Transfer 8, week 5 (transfer week!) (June 15, 2014)

Hello!

Thanks for the package! I've already shared out some of the goodies in it with other missionaries. I hope you're all enjoying your time in Japan. I'm jealous!

I'll send a couple of pictures - the first is a picture of our Branch President's family with some of the foreigners in the branch (plus another member, plus Josh - more on him in a bit). Being able to spend some time with them and eat delicious food was really, really good - especially our time with Brother Ted and Josh.

We also had a zone p-day, and while the picture doesn't have everyone in our zone, that's probably a little more than half of them. I need to take more pictures, huh?

We had a short transfer this time around (because President Gilbert's leaving), so this week is transfer week. I'm guessing I'm not going anywhere, but I guess you can never tell huh? We'll see, but Elder Boome and I are pretty young here in Pohang.

We had a really good week. I know I wrote last week that things were hard, and that I was really tired, but things turned out well. I'm really grateful for the miracles we were able to see out here.

First - we had to cancel Brother 이창준's (I Changjun) baptismal date (not one of the aforementioned miracles). He said that he doesn't think he can make that date, and to be honest, I don't really think he can either. The important thing is that he knows that baptism is kind of the big goal, and we shoot for a date once he learns a little bit more. However, the lessons have been going really well with him (which is a miracle!). I wrote that he's a shy person, but he's opened up a lot - he's been asking questions about things he doesn't understand, and we're starting to get a feel for his thoughts a little bit better now. Last time we met, he prayed to understand the gospel better, which is exciting! He's still got a ways to go, but he's headed in the right direction.

We've pretty much dropped Brother 전성호 (Jeon Seongho) (older man who really likes reading the Book of Mormon). He hasn't been contacting us like he usually does, and we haven't really tried to call him or anything either. I only met with him with Elder Boome once, so maybe to pressured him too much or something; or maybe he doesn't want to meet with us without a Korean; I'm not sure.

We've called Brother 공인후 (Kong Inhu) up like once this week, but he rejected our call. We'll try again tonight, and see if he has time to meet.

So our current investigator situation isn't great (well, it hasn't changed...), but we've been able to pick up a few potential investigators.

About a month ago, we had a meal appointment with a member, and the member told me to call one 나정희 (Na Jeonghwi). He said that this guy had gone to BSU to study, and kind of gave me the general instruction to call him and "talk about Idaho." So I gave it a shot, and he's super nice and speaks really good English. I kind of neglected to follow up and keep in touch, but I did that this week, and he said he'd like to meet with us! We haven't been able to get an appointment yet, but he says he thinks good things about our church, but just "insn't into it yet." He says that he went to BYU for a summer sememester, his aunt is a member of the church, he met with the missionaries in Seoul, and has been to the Pohang church several times to boot. Hopefully, we can start meeting with him - he seems like he has a lot of potential!

I guess he's not just a potential investigator anymore, but we met with and taught 이채호 (I Chaeho) from our English class. He's like 28, majored in psychology, and studies the Bible often. He's a little bit daunting, since he seems really smart, and it kind of feels like he has a lot of doubt about our beliefs, but we'll have to see where he goes. He also has a mysterious past where he's met with the missionaries for about a month fairly recently (we found 이채호 (I Chaeho) in some records), but he seems really, really relucant to talk about it (he hasn't mentioned it yet, and he's said some things that seems like he doesn't want us to know he's been taught by missionaries before...). But he's a really nice guy, and we'll probably get to meet with him at least a few more times.

I didn't write about him last week, but Brother Ted (who I DID mention) brought one of his military friends, Josh, to church. Josh was supposed to leave for America last week, but he got an extension and came to church for a second time. We were able to talk a lot, and ended up teaching about the Plan of Salvation, which was really good. He's a really nice guy.

Um, we got a few contacts this week, and decent contacts took, not just the typical "I want to learn English contact." Once gentleman in particular kind of stands out, so I'll write about him for a bit.

We weren't able to get his full name - he just told us to call him Mr. 장 (Jeong). Mr. 장 is a little bit older, maybe like 60, and has NO interest in religion. We were talking for a while, and this is how the conversation went -

"(Mr. 장) So you're missionaries, right?"

"Yes."

"I'm not interested in religion."

"Is that so?"

"I said I'm not interested in religion."

"Yes."

"(Mr. 장 again) How do you say 'I'm not interested' in English?"

