안녕하세요~ (Annyeonghaseyo)
Sorry for the late email! We had to go down to 부산 (Busan) for transfer meeting. Actually, neither Elder Boome nor I transfered (or the 상인 (Sangin) sisters for that matter), but we had to take a test/participate in a study about how well foreigners understand Korean proverbs (actually, I have no idea if that's what they were studying, but they told us a few Korean proverbs, spent way too long explaining them, and then had us make example sentance). So by the time we got back to our area it was around 7:00 and so we didn't have much time to do anything.
We had Family Home Evening (for the ward) yesterday night, so we just ended up doing that. Attendance had been a little sparse recently; school's started up in Korea, so the young men that used to come to EVERYTHING we did aren't able to make it to activities any more, and so that takes a pretty big toll on our attendance. The other members kind of show up when they do, and don't come when they don't, and it all just changes from week to week. Still, we have a couple of older sisters (50's? 60's?) who come out pretty much every week, and they're (suprisingly) fun and participate well, so it's not too bad.
I was actually kind of sick this week, so we had a couple of weird days where we had to do stuff related to that. I've just had a stomachache for like a week or two now, and it wasn't too bad most of the time, but it's gone on long enough that I went to see a doctor this morning. I felt good after fasting last Sunday, but then I ate waaaaay too much unhealthy food on Monday and Tuesday, and so I felt like dying on Wednsday, haha. So I took it easy Thurday Friday, got some advice from Sister Barrow (who kind of manages missionary health), then decided to see a doctor yesterday. There's a member in Daegu who used to be a member of the Area Seventy, and he's a doctor, so all the members told me to give him a visit. I met and talked with him today, and he said that it sounded like I have "gastritis" (?) which is some kind of inflammation of the stomach. Anyways, he gave me some medicine, told me to avoid any greasy or spicy foods and not drink sodas and then get back to him on how I'm doing. So I'm hoping this will be the end of being sick.
As far as this week goes.....!
It was transfer week, but I kind of already talked about that. I have a couple of friends moving into our zone, so I'm pretty excited. Elder Frampton from my MTC district is district leader in one of the... districts, and Elder Pickard is district leader in our zone as well (though he was there last transfer as well). And Elder Lees is moving in from 부산 (Busan), up to 안동 (Andong) (training there actually...), which is both the largest and northernmost area in our mission. There were a lot of weird transfers this time; we have a looooot of young missionaries, so there's a lot of teams out there that are two foreigners that have been serving for 5-6 months - just a lot of young missionaries serving together.
As a side note, I met the 영도 (Yeongdo) (my first area) missionaries, and they say that 이상남 (I Sangnam) is still coming out to church with his aunt (he's the 8 year old kid that I baptized back when I was in 영도 (Yeongdo)), so that's pretty cool. And I also heard that Brother 정대영 (Jeong Daeyeong) in 광안 (Gwangan) is still doing well; he's still meeting with the missionaries and coming out to church, though he hasn't been baptized yet still. They say he's been introducing his friends to the missionaries though, which is pretty cool. Now that school's started though, things might slow down a bit with him.
Brother 이진산 (I Jinsan) and Sister 이예진 (I Yeojin) are both still doing well; we're planning on meeting them both Saturday and Sunday this week; otherwise, I don't think we can teach everything we need before baptism. We had a lot of material prepared to teach them, but we didn't have time to teach it all during church (which was fine since we were talking about other important things). Sister 이예진 in particular seems to be doing well - she takes in the lessons well, understands well, is friendlier with the members, and in general is doing better than her younger brother. Our Sisters showed her the baptismal font, and they say she seemed pretty excited about that as well. I think she'll be ready by the baptismal date. We still have a few concerns about 이진산b - he's doing well, of course, but when we tried to commit him to keep the Word of Wisdom, he kind of said that he wasn't sure. He said that it's a part of Korean culture to drink, and that if he has to drink he has to drink, and so he's not sure if he can keep the Word of Wisdom. Of course, that's kind of a hard thing to ask someone to do huh? We're basically asking him to make a promise that he has to keep for the rest of his life, all while he knows that there will be situations where it will be difficult to keep that promise.
Oh, and we moved the baptismal date from Saturday the 21st to Sunday the 22nd - it seems like that would fit everyone's schedule a little bit better. It gives us a little bit more time, on Saturday and then Sunday during church, to teach them, so we've got a little bit more room. We also had I think a stake temple trip planned on that day, so that would have conflicted some. We've got to get started on planning the service soon!
We also met with a sort-of-kind-of investigator, Brother 전상현 (Jeon Sanghyeon). He's the 8-year old son of a recent convert, and she wants him to take the lessons because he doesn't know that much about the church. He's 8 years old, and his mother is a member, so he won't be a convert baptism, so he's more of just someone to teach rather than a real investigator who's super interested in our church (he didn't want to have to participate in the lessons - he said that he just wanted to play at church, haha). So we'll probably just reaaaally briefly and simply go over the lesson contents, and then tell his mother that he's pretty much good for baptism. If nothing else though, it's good to have someone to prepare for and teach.
I think that's about it! We've got Zone Training Meeting coming up next week, so we've got to figure that out.
Thank you for everything! Please tell everyone thanks for the birthday emails as well! (speaking of being sick, I wasn't feeling super good on my birthday, so we didn't do anything special. I got a couple of phone calls from missionary friends wishing me a happy birthday though, so that was pretty cool. Elder Pickard sang me "Happy Birthday" in Japanese. He asked me how to say that like 2 days before my birthday, then put that to the tune, and then taught the other 3 missionaries in the house that song so they could sing it to me over the phone at 6:30 in the morning. Haha, it was really nice of Elder Pickard.)
Until next week!
- Elder Luke
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