Transfer 13, week 3 (?) - Christmas! (December 29, 2014)

안녕하세요! (Annyeonghaseyo!)

 

메리 크리스마스! (Meri Keuliseumaseu! [Merry Christmas])

 

I feel like since I Skyped with everyone this week, there's not too much to write about... but I'll do what I can!

 

This week was really crazy with Christmas stuff going on. We ended up going to 3 Christmas parties, which ate up a lot of our time.

 

We had our official mission Christmas party this Tuesday which was literally a whole day long; we woke up at 5 and got back home around 8 at night. The meeting itself was pretty good; we had kind of a more spiritual part with talks given by President Barrow and Sister Barrow and a few missionaries and members interspersed with musical numbers. The topics were pretty diverse, ranging from Christmas to Christ to "light" to "more important than praying for investigators is praying to meet a good wife" (my personal favorite talk; it was given by on of President Barrow's counselors, and it was really really funny). Then we had lunch together (chicken, potatoes, salad, rice, rolls), watch clips from "Remember the Titans" to learn about companionship unity, then had a talent show put on by various missionaries, and finally we watched Ephriam's rescue. It was fun, but I was kind of ready to go home by the end; the meeting was almost 8 hours long!

 

Wednesday was the 상인 (Sangin) ward Christmas party, which, like I said, was pretty crazy. A lot of members invited friends, and we had like 3 investigators show up, but we were so busy couldn't spend a lot of time with them. The party was supposed to start at 7:00, but we started decorating at 7:00, so we started 20 minutes late, and then we got a phone call from the 2nd counselor asking my companion to go ahead and start and conduct the meeting until he could get there. I didn't really do anything but I was really really stressed anyways, haha. The actually meeting went well once the 2nd counselor got there and all the performances were really good. I think the members enjoyed all of it. The pinnacle was Elder 박 (Bak)'s magic show though; he's been learning magic as a hobby since middle school, and he did a really, really good job. The next Sunday, all the members came up to him to say thanks.

 

Oh, and we did a song and a short skit... that we started preparing about 6 hours before the meeting started. We were really busy and Christmas seemed really far away so we didn't prepare that much. The skit too though, in the end, turned out okay. I think the members liked it and didn't realize how much time we didn't put into it.

 

Then the meeting wrapped up and everyone gathered to eat delicious food which we missed because it was too late and we had to get home. Some members were nice enough to wrap up some food and give it to us, so we got to eat it together.

 

Then on Thursday, we went to another Christmas party, because the bishop asked Elder 박 (Bak) to put a performance on there. The meeting was pretty good (I honestly think that 상인 (Sangin) had better performances though, haha) but I was just there to hang out so it wasn't a problem.

 

So that pretty much wraps up our Christmas schedule, and things are setting back down.

 

One investigator who showed up to the Christmas meeting, Brother 이주영 (I Juyeong) is doing pretty good right now; he's not actually an investigator yet, since we haven't taught him any lessons, but he's shown up to English class twice (he really, really, really loves foreign languages. His dream is to master English, Japanese, German, Spanish, and like 2 other languages), came to the ward barbeque, Christmas party, and the young men's activity we had after English class. Hopefully, we can invite him to learn more about our Church, and we can start teaching him.

 

We had another investigator who came to the party Brother 김재수 (Gim Jaesu), but he's a little bit further from taking the lessons. He's said he had interest in our church; he lives nearby and so has seen our church a lot and said that he thinks our church seems different from other churches. He showed up to the party, but then left partway through and came back and then left early, but I wasn't able to talk with him (I spent a lot of time with 이주영b (I Juyeong)). But he said that he doesn't like being pushed so we'll have to take things kind of slow and keep inviting him out to activities and English class and stuff.

 

We've got a few other potentions, but those are the main people we're working with.

 

We had Zone Training Meeting, MLCM, and SPM in the next two weeks, so we'll be very busy for the next few week taking care of all that.

 

Here's a few pictures - one of us with our "Magic Class" students - a couple of super active young men (if we ask them to come out to an activity, they always always come; Elder 박 (Bak) has been here for close to 5 months now, and he says they haven't missed a magic class yet) plus a member, Brother 배경태 (Bae Gyeongtae) who showed up because we told him we would be having a party. And I'll send a picture of us eating our after-Christmas feast, and of us testing out a "selfie stick" that we got.

