Dear Family,
I can’t believe I’ve been in 포항 (Pohang) for two weeks. It feels like we’ve haven’t been able to do anything at all yet… Memorizing people’s names, bus numbers, knowing where what is (especially getting to places by walking!), finding member’s houses, just learning about the area in general; these all take so much time! It’s easy to keep forgetting about taking the time to sit down and learn these things. Four more weeks until I have to be in charge in 포항 (Pohang)! Ahh!
I went to our branch for the first time yesterday. Everyone seems nice, though I’ve only exchanged “hello”s with most people. My companion says that most of them speak really good English, so that’s a relief. I was flipping through our “member book” (which is basically a bunch of records that missionaries have made that has names, address, family members, personalities, and any other important information about the people in our branch), and a lot of them have served missions in the US. Elder 이영호 (I Yeongho) says we have a very talented branch!
We couldn’t meet with a lot of people this week; people were just busy for some reason. Luckily, we had a couple of special meetings (interviews with President Gilbert, and a Zone Meeting) this week, so we were still pretty busy anyways. I think things start picking up again this week.
Here’s one story from this week. Sorry it turned out a bit long!
We got a referral from the mission office this week. His name is 권대현 (Dehyun Gwon), and we’re not really sure what his story is. From what the office elders told us, he went to Hawaii on vacation, and the Church somehow got his address along with the fact that he’s interested in knowing more about temples and Jesus Christ (he probably visited a temple in Hawaii, and gave out his address and information there). The office elders also told us to try and act like we’re not actually looking for him, but to pretend like we just “happened” to find his house. I’m not sure where this instruction came from, but it felt like a special mission (not like a missionary mission, but like a spy mission; “Make it seem like it was an accident.”).
In any case, we set out to meet him.
Well, before that, let me explain this… In Korea, very much unlike Idaho, there are huge apartment complexes. The larger ones made by kind of big-name companies tend to be nice, with parks, and gardens, and security guards and whatnot. The apartment complexes also sometimes have passwords for each building. To get into the building, you need to either know the password, or someone has to let you in (there’s kind of like a telephone thing outside, and so you can call a specific apartment number, and they can open the door for you) (OR you can just follow someone that knows the password into the building, but the security guards don’t like that. They also don’t like it if you look lost. Did I write about that time when I was with Elder Platero, and the guards kind of got angry at us and kicked us out of the apartment in a niceish way? Probably?).
Uh… so anyways, 권대현 (Gwon Dehyun) lives in an apartment complex, so we were wondering how best to make it seem like we ran into him on accident. It would be really weird to call him up from the outside, but that was pretty much the only choice (choice #2: hang out outside his building, and hope he recognizes missionaries).
But we decided to not worry too much about it, so we went. We get to his apartment building still not knowing how to approach him, but strangely enough, the door was open. It’s kind of hard to explain, but the passworded door was closed, and there was a door right next to it that was open. So we were able to just walk in and go directly to his apartment!
It turns out he wasn’t home, and his wife or someone was, and they were busy, but still! We felt really blessed that we were able to get past the passworded door. We were able to leave a card with our phone number on it, and we’re hoping to be able to get in touch with him. I think there are a lot of little miracles in our lives; in this case, it hasn’t amounted to much yet, but I feel grateful that we were able to be a part of a little miracle!
One more story…
I’ve had another experience that’s made me think a lot lately. For some reason, I’ve been praying a lot the past few weeks that my Korean would improve. I prayed for that a lot when I first got to Korea, but it kind of fell off somewhere, and something motivated me to start praying for that again. As I was doing so, an experience from the MTC came to my mind…
(I might have already emailed this before…) At the MTC, I prayed a lot for my Korean ability, since Korean scared all of us do death. I remember feeling jealous if other people understood things I didn’t, or knew words I didn’t know. (It’s bad to feel that way, I know…)
One night, I was praying for help, asking Heavenly Father what I need to do to improve. Right after I finished my prayer, maybe 5 seconds after, an elder from my MTC district came and started talking to me. I didn’t bring it up, but we ended up talking about studying Korean. He said to me, “Learning Korean’s important, but as a missionary, what I need most is the Spirit,” and then he continued on to talk about how studying the gospel is just as or more important than our language ability. I took that to be my answer, and so when I had free time at night, I started reading the Book of Mormon instead of studying Korean.
So recently, as I’ve been praying about Korean, I thought about this MTC story and I’ve decided again to (rerere)reread the Book of Mormon. It’s a little bit difficult, because I was really excited about studying Korean more, but I think it’s the right thing to do.
This experience has helped to know better that God does answer our prayers, and that sometimes it’s in unexpected ways. It also made me realize that we need to put spiritual things first; whether that be prayer, scripture study, or going to church. To paraphrase President Henry B. Erying, “we need to find out what’s most important to God, and therefore to us,” and then we need to do those things.
Hm… I think that’s about it for this week. Hopefully, I’ll have a few more stories to write next week as well!
Thank you so much for everything! I’m really grateful for all your prayers and support! I love you!
- Elder Luke
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