Sunday, October 12, 2014

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 (jeondothis 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 (Seogwipois 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 Daeyeongstayed 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!


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