"(Us, in English) You say 'I'm not interested'."

"(Him, in English) I'm not interested."

Somehow, as we talked a little bit more, he told us that there was one things that he had a litttle bit of interest in - that was whether Noah and the flood actually happened. We talked more, and we ended up talking about life after death, and the purpose of life, and then getting his phone number. I'm not sure how it happened, but I'm grateful that we were able to see that miracle of not only teaching, but getting a phone number from someone who said to have no interest in religion whatsoever.

So anyways, this week turned out to be really good - we saw a lot of little miracles like that, just things happening that allow us to progess the missionary work in Pohang. I've learned that good things are in store for all of us, but that we sometimes have to endure some hardships. Like it says in Ether, we don't recieve a witness until after the trial of our faith. I know that God loves us, and He's got great and wonderful plans in store for us!

Love,

Elder Luke

Looks like a big, nice house -- I wonder how typical this is? And holy cow, Elder Boome is tall!

I think the sign on the window says "Self Bar 무한셀므두이 & 샐러드." Google Translate gives the Korean as "Duy & endless salad selmeu." Yeah, not very helpful... But enough to guess that this is an all-you-can-eat self-serve place. From the grills on the table you can tell they specialize in barbecue (焼肉).

Transfer 8, week 4 (June 9, 2014)

Hello!

Another fairly slow week this week, but things turned out well. It was super hot last week, but it got kind of rainy and cold this week which is actually kinda nice.

We have not been doing a very good job keeping in touch with Brother 공인후 (Kong Inhu), so we didn't meet with him this week. He's kind of in a half-dead state as an investigator - he's just really busy and not super interested.

We met with Brother 전성호 (Jeon Seongho) but the meeting kind of went iffy. It kind of looks like we'll have to drop him - he's pretty happy with the church he's going to now, and seems unwilling to switch/be open minded about things. We'll probably meet him one or two more times (we've been saying that for like a long time now... Elder 이영호 (I Yeongho, Andrew's previous companion) said he and Elder Harris (who was in 포항 (Pohang) before me) talking about dropping Brother 전성호 (Jeon Seongho)).

So that's kind of the bad news for the week, but we do have some excitingish news!

Brother 이창준 (I Changjun) accepted a baptismal date for the 29th of June! It was a pretty hesitant "yeah, I'll try" kind of commitment, but he said yes. He's still got a long way to go until baptism, but we're excited to keep working with him. He's the only baptismal date I've had since 이상남 (I Sangnam) way back in my first transfer (and I didn't actually give him the date), which is pretty crazy and probably a little sad (we haven't been teaching as much as we would like for sure; we tried really hard in 서귀포 (Seogwipo) to give brother 전충식 (Jeon Chungsik) a date, but he never said yes...).

So here's a little bit more on Brother 이창준 (I Changjun). He's single, 40, works as a safety manager in an electric company, and doesn't really seem to have a lot of direction in life. He likes working out and watching TV (he really likes "Friends"), and wants to learn English so he can travel around the world someday. His English is, uh, not that good but definately not the worst I've heard. He's a nice guy.

The main problem with Brother 이창준 (I Changjun) is that he's really, really quiet. He's opened up a little more as we've studied English, but he's still pretty quiet as we teach the gospel. He usually just kind of accepts things and says he doesn't have any questions. We've been trying to figure out what he's feeling or thinking as we teach, but he's pretty good at giving vague answers ("If there really is a life after death, how would that affect your life now?" "I'd probably have to be more kind." "...yes. Good."), or saying he doesn't know or hasn't really thought about it.

I thought I would be move excited about the baptismal date, but maybe it's hard to be excited because he's not that excited. Maybe someday we'll be able to find someone who's excited about the gospel. :/

Speaking of finding, we've been outside "전도"ing (jeondo -- probably 伝道) - trying to talk to people and find through doing that (I kind of prefer calling people on the phone or basically anything else, but Elder Boome doesn't really seem to like other finding activities so we don't do that that often).

Most people in Korea are really nice, especially to two foreigners so talking to people usually isn't too bad. There's people who throw out a "괜찮습니다" (kwaenchanhseubnida) (I'm fine) or "됬습니다" (doissseubnida) (not sure what that translates to - either "I'm done" "We're done" or "It's done") (Google Translate says "false prophets and guides"), after you talk for a bit, but that's usually pretty rare. Above that are people who will talk, but only if you ask questions. They're okay to talk to, but gets awkward once you run out of questions, haha.

