July 28, 2013

So it's come down to this, my final email for my mission blog. Unfortunately it's going to be really short because I don't have a lot of time but it has been a blast serving here in Korea. This past week we were really busy with our English Village thing in Daejeon and it went pretty well. We spent pretty much all week setting it up and maybe about 60~70 people came which was really good. Now that the missionaries know what to do in the future I hope that it goes better in the future next time. Anyways, I'm looking forward to coming home, I've learned so much here on my mission and I wouldn't trade any of these experiences I have had over the past 2 years for anything. It's been such a blessing in my life and I will remember it forever. I will thank my Heavenly Father everyday for sending me here to Korea. BYE EVERYONE!!!

July 14, 2013

This week was pretty awesome for us here in Gongju. I now have 3 more weeks left which is pretty crazy…..actually I have a little less than that left but we'll call it 3 weeks :). The work is going really well though, we were able to find some more new investigators last week and we're seeing a lot of miracles from the Lord. On Saturday we had a woman call us and tell us that she wanted to come out to our ward and on Sunday we picked her up with one of our members. Unfortunately we have a lot of little kids in our ward (who are mega brats….) and they were really noisy which kind of ruined her church experience, but we hope that she comes out next week as well. Right now we are advertising a lot for our English Village that will be happening on the last Saturday of this month. We go to Daejeon twice a week to hand out fliers and it seems that a lot of people have interest in coming so we're hoping it turns out good. An English Village is somewhere where people can use in English in real practical situations. We'll have a make shift post office and restaurant and other stuff like that where people can come in and talk to us like they want to order food or mail a letter or something like that. They are really popular in Korea so we're hoping through it we can share our church message with a lot of people. We're going to advertise for it more this week but hopefully all goes well! I'll see all of you in 3 weeks!

July 7, 2013

This week was pretty good for us here in Gongju. We met our new mission president and his wife, President and Sister Shin. They are such kind people, I'm really excited for our mission here. President Shin used to be Executive VP of Samsung here in Korea, so he commands a lot of respect so he'll be able to influence our mission a lot. He is trying to focus on getting the wards more interested in missionary work and member responsibilities (particularly with the massive amount of less active members) so I'm so excited to see how it all goes. Our investigators are doing good though, Edna and Michelle (our Filipino investigators) are doing good. We met Edna in the middle of the week and Michelle came out to church (Edna was sick so she couldn't make it..) but they are both doing good. They want to learn more about God and Jesus Christ, so we teach them really slowly and simply in English because they aren't very good at English or Korean. We're working on getting the pamphlets in Tagalog so that they can fully understand what we are teaching them. This week we've got a few appointments with some investigators as well that we're looking forward to. One of our members' daughter is going to Utah soon to learn English so she told us to come over every night for dinner to help her daughter get used to speaking English, so we're looking forward to visiting them a lot! They are such a sweet family, the husband isn't a member, but he sure does love feeding us! I've got a little bit of time left here so we're trying to make the most of it! 

June 30, 2013

Hello everyone! Only 4 more emails to go after this! Time is winding
down very quickly.......it's crazy to think that 2 years ago this
month I was preparing to head to the MTC, and now I get to go home
again....I'm partially happy, and partially sad. I'm going to miss
serving here in Korea for sure. This week we actually got a new
mission president, his name is President Shin and he was actually all
the Korean missionaries' MTC Branch President so everyone knows him
very well. I'll only have the opportunity to serve under him for 1
month, but I'm looking forward to the experience. Last week we had a
farewell for President and Sister Furniss and I will definitely miss
them. I learned a lot from them and I definitely look forward to
seeing them after my mission. It's weird that now they are
on their way home to America, especially since I will be following
them shortly after. I don't have a lot of time left, but we're
making the most of it out here in Gongju! Last week we were
able to find 2 new people to teach so we're super excited
to meet with them, it gives us more stuff to do! Hahahahaha, anyways,
our Filipino investigators Edna and Michelle came out to church again
yesterday and they seem to like it. Next week they said that they are
going to bring out a friend so it should be interesting.
It's kind of difficult because they all have young children that make
a lot of noise and our investigators/their kids aren't really good at
English nor Korean, so it's kind of hard to communicate. We have 1
Filipino Sister in our ward so we're going to have to rely on her
heavily for translation help. It should be good though, we hope that
all goes well this next week as well!

June 23, 2013

Hello everyone! Well it's coming down to the end pretty quickly.....I
have a little over 1 month left to be a missionary and I'm definitely
going to miss it. It's been so great serving, I'm always so happy
because we're able to serve other people, it'll be weird going back to
a regular life. This past week was pretty good for us, I got my final
companion last week. His name is Elder Osguthorpe and he is from
Ogden, UT. He's in his third transfer right now and is excited to work
so I'm excited to spend my last transfer with him. This past week we
saw a miracle in that one of our members brought 2 Filipino women that
work at his office with him. They seemed to like our church a lot so
we're hoping that they decide to keep coming out each week. I'll keep
you posted more next week!

June 9, 2013

Hello everyone who reads my blog! Right now I'm still here in Gongju
and it's been really fun. This past week was kind of crazy for us
though. So we had been meeting with a recently re-activated family in
our ward in order to prepare their daughter for what we thought would
be a convert baptism....but it turns out that she's still 8 years 11
months and 20 something days old..... so when she is baptized next
Sunday it will be a member baptism, not a convert baptism. I don't
know how that information was found out so late, but we just found out
yesterday and I was super embarassed because we had essentially been
doing the discussions for no reason at all. Maybe there was a reason
behind it that I don't know yet, but it was pretty crazy to me. That
was kind of the crappy part of last week, the good part was that we
had an investigator who planned out a whole tour of Gongju today for
our zone so that was really fun. He set it up so we had a tour bus and
lunch provided and we were able to visit a bunch of historical sites
today which was really awesome. He is so kind, unfortunately he
doesn't have a ton of interest in the gospel, but he's always willing
to help us out so it was amazing. Hopefully we'll be able to find some
more people soon to teach, I have less than 2 months left which feels
really weird, but we're making the most out of it!

May 26, 2013

This week was a really awesome week for us here in Gongju! The week
started off pretty normal, we had some regular appointments, but other
than that it was pretty dead. We were able to meet our investigator
with a baptismal date and she is so adorable. Her family went less
active for a little bit, but is now coming out to church again so she
is about 10 years old so we're preparing her for baptism. She already
knows all the lessons and everything so it's all a review, but it's
super fun to meet with her and play games with the family. She will be
baptized next month on the 18th, so we're looking forward to that. One
big miracle we saw last week happened on the way to one of our
appointments. It was in the morning and we were going to meet one of
our investigators when I man sitting at a table outiside a convenient
store stops us and asks us to sit down with him. He was talking about
how his father had passed away a month before and that he had a lot of
guilt and stuff like that because his father never attended church and
that he might have gone to hell. We taught him about the spirit world
and how this isn't the end of our life and that this life is just a
really small moment in the eternities and he was so excited about
that. He was so thankful to hear our message and recognized that God
put us in his path that morning to meet him. It was way awesome, we
got his phone number and we're planning on meeting with him this next
week. He lives in Seoul, but he comes to Gongju pretty regularly.
Worse comes worse we refer him to the Elders in Seoul, but he's pretty
much awesome and hopefully he'll make a decision to be baptized in the
near future! Just a second ago too we got a phone call from a woman
who wants to know more about our church so we set up a time to meet on
Friday so hopefully all goes well with her.