Transfer 11 - week 6, transfer week~ (October 27, 2014)

안녕하세요~ (Annyeonghaseyo)!

 

We had another 5k run today. The Barrows must really, really like it.

 

Because of that (and because Elder Lees and I needed haircuts to stay lookin' sharp) this email might be a little short. We don't have a ton of time, and I'm pretty tired. Elder Lees and I had gone jogging every morning (nothing too intense, usually 10 minutes or so) but we've stopped doing that since it's gotten cold. It's probably a good idea excercise, but the mornings are rough, haha.

 

광안(Gwangan)'s pretty much hit the bottom in terms of investigators. We talked with 정대영b (Jeong Daeyeong) about asking his parents for baptism, but he seems really set on not asking his parents about it. We asked him how we could help him be baptised, and he told us to give up trying to meet his parents. He's done all the lessons, understands them well, AND passed all the baptismal interview questions, so I'm not sure what's next... we need to keep meeting with him, so maybe we'll read from the scriptures with him or something. I don't know...

 

And we STILL haven't been able to meet with 박신곤b (Bak Singon)! (!!!!!) We sent him kind of an ultimatum text basically saying "Hey, we don't want to keep bothering you if you're not interested, but we really want to meet with you because we know what we teach will help you. Is there anything wrong? What's changed?" and we're still waiting for a response. We get spooked every time we get a text.

 

On the bright side, we were able to meet that new investigator I wrote about last week. His name is 김상윤b (Kim Sangyun) (the "b" stands for "brother" and it's kind of a shorthand used very frequently by the missionaries). We had a really good lesson with him - we talked about our purpose and how we work as missionaries (so we mentioned baptism and conversion (really, our purpose as missionaries is not really to simply "baptise" but "We want to help you be converted to our church and be baptised to become a member" is a lot more clear to most people than "we want to help you to come unto Christ"), and talked about the commitments we give), and he asked about some of the questions he had. We planned on talking about the Restoration, but he had questions that where more leaning towards the Plan of Salvation, so we ended up discussing that. He asked really, really good questions. He started to talk about the Creation, so I kind of feared that he would ask "how did God create the Earth?" but instead, he asked the much, much better "I understand that God did create the Earth, but I don't get why God created the Earth." I feel like that's a really deep question; 김상윤b (Kim Sangyun) seems to be a really sharp guy.

 

Unfortunately, he just kind of had passing interest - I think he'd be willing to meet again, but he's busy and he said he'd contact us if he had time. So right now, we can't meet with him... Oh and his wife seriously hates all churches and all religions apparently, so that doesn't help. He said he had to meet with us secretly.

 

Mom asked a question about the picture of Elder Lees and I at the restaraunt. We ate 돼지국밥 (dwaejigugbab = pork soup) there, which is kind of a pork-based soup. It's a very mild broth made of pork bone (I think) with pork chops in it. They give you a bunch of stuff to throw in as well, so I normally also add some very normal noodles (like somen), some red paste that I guess adds flavor, some kind of vegtable that looks like grass (I think it's onion greens, but now that I actually think of it, it's probably just some kind of grass), and then you usually dump in a bowl of rice and eat it all together. It's one of Elder Lees's favorite Korean dishes, and I think most Americans like it, since it's not TOO Korean.

 

And then Dad had a few questions on General Conference, and I probably already wrote all this but here it goes...

 

I don't think General Conference is broadcast at all - each ward or branch is responsible for getting their own stuff set up. So usually, somone brings their laptop, connects to the wifi, hooks it up to the projector, and that's how everyone watches it. There's really no set time either; different wards do it at different times. We (the American missionaries) just watched it directly from the computer, so it was pretty easy. We were given time to watch it all as well, so we didn't have to miss any sessions.

 

I had exchanges with one of our Zone Leaders, Elder Himmer this week. He's a pretty intense guy; but the exchanges were really good. I was able to talk with him alot about how we can be better missionary leaders and missionaries in general.