And there's a lot of really nice people you can have a conversation with, and who will ask us questions back (mostly "where are you from?" "how long have you been in Korea?" "are you students?").

Anyways, we've been trying to teach about the gospel, but it's really, really hard. Handing out pamphlets is easy enough, but I don't know how many people read those. There's a section in Preach My Gospel under "Finding People" called "Find when you teach, teach when you find," and we've been trying to apply that, but it's not going so well, haha. It's hard to steer the conversation into important topics that we can actually teach and testify about, especially if you have like 3 minutes on a bus to do that. We're slowly improving, and we've doing a lot of practice, but we're still not quite where we want to be. Finding people is not easy work. :/

Studying with Elder Boome has been really good. We had one of the APs (assistant to the President - basically a missionary that serves as a counselor to the mission president) come over 포항 (Pohang) to help us out. He gave us some pointers, and it's helped us to focus on our investigators more. We're also trying to do some teaching practice every morning - there's a lot of times we think we know what we're going to teach, but it's hard to put it into words (especially in Korean!). Hopefully, we're teaching better as a result of all this...!

We had one "Ted Csomething" come into our branch. He's serving in the Navy (I think), and is stationed in Korea for 6 months. Not that that's super important, but just thought I'd mention it. He's from the States, Virginia, I think.

Oh, and one last thing: Dad, can you put some more money on my debit card? I've pretty much used up everything I came to Korea with. Thanks!

Well, I think that's it. If you have any questions, please send them my way~!

Thank you so much for your prayers and everything else you do! I miss you all!

Love,

- Elder Luke

Transfer 8, week 3 (June 2, 2014)

안녕하세요 (Annyeonghaseyo)~

I don't know what to write this week. (update: Elder Boome has been emailing for forever, so while I don't have anything in particular to write, I've been writing it anyways...)

We had a meeting Saturday for President Gilbert. The district (not our mission district but district as in not quite a stake) had a meeting for him (because he's leaving in a few weeks!), and so we kind of spent the whole day there. For some reason, missionaries are expected to know how to sing, so we were part of a choir, which went reasonably okay, but far below the choir director's high expectations for us. We missed a choir practice last Sunday, so that didn't help (we had an appointment with a new investigator, but he wasn't home when we visited, so that was a little disappointing). One song wasn't even a hymn, and the choir practice right before the meeting was the first time I had seen the song. All in all, it went okay though.

Haha, I just reread that last paragraph, and I think you can tell that I'm tired. The weather's been really, really hot lately, and so maybe because of that I haven't been sleeping super well it seems. We don't have an a/c at our house yet - rumor has it that one is on its way.

Anyways, the meeting was good. For some reason, one of the main thoughts I had is "I need to be a more wonderful missionary." That wasn't talked about at all, but I feel like I'm at the point where I can really improve and do a lot more work. It's been a year, and now I know how to do basic missionary tasks well, and the language isn't as big of a deal (did I write about this last time?). So it feels like now just needs to be a time where I focus really well, and do the best that I can.

I forget who, but I know someone in General Conference asked everyone to get a copy of Preach My Gospel and study it. Do we have one at our house? Are you studying it? Elder Boome and I decided we want to read PMG over from the beginning (everyone reads it in bits, here and there, but we made a plan to be able to read all of it from cover to cover within two transfers (basically a chapter a week). I feel like we're both learning a lot from it so far - it's easy to forget a lot of the basics that are in it.

We kind of had a weird week last week. We're not as busy as we would like to be for sure, but finding people isn't really easy. Our ward mission leader said to not get frustrated or stressed, since our effort is more important than how many investigators we have. That's true, but I don't feel like I've been able to teach anyone who's actually been progressing in the gospel. But I suppose a lot of missionaries have similar experiences. We just do the best that we can anyways.

Elder 이영호 (I Yeongho, Andrew's previous companion) didn't like visiting members for some reason, so we didn't do that a lot last transfer (I think he that they were too busy). Elder Boome and I decided that that's not the right way to do things, so we've been trying to get to know the members at least a little bit better. We've been blessed to have a few opportunities to talk with our members. One member gave us a ride back from the Saturday meeting, so we talked with him for like an hour, which was really good. Yesterday, we had a "우정 모임" (ujeong moim) (which translates directly to like "friendship meeting"), so we got to spend some time with another member who gave us a ride. There's a lot of people we still don't know, but it's been a good week as far as that goes.

