Hello!
This week was fairly normal, not too much to report on. Sorry!
We spent a lot of time sticking up 전단지's (I guess they're just called flyers in English, but the kind where there's strips of papers with phone numbers on the bottom, so people can tear off a piece and take it with them) around 서귀포, to try and advertise our English class. I definately said this, but in Elder 허정헹's last area, he did a lot of that.
Anyways, we were really blessed with that - on our second day of sticking up the papers, while were were out putting up the 전단지's actually, we got two phone calls from people who were interested in our class!
That doesn't seem like a lot, but I remember in on night in 영도, where my trainer and I handed out little English class flyers. We had maybe 200-250, and we gave them all out, but never got a single phone call. So it was really good to be able to get these contacts as early as we did, and to be able to get them at all! Oh, and one more person called today as well (Elder 허 says its much more fun when people call you every once in awhile. Our phone is kind of dead most of the time so...).
We're hoping that as we keep putting those up, we'll be able to grow our English class, and from there, find a few investigators. It's still kind of a long shot, but we're one step closer now! And if we get enough people, we might make another English class, and hope that through more advertising, and people referring their friends, our classes can keep growing.
Oh, but the contacts we've recieved so far are all women, which is annoying, because we can't really meet with them easily. We might just have to refer them to the sister missionaries, and hope we can find some men to meet with and teach...
Speaking of which, the sister missionaries in 제주시 called us yesterday, and they said that they want to start coming over to 서귀포 now! I think either our mission president or district president asked them to, and Elder 허 and I are really, really excited. There's a lot of things in 서귀포 that the elders can't do (oh, we have a rule that if we meet an investigator that's a woman, we have to meet her with a man. So we would normally go with a member, but that adds another schedule to work with, and it's a little bit awkward visiting someone with a gang of people), so having the sisters working with us will be great! So that's another little miracle as well - hopefully, we can get a lot of work done in 서귀포!
Ah, and other little miracle would be our English class. We had a couple of new people show up last week - one lady that we've been contacted for like 5 week now, and an aunt (or something) of one of the girls that show up. I'm used to seeing the same people come to English class, so it's exciting to see some new faces. Again, them coming to English class once is very very different from them having interest and joining our church, but it's a start (oh, and since they're both women, we'll probably let the sister missionaries figure out how best to work with them...).
We couldn't meet with 전충식 this week - he went up to Seoul for his sons's graduation from college, and then had other plans, so that's too bad. We'll start meeting him again regularly after this week.
Met 양군수 (newish investigator we first met a few weeks ago). Elder 허 says that 양군수 probably didn't go to college, and probably didn't get a good education. He says that 양군수's spelling is terrible, which is something I didn't (and probably coudn't) notice. It doesn't really matter, but it made me think that Koreans have the ability to notice things like that. Maybe someday I will too!
Uh, anyways, the lesson went fine. 양군수 is a nice guy. He gets a little distracted sometimes, and is a little bit hard to read, but Elder 허 says that he has a very pure heart, and while I don't really understand what that means exactly, I agree with the feeling behind it.
We also attended the mission tour this Thursay. That day was exhausting - I was kind of sick Wednsday, so I wasn't 100% percent to start with (much better now though), and riding a bus, sleeping over, plane, taxi, meeting, car, plane, bus was a looooot of travel to do over 2 days. But it's totally worth it if they don't make us watch it over Skype, because that is not at all the same. I've expereinced one meeting like that, and you simply can't get the same out of a meeting if you're not there in person.
We had a few talks - we heard from President and Sister Gilbert first. They both talked a lot about action. Sister Gilber kind of focused on praying for things like faith and charity, and then using those gifts. President Gilbert talked about a lot of things, but I guess really basically, the centralness of the Book of Mormon to our religions, the conversion process, and trying to work with the Spirit.
Elder Ringwood's focus for the meeting was Moroni 10, so we all studied that chapter beforehand. I thought we would talk alot about verses 3-5, since we use that a lot as missionaries, but we didn't really talk about it. We discussed spiritual gifts for bit, but basically, he just opened it up to questions.
And so what we talked about/what I personally learned/what impressed me the most was the fact that God asks us to to our best, and he helps us when we do. It's our job to try hard, and trust God to make up the difference when we fall short.
He said something that I really like, so I'll kind of paraphrase it here...
"God doesn't really care about yesterday. He cares very much, however, about today and tomorrow. He cares about what kind of person you are becoming, and what kind of person you will become."
That kind of ties in with repentance, and trusting God and doing your best; if yesterday wasn't good, it doesn't matter because today and tomorrow can be better.
I don't really know exactly how I think about al this, but the mission tour gave me a lot to think about. It was a really good meeting.
Well, I think that's it for now. I ended up writing a lot more than I thought I would, but I'm sure you all don't mind. It's because none of my friends emailed me this week. ;o;
Thanks for everything! I love you Mom, Dad, Rachel, Lisa, Daniel! Be good!
Goodbye~!
- Elder Luke
Notes:
전단지: jeondanji, the flyers with the tear-off phone number slips on them. Do we have a special word for those in English? I don't think so. Anyway, FWIW Google Translate just says that word is "leaflets."
서귀포: Seogwipo, the city he lives in.
허정헹: Heo Jeongheng, his companion.
영도: Yeongdo, his first area.
제주시: Jeju-si = Jeju city, the main city on the island of Jeju, which is where the other two sets of missionaries on the island are based.
서귀포: Seogwipo again.
전충식: Jeon Chungsik, the man they've been working with for several months now.
양군수: Yang Gunsu, the newish investigator. Andrew mentioned him in his February 24 letter.
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