Not a lot of time, so I'll have to wrap things up.

It kind of seems like I'll be transferring this time around - trainers/trainees only stay together for 2 transfers, so someone's going to have to leave 광안 (Gwangan)... I'll write about that next week! Bye!

Love,

Elder Luke

Transfer 11, week 5 (October 20, 2014)

안녕하세요~! (Annyeonghaseyo!)

이번주도 구도자들을 많이 만나지 못 해서 시간이 많은 것 같았어요...

(Again, this week too, since there weren't many investigators, it seemed like there was a lot of time...)

Things have been pretty good in 광안 (Gwangan) - we weren't able to meet Brother 박신곤 (Bak Singon) this week (again!?), but we've pretty much wrapped up everything with Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) in terms of lessons. We also met a guy though English class that says he is fine with meeting us (he didn't really say he's super interested, but is willing to set up a time with us and meet), so that's really good news! We actually had an appointment for today, but he said his work schedule shifted around and so he can't make it; we'll have to get him next time.

Here's a story about Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong). We met with him last Saturday for a lesson, and we met at a local park instead of the church, which was kind of neat. It was also kind of distracting since people were like talking walks around us, but the lesson went fine (this isn't important, but Elder Lees and I wanted to spend a p-day at the park, but it turns out that the park is smallish and not as cool as it was advertised, so I'm kind of glad we got to check it out before we spend precious p-day time there. 정대영 형제님 (Brother Jeong Daeyeong) lives near the park, and so he said it's more convenient for him to meet there). So like I wrote in the paragraph above, we've wrapped up all the lessons, so we went over the baptismal interview questions. I think he thought that the questions would be really hard - he asked a couple of times "So is this like a test!?" "How much do I need to study for it?" but by the time we went through them all, he was like "Is this it? This is way easy."

So he knew the answers pretty well - there were a couple of things he needed prompting on.

"What does it mean to you that we have a living prophet on the earth?"

"Uh... this is a hard one...... what's the answer?"

"형제님 (Brother)! There's no right or wrong answer; it's just what you think. So what do you think?"

"Uh... prophets can tell us what God wants us to know?"

"Good!"

But that was pretty much the only thing he had questions about.

That means that Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) is all ready for baptism, and so our next step is to try and meet his parent and get their approval for his baptism!

Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) told us that he wasn't going to be able to make it to church on Sunday because he was going to another church; a friend that he hadn't seen for some time invited him. It was kind of funny - he kept telling us that he didn't think it would be okay to go because he needed to come to church to take the sacrament. He double-checked with us and asked "other churches don't have the sacrament, right?" He was suprised when we told him that he could go to the other church if he wanted (we can't really force him to come to our church, and so of course we wanted him to come, but we basically just said, "Hey, it'd be good if you came to our church" and left it at that).

Come Sunday, Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) doesn't show up at church, so we were a little disappointed, but then he walked in like 15 mintues late to sacrament meeting! We talked with him later and he said simply "I decided not to go to the other church." And then he stayed for the whole 3 hours. Elder Lees and I were happy that Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) made the right choice. He's a really, really good kid.

We also had a chance to meet with some of our members this week. To be honest, we haven't been meeting with people as much as we should be - people just tend to be really busy and hard to catch. Recently, if we've tried to meet someone and if they just can't find time time, we'll write like a letter/note and drop it off at their house. A couple of people that we've done that to seem to have appreciated it, so I think it's a pretty good idea. It's really nice meeting with the members - it's hard to feel like you know them well until you visit them in their home and share a message with them. Nothing really to speak about the meetings, but we met our goal for members visited this last week, and it's been a long time since we've been able to do that.

Elder Lees and I were out on the streets talking to people, and one person we said hi to responded with "it's the Mormons!" so we started talking to him. He kind of launched off into a story about how he met our missionaries some 10 years ago. I guess the missionaries taught him a song or something (?) - I'm not really sure. He also talked about how the missionaries came into his office and left some pamphlets and how good of people the missionaries are.