 

Alllirghty I think that's about it for this week... Until next week then!

 

Have a happy New Year's~!

 

Love,

- Elder Luke

Here's a few random pictures that Elder Maccarthy sent to us....

Transfer 13, week 2 - Merry Christmas! (December 22, 2014)

안녕하세요 (Annyeonghaseyo)!

 

Merry Christmas!

 

I think we've got things arranged for Skype on this side, and so I'll be seeing you all in a few days!

 

This week was pretty crazy... I think I wrote about it last week but Elder 박 (Bak) got sick, and he was starting to get better, but then had too much food before he completely healed and so he got sick again (in retrospect, the seasoned steamed cheese chicken was probably pushing it after he spent an evening throwing up...).

 

We went to a doctor's office, and the doctor said to not eat anything for three days, and so that's what we did (the doctor is a total quack by the way; they took his blood pressure, Elder 박 (Bak) talked to him for like 3 mintues ("I threw up and got better and then I ate chicken and I don't feel good anymore"), and the doctor diagnosed him with an "inflammed stomach" without doing ANY kind of test whatsoever... Korean medicine seems kind of not sound at all), and so we got medicine.

 

He actually wasn't feeling that bad, but since he wasn't eating, Elder 박 didn't have a lot of energy to go outside and walk around and stuff. He's much, much better now by the way, so I think it's a good thing we took things kind of slow.

 

So that means we had to spend a lot of time this week at our church or house kind of doing busy work/stuff we can do without moving too much. I think I mentioned the Christmas cards our mission made; we spend a good deal of time preparing those (printing off and gluing messages onto them) and we gave out a bunch yesterday. We're supposed to be giving out like 10-15 cards a day, and we definately have not been doing that, so we have a bunch of cards that need to be given out before Christmas.

 

We spend maybe an hour to an hour and a half giving out the cards (one of us held a board that basically said "Take a card! Merry Christmas!" and the other gave out the cards as we wandered around 대구 (Daegu)). To be honest, it's pretty easy missionary work; there's not a lot of thinking we had to do, but it felt really good to finally step out, do something, and be able to count the numbers to prove that we worked (we gave out 105 cards this week, with some 90ish yesterday. We really need to be giving more out though).

 

Other than that, we've had a lot of planning an practicing (well, not as much practice as we need) for various Christmas meetings and other meeitings we have planned, so again, kind of a slow meeting.

 

We met with Brother 변수환 (Byeon Suhwan), a member, this week. To be honest, we were with him for a super long time because he said he wasn't ready to hear our message (he instead demanded our wallets and then spent like 20 minutes checking them out. He's kind of a funny/strange man (probably would be funnier if I could understand his jokes), but that was kind of weird). The message, however, went really well. Brother 변 is kind of a jokester, but he seemed to think really hard and he was really serious during the message. Have you seen the video "Heavenly Father, Earthly Father?" We showed that to him, and talked about the role of fathers.

 

Oh! I had actually planned to send a Christmas package, but that didn't work out, and so I wanted to send a bunch of pictures as a Christmas present insead, but that didn't work out super well either; I had hoped to have saved a tooooon of cool pictures but I'll send what I have (I thought about it, and I'm basically not giving the pictures I should have send earlier and then calling it a present, which is a pretty lame present). It's not much, but enjoy!

 

Talk to you on Christmas!

 

Love,

- Elder Luke

So here's a few pictures from 이기대 (Igidae) a couple of transfers back. I tried to save the cooler pictures for this...

Here's a few more from 이기대 (Igidae)...

Here's a picture I took in 남포동 (Nampodong, a big shopping district in Busan), along with some random rainbow stairs we found in 광안 (Gwangan). The stairs are pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but they were pretty cool so we took a few pictures on a pday when we had time.

The first picture is me with Elder 홍의택 (Hong Witaek -- Andrew's first companion in Gwangan, from the latter part June through the first part of August last year)  - he had to come down to Busan to do military stuff, so we got to hang out with him during lunch after a district meeting. The next is our district picture, and the last is just to say, "Merry Christmas!"

Transfer 13, week 1 (December 15, 2014)

안녕하세요 (Annyeonghaseyo)!

