Sunday, November 23, 2014

Transfer 12, week 4 (November 24, 2014)



안녕하세요 (Annyeonghaseyo)!
 
I can't believe how fast this transfer has gone! It's already halfway over! What!? We haven't even done anything this transfer yet...!
 
Life in 상인 (Sangin) is pretty good - as expected, we did a lot of planning this week. We have a zone meeting this week (a monthly meeting that we have to plan for all the missionaries in our zone (obviously)), so we spent some time planning that, we had a meeting with the stake presidency (which we had to plan a bit for), our weekly planning, and some other stuff that I forget (oh I remember; we had to go down to Busan for a meeting). On top of that, Elder 박 (Bak) got sick this weekend, and so he slept for like 8 extra hours this last Saturday, so it's been a pretty slow week overall, but we got done what we needed to.
 
I've been trying really hard this transfer to memorize the names of people in 상인 (Sangin(so the members) - last transfer, I didn't know the names of most of the single relief society sisters, and the youth of the ward until the end of my last transfer, and I felt pretty bad about that, so I'm trying to fix that. Sangin is bigger (70 people), so it's a bit harder, but I was looking around in Priesthood meeting last Sunday, and I knew the names of everyone except one brother, so I feel pretty good about that. There's a bunch of children here though, and they're kind of hard to try to get the names down for, but I figure I'll just memorize them last. It's really hard to memorize people who I've never talked to. If the members invite us over for a meal, they're the easiest to remember names for, haha. I think the extra effort I'm putting in (I made little flash cards for everyone and I study them when I have free time) is paying off though; my goal is to memorize everyone's (or maybe everyone - the really young kids') names by the end of the transfer, but we'll see about that.
 
Our investigator Brother 김태한 (Gim Taehan) didn't come to church again - he was out somewhere travelling with his family. He's really hard to meet it seems.
 
We got a referall from a member this past week - he's the son of a less active lady. One really really active sister in our ward has been visiting the mother for some time now, and the mother wanted to come out to church with her son. I'm pretty sure she didn't tell her son that they were going to church, but well, he showed up. He didn't like church that much though (maybe because he didn't know he was going), and so he left right after. Anyways, he's a potential investigator. Our ward mission leader asked us to try and do some basketball or do something fun with him to try and be friends with him before we talk too much about church.
 
Other than that... the kind of big news for the mission is social media missionary work. I'm not sure at all what's going on in America, but there's been a lot of meetings and firesides to try to encourage members to share the gospel through the internet. That's one thing that we as zone leaders have been asked to do - present social media member missionary work to the missionaries so that they can encourage the members to do it. There's a lot of problems to that (like we have really restricted access to the internet), but I guess that's the kind of things we need to do as zone leaders.
 
So real quick, here's an experience I want to share...
 
This last General Conference, someone, I think Elder Richard G. Scott, gave a talk and talked about prayer. He said prayer should be a conversation with God - we can talk freely about our experiences, fears, concers, thanks, questions, pretty much whatever we want. I heard this and felt that my prayers needed improving - we always pray every morning and night, but I'm usually really tired so the prayers aren't that good. Anyways, so what I decided to do (this is in 광안 (Gwangan)) is to not pray on top of my bed (to warm and soft and easy to get sleepy) but to go to a separate room and pray. It was kind of hard at first, but being in the different room helped to be able to think more about what I should pray about, I could pray out loud, and it felt a lot more private, so it was really good. I think my prayers improved a lot from that.
 
So in Sangin, since there's 4 people here, it's really hard to pray by myself in a room (there's the kitchen but the kitchen is always suuuper cold), but I've been feeling that my prayers weren't as sincere as they should be. In the end, I just decided to try and try harder when I prayed. I haven't done anything hugely different, but I think the difference has been huge. I can't really explain it, but I think I feel more peaceful now, and I'm able to really think about what when on during the day when I pray. I also think I pray more now - whether it's at the house during study time, or one the street walking somewhere, or whenever, I think I turn to prayer more now.
 
There's a scripture in D&C where God says something "Seek me and I will find you" and I've been able to feel that through trying to improve my prayers. As I've tried to pray more earnestly, I've been able to feel more peace, and more love from God.
 
Thank you for all you do! Have a great week!
 
Love,
- Elder Luke


P.S.

Here's a picture of me with Elder 박 (Bak) that I took the other day.


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