Monday, December 29, 2014

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....






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