Transfer 11 (!), week 1 (September 22, 2014)

Hello~!

I feel like there's not too much to write about for this past week... oh, and I left my old planner at home, so I've forgotten what we've done. :)

I think the main think for this next week will be adjusting to the new transfer. Elder Lees and I will be staying in 광안 (Gwangan) of course, so no difference there, but we have a new sister missionary coming in. We've had a couple of projects waiting (Sister 이자경 (I Jagyeong) went home this transfer, so we all knew a new missionary would come in) until this transfer to start, so we'll probably be pretty busy.

Actually, our mission's in a pretty crazy spot right now; we're losing a lot of old missionaries, and having a bunch of new missionaries come in. Elder Lees came in with 15 new missionaries, and I think 22 new missionaries came in this transfer (so like today) with another 20 or so coming in next transfer. We had some 10 or so missionaries go home today, with some 12ish last transfer; President Barrow said that once we get the next transfer started, some 40% of our mission will be new missionaries (I would guess that means like 4 or less transfers old). Bascially, everyone who is even remotely qualified to be training is training (meaning they're old enough/experienced enough and an obedient enough missionary to train). There's been a lot of strange transfers, a lot of new teams being added to areas, etc. I might train again in Gwangan as soon as Elder Lees and I wrap up, and another team of missionaries might move into Gwangan.

We dropped Brother 박제휘 (Bak Jehui) this week. Brother 양기욱 (Yang Giuk), the member we usually met with, went to America on vacation, so we met him with a different member. Elder Lees and I really stressed the importantance of coming to Church, but he still says that he can't come because he doesn't like large groups of people. We wanted to talk a lot about prayer and the Atonement, and how that can help him to overcome his fears, but he kind of insisted that it would be too hard for him. He actually asked if we could talk about something that's not coming to church, but our member told him that we as missionaries need to help people to come to church.

We called him back later to offically drop him, but when I called, he said that he understood, and would call us every once in a while to check up on us and set up an appointment if he feels like it, so we're pretty much done with him.

We're kind of looking at dropping Brother 윤영언 (Yun Yeongeon) this transfer if he doesn't progress. That'll leave us with just two investigators - Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) and Brother 박신곤 (Bak Singon), which is kind of too bad. We're trying to do a lot of finding, but it's kind of a long process. Especially if we drop Brother 윤 (Yun) early, Elder Lees and I will have a lot of free time to try and find...

Things worked out such that we ended doing a lot of street jundo this week. That too has been kind of a slow process, but we've been able to give out a lot of Book of Mormons this week (well, a lot compared to what I'm used to givin) as we've done that.

Yesterday, we met a man in the subway station near our house; kind of like that last time I wrote about (I don't know if I mentioned it, but we gave him a call, and he said that he would call us once he read some of the Book of Mormon, and that we shouldn't call him, so he's pretty much a bust), he was pretty much the last person we had time to talk to. We just said "hi" to him, and he said "Oh, the Mormons!" and so we stopped to talk with him. He talked really fast and I'm not sure what he was trying to get at, ("Youmissionariesalwaystalktopeopleandtellthemaboutyourchurchifthey'reinterestedlikeyou'redoingtomerightnowbecauseIsaid"Mormons"toyouandohlooknowyou'reshowingmethatBibleofyours")
and he actually said that he wasn't interested, but he said that he would take a Book of Mormon and give it a read. I think we've been really blessed to give out these Book of Mormons - it seems like every time we go out, as long as we're trying hard, we always find someone to talk a copy. We haven't found any new investigators through that as of yet, but we're working on it!

We've also been calling former investigators from our Area Book (a big book of missionary records), but we've been working though them faster than I thought it would take. We'll probably boil through them pretty quick, and then we'll have to switch up our finding techniques. We can always just call people saved onto the phone, but Elder Lees will probably have a pretty hard time with that (at least with records, he can sort through them and pick out people who look likely), so we'll see.