 

Last week was transfer week, but nobody in our house got transfered, so everything will be pretty much the same here in 상인 (Sangin). It's Elder 박재훈 (Bak Jaehun)'s last transfer, as well as Elder 허신행's (Heo Sinhaeng) last (I don't know what to call him... roommate? fellow 상인 (Sangin) missionary?), so we'll definately see some changes next transfer. Until then, things will be pretty quiet.

 

It's been kind of snowy in 대구 (Daegu) - it's snowed like twice now I think. Nothing major; it snowed maybe half an inch once, but that melted by noontime. It's pretty cold though - I'm going to have to buy warmer socks because my feet are always cold, haha.

 

This last week was really good. Well, actually Elder 박 (Bak) got really sick and threw up and had to rest a lot (don't worry, everyone else is healthy. I'm pretty sure whatever he has isn't contagious. Or at least, nobody else has got it yet. It was probably something weird he ate, but we had lunch with the district and then dinner together, so maybe he's just super unlucky) , but other then that, I think things are slowly starting to pick up in 상인 (Sangin).

 

To be honest, we really weren't busy the first like 4 weeks here. Well, we were busy, but it was a lot of planning and meetings and other stuff that zone leaders have to deal with. I wrote last week about how excited we were for this week, and while it didn't turn out exactly how we wanted (partly because Elder 박 (Bak) was sick and pretty much couldn't eat food), things are still going well.

 

We started meeting with Brother 배경태 (Bae Gyeongtae). He's a less active that was baptized like a year ago, but was reactivated by a missionary coming back to 대구 (Daegu) to visit members and friends. I think it was his 3rd or 4th time coming to church when I first got to 상인 (Sangin), so he's been to church for like 10 weeks in a row now, so he's not considered less active anymore. New coverts are supposed to meet with the missionaries to learn more about our church (we've got a program called the 90 day program that we use), but since Brother 배 (Bae) didn't recieve those lessons, we've decided to go over them again with him. So while it's not a new investigator, he's someone new that we can meet with, plan for, help and teach, which is really really awesome. :D

 

There's another recent convert of about 6 months, Sister 최진영 (Choe Jinyeong) who's most of the way through the 90 day program, but the 상인 (Sangin) sister missionaries were taken out of our area before she finished all the things she needed to learn. We kind of put off meeting with her since she's a woman, and we need a man to meet us with her, but we meet her once this week. We only need to meet with her one or two more times to be done, and then I'm not sure what we'll do after that (her sons and husband aren't members, so that's kind our big goal with her, to help her family be baptized as well).

 

We've also got a new person showing up to English class - he's a high school student who is super into foreign languages (his English name is "Fieheieht" or something. It's apparently German for "freedom." I probably would have thought that that was super cool when I was his age too...). He's only shown up once to English class, but I'm preeeetttyyy sure he'll keep coming. We had a party at the church after English class last Saturday, and he stayed and hung out with our members for a few hours. I don't think he talked with a lot of people or made bunch of friends or anything, but I don't think he felt super uncomfortable or anything, and he's probably come out to other ward activities if we invite him.

 

Other than that, we've got few potential investigators here and there (a few contacts we've forgotten to recontact, a guy who called wanting to know about English class (who actually came to English class after the class started, and came up to the door that we were having it, but didn't go in because it was closed. Noooo~!)), and it feels like we're slowly pulling together a group of people we can work with. If we can continue to work like this, I think we can find investigators and be teaching a lot more by the end of the transfer.

 

Mom asked me about whether I like being a zone leader and doing zone leaders stuff or being a normal missionary and doing that; it's hard to say, because it always feels like the grass is greener on the other side, you know? I think the area I'm in is hard until I transfer, and then I look back on it with like fondness or something - I looked at leaders and thought that they were so good and important and stuff, and then when I become a leader I realize that it's just more work, haha. Well, it's a different kind of work in any case. I should just be happy with where I'm at, right?

 

Oh, and I'll try to get Skype to work for this Christmas. We're allowed to call our Christmas day, so your Christmas Eve. I've emailed Dad a little bit about the details, so hopefully everything will work out by the 25th.

 

Talk to you next week~! (Oh, email will be on the 24th, and not that Monday, so it'll be late because of our Christmas meeting).