As for investigators, we've just basically been meeting the same people over and over again. We need to find new people... We had planned to spent a lot of time this week finding people, but somehow I don't feel like we were able to do that as much as we had hoped.

Oh, people have been asking about how Mom and Dad met (met like really briefly when Dad was missionary, then Dad went back for an intership, and you had a group of friends you would go sightseeing with, etc) - I know the story, but not really the details. Could you write about that and send it to me? Thank you~!

I guess I'll write a little about our district since we have time...

We have 8 missionaries in the district, in two areas. 포항 (Pohang) has us, and the senior couple, and 경주 (Gyeongju) has two elders and two sisters. 포항 (Pohang), as you already know, is pretty heavy into the steel industry, while 경주 (Gyeongju) is kind of a historical touristy area - it used to be the capital for some ancient dynasty or something, so there's a lot of historical sites around there. It takes like half and hour by bus to get from Pohang to Gyeoungju. I actually know pretty much everyone in our district. 경주 (Gyeongju) has Elder 김태운 (Kim Taeun) as district leader (he was in my district my last transfer in 영도 (Yeongdo)) with Elder Baker (was in my district for two transfers in 서귀포 (Seogwipo)). The sisters are Sister Redford (was in my district my first two transfers in Korea), and she's training Sister 강다현 (Kim Dahyeon) (who is new). I don't know where I'm going with this anymore. We have a good district.

To wrap things up, here's a few thoughts I've been thinking about this week...

The parable of the empty parable:

One of our investigators, Brother 공인후 (Kang Inhu), met with the missionaries like a year and a half ago, so he doesn't remember a lot from the lessons. He says that he's a visual learner, so a lot of the stuff he does remember involve doing some activity, or perhaps a drawing on a board or something like that. Amoung that which he remembers is a little activity that you do with your hands and a pen that demonstrates the need for prophets (it's hard to explain so I won't). 공인후 (Kang Inhu) very distictly remembers that the missinaries taught him something that he does with his hands (he usually very vaguely moves his hands at this point), nods, and says, ah, yes, the missionaries taught me this. The problem of course, is that he has no idea what the hand motions mean.

Elder Boome and I kind of thought it was just funny at first, but it's made me thing about other things that we just kind of see the outside and accept, but not really see the deeper meaning of. I'm sure there's a gospel application somewhere, but I can't quite figure it out. I guess one would be reading scriptures, learning the stories, but not the principles behind them, but that's kinda lame.

Moving on...

I think one of the most important things I've learned so far is about the Atonement. In sacrament meeting, or at the MTC or wherever, people would testify a lot about the Atonement of Jesus Christ, but I never understood it. But now, as a missionary, I'm learning what it means to rely on the Atonement. It's hard to explain. But I'm really grateful that Jesus Christ atoned for us, and that through the Atonement, God gives us strengh to be able to do what's right.

I'll write you all next week!

Love,

- Elder Luke

Notes:

"The weather's been really, really hot lately": It looks like Pohang has been up in the high 80s, with high humidity, in the last week.

Transfer 8, week 2 (May 26, 2014)

Dear family!!!

This week's been really weird. It feels like I've been with Elder Boome for like a couple of months now, but it's only been a week! Ah, strange how the time goes.

This transfer is only 5 weeks because President Gilbert is leaving, but the next will be 7 weeks, so I don't think it'll really affect me. Elder Boome and I will probably be together for that time anyways.

Our first week went well - I'm excited to be with Elder Boome! Also, I didn't get us lost yet, so that's a relief. I think I know enough to get by (except I don't know like anyone in the branch...). Anyways, this week we kind of seemed to have a lot of time. Brother 전성호 (Jeon Seongho) is still up in Seoul, and so we we're able to meet with him (we've been kind of wondering whether he needs to be dropped anyways...), and Brother 공인후 (Kong Inhu) was busy so we only met him once this week.