I realized that he was drunk a few minutes into the conversation, and the conversation lasted like 10 minutes.

Afterwards, Elder Lees said to me, "That guy was really friendly.", so I told him that he was probably drunk. He responded with "Drunk people and prepared people are surprisingly similar." Earlier in the week, Elder Lees had given a Book of Mormon to another drunk guy.

Elder Lees and I have continued to try to give out Book of Mormons this week, and since we couldn't meet with investigators that much, we've been doing a lot of that. Here's a few stories:

We met this one nice old man at a subway station. We weren't actually going anywhere - we were on our way to a meeting and we had some time so we were hanging out in the subway trying to talk to people (I've found that if people ask where we're going, the best response is "I'm waiting for a friend." I told (lied to) a guy in 포항 (Pohang) saying I was going to the bus terminal, and then he called me out and told me the ride the bus that was in front of us. I wasn't actually going to the terminal; I was at the bus stop to talk to people. So I probably said something stupid, gave him a pamphlet and left. "Waiting for a friend" is perfect because you're not actually obliged to go anywhere.), and this old man who was like half deaf was standing, so we started talking to him. He was really nice, and so we showed him a Book of Mormon, and he held it for maybe two minutes. He checked out the pictures, the introduction page, and then flipped through the book. His train came, so we told him to have the book, to which he hurriedly shoved if back into our hands saying, "Difficult." Elder Lees showed him a pamphlet as kind of an alternative ("Oh, then please take this little pamphlet with you! It's small and not difficult!") . He flipped through that, gave it back to Elder Lees, and then grabbed the Book of Mormon out of my hands and got onto the train. I'm not sure what was up with that, but hey, Book of Mormon given!

We also had a district Book of Mormon 전도 (jeondo = contacting) activity; we met up in a train station, said a prayer together, and then split up to try to give out as many Book of Mormons as possible. We were at an area near the beach, so while there were a lot of people there, it was kind of a bad atmosphere to talk about religion - a lot of foreigners, groups of people (friends, couples), and loud music. We planned for the activity to be about an hour and twenty minutes, and Elder Lees and I were having a hard time even just talking to people, let alone giving out a Book of Mormon. We made a plan to go to hang out at a nearby bus station where things would be quieter and where there would be a decent number of people. It was 8:15, right when we had to wrap up and go home, and we were blessed to be able to give a Book of Mormon to a nice old man. It seems like it's really often that it's the last person you talk to that is willing to accept the gospel, a pamphlet or whatever it might be.

I think that about does it - we went to 남포동 (Nampodong), which is a big shopping district. We went to the 짬뽕 (jjamppong) place we went to before - here's a few pictures. Have a good week!

Love,

- Elder Luke

Notes:

Thanks to Lynn for the translation of the first sentence!

남포동: Nampodong. You can see it on a map here. The area Andrew is usually working in is the peninsula to the east, and the area behind (west of) the bridge, up to the river. The island just across from Nampo-dong is Yeongdo, which was his first area.

짬뽕: Jjamppong. Google Translate gives this as "chanpon," which is a Japanese soup from Nagasaki, and which was inspired by a Chinese soup, similar to ramen. The English Wikipedia article doesn't say anything about Korean variants, but the Korean Wikipedia article shows two photos of the Japanese-style soup, and one photo of what looks a lot like what Andrew is eating in the photo, which looks like it has been Koreanized with near-lethal quantities of red pepper.

Transfer 11, week 4 (October 13, 2014)

Dear family -

Another week down! This puts us halfway through my transfer #11, and three weeks left with Elder Lees. Time has gone pretty fast for both us of (Elder Lees says things are fast which is good; 영도 (Yeongdo) (so my first area) was pretty slow for me...).

