Hello!
Another fairly slow week this week, but things turned out well. It was super hot last week, but it got kind of rainy and cold this week which is actually kinda nice.
We have not been doing a very good job keeping in touch with Brother 공인후 (Kong Inhu), so we didn't meet with him this week. He's kind of in a half-dead state as an investigator - he's just really busy and not super interested.
We met with Brother 전성호 (Jeon Seongho) but the meeting kind of went iffy. It kind of looks like we'll have to drop him - he's pretty happy with the church he's going to now, and seems unwilling to switch/be open minded about things. We'll probably meet him one or two more times (we've been saying that for like a long time now... Elder 이영호 (I Yeongho, Andrew's previous companion) said he and Elder Harris (who was in 포항 (Pohang) before me) talking about dropping Brother 전성호 (Jeon Seongho)).
So that's kind of the bad news for the week, but we do have some excitingish news!
Brother 이창준 (I Changjun) accepted a baptismal date for the 29th of June! It was a pretty hesitant "yeah, I'll try" kind of commitment, but he said yes. He's still got a long way to go until baptism, but we're excited to keep working with him. He's the only baptismal date I've had since 이상남 (I Sangnam) way back in my first transfer (and I didn't actually give him the date), which is pretty crazy and probably a little sad (we haven't been teaching as much as we would like for sure; we tried really hard in 서귀포 (Seogwipo) to give brother 전충식 (Jeon Chungsik) a date, but he never said yes...).
So here's a little bit more on Brother 이창준 (I Changjun). He's single, 40, works as a safety manager in an electric company, and doesn't really seem to have a lot of direction in life. He likes working out and watching TV (he really likes "Friends"), and wants to learn English so he can travel around the world someday. His English is, uh, not that good but definately not the worst I've heard. He's a nice guy.
The main problem with Brother 이창준 (I Changjun) is that he's really, really quiet. He's opened up a little more as we've studied English, but he's still pretty quiet as we teach the gospel. He usually just kind of accepts things and says he doesn't have any questions. We've been trying to figure out what he's feeling or thinking as we teach, but he's pretty good at giving vague answers ("If there really is a life after death, how would that affect your life now?" "I'd probably have to be more kind." "...yes. Good."), or saying he doesn't know or hasn't really thought about it.
I thought I would be move excited about the baptismal date, but maybe it's hard to be excited because he's not that excited. Maybe someday we'll be able to find someone who's excited about the gospel. :/
Speaking of finding, we've been outside "전도"ing (jeondo -- probably 伝道) - trying to talk to people and find through doing that (I kind of prefer calling people on the phone or basically anything else, but Elder Boome doesn't really seem to like other finding activities so we don't do that that often).
Most people in Korea are really nice, especially to two foreigners so talking to people usually isn't too bad. There's people who throw out a "괜찮습니다" (kwaenchanhseubnida) (I'm fine) or "됬습니다" (doissseubnida) (not sure what that translates to - either "I'm done" "We're done" or "It's done") (Google Translate says "false prophets and guides"), after you talk for a bit, but that's usually pretty rare. Above that are people who will talk, but only if you ask questions. They're okay to talk to, but gets awkward once you run out of questions, haha.
And there's a lot of really nice people you can have a conversation with, and who will ask us questions back (mostly "where are you from?" "how long have you been in Korea?" "are you students?").
Anyways, we've been trying to teach about the gospel, but it's really, really hard. Handing out pamphlets is easy enough, but I don't know how many people read those. There's a section in Preach My Gospel under "Finding People" called "Find when you teach, teach when you find," and we've been trying to apply that, but it's not going so well, haha. It's hard to steer the conversation into important topics that we can actually teach and testify about, especially if you have like 3 minutes on a bus to do that. We're slowly improving, and we've doing a lot of practice, but we're still not quite where we want to be. Finding people is not easy work. :/
Studying with Elder Boome has been really good. We had one of the APs (assistant to the President - basically a missionary that serves as a counselor to the mission president) come over 포항 (Pohang) to help us out. He gave us some pointers, and it's helped us to focus on our investigators more. We're also trying to do some teaching practice every morning - there's a lot of times we think we know what we're going to teach, but it's hard to put it into words (especially in Korean!). Hopefully, we're teaching better as a result of all this...!
We had one "Ted Csomething" come into our branch. He's serving in the Navy (I think), and is stationed in Korea for 6 months. Not that that's super important, but just thought I'd mention it. He's from the States, Virginia, I think.
Oh, and one last thing: Dad, can you put some more money on my debit card? I've pretty much used up everything I came to Korea with. Thanks!
Well, I think that's it. If you have any questions, please send them my way~!
Thank you so much for your prayers and everything else you do! I miss you all!
Love,
- Elder Luke
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