Transfer 10, week 5 - 고기 파티 (Gogi pati = meat party) (September 8, 2014)

안녕하세요! (Annyeonghaseyo!)

Happy 추석! (Chuseok)

추석 (Chuseok) is a pretty big Korean holiday, and so things are kind of quiet around here. There's still a few cars, but all the stores and shops are closed and locked down. There's like nobody out on the streets! Luckily, it's P-day so it's not like it's a disaster or anything... things will start to go back to normal starting tomorrow, but things probably won't go back to 100% normal until the beginning of next week. I don't think it will interfere with missionary work that much though.

This week we'll have Mission Tour, where Elder Aoyagi (maybe in the area presidency? he's some kind of church leader that oversees Korea and Japan I think) will come and speak to us. So with that taking up most of Thursday, and 추석 (Chuseok) until maybe Wednsday, things look like they'll be a bit on the slow side this week, but there's not a whole lot we can do.

We had a (almost) missionwide p-day today for the holidays. Apparently, President Barrow and his whole family are runners, so he arranged a 5k for us all to participate in. I don't know if I have ever ran that much before. I ran with Elder Lees though, and he's slower than me, so it wasn't too bad to run. I wasn't able to get any pictures though, which is really too bad. I think the Barrows are planning another 5k (or possibly 10k!) for whatever holiday is next, so I guess I'll have more chances for pictures.

After that, they brought everyone back to the mission headquarters and we got to kind of hang out. They had a barbeque with delicious Korean 삼겹살 (samgyeopsal = ?), but there were too many missionaries and not enough grills. I think they continuously cooked me for like 1-2 hours, but they couldn't keep up with the number of people eating. I got like 5-6 pieces of meat (like bite sized pieces!), and there were people who ate less.

After that, it was kind of scheduled for the missionaries to do whatever; some people played  basketball, some people played board games, and most people just chatted with their friends. Elder Lees and I decided to leave early since we still had to do our emails, so we left as lunch was maybe 70% of the way through. I think it was a good choice though; it's really nice to be able to email comfortablely and not feel rushed for time.

We came home, showered and rested, bought some Ministop ice cream on the way to the church and are emailing now of course. It's been a good p-day!

As far as this week goooees...

Monday - Nothing too special; we just kind of had a normal p-day. We got pizza for lunch, went to the bank to get money, did our shopping and email, and we had like 2 hours left, and so we decided to check out a nearby Buddhist temple. I had heard that there was a temple near our house, but I had been to lazy to go up and look for it. It turned out to be about a 5 minute walk from our apartment, and the temple was pretty cool. It made me think that I need to go out and visit places more on p-days... I took some pictures, so hopefully I remember to attatch them to the email (I can't right now; I need to switch computers).

For dinner, we got invited over to a member's house; he invited a few other missionaries and President and Sister Barrow over, and so it was kind of a missionary party. The food was really good.

Tuesday - We had a lunch appointment with Sister 배나라 (Bae Nala) (we meet with her pretty much every week, and she buys us food). She normally takes us to the exact same 돼지국밥 (dwaejigugbab) (pork chop soup, I guess) restaurant, but we went to a Chinese food place this time. It was really good, but since we had eaten a LOT of food the night before, I wasn't super hungry for the meal.

We also met with Brother 윤영언 (Yun Yeongeon) and Brother 오삼석 (O Samseok). We talked about prayer, and everything went okay, but they're kind of frustrating to teach, since they're not really looking to be converted or anything. If things don't really change, we'll probably have to consider dropping them; I might have written this already, but they said that they want to just study from the Book of Mormon for now, and not think about church or baptism or anything. :/

Wednsday - We ended up having a LOT of time on Wednsday, so we spent a lot of time working some unfinished projects we had lying around. We spend a good majority of time on making a record book for English class because our ward mission leader asked us to make it. I'll be honest, I'm not sure if it'll be extremely useful, but it's kind of nice to have around...

We also met with Brother 박제휘 (Bak Jehwi) and we read 1 Nephi 17-18 with him and talked about prayer. It pretty much went as normal; nothing really to say...

We haven't really been able to drop him because one of our members really really wants to continue meeting. But said member is going to America on vacation, and so we might drop him while the member is gone. I'll be a little bit scared if I'm still in 광안 (Gwangan) by the time the member comes back; he's not going to be happy.

Brother 박제휘 (Bak Jehwi) said that he's never prayed about the Book of Mormon (he's met with misisonaries off and on for AT LEAST 2 years, and we dug up a teaching record from 2007 for him, and I'm pretty sure he's met with our elders before that as well...), so we commited him to do that.

He also says that sometimes he prays to the moon, so there's that ("Sometimes, when I'm hiking mountains at night, I'll look up at the moon, and the next thing I know, I'm praying to the moon in my heart."). But he says he knows that prayer works because as he hikes mountains at night, he hasn't been injured yet, even though he has bad ankles.