 

Love,

- Elder Luke

Transfer 12, week 6! (December 8, 2014)

Hello~!

 

Oh, Elder 박 (Bak) and I are super excited for this next week; it's pretty much the first week this transfer where we don't have any kind of major meeting or thing to plan for, which means we get to have a pretty much normal week! Things have been working out really well, and we've got quite a few appointments (mostly with members, a few with some less active-type people), so we're going to be busy (especially compared to what we've been doing recently).

 

Let's see... so this last week, our big meetings were SPM and MLCM. SPM is the Stake Presidency Meeting (which I wrote about last time), and we spent most of the first half of the week preparing for that; so calling people and organizing all the information into a document. The meeting itself is pretty easy; the Stake President looks over our files and basically asks questions or suggestions based on what he sees. We don't actually do much; we just have to be ready to answer questions about investigators if he has any. Basically what happened at that meeting is that that stake president asked us to help missionaries to try and visit with members more, andt also told us that the one branch in our zone not doing a Christmas party needed to make one. We'll talk to the zone leaders about missionaries visiting members, and we already made the called needed about the Christmas party, so everything's pretty much in order from that meeting.

 

We also had MLCM, which is a meeting where all the zone leaders and sister training leaders gather in 부산 (Busan) to have a meeting about concerns and focuses for the upcoming month. We talked alot about leadership and planning and goal-setting, and also about the "He is the Gift" missionary project/initiative (no idea what it's actually called). Have you seen the video yet? It's kind of a big social media push, but the church made a Christmast video about the birth of Christ, and I'm pretty sure it's a big worldwide push to try and use the video to find investigators. The church produced a bunch of pass-along cards with a QR code linking to the video, and we're supposed to pass them out during the holiday season. Our mission printed 29,000 cards, which is pretty insane. Looking at the paper we got regarding the "He is the Gift" video, we're each supposed to get like 15 cards a day to pass out; the AP's said 500 per team for the entire mission. Honestly, that's kind of hard to do, especially for busy teams (which we aren't.......), and on top of all that, we haven't recieved the cards yet (the project kickoff strarted on the 28th of November I believe, so it's been some 10 days since we were supposed to get the cards and pass them out)! So we're going to have to work super hard to try and pass out the cards - like maybe 20 a day?

 

So hopefully things are running a little bit more smoothly over in the US and you've gotten that card from the missionaries and have seen the video and are sharing it with your friends and stuff. How are things in the US? It it as big of a deal as the MLCM made it out to be?

 

So that's kind of the main things that went on this week; it just takes a couple of meetings and preparation for said meetings to fill up our schedule and keep us busy!

 

Something fun though - a member invited us over for lunch (she owns a restaraunt) and so we and the B team headed over to meet with them. We though we were just going to eat together and share a message, but it turns out that they were making 김치 (kimchi) and for some reason didn't tell us. Actually, I have no idea if we were called to help make the kimchi or not, but one way or another, we were roped into making kimchi (not that we didn't want to, but we probably would have worn less nice clothes had we had known). So I'll send a few pictures of that.

 

Most of the work was done for us; they had a mountain of cabbage and a bathtub full of red sauce ready for us. One person kind of cleaned the cabbage and took off bad leaves, and the rest of us slathered said cabbage with the red sauce (I'm not sure exactly what it is - I think it's mostly hot peppers with some other sliced vegtables and maybe some seafood). I was on the slathering team, and so I had kind of a tray in front of me, and one of the members poured a huge spoonful of red stuff on my tray, and I would then take the cabbage and put the sauce all over it (with my gloved hands, no other special tools), making sure to get it between all the leaves and stuff. Then when it was done, put it in a bucket, and got another head of cabbage. It was pretty simple, and we finished in about an hour.

 

It's actually my first time in my time in Korea making kimchi, so now I can say that I feel that my mission is complete, haha.

 

I think the members want us to visit like every week, so we'll probably end up going over to help out with odd jobs like that - making kimchi, doing dishes, cooking, etc. We don't have anything down for sure, but one of the members was reminicisng about the days when the missionaries visited every week and did random stuff for him, so we'll see how that goes...

 

Alrighty, as always, it's kind of short, but that's pretty much what went down this week! Thank you so much for your letters and love and prayers! Until next week!

 

Love,

- Elder Luke