안녕하세요 (Annyeonghaseyo)~
I don't know what to write this week. (update: Elder Boome has been emailing for forever, so while I don't have anything in particular to write, I've been writing it anyways...)
We had a meeting Saturday for President Gilbert. The district (not our mission district but district as in not quite a stake) had a meeting for him (because he's leaving in a few weeks!), and so we kind of spent the whole day there. For some reason, missionaries are expected to know how to sing, so we were part of a choir, which went reasonably okay, but far below the choir director's high expectations for us. We missed a choir practice last Sunday, so that didn't help (we had an appointment with a new investigator, but he wasn't home when we visited, so that was a little disappointing). One song wasn't even a hymn, and the choir practice right before the meeting was the first time I had seen the song. All in all, it went okay though.
Haha, I just reread that last paragraph, and I think you can tell that I'm tired. The weather's been really, really hot lately, and so maybe because of that I haven't been sleeping super well it seems. We don't have an a/c at our house yet - rumor has it that one is on its way.
Anyways, the meeting was good. For some reason, one of the main thoughts I had is "I need to be a more wonderful missionary." That wasn't talked about at all, but I feel like I'm at the point where I can really improve and do a lot more work. It's been a year, and now I know how to do basic missionary tasks well, and the language isn't as big of a deal (did I write about this last time?). So it feels like now just needs to be a time where I focus really well, and do the best that I can.
I forget who, but I know someone in General Conference asked everyone to get a copy of Preach My Gospel and study it. Do we have one at our house? Are you studying it? Elder Boome and I decided we want to read PMG over from the beginning (everyone reads it in bits, here and there, but we made a plan to be able to read all of it from cover to cover within two transfers (basically a chapter a week). I feel like we're both learning a lot from it so far - it's easy to forget a lot of the basics that are in it.
We kind of had a weird week last week. We're not as busy as we would like to be for sure, but finding people isn't really easy. Our ward mission leader said to not get frustrated or stressed, since our effort is more important than how many investigators we have. That's true, but I don't feel like I've been able to teach anyone who's actually been progressing in the gospel. But I suppose a lot of missionaries have similar experiences. We just do the best that we can anyways.
Elder 이영호 (I Yeongho, Andrew's previous companion) didn't like visiting members for some reason, so we didn't do that a lot last transfer (I think he that they were too busy). Elder Boome and I decided that that's not the right way to do things, so we've been trying to get to know the members at least a little bit better. We've been blessed to have a few opportunities to talk with our members. One member gave us a ride back from the Saturday meeting, so we talked with him for like an hour, which was really good. Yesterday, we had a "우정 모임" (ujeong moim) (which translates directly to like "friendship meeting"), so we got to spend some time with another member who gave us a ride. There's a lot of people we still don't know, but it's been a good week as far as that goes.
As for investigators, we've just basically been meeting the same people over and over again. We need to find new people... We had planned to spent a lot of time this week finding people, but somehow I don't feel like we were able to do that as much as we had hoped.
Oh, people have been asking about how Mom and Dad met (met like really briefly when Dad was missionary, then Dad went back for an intership, and you had a group of friends you would go sightseeing with, etc) - I know the story, but not really the details. Could you write about that and send it to me? Thank you~!
I guess I'll write a little about our district since we have time...
We have 8 missionaries in the district, in two areas. 포항 (Pohang) has us, and the senior couple, and 경주 (Gyeongju) has two elders and two sisters. 포항 (Pohang), as you already know, is pretty heavy into the steel industry, while 경주 (Gyeongju) is kind of a historical touristy area - it used to be the capital for some ancient dynasty or something, so there's a lot of historical sites around there. It takes like half and hour by bus to get from Pohang to Gyeoungju. I actually know pretty much everyone in our district. 경주 (Gyeongju) has Elder 김태운 (Kim Taeun) as district leader (he was in my district my last transfer in 영도 (Yeongdo)) with Elder Baker (was in my district for two transfers in 서귀포 (Seogwipo)). The sisters are Sister Redford (was in my district my first two transfers in Korea), and she's training Sister 강다현 (Kim Dahyeon) (who is new). I don't know where I'm going with this anymore. We have a good district.
To wrap things up, here's a few thoughts I've been thinking about this week...
The parable of the empty parable:
One of our investigators, Brother 공인후 (Kang Inhu), met with the missionaries like a year and a half ago, so he doesn't remember a lot from the lessons. He says that he's a visual learner, so a lot of the stuff he does remember involve doing some activity, or perhaps a drawing on a board or something like that. Amoung that which he remembers is a little activity that you do with your hands and a pen that demonstrates the need for prophets (it's hard to explain so I won't). 공인후 (Kang Inhu) very distictly remembers that the missinaries taught him something that he does with his hands (he usually very vaguely moves his hands at this point), nods, and says, ah, yes, the missionaries taught me this. The problem of course, is that he has no idea what the hand motions mean.
Elder Boome and I kind of thought it was just funny at first, but it's made me thing about other things that we just kind of see the outside and accept, but not really see the deeper meaning of. I'm sure there's a gospel application somewhere, but I can't quite figure it out. I guess one would be reading scriptures, learning the stories, but not the principles behind them, but that's kinda lame.
Moving on...
I think one of the most important things I've learned so far is about the Atonement. In sacrament meeting, or at the MTC or wherever, people would testify a lot about the Atonement of Jesus Christ, but I never understood it. But now, as a missionary, I'm learning what it means to rely on the Atonement. It's hard to explain. But I'm really grateful that Jesus Christ atoned for us, and that through the Atonement, God gives us strengh to be able to do what's right.
I'll write you all next week!
Love,
- Elder Luke
"The weather's been really, really hot lately": It looks like Pohang has been up in the high 80s, with high humidity, in the last week.
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