as our Zone Meeting, and then a few things to organize for a stake meeting that's coming up. Aaah!

Luckily, my companion, Elder 박재훈 (Bak Jaehun), is a really experienced Zone Leader - I think this is his fifth transfer doing Zone Leader, so he knows what he's doing really well. I'm grateful I get the change to work with him this transfer and learn and try and figure out what it is I need to do!

A lot of what we do is worry about people. We spend a lot of time thinking about the different missionaries in our zone, how to help them be better missionaries, trying to figure out how they're getting along with their companions. It's a different kind of missionary work (we help missionaries more than investigators), but it's still really really important.

As far as the area goes, I don't think we have any really strong investigators. There was a person who was baptized a few weeks before I got to 상인 (Sangin) who then got in a car accident and was not able to recieve the gift of the Holy Ghost. He's slowly getting better. But other than that, we don't have any serious investigators.

The 상안 (Sangin) ward is pretty big. 71 people showed up (a lot of those were children though; at least, a lot lot more than live in 광안 (Gwangan)!). There's a fair number of families as well, so the ward seems pretty strong. Don't really have much to say about that...

I think that's about it for today - I know it was short, but we really just spend our time this week with SPM, planning, and exchanges with 안동 (Andong)! I'll try to write more next week!

Love you all!

- Elder Luke

Transfer 12, week 1 - Daegu (November 3, 2014)

안녕하세요~ (Annyeonghaseyo)!

 

I got a call last Thursday, and I've been transferred to the 상인 (Sangin) 와드 (wadeu = ward) in 대구 (Daegu)! 대구 (Daegu) is the thirdish largest city in Korea, and this is my first time in the Daegu area (it's the northernmost zone in our mission). I'll also be serving here as a zone leader.

 

My new companion's name is Elder 박제훈 (Elder Jaehoon Bak), and I've heard a lot of good things about him.

 

So there's not a ton of time today - we took a bus for like an hour and a half to get here, and then had to drop by the house to drop stuff off - so this will probably be short.

 

Now, back to 광안 (Gwangan)...

 

This last week was really, really slow. Our ward mission leader asked us to make a few records for him - a digital record for our investigators (we keep really detailed records on paper, but those records aren't supposed to leave the house), as well as a simple record of everyone who comes to English class. Since we knew that one of us was transferring, we pretty much spent this last week typing up those records (which turns out to be a good thing since I left, and I knew the most about the investigators), which means we sat at a computer for a very long time.

 

Which probably would have been bad if we were really busy, but Elder Lees and I have kind of had a lot of time in 광안 (Gwangan)...

 

Brother 박신곤 (Bak Singon) responded to one of our texts (actually, the one I wrote about last week) and he said that his parents don't want him to meet with us anymore. They're strong members of another church, and so because of that, we're not going to be able to meet with him anymore.

 

So that puts our investigator count at 1 (Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong)), which is not really a good state to leave 광안 (Gwangan) in, haha.

 

In more positive news, our ward missionary meeting went well. There was a lot of last minute planning that had to go on, but I think people enjoyed it. We had one part where we gave people a list of situations that they might encounter (people inviting them to a baseball game on Sunday, and then practicing how to say know and teach about our belief about the law of the Sabbath), and then they practiced that for like 15 minutes in small groups. I think people really enjoyed that - it was a church meeting, but kind of had a relaxed atmosphere to it.

 

There were some other things that didn't really go to plan - we had a suprise visit from an Area Seventy who wanted to give a talk at the end of our meeting, but our ward mission leader did a really, really good job of making everything run smoothly, so I'm really grateful to him. He is a really, really good guy, and I think I'll miss him and how much he did to help us out.

 

Ah, I've taken a few pictures with members and things, but the computer I'm on doesn't allow pictures, so I'll have to send those later...

 

Have a good week! Sorry for the short email!

 

Love,

Elder Luke

Note:

대구: Daegu, which is the fourth largest city (Busan is second) and third largest metropolitan area in South Korea. The city has a population of about 2.5 million. It is actually slightly south of Pohang, where he was in the area before last. You can see it on the map here.

Transfer 11 - week 6, transfer week~ (October 27, 2014)

안녕하세요~ (Annyeonghaseyo)!

 

We had another 5k run today. The Barrows must really, really like it.

 

Because of that (and because Elder Lees and I needed haircuts to stay lookin' sharp) this email might be a little short. We don't have a ton of time, and I'm pretty tired. Elder Lees and I had gone jogging every morning (nothing too intense, usually 10 minutes or so) but we've stopped doing that since it's gotten cold. It's probably a good idea excercise, but the mornings are rough, haha.

 

광안(Gwangan)'s pretty much hit the bottom in terms of investigators. We talked with 정대영b (Jeong Daeyeong) about asking his parents for baptism, but he seems really set on not asking his parents about it. We asked him how we could help him be baptised, and he told us to give up trying to meet his parents. He's done all the lessons, understands them well, AND passed all the baptismal interview questions, so I'm not sure what's next... we need to keep meeting with him, so maybe we'll read from the scriptures with him or something. I don't know...