We were able to meet with Brother 이창준 (I Changjun) twice though, which was good. He seemed to take the fact that Elder 이영호 (I Yeongho) kind of left without a word pretty well (actually Elder 이영호 (I Yeongho) told pretty much nobody that he was going home - he said that he wanted to leave quietly). Brother 이창준 (I Changjun) seems like he's enjoying learning English more - he seems more comfortable, and he laughs more. We're not sure if it's because there's two people teaching him English, or if he's just finally gotten used to missionaries. Unfortunately, the Family English Program (Our not-English-class English learning program which really should be used to meet families but is usually used to meet individual people) goes for six weeks, and his sixth week is this week. So we have to talk to him and ask if we can continue meeting, but only talk about the gospel. Elder Boome and I have some (perhaps unfounded) high hopes for him though. If nothing else, we both really like him, haha. He's a good guy.

That's one thing Elder Boome and I have talked a lot about; we've really been seeing a weakness in the Family English Program, which is the fact that you meet a lot of people not really interested in the gospel. I think Preach my Gospel definately works on the assumption that your investigator is interested in learning about at least some part of the gospel.

As we plan, we almost always talk about investigator's needs, but it seems like a lot of investigators have the need "feel the Spirit and start finding faith," which is really, really, really hard (we're supposed to find out their needs and then teach to said needs to help them feel the Spirit, but "becoming interested" is not really a good need). We're not really sure how to go on - if you teach a lot of English, you can teach a lot of people who aren't that interested, which isn't that great. But if we try to focus on talking to people only about the gospel, well, it's hard to find people who are interested.

So we kind of need to pray and think a lot to try and figure out what God wants for Pohang.

Haha, so our investigator situation isn't too great (basically 3 men with strong English interest and a willingness to hear about the gospel), so we're trying to focus on finding new people (we were looking at old records, and it was a little sad to see so many investigators picked up and dropped and picked up and dropped. It seems like finding new investigators - who have never met with the missionaries before - is really hard). Luckily, I think we're the companionship to find a bunch of people!

I really love working with Elder Boome - it's only been a week, but it feels like we both want really badly to be able to improve as missionaries, find people and baptize someone. We talk a lot about how to do things efficiently so that we can make the most of our time, about how we teach and how we can improve, and trying to always work harder.

We've been trying really hard to talk to a lot of people - we've been able to hand out a lot of pamphlets, but it's hard to find someone on the street, and then talk to them until the point where they're willing to meet and learn about the Gospel.

Well, that's how things are looking right now, but I think if Elder Boome and I keep trying to do our best, and we keep working hard, we'll see a lot of miracles in Pohang. We'll prooobably be together for at least 3 months, so we're trying to make the most of the time we have together. We've made a lot of good plans, and we just hope to be able to set them into action and grow a lot these next transfers!

I still have some time, so let me write a quick story.

I don't know if I've mentioned William before - but he's someone who came to our English class like 2-3 times. He's just this super nice guy, and (like everyone else) we wanted him to teach him. He seemed really solid as an English class member, but he stopped coming, and we didn't know why. We got a text the other day, and he said he found a job and is working somewhere and couldn't come, so we pretty much had to give up on him since we didn't really know how to proceed with him.

Well, today we were walking around the downtown area of Pohand after having eaten lunch, and guess who we find! It turns out the the place he works is super close to our church (like within 5 minutes walking), and he was really happy to see us again, and even invited us to come by anytime and chat. We're really grateful to have been able to find him again!

We've been seeing a lot of little miracles like that - there was one guy we met who asked us for directions (I'm not sure why any Korean would ask two foreigners for directions, but I suppose that's where the miracle lies), but we didn't really the directions really well. Anyways, we continued to talk to him, and it turns out he's interested in English and we had traded numbers by the time we finished talking.

Ah, I think that's about it for time.

I'm really thankful that I can serve as a missionary in the Korea Busan mission! I've learned a lot, and (I hope) I've helped other to learn a lot as well, whether it be members, other missionaries, or our investigators. God loves each and every one of us, and he is looking out for us.

I'll write to you all next week~!

Love,

Elder Luke

Oh, and I think I promised to send a picture of Elder 이영호 (I Yeongho) and I, but I'm pretty sure I didn't. Here it is!

Transfer 8, week 1 (May 19, 2014)

Hello!

This will be kind of a short email, because we need to get back to 포항 (Pohang) and do some other stuff, and I'm kind of tired but...

As expected, I'm staying in Pohang, but I'll be serving with Elder Boome! My companion told all the members he's a "tall handsome guy from England." He's been in Korea six more weeks than I have, so I think today is basically his year mark in Korea.

Anyways, I'm excited to be able to work with him; things will go well in Pohang!

