Monday, October 6, 2014

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 Daeyeongand Brother 박신곤 (Bak Singonare doing fairly well, and it looks like we'll have to drop Brother 윤영언 (Yun Yeongheunthis 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.

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