Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Transfer 10, week 6 - 항상 파티 (Hangsang pati = party all the time?) (September 15, 2014)



안녕하세요 (Annyeonghaseyo)!

Man, this week was really really crazy. Strangely, we were really busy even when we didn't have things to do. It was a week of miracles I think; here's kind of what went down:

Kind of the main thing this week was planning. There's a kind of training curriculum for new missionaries (called "The 12 twelve weeks" or 12주 (ju = week) for short), and week 5 focuses on planning. We watched a bunch of videos about planning and studied from Preach My Gospel about planning as well, and so Elder Lees and I decided to keep better track of our goals. I know in the past I haven't been done a very good job of remembering what goals we set for the week (by goals I mean key indicators, which are things like how many lessons you taught in a week, how many contacts you got, etc.), so I was kind of excited to try.

What we ended up doing was pretty simple. We wrote down our goals on a whiteboard, and then wrote down what we had accomplished - if we taught a lesson, then we were write it on the board, and then see how many we had left for the week, who we had appointments with, and then we would think about what we had to do to complete the goal we set.

We had a few experiences this week where we set a goal, and miracles happened that made the goal possible. For example...

This week, we wanted to get one RCLA (a lesson taught to either a recent convert or a less active). We had planned to spend some time looking for less actives this week to try to get this stat, but we were really busy. Things just didn't work out the way we had planned, so we had no time to look for any less actives. We kinda gave up on the goal, but then on Friday, we got a call from Brother 서민호 (Seo Minho), a recent convert, saying that he wanted to meet with us. He's really busy, and can only meet like once a monthish, and I had kind of forgotten about him. But we met on Saturday morning, and we were able to get the goal.

We also wanted to teach 4 other lessons this week (lessons taught to an investigator without a member present). One of our goals was to teach Brother 윤영언 (Yun Yeongeon), but we couldn't meet on Tuesday because of 추석 (Chuseok). We had contacted him to meet, but he said he wasn't really interested on meeting on another day, and so I was kind of satisfied that we did what we could to meet the goal. But then on Saturday, Brother 양현재 (Yang Hyeonjae) (the troubled kid) wandered into church, and we were able to set up an appointment for Sunday and meet that goal for other lessons.

We also wanted to go do English class 전도 (jeondo = contacting) with the sisters - we were kind of low on contacts recieved, and that's a fairly easy way to get contacts, but the sisters got busy and our plans fell though. We were sitting at home on Sunday, trying to figure out what to do with the last 2.5 hours of the day, when we got a call from the sisters asking if we had time to do some English class 전도 (jeondo = contacting). We were out for a little over an hour, and we got 5 contacts, which was the exact number we needed to make our goal.

I don't know what it was this week, but things worked out really well. Both Elder Lees and I felt that we were able to see a lot of miracles to help us out in meeting our goals. I had to give a talk this Sunday, and while I was sitting up on the stand, I was looking out over our ward. I started thinking about this week, and I felt that I really loved our ward here - it's not perfect, but I think I say now that I really love the 광안 (Gwangan) area. Elder Lees and I are super pumped to be able to serve here and together for the next transfer as well (well, probably).

I think I mentioned him before, but we met with Brother 박신곤 (Bak Singon) (college student), and we got a baptismal date for October 12! He actually accepted the date really easily - he simply said yes and asked what he could do to prepare to be baptised. He's a really really good investigator - he read the pamphlet we gave him several times, asked questions and participated well, and new the materal really well. We think he might have gone online to do some research about missionaries and our church as well. He texts us whenver we have a question, and so we've been able to have regular contact with him. We're excited to continue teaching him.

He did mention, however, that his parents go to a different church. Brother 박신곤 (Bak Singonsays that his parents probably won't allow him to be baptized (he's 30, but I don't think he wants to have a fight with his parents), so that's a problem we'll have to work with as that date gets closer. Oh, we also found out that General Conference is going to be on that date (it's a week later in Korea), so we'll probably have to push it back a week or so.

I wrote about mission tour last time; I don't think I mentioned that I was asked to translate. It was a pretty crazy meeting; Elder Aoyagi spoke in Japanese with a little English here and there, and that was translated into English by a translator sent down from Seoul, which either I or the other missionary translater I was with translated into Korean. I was pretty happy; I understood some 90-95% of Elder Aoyagi's Japanese (and I could understand a suprising about of church words), and so I actually mostly translated the Japanese directly into Korean, listening to the English if I wasn't sure what was said. All the other missionaries keep bothering me that I'm trilingual now... :(

Anyways, the mission tour was really good. President Barrow spoke a lot about overcoming our fears and bearing testimony about the gospel to others. Sister Barrow spoke on the power that even one testimony can make, Sister Aoyagi talked about spreading Book of Mormons (*copies of the Book of Mormon, excuse me) and giving those to others, and Elder Aoyagi talked about how missionaries in the Book of Mormon were successful, and about how we too can be successful like them.

One big push our mission is doing right now is teaching more lessons. I don't know what the numbers look like, but I guess or mission has dropped somewhat in lessons taught. And since Sister Aoyagi talked about giving Book of Mormons, Elder Lees and I go hit the streets to 전도 (jeondo) if time and circumstances permit.

We had like 45 spare minutes this last Sunday, and so we wanted to go and try to find someone to give a Book of Mormon to. We prayed, and headed out. We actually talked to a few people, but none of them really worked out. One guy had to go somewhere before we could even talk about religion, one guy said his eyes aren't good and so he couldn't accept a Book of Mormon, and a few people said politely that they weren't interested (and one person said rudely that they weren't interested, haha). It was time to start wrapping things up - we had to be at church in like 10 minutes, so we were starting to wind down and head that way, when we met a man...

It's kind of your typical missionary story, but he was pretty much literally the last man we had time to talk to (after that we had to jog back to the church), but he was really friendly and open to us. We chatted a bit, and we talked about and offered a Book of Mormon, and he took it. We also got his number, and he said that he would trying reading the Book of Mormon.

At the time we met him, he was checking his mail. His mailbox was maybe 2 steps away from his gate, so we had maybe a 10 second window to meet and talk with him, and we were let to hit that window exactly on time. We were even impressed a few minutes before to knock the door of a house. It's weird to think that while nobody answered the door, the few minutes we spent at the house caused us to meet that man that would gave the Book of Mormon too. I think sometimes we're lead to do things, even though we don't know that we're being let.

I'm out of time, but we were blessed to see so many miracles this week. I've learned to love 광안 (Gwangan), and I'm really excited to continue serving here.

Love you all!
- Elder Luke



Notes:

항상 파티: Hangsang pati = party all the time? Google Translate says the word is "always." I'm not quite sure what he means by this. It's a play on words with his "meat party" subject line from last week, and I'm guessing what he's trying to say was that it was a crazy week, and every day was like a party (without any literal parties actually happening). Maybe...

주: ju = week. This is certainly 週 = しゅう = shuu in Japanese.

박신곤 (Bak Singon): First mentioned last week.

전도: jeondo = contacting, or missionary work. Almost certainly 伝道 = でんどう = dendou in Japanese. Literally "the way of spreading the word."

No comments:

Post a Comment