We'll probably have to focus a lot on finding, since the investigators we have are kind of iffyish, so we'll have to see how that goes. Honestly, even if you have a ton of investigators, you need to focus on finding, so that's not that different.

Sorry this is so short, but I'll write you all next week!

Love,

Elder Luke

Transfer 7, week 6 (May 12, 2014)

안녕하세요 (Annyeonghaseyo)!

오늘 여러분이랑 통화할 수 있어서 좋았어요! 근데 이미 이야기했으니까 쓸 일이 없네요…

It was good talking to you day! I feel like the hour went by fast; maybe next time, I think of some stories or experiences to share so you can hear something that’s a little bit more fun. And I’ll try to remember to get Skype set up, though I’ll probably be in another area by then, so who knows how things will go!

We had branch conference this week, which seemed to go really well. The branch presidency really pushed for people to invite others to come to church, and for members to visit less actives and invite them as well. We normally have 50 people come to church, and we had 70 this week – around 10 less actives and 10 nonmembers showed up, so I think it was a huge success. Elder 이영호 (I Yeongho, his companion) said that it was the second most “대박” (daebak = "jackpot"?) branch conference he’s been a part of. We invited almost all the nonmembers we’re working with (investigators and English class people mostly), but our turnout wasn’t great. We did have one English class member show up a little late, so at least someone showed up!

There’s this one English class member, 전옥근 (Okguun Jun), who’s shown up to English class a couple of times. She’s been busy or something, and hasn’t been able to make it the past few weeks. She missed out the English class where we invited everyone to church, so she wasn’t invited.

We got a feeling that we should invite her though, and so we gave her a call and did. After a bit of confusion (I called her at first, and she for some reason didn’t understand a word I said apparently… she called back later because she was confused, haha), she said she would come to church – she even said she would cancel another appointment to make it!

She didn’t make it. Another English class member did, haha. Anyways, I guess the impression we got to call her gave her the chance to use her agency, right? We were pretty disappointed when she ended up not coming to church, but we did everything we could.

That’s one of the big things that I’ve learned, and am still learning, on my mission. We do what we can, and we trust that God will bless us to turn our work into His work.

We really wanted 이창준 (I Changjun) to show up to church, but he didn’t come. We invited him twice, but he just said, “I’ll think about it.” I guess with this too, we have to let him exercise his agency.

He’s been doing good though – last last time we met, he had prayed and read the Book of Mormon. He’s read up to chapter 8 now I think – we were surprised; he read much more than we had expected. For example, we gave the introduction to the book of Mormon as assigned reading, but he read all of the stuff in the beginning of the Book of Mormon, and read up to 1 Nephi 2. He prays better now too – at first, he only said “Thank you for letting us spend good time with good people,” but now he says like two sentences instead of one. :D

Last time we met, he was busy and couldn’t forgot to pray and read, but we have an appointment with him today, so hopefully, all will go well and he’ll have remembered to do those things.

So this is Elder 이영호’s (I Yeongho) last week as a missionary. He says it feels really weird, but it’s weird for me too. I don’t have confidence in getting around, so we’ll probably end up getting pretty lost a few times. Maybe I’ll be companions with a Korean, and then I won’t have to worry as much… Come to think of it though, I’ll probably be with my next companion for at least 2 transfers (3 months), since 3 transfers is usually minimum in an area. We get to find out what happens this Thursday!

Oh, this is kind of random, but I wanted to write about our eating habits here. In my other areas, we would almost always eat lunch and dinner at our house, but we really don’t do that in 포항 (Pohang). Our church is like 10 minutes by bus from our house, with busses coming around every 20-25 minutes, so it can be a little bit time consuming. I don’t know if that’s why, but we’ve barely gone shopping – maybe like 2 or three times this transfer?

Normally, we eat lunch at our house, and then dinner somewhere outside. There’s this really cheap restaurant right by our church – you can get dinner for like $3 a person, so it doesn’t really make sense to spend a lot of time on a bus, and spend money on bus fare when we can eat right there. Granted the restaurant isn’t thaaat good (it’s not bad), and it seems a little bit on the sketchy side, but the price is good.

Anyways, I don’t know what will happen next transfer, but I hope we go shopping; I hate feeling like there’s no food in the house, haha (or should I say, I hate there being no food in the house?). But we survived for these past 5 weeks, right?

Uhhh…

I don’t know what else to write, so I think I’ll end it here. I’ll send a picture of me with my companion – it’s like the only picture I have of us together so far.