So I guess what it boils down to is that we really need new investigators... We've got a couple of really good people we can meet though, so that's really good.

Back to the projects I was speaking of, one of the big ones is this "Ward Missionary Meeting" that we'll be having in two weeks. We've been given the last hour of church to have a meeting to help the ward members to do missionary work. We're basically working from the ground up - we don't really have that much to work off of, and nobody in Gwangan was here when they did that last meeting. We'll probably have to do a lot of planning this week.

Brother 박신곤 (Bak Singon) has been doing well. He's been pretty busy, so we've only been able to meet once a week, which is a little too bad, but he's progressing well. If we only meet once a week, we can't teach all the lessons in time, so we'll probably have to push his baptismal date back a few weeks.

We weren't able to teach Brohter 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) this week, which kind of hurts. He has school tests going on, so he's been spending a lot of time studying. He came to the youth activity on Saturday and part of church Sunday, but we didn't have enough time to teach a lesson. I guess it's really important for him to come to this sort of normal church functions...

The sister missionary coming in is Sister Broyles, and I believe it's her 3rd transfer. Now in English class, usually more experienced missionaries teach the basic level classes, so I might ended up teaching a basic class, instead of by beloved intermediate class (intermediate class in particular is fun - all the members are friends and they always bring food. Someone bought me a frozen pizza last time.). We're teaching a basic, intermediate, and advanced class now, but since we have 4 American missionaries, we might do another basic class in addition (English Conversation 102). Actually, I think everyone in my district might be American; Elder Pickard is training, and we don't know who his companion is yet, but odds are, he'll not be Korean.

Well, there's a couple of things that really stood out this week - the first is not to give up. We had a 2 hour 전도 (jeondo = street contacting, in this case) session yesterday, and it was really hard. There weren't a lot of people out, and it seemed like the people we did talk to weren't really that excited to talk with us (and there were a lot of people that we straight up couldn't talk to, since they didn't stop). There was actually point where I looked down at my watch and almost laughed because we had so much time left. But we didn't give up, and kept trying, and like I wrote about above, we were blessed to find someone who was willing to accept a copy of the Book of Mormon.

The second thing I learned is the power of study. As a missionry, I've focused a lot of study on the missionary lessons; I know a lot of other people study other things, but that's what I've chosen to do. I think it's easy sometimes to think that we know everything, but as I've continued to study, the lessons have become clearer to me - I guess I get inspired with new ideas to teach that principle, or how to teach it clearer. I remember one study session when I had 10 minutes left, and I didn't have anything in particular to study. I considered to kind of just chill it out, but I felt that that wasn't okay, so I studied about the missionary lessons instead. And in those 10 minutes, I actually learned a lot, and felt like I was better able to organize the principles of the lessons in my head.

I think that's about it! I love you all!

Until next week!!

- Elder Luke

side note: did I talk about Taximan? We met kind of crazy guy this week; he's a returned missionary who fell away from our church after reading some anti-Mormon stuff. He speaks English almost entirely in idioms (anyone know what "hollow legs" mean? I didn't until he explained it. He insists it's both extremely common and useful), prays 5-6 hours a day and sometimes sees the devil even though he doesn't want to, almost has 5 million dollars because he prays so much, and half-shouted at us for like 50 minutes in a Pizza Hut the other day. I'd write more, but actually I pretty much summed him up. That lesson is a good lesson for Elder Lees and I.

Here's some pictures: the ward mission leader wanted pictures of all our investigators, so here's Brother 박제휘 (Bak Jaehui) and 박신곤 (Bak Singon). 

Here's a couple more pictures: one of our district (we're getting 3 new missionaries this transfer!), and one of a 떡파티 (tteokpati = mochi party) we had after English class. It was pretty good, but they served green tea, which is kind of awkward. We didn't say anything and just didn't drink it, haha.

Note:

tteok = a type of rice cake (see Wikipedia article) that seems to be very similar to mochi (もち) in Japan.