I think we've kind of hit a slow point - its been several weeks in a row where we haven't been able to do as much as we would have liked; I guess most of that comes from dropping half of our investigators, and not being able to meet regularly with Brother 박신곤 (Bak Singon). We've been trying a lot of finding and I think we're very slowly pulling together a pool of potentials, but no new investigators as of yet.

We've tried a couple of (sort of) of new things this week, so I'll write about that real quick...

So for us, normal finding methods mean street 전도 (jeondo = contacting), or English class advertising. Street 전도 (jeondo) usually isn't that effective, but you can give out pamphlets, Book of Mormons, and actually talk about the gospel. English class stuff, on the other hand, means you can pull in a lot of contacts, and hopefully get people to English class and then from there go on and ask if they're interested in the gospel.

We tried a district 전도 (jeondo) this week (English class, unfortunately - we wanted to do stickerboarding, or at least something gospel-related, but nobody had any good boards so we had to go with English class), and it went pretty well. We got 20 contacts in like an hour and a half. It was really hard at first - we got like 1-2 contacts in the first half hour, so things were not looking good. Especially considering we had 3 teams (so 6 people there), I really wanted this to turn out well so that we didn't walk away feeling like we wasted our time. Thankfully, things started picked up, and we got the other 18 or so contacts in the next hour, so things worked out really well. I guess we learned that it's important to stick things out to the end because you never know how things will work out! :)

There's a typhoon hitting Japan/Korea right now so the weather is pretty windy and rainy, so we spent a lot of time last night calling people (we had some sweet plans for p-day today, but we cancelled them because of the weather... we wanted to go to the shopping district of Busan and buy touristy stuff, but better luck next time I guess). It's actually the first time I've done that - I've heard of other missionaries doing it, but I don't think I've called more than one or two people randomly off of the phone before.

So before I write about that, you need to understand how much of a mess missionary phones. I pride myself in not putting random contacts onto the phone, but missionaries have been using these phones for a very, very long time. Our phone has some 800 numbers on it, and I did the math really quickly, and some 300 of those are people we don't really have to call (people coming to English class, other missionaries' phones, members, less actives), but that still leaves 500 people that we have no idea who they are. It's really a daunting task to try and sort the phone, but as the weather gets colder, Elder Lees and I decided to try and lessen time on the street, and so more on the phone.

We picked some 20 people randomly off the phone and called them. We actually had pretty good success - of the 20, 3 didn't pick up, like 10 didn't know who we were, and 2-3 were worth keeping saved. We couldn't call everyone, so that makes up the rest. A lot of missionaries have the problem where they'll save contacts they get on the phone, and then never follow up with them, so the people who had no idea who we are are probably people who met the missionaries for like 5 minutes several years ago (a lot of them where younger, probably high school students), so we just deleted those people. One lady actually wanted to set up an appointment - we called her, told her that we were the missionaries, and she started apologizing for not calling us; she said she was really busy and completely forgot. Not sure exactly what happened, but we gave her over to the sisters, and I think they'll be able to start teaching her.

I'm not sure how to talk to the people who don't remember us though -

"Hi, is this the phone number of Mr. 김 (Kim)?"

"Yes. Who is this?"

"Hi, we're the missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!"

"Okay."

"We were just curious about this phone number which was saved on our phone. How did you meet the missionaries?"

"Who?"

"The missionaries."

"I've never met them."

At this point, what do I say? I usually either give up or ask them if they're interested in religion at all. In a perfect world I would talk about our missionary purpose, promise that they'll be blessed if they follow of the gospel, and then invite them to learn more, but that's definitely not what I do...

Oh, and while calling, I think I met my match. We called one man who was absolutely THE MOST difficult man to understand that I've ever talked to. There was a less active lady in 서귀포 (Seogwipo) who was tough, but I could only pick out like 5 words with this guy, and I have some 8 months or so more experience in Korean now. I only understood him saying "I am" and then I literally couldn't make out any words, anything I thought was a word, or where a word ended and another began. I told him that his number was saved on our phone, and we were wondering who he was. He something about "fragrances" and "things that smell" so I guess he makes perfume, which does NOT answer our question. He said something, I said "Okay, I got it" hung up and deleted his number. Case closed.

