Last week in 영도? (November 25, 2013)

안녕하세요!

No real news for this week either... we've haven't had very much luck doing anything it seems. Our only real investigator, 지영수 (Jii Yeoungsoo in English, though Dad's probably already read his name to you...) was busy this week, and so we weren't. I don't really have any good stories to share either...

We're not sure exactly what he does, but he says he's a plastics something, and is an expert in making fishing lures. I guess the whole factory setup in his house is there so he can make those; 지영수 says he gets orders from all over the world, and he's working on some from South America right now, so that's pretty crazy.

We've been working on trying not necessary to find non-actives, but just trying to see if these people even live in 영도 anymore. The records are really old - maybe 10~15 years old, and so all the information is bad. There's a lot of phone numbers that don't exist anymore, addresses that are vague enough that there's like 20 possible houses, things like that. But we have a lot of time so we've been whittling down on that. There's like 3 different books of records, so trying to get all the information from all of them is kind of painstaking (?) work. Someday, everything will be digital with Google Maps, and then life will be easy!

We had a lot of luck the last couple of days though, most likely because we went on a Saturday and Sunday. There was a lot of people at home, and so they could tell us whether the person lived there or not.

Other than that, doing the usual knocking doors, trying to talk to people, etc, etc. We've tried a couple of times to "sports 전도" - I guess the theory is that you play sports with people, and they they'll give you their numbers to play again, and you do that a bit more and try to see if they're interested in gospel stuff at all. That hasn't really worked out either; we don't have like a basketball here in 영도, and neither does anyone else in our district. Oh, and we're both terrible at sports. We've gotten a couple of numbers, but I honestly don't know if they want us to come back again!

Um... We taught 이상남 this last Sunday, to teach the after-baptism lessons. He's still pretty hard to teach, so we've been keeping it slow. He probably doesn't remember anything that we've taught, but that's kind of out of our control. Last time, we talked about temples (reaaaally simply), but he really wanted to hurry up the lesson and watch his friends play Minecraft. Luckily, we had made this puzzle of the Seoul temple, and had him make that. I think that took his mind of video games, and he concentrated a tiny bit better than before the puzzle. He's a funny kid.

For some reason, we've been getting fed a lot recently. I've probably eaten more with members during the past 4 week here than the 12 with Elder Cho. Not sure why; Elder Platero insists that it's because he looks hungry, so people want to feed him. Don't really know what that means.

We had interviews with President Gilbert this week. He basically said to be patient and keep working - that sometimes, things just happen slowly sometimes. I understand that that's true, but it's still a little annoying that what we're doing doesn't seem to be working out very well. But he said that I was doing fine, and Sister Gilbert said the same thing, so I all I can do is keep at it and not worry too much. They also said that they're going to start keeping missionaries in areas longer; President Monson at one point said that 4-5 transfers is about right for a missionary to be successful (we've been averaging 3 transfers per area I think; the logic behind it is to spend the first transfer getting to know the area and members, the second getting referrals, the third teaching, and the fourth to finish teaching and baptize, which makes a lot of sense).

Oh, and this is probably my last week in 영도. I think I've only explained why, but it's rare for a trainee to stay in their first area any longer than 3 transfers - I guess members tend to remember their first impression, and if that's a scared Elder who can't speak any Korean, that's who they remember. I don't want to leave 영도 though. :(

Happy Thanksgiving! For some reason, I thought it was last week (it isn't, it it?).

Thank you, thank you for all you do~~~!

Love,

- Elder Luke

Notes:

영도: Yeongdo, his area.

안녕하세요!: Annyeonghaseyo, the standard Korean greeting.

전도: Jeondo, "missionary work." From the pronunciation and meaning, I assume this is 伝道 (でんどう [dendou] in Japanese).

이상남: I Sangnam, the boy they taught and baptized a while ago.