Okay, moving on to...

Thursday - We had exchanges with the 해운대 (Haeyundae) Elders, and so I spent most of Thursday with Elder Pickard. You probably don't remember, but Elder Pickard was in my MTC district, so it was a lot of fun serving with him for the day!

Every Thursday, we have what we call the "Pop Song service activity," where we go to a local library to serve. They've got a sort of class for blind people, and one of the things they do is study old American pop songs together. Mostly, we help with pronunciation by reading through the song with them. Sometimes we help with translation/interpreting lyrics, but for the most part, it's pretty chill. Once we go through the song, we practice singing along to the song, and then one of the teachers will accompany us with a guitar as we all sing the song together.

So far we've sung "Take Me Home Country Roads" by John Denver (that was a lot of fun), "Tennesse Waltz" by Pattie Page (maybe?), "Annie's Song" by John Denver, and "Vincent" by Don Msomething (Mclean?).

So again, it's pretty chill; the teachers do a really good job leading the class, so what we have to do is fairly minimal, but it's a lot of fun. Elder Pickard really really liked the class.

After that, we did some advertising for our English class with the sister missionaries. It went suprisingly well that day; I think we got 32 contacts of people who said they were interested in maybe 1.5 hours. I've had transfers where we don't get even half of that, so we were really satisfied with how things worked out.

Friday - Elder Pickard and I contacted everyone we got for our English class on Thursday, and then we had district meeting, where we met with Elder Pickard's companion and Elder Lees and we un-exchanged.

We got invited to a sweet barbeque at the church that evening, and so we headed over there for the evening (strangely, our ward mission leader didn't invite the sisters over, so I'm not sure if that means anything or not... he invited us on the previous Sunday when we just kind of happened to be at church, so maybe that's why?). The barbeque was really, really good. It took a while to get everything set up, and there wasn't a lot that Elder Lees and I could do, so we played with the kids there (I think only the younger families got invited; it wasn't a ward activity, so just the families that are close friends went). I think children were all under 8.

I actually feel that us playing with the kids was a really important thing; that next Sunday, a few of the parents of the kids talked to me. They were people that I hadn't really met much before, so I was a little suprised, but I think they got a good impression of us because we spent time with their kids during that time before the barbeque. Hopefully, we can keep working on that and get the members to trust us more!

We had an appointment with Brother 박신곤 (Bak Singon) (not 박신근 (Bak Singeun) as we had previously thought), so we left the barbeque to have a lesson with him. The lesson went really well - Brohter 박신곤 (Bak Singon) is Christian and has a lot of similar beliefs to ours. He prayed, agreed to read the introduction to the Book of Mormon, and also agreed to be baptized once he knows our church is true, so he's off to a really good start. We're pretty excited.

Elder Lees was really happy after Friday - He kept saying "A sweet lesson followed up by a delicious 고기 파티 (gogi pati = meat party); 광안 (Gwangan) is the best!" It was a really good day for us!

Saturday - We taught English class, and more people showed up then we thought, especially considering it was nearing 추석 (Chuseok). We also spent some time working on other random project we had yet to tie up.

Sunday - We only had 1 hour of church because of 추석 (Chuseok), so we thought we would have a ton of time, but things worked out well. We have mission tour this Thursday, and we're supposed to sing a musical number, so most of the evening was taken up by travelling there and practicing. We also tried to meet a potential investigator, but he didn't show up at the appointed time, and his phone was off, so we'll have to try again later.

It's kind of a long email, huh!? I guess this is just a slice of what life in 광안 (Gwangan) is like!

I've been thinking a lot about prayer this week, since it's something that we've been focusing on with investigators a lot. I learned that it's really important to have faith in prayer; one of our investigators said that the reason why prayers are answered is because prayers make us act to achieve what we prayed for. While that's true to some extent, that kind of a really worldly explanation; with faith, we can know that God helps up to do more than were alone are capable of as we pray and have faith that God will answer.

It's probably hard for them to understand prayer, since having personal experiences goes a long way in understanding. I don't really have a specific example, but I've had a lot of experiences where prayer and diligence has helped to do more than what I could have done on my own. Prayer really works because God really lives and loves us! (I wish our investigators could understand that more clearly!)

I think that wraps us this week. Hope you all had a good week, and I'll write you next week!

Love,

- Elder Luke

Notes:

추석: Chuseok, which according to Wikipedia is "is a major harvest festival and a three-day holiday in Korea."

삼겹살: Google Translate claims this word means "belly," which my best guess is slang for "yummy food," maybe?

Elder Aoyagi: Elder Koichi Aoyagi is first counselor in the Asia North area presidency. He's from Matsumoto, Japan.

Ministop: A Japanese convenience store chain that also operates in several other countries in Asia.