20 numbers down, 480 to go.

Let's see, the sisters had this idea to try and find more families, so we've been putting up flyers. Pretty much all Elder 허 (Heo) and I did in 서귀포 (Seogwipo) is put up English class flyers, but the sisters had an idea to put up flyers to advertise our Family English Program (where we meet with families for an hour, teach English for 30 minutes, then the gospel (in Korean!) for the other 30 - I've never done it with a real family) (mm? did I write about all this already?). We've gotten a couple of contacts so far, which is really good. Unfortunately, we're not allowed to meet them unless there's a man present, and men are always busy in Korea, so I think we'll have to give out most of the contacts to the sisters. As soon as the typhoon dies down, Elder Lees and I are planning on putting up a bunch of those flyers.

An 84 year-old man called us about the Family English Program (looking back, he was pretty hard to understand too) (and he didn't make much sense either - I asked him when he had time to meet, and he said he would just come by the church sometime and call us to see if we were there, and we could meet if we were) and anyways, he said that he had a request for us. I was hoping it was some kind of religious thing, but instead, he launched into a war story.

He talked about some General Taylor and a "brown star" and probably the Korean War and Seoul. So I'm not sure what the story was exactly about, but I'm like 70% sure that he asked us to go up to Seoul to go the American embassy and get some information for him. I just told him that we should meet once, and then discuss it (us travelling up to Seoul is a no-no, however).

We met with Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) a couple of times, and finished all the lessons this week. We're not really sure where to go from here; he could use a review of all the lessons (I probably said this last time, but he's been meeting with the missionaries some 6 months now, so I think he's forgotten a lot of that which we taught him), but we'll have to talk to our ward mission leader for that.

Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) stayed for the whole Sunday Session of Conference! He said it was kind of hard and he was tired, but he did well - a lot of the other youth gave up partway through and ran around outside (not a good example for our investigator...).

Our zone set a goal to give out a lot of Book of Mormons this transfer, and so every time we go out to 전도 (jeondo), Elder Lees and I try to focus on that. The other day, we were able to see a small miracle, so I wanted to share that story with you.

Really, every time we give out a Book of Mormon is a miracle - people are pretty accepting about pamphlets (maybe because they don't feel bad about throwing them away...), but books are a whole different matter, it seems.

Anyways, Elder Lees and I had like 25 minutes before we had to be back home, and we set a goal to give out a Book of Mormon that day. So we didn't have a lot of time, and because of the typhoon, the weather's been really windy and cold, so there weren't even that many people out. But we stepped out and did our best to talk to the few people that were out there. With maybe 15 minutes left, we found a man standing outside of a hair salon, so we started talking to him. He said that he wasn't religious, and actually had no interest, but we offered him a Book of Mormon, and he accepted! He also gave us his phone number. We finished talking to him, and had just enough time to jog our way back home.

It was just a neat experience - I felt that God helped us for trying to be obedient and stepping out even when it would seem like a bad idea or a bad time to.

The story doesn't end well though. We called him back, and he seemed irritated, asked us what time it was (well, that's what I THINK he said; it was 7:40pm, and said he was busy and then hung up on us). Maybe I shouldn't tell you this part of the story?

Anyways, we've had a pretty good week. Hope you're all doing well!

Love,

- Elder Luke

We usually email at the church; this is what we look like. Until next week!

Transfer 11, week 3 (October 6, 2014)

Hello~~!

Things are going pretty well in Gwangan! As always, things are a little bit slower than we'd like, but I'm sure that's the same no matter where you serve. :)

Well, to be honest we didn't do a whole lot this week (if we have extra time during the week, we do finding activities, whether that be talking to people on the streets, advertising English class, calling former investigators, etc.); I'm not sure what exactly to write about, haha.