I’ve learned that God blesses us with joy in life as we do our best. It’s not easy, but to paraphrase someone in General Conference quoting someone else (…?), “God gives us, along with the commandment to love, the ability to love others.” Likewise, God had told us to do our best, as we strive to do our best to do what’s right, to keep the commandments, and to help others, we’ll be helped and lifted. I know that the gospel was given to us so that we can be protected, blessed, and happy in life!

Thank you for all your prayers and support and love!

Love,

- Elder Luke

Notes:

According to Google Translate, the first line means "Today you can be talked to the good! Marilyn was already written but the story happens eopneyo...."  Clearly, the first sentence is probably "It was good to talk to you today!" I have no idea what the second one is supposed to be.

대박: Daebak = "jackpot"? I'm guessing this means "successful."

이창준: I Changjun, an investigator mentioned by Andrew two weeks ago.

"I’ll send a picture of me" -- he didn't.

Transfer 7, week 5 (May 5, 2014)

Hello!

 

Sorry, we don't have much time to write today; we're kind of in a weird place.

 

President Gilbert lets missionaries who are on their last transfer go back to old areas and meet with investigators/other people they know. So we're travelling back to Busan today to meet someone who I think was Elder Lee's first investigator. We're emailing from kind of a pay computer, so I have like 20 minutes to write this email, so it might be short...

 

I can't remember what we did for Christmas, but I think if you call us the same way you did then, all will be well. Like I said, anytime is fine for me - we start our morning study at 8:00 Korean time, and then we just have P-day the whole day, so just call like sometime bettween 8:00 and 12:00 or like 1:00, and we should still be in the house. Since you're getting this email a bit early today, please write back, and I'll try to find some time to double check when you're going to call. I totatally spaced on the Skype thing though, so I didn't ask anyone at church. :( It, uh, might not happen.

 

Ugh, 15 minutes left.

 

Let's see, we just kind of had a normal week this week. Our recent convert, Brother 김지원 (Kim Jiwon) is doing well. He attended a single adult meeting/activity and he said he had a lot of fun there, and he got a calling in the Young Men's presidency, so that's really good as well. We still meet with him like 3-4 times a week.

 

We talked about our investigators during weekly planning, and we're a bit concerned about Brother 전성호 (Jeon Seongho). My companion's met him for almost 3 months now, and he's not reaaaaally progressing one way or the other. We kind of decided to meet with him until the end of hte transfer, and then we'll decide whether to meet him or not. It's too bad if we have to drop him - he's a really nice guy. But I guess our job isn't to just meet nice people, haha.

 

We cancelled our English class for a couple of weeks to try to figure out how to run it better. My companion says that when he first got here, some 10ish people were attending English class, but we had just 1 last time we taught. So we'll be making a lot of phone calls to old English class students, and will try to figure out how to take it from here.

 

We do have some good news about English class though - we've kind of accidentally created a new class that's been going suprisingly well. We do a "free talking" English class on Thursday nights. Originally, I think it was just one person that wanted to speak English, and the missionaries met with him because Thursday evening happened to be time they had. He brought a friend, and they atteneded together for awhile. My first week in Pohang, someone they met on the street showed up (I believe she approached the missionaries and said "Can you teach me English?"), so we had 3 for awhile. Anyways, long story short, we have 5 solid members who seem like they'll show up every week.

 

We had a new guy show up last week, Will. He made friends with the people in our English class incredibly fast (in like 30 minutes...), and we all went out to dinner together after we finished the class. I still can't believe it, but he was trading phone numbers, things like that.

 

And the other English class members kind of did missionary work for us. One of the ladies that attend was telling Will about how our English class helps her to focus on what's important in life, and how she loves to hear our spiritual messages. We were on exchanges that day, and my companion ended up giving a Book of Mormon to Will, and another class member started telling him how good the Book of Mormon is (oddly, I think the guy that said that is someone who used to be a former investigaor, but decided he's interested in religion, but not our church).

 

Anyways, the free talking class is doing really well, and the conversation is really good. It feels like we can solve the world's problems by meeting and talking to each other, haha. (Of course, we're hoping to find investigators through our English class as well...)

 

I don't have a lot of time left now, so I'll have to end it here, but we'll be able to talk to each other next week! Have a great week, and I love you all!

 

Love,

Elder Luke!