Jan. 27, 3013

This past week was kind of average for us here. I don't know how to describe it, it went by really quickly so I honestly don't remember a whole ton. We are still meeting with our regular investigators on a daily basis and they are all doing pretty well. One in particular who is doing good is our investigator named Lee Cheong Yong. He is really awesome, he is learning English from us and has some gospel interest. We are starting the Plan of Salvation with him this week which should be really good because his father passed away 3 years ago so it will have some good application to him. His mom is also super sweet, we don't really share messages or teach English with her, but she loves cooking Korean food for us so every time we go over there she makes us something new and it's always delicious. We made them tacos this past week and he really liked them, I think that it was the first time he had eaten a taco in his life. That's one food that has never really made to Asia....the taco. Either way he's doing well and we're super excited to meet him again this week! I went on a split last week with Elder Warner and it was really fun. He serves right now in Shingal, which is where I served last year at this time. So it was fun to see some of the members as well as my recent converts living here. They are doing really well and it was such a blast to see them. It's sad because a lot of people who are baptized go less active pretty quickly after their baptism, but she and her daughter are going really strong in the church so it's really special to see real converts.

Jan. 20, 2013

So this past week was a tad bit disappointing for us. The miracle man that we met on Sunday kind of dropped us.....but not really. We met him twice in the beginning of the week and both times he was kind of buzzed, but we shared a message with him and left. He was complaining that he was hungry and didn't have money for food, but we also don't have money so we couldn't give him any so we said we were sorry and left. Anyways, I called him later in the week and he said he was sorry and that he met with him Pastor/Preacher from his old church and told her that he was going to attend that church (my guess is for food aid). Anyways, we were really bummed and wanted to talk with him, but he wouldn't give us the time to do so, so we were super disappointed. The bright side was yesterday in the morning on the way to church we saw him again and he thanked us for all we had done and I told him that we would continue helping him and he said ok. So that night we visited his house and his 2 friends let us in (they were all drinking together) and we were able to show him our sincere desire to help him so I hope that it helps put things in perspective for him that our help will go a lot farther in the end than the food that he receives from the other church. But other than that sad bit of news everything else was pretty good this week, we met with one of our investigators named Lee Cheong Yong and he invited us to play basketball with him and his friends so we played together on Thursday night and it was super fun. It was in a full size US gym because it was at an International School, similar to ASIJ and HKIS, so it was super nice. We played for a bit and met his friends which was really cool. Some of them have some English interest so we're hoping to meet some of them in the future. This week is looking up as well with some appointments so we're just hoping our investigators can keep progressing and hopefully get baptized soon!

Jan. 13, 2013

This week was a super busy week for us. Today we got transfer calls and luckily Elder Wedam and I are going to be staying together another transfer because he's really only been here for 3 weeks due to his emergency transfer. We met 4 new investigators this week and they are all super nice. One of them actually came out to church on Sunday which was really cool to see. The big main miracle that we saw this week actually happened yesterday. On our way to church we were stopped by a man asking about where a certain church was in the area. I responded that I had no idea where it was but that we were from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He said that he had met missionaries in the past and asked when our church meeting was. I told him that we were actually on the way to it and if he would like he could join us, but he declined and said that he was going to go drinking instead. I then asked him if we could have his phone number so we could call him later, but he declined that too, so we just gave him one of our pamphlets with our number on it and asked him to call later if he had any interest. So while we were in sacrament meeting I received 2 calls, but couldn't answer it because it was sacrament meeting, so after the meeting I called the number and it turned out to be him. He told me his name and said that he would try to come out next week to church, I told him cool, and then hung up on him. Then in Elder's Quorum I got another call from him saying that he wanted to come to church, I told him that there was only 15 minutes left and there wasn't much of a reason, but he insisted so we told him that we'd meet him outside. Anyways, he shows up to our church with 10 minutes left, and I explain that there are a bunch of meetings going on, but if he would like I could show him the chapel. He said that he would like to go in so we went in together and then he sat down and just started praying, which I thought was a little weird. While he was praying though, he just started to cry and ball up so we knew that something was happening within him, so we patiently waited for him to finish and then talked with him a little after it. He told us that he was an alcoholic and that he is trying to overcome his alcoholism, so we explained briefly about how in our church no one drinks or anything like that and he seemed to like it. Anyways, after the meetings were done we went back to his house and taught him about the Book of Mormon and the power and guidance that he could receive from it and promised him that as he did so that he would be able to overcome his addictions and he accepted a baptismal date for the end of February which will be really exciting. We are going to meet him again tomorrow so hopefully he's read a little bit of the BOM by then!

Jan. 6, 2013

This week was New Year’s here in Korea and it was pretty fun! We woke up early and went to our church and met a couple of our members. We then went and hiked up the mountain (hill) that was close to our church to watch the new year’s sunrise….It was pretty fun though, but really cold. It snowed a lot that morning so we spent the first little bit shoveling snow, then we were finally able to go hiking. Other than that though our week was pretty good. We didn’t have a ton of appointments so we spent quite a lot of time talking with people on the street and it was good. We found a couple of potential investigators that we will meet next week so that will be good. Our investigators are doing good though, I would write about all of them but the computer I’m using is retarded and the “l” button is broken so every time I want to type it in I have to control v it to paste it so I’m going to keep it shorter this week.