The ward has kind of been scrambling to figure out activities and the schedule for the next few months. The ward missionary meeting that was originally supposed to be yesterday that got pushed back to 4 weeks from now got pushed back to 7 weeks from now, and then that got moved back to 5 weeks from now. I'm not sure what's so complicated about all this, but that just gives us more time to prepare, so it's all good. However, they moved the ward activity meeting (ward social...?) from like 6 weeks from now to 3 weeks, so now we have an entirely new, different meeting that we need to help plan for. It kind of sounded like the ward was going to help out a lot more this time, so I think this should be fairly low-stress (it will probably actually be high-stress).

But that's all boring stuff.

Members

On Tuesday, we got to meet and have lunch with the Stake President and the Stake President's wife. Now normally, missionaries will have a meal with the members and then share a spiritual message at the end, usually 5-15 minutes long. That's pretty standard, and I don't know why, but some members don't really seem to understand that missionaries want to share a message more then eat the meal. What I'm trying to say is that we're grateful for the meal of course, but what we're really after is the time to help the member, talk with them, and see if there is any way we can help them. We went to a nearby restaurant with the couple and ate for like 45 minutes, and then the sister suddenly said that she had to leave right then and there to make some other appointments. The sister missionaries were there, and there were going to share the message. They asked if she had a little time to hear the message, and she replied, "share it while my husband pays for the food," so we had all of like 45 seconds to share it. It was really rushed of course, and not at all what we wanted from them.

Speaking of members, we met with Sister B (have I mentioned her before? she's pretty much a single sister (she's married but her husband is less active and lives up in Seoul), and she invites us over for lunch every week. Elder 홍의택 (Hong Witaek) didn't like her because she always buys two bowls of rice for us to eat with our soup, and something about Elder 홍 (Hong) trying to diet. Anyways...), and it went about normal. She talks really fast and she talks a lot, so usually we usually just listen to her for like an hour as she tells us about her life.

She has really strong opinions, and a lot of her talking has to do with how the other members in the ward need to shape up (nothing she says is actually wrong, but it's probably too strong for people who don't know her well). Anyways, last time she told us that she likes the elders more than the sisters (well, what she said is "I like sons more than daughters."), and then she told us that she always wanted the elders, not the sisters, to give prayers when we met. I'm not really sure what's up with that; the sisters weren't really too happy about that, but they thankfully just accepted it as one of Sister B's quirks.

English Class

We started interviews for English class this week. We usually meet people before or after English class, and really the point of interviews is to see if they're interested in the gospel. We also ask them what they think of English class, how we can improve, if they would be willing to invite people to come, and whether they have interest in our religion etc. We've only been able to talk with like 3 people so far, and basically everyone thinks really good things about our church and missionaries, but aren't really all that interested in the gospel. Oh English class people.

One of our members showed up to the church at a time that we happened to be doing English class, and he said that he was really suprised at how many people were there. He was also suprised by how old they were. We're always trying to get new people to show up, but I think they feel awkward when they're in a class with 7 old ladies...

The same member recommended that we cancel English class to get rid of all the old people and then make a new class from the bottom up, but that comes with a huge share of problems as well (it's a really common problem that people show up 1-3 times, and then stop coming. And you really need maybe 10ish people for the class to actually feel like a class so that people want to keep coming, so starting a class with 100% new people is difficult, since it's hard to find enough people to show up to make the class feel good. Practically everyone is interested, but nobody has time to show up).

It's kind of funny - most missionaries are impressed when we tell them that we have 30 people in our English class (my biggest was Seogwipo with like 7ish on a really good day), but members are always asking about how many investigators we have, or suggesting that we change English class so we talk about the gospel for 30 minutes in English, and then have a gospel lesson for 30 minutes in Korean (I don't know if you can tell, but that's absolutely a terrible, terrible idea that nobody who has ever taught English class would suggest)

We also taught our children's English class, and I think that class might die soon. We've only been having 1-2 families show up, and they're all members. So we only have like 2 children to teach English to; the sister missionaries' investigator stopped responding to texts, and so while I don't want to say the class is pointless, it's not really where we want it to be.