 

And we STILL haven't been able to meet with 박신곤b (Bak Singon)! (!!!!!) We sent him kind of an ultimatum text basically saying "Hey, we don't want to keep bothering you if you're not interested, but we really want to meet with you because we know what we teach will help you. Is there anything wrong? What's changed?" and we're still waiting for a response. We get spooked every time we get a text.

 

On the bright side, we were able to meet that new investigator I wrote about last week. His name is 김상윤b (Kim Sangyun) (the "b" stands for "brother" and it's kind of a shorthand used very frequently by the missionaries). We had a really good lesson with him - we talked about our purpose and how we work as missionaries (so we mentioned baptism and conversion (really, our purpose as missionaries is not really to simply "baptise" but "We want to help you be converted to our church and be baptised to become a member" is a lot more clear to most people than "we want to help you to come unto Christ"), and talked about the commitments we give), and he asked about some of the questions he had. We planned on talking about the Restoration, but he had questions that where more leaning towards the Plan of Salvation, so we ended up discussing that. He asked really, really good questions. He started to talk about the Creation, so I kind of feared that he would ask "how did God create the Earth?" but instead, he asked the much, much better "I understand that God did create the Earth, but I don't get why God created the Earth." I feel like that's a really deep question; 김상윤b (Kim Sangyun) seems to be a really sharp guy.

 

Unfortunately, he just kind of had passing interest - I think he'd be willing to meet again, but he's busy and he said he'd contact us if he had time. So right now, we can't meet with him... Oh and his wife seriously hates all churches and all religions apparently, so that doesn't help. He said he had to meet with us secretly.

 

Mom asked a question about the picture of Elder Lees and I at the restaraunt. We ate 돼지국밥 (dwaejigugbab = pork soup) there, which is kind of a pork-based soup. It's a very mild broth made of pork bone (I think) with pork chops in it. They give you a bunch of stuff to throw in as well, so I normally also add some very normal noodles (like somen), some red paste that I guess adds flavor, some kind of vegtable that looks like grass (I think it's onion greens, but now that I actually think of it, it's probably just some kind of grass), and then you usually dump in a bowl of rice and eat it all together. It's one of Elder Lees's favorite Korean dishes, and I think most Americans like it, since it's not TOO Korean.

 

And then Dad had a few questions on General Conference, and I probably already wrote all this but here it goes...

 

I don't think General Conference is broadcast at all - each ward or branch is responsible for getting their own stuff set up. So usually, somone brings their laptop, connects to the wifi, hooks it up to the projector, and that's how everyone watches it. There's really no set time either; different wards do it at different times. We (the American missionaries) just watched it directly from the computer, so it was pretty easy. We were given time to watch it all as well, so we didn't have to miss any sessions.

 

I had exchanges with one of our Zone Leaders, Elder Himmer this week. He's a pretty intense guy; but the exchanges were really good. I was able to talk with him alot about how we can be better missionary leaders and missionaries in general.

Not a lot of time, so I'll have to wrap things up.

It kind of seems like I'll be transferring this time around - trainers/trainees only stay together for 2 transfers, so someone's going to have to leave 광안 (Gwangan)... I'll write about that next week! Bye!

Love,

Elder Luke

Transfer 11, week 5 (October 20, 2014)

안녕하세요~! (Annyeonghaseyo!)

이번주도 구도자들을 많이 만나지 못 해서 시간이 많은 것 같았어요...

(Again, this week too, since there weren't many investigators, it seemed like there was a lot of time...)

Things have been pretty good in 광안 (Gwangan) - we weren't able to meet Brother 박신곤 (Bak Singon) this week (again!?), but we've pretty much wrapped up everything with Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) in terms of lessons. We also met a guy though English class that says he is fine with meeting us (he didn't really say he's super interested, but is willing to set up a time with us and meet), so that's really good news! We actually had an appointment for today, but he said his work schedule shifted around and so he can't make it; we'll have to get him next time.

Here's a story about Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong). We met with him last Saturday for a lesson, and we met at a local park instead of the church, which was kind of neat. It was also kind of distracting since people were like talking walks around us, but the lesson went fine (this isn't important, but Elder Lees and I wanted to spend a p-day at the park, but it turns out that the park is smallish and not as cool as it was advertised, so I'm kind of glad we got to check it out before we spend precious p-day time there. 정대영 형제님 (Brother Jeong Daeyeong) lives near the park, and so he said it's more convenient for him to meet there). So like I wrote in the paragraph above, we've wrapped up all the lessons, so we went over the baptismal interview questions. I think he thought that the questions would be really hard - he asked a couple of times "So is this like a test!?" "How much do I need to study for it?" but by the time we went through them all, he was like "Is this it? This is way easy."

So he knew the answers pretty well - there were a couple of things he needed prompting on.

"What does it mean to you that we have a living prophet on the earth?"

"Uh... this is a hard one...... what's the answer?"

"형제님 (Brother)! There's no right or wrong answer; it's just what you think. So what do you think?"

"Uh... prophets can tell us what God wants us to know?"

"Good!"

But that was pretty much the only thing he had questions about.

That means that Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) is all ready for baptism, and so our next step is to try and meet his parent and get their approval for his baptism!

Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) told us that he wasn't going to be able to make it to church on Sunday because he was going to another church; a friend that he hadn't seen for some time invited him. It was kind of funny - he kept telling us that he didn't think it would be okay to go because he needed to come to church to take the sacrament. He double-checked with us and asked "other churches don't have the sacrament, right?" He was suprised when we told him that he could go to the other church if he wanted (we can't really force him to come to our church, and so of course we wanted him to come, but we basically just said, "Hey, it'd be good if you came to our church" and left it at that).

Come Sunday, Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) doesn't show up at church, so we were a little disappointed, but then he walked in like 15 mintues late to sacrament meeting! We talked with him later and he said simply "I decided not to go to the other church." And then he stayed for the whole 3 hours. Elder Lees and I were happy that Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) made the right choice. He's a really, really good kid.

We also had a chance to meet with some of our members this week. To be honest, we haven't been meeting with people as much as we should be - people just tend to be really busy and hard to catch. Recently, if we've tried to meet someone and if they just can't find time time, we'll write like a letter/note and drop it off at their house. A couple of people that we've done that to seem to have appreciated it, so I think it's a pretty good idea. It's really nice meeting with the members - it's hard to feel like you know them well until you visit them in their home and share a message with them. Nothing really to speak about the meetings, but we met our goal for members visited this last week, and it's been a long time since we've been able to do that.

Elder Lees and I were out on the streets talking to people, and one person we said hi to responded with "it's the Mormons!" so we started talking to him. He kind of launched off into a story about how he met our missionaries some 10 years ago. I guess the missionaries taught him a song or something (?) - I'm not really sure. He also talked about how the missionaries came into his office and left some pamphlets and how good of people the missionaries are.

I realized that he was drunk a few minutes into the conversation, and the conversation lasted like 10 minutes.

Afterwards, Elder Lees said to me, "That guy was really friendly.", so I told him that he was probably drunk. He responded with "Drunk people and prepared people are surprisingly similar." Earlier in the week, Elder Lees had given a Book of Mormon to another drunk guy.

Elder Lees and I have continued to try to give out Book of Mormons this week, and since we couldn't meet with investigators that much, we've been doing a lot of that. Here's a few stories:

We met this one nice old man at a subway station. We weren't actually going anywhere - we were on our way to a meeting and we had some time so we were hanging out in the subway trying to talk to people (I've found that if people ask where we're going, the best response is "I'm waiting for a friend." I told (lied to) a guy in 포항 (Pohang) saying I was going to the bus terminal, and then he called me out and told me the ride the bus that was in front of us. I wasn't actually going to the terminal; I was at the bus stop to talk to people. So I probably said something stupid, gave him a pamphlet and left. "Waiting for a friend" is perfect because you're not actually obliged to go anywhere.), and this old man who was like half deaf was standing, so we started talking to him. He was really nice, and so we showed him a Book of Mormon, and he held it for maybe two minutes. He checked out the pictures, the introduction page, and then flipped through the book. His train came, so we told him to have the book, to which he hurriedly shoved if back into our hands saying, "Difficult." Elder Lees showed him a pamphlet as kind of an alternative ("Oh, then please take this little pamphlet with you! It's small and not difficult!") . He flipped through that, gave it back to Elder Lees, and then grabbed the Book of Mormon out of my hands and got onto the train. I'm not sure what was up with that, but hey, Book of Mormon given!

We also had a district Book of Mormon 전도 (jeondo = contacting) activity; we met up in a train station, said a prayer together, and then split up to try to give out as many Book of Mormons as possible. We were at an area near the beach, so while there were a lot of people there, it was kind of a bad atmosphere to talk about religion - a lot of foreigners, groups of people (friends, couples), and loud music. We planned for the activity to be about an hour and twenty minutes, and Elder Lees and I were having a hard time even just talking to people, let alone giving out a Book of Mormon. We made a plan to go to hang out at a nearby bus station where things would be quieter and where there would be a decent number of people. It was 8:15, right when we had to wrap up and go home, and we were blessed to be able to give a Book of Mormon to a nice old man. It seems like it's really often that it's the last person you talk to that is willing to accept the gospel, a pamphlet or whatever it might be.

I think that about does it - we went to 남포동 (Nampodong), which is a big shopping district. We went to the 짬뽕 (jjamppong) place we went to before - here's a few pictures. Have a good week!

Love,

- Elder Luke

Notes:

Thanks to Lynn for the translation of the first sentence!

남포동: Nampodong. You can see it on a map here. The area Andrew is usually working in is the peninsula to the east, and the area behind (west of) the bridge, up to the river. The island just across from Nampo-dong is Yeongdo, which was his first area.

짬뽕: Jjamppong. Google Translate gives this as "chanpon," which is a Japanese soup from Nagasaki, and which was inspired by a Chinese soup, similar to ramen. The English Wikipedia article doesn't say anything about Korean variants, but the Korean Wikipedia article shows two photos of the Japanese-style soup, and one photo of what looks a lot like what Andrew is eating in the photo, which looks like it has been Koreanized with near-lethal quantities of red pepper.