I've been teaching the basic class since the beginning of the transfer. Our English class book (produced by the mission) has pictures in it, and so most of my teaching comes from the pictures. The basic class's level is pretty low, so most of the time I just have them say words and then I write sentances. For example, there was a picture of a rose in a lesson a few weeks ago. So everyone called out words - "rose" "beautiful flowers" "white rose" and "please woman". Then I make a sentance, like "I gave beautiful flowers to my wife on her birthday," they try to figure it out, we read it together a few times, and then move on to the next pictures. As always, I'm not sure how much it helps them, but that's the way that they want to learn English.

Brother 박신곤 (Bak Singon)

We weren't able to meet Brother 박신곤this week, which had us really really concerned for a while. We kept texting him (he speaks pretty good English, so we normally text in English) about when he had time, and I guess he kind of got annoyed. He sent us a "please let me tell you when I have time," and Elder Lees and I thought he was angry at us. So were really scared to text him because we didn't want him to think we were annoying. We wanted him to come to church on Sunday, but we couldn't text him! So we just had to wait until he got back to us. We spent a couple of days nervously waiting - I personally thought he would drop us! Luckily, we got a text last night asking if we could meet today, and so we did and everything was fine.

Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong)

Brother 정대영 has been pretty busy with tests this week, but he said that things should start slowing down for him soon. We met just once this week, and talked about baptism (when he told him that, he asked "Again!?"). He's almost done with all the lessons; if we meet 2-3 more times we should finish them all (Though to be fair, he almost definately doesn't understand every-everything we've taught him. It's been quite the process; he's been meeting with us for like 5-6 months now. We met Brother 박신곤 (Bak Singon) maybe 1 month ago, and he's done with about half of the lessons). So we set a goal for this Tuesday to fast and pray together (just him and us) so that he can get permission from his parents. Ideally, they'll say yes, we'll finish off the lesson, review the baptismal interview questions, and have a baptism by the end of the transfer. And I guess if we're talking really ideally, we'd start teaching his family as well! :)

Brother 윤영언 (Yun Yeongheun)

We didn't really want to do the interview for Brother 윤영언 since he's already an investigator, but we had time before an English class, and he showed up early so we did. He too thinks good things about our English class, but he mentioned that he doesn't think he could ever join a religion because religions restrict people, and he wants to be free (sounds like something a 20 year old would say, not someone 70...). He also said that Brother 오삼석 (O Samseok) will probably also never get baptized because he's fairly high up in the Buddhist religious organization. So it looks like we'll have to drop both of them this week. We've been planning to for several weeks now, so it's not really a suprise.

So Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) and Brother 박신곤 (Bak Singon) are doing fairly well, and it looks like we'll have to drop Brother 윤영언 (Yun Yeongheun) this week. That means we'll be left with our best investigators, people who are actually progressing, so that will be very good. I say this alot, but we'll have to find some new people this week (finding is not easy). Things were pretty good here, and I hope things were good back home as well! Until next week!

Love,

- Elder Luke

P.S.

We went to 이기태 (Igitae) today, which is some kind of like nature park on the coast. It's got a bunch of cliffs right by the ocean. We took a bunch of pictures, but here's some of the better ones. There's not a ton of time left for p-day, so I'll just send you these, and hopefully more later.

Have a good day~~!

Note:

Busan Igitae is a large park -- it looks like it's more than a mile long and nearly a half-mile wide -- that is within Andrew's area. You can see it on a map here. Andrew's area (the Gwangan Ward) is pretty much everything from the mountain in the center (Hwangnyeongsan) to the southeast until you hit the river and the ocean. Note that the island to the southwest is Yeongdo, which was his first area.