January 19, 2015

Things here are pretty good. Crazy how fast time flies! This is the last week of the transfer, so next Monday I might be somewhere else :P. The Gwangan English class thinks I'll leave, so they took us out to eat. Haha. They got us samgyetang, which is a whole chicken in a soup stuffed with rice. It's good, though kind of expensive compared to other Korean foods. They are all just funny :P

Samgyetang

On Wendesday, everyone had an interview with the mission president, and it went well. He didn't give me any hints if I am going to transfer or not :P haha. That day we also visited a member who is in the hospital... It was super sad. She couldn't really communicate or move at all. ah.

On Thursday, we tried to visit someone who is not coming to church anymore. She lives really far away, and when we got there, turns out her work was closed on Thursdays, which was how others have visited her in the past :P Soooooo. We at least learned the business hours :P. 

As skit we did a few weeks ago

On Friday, we had a district meeting, and then went to eat together (tofu soup). As we were heading back to the church, we had to run across the street before the crosswalk changed to red, and soon after that I noticed my nametag was missing :( So later we backtracked to see if we could find it, and we did!! I was excited, but the pin on the back was broken (maybe it got stepped on?), so we had to tape it together for the rest of the day :P haha. But because of that, I invented the greatest thing ever. At the MTC, we had really cool magnetic nametags, but in Korea we can't get that kind, it's just the pin ones or suit pocket ones. So I took one of my old MTC ones, popped off the magnet, and the pin on the broken one, then glued it to the one that used to have the pin. (it was the same glue that permanently zipped my boot, by the way:P) Muahaha. I'm so proud of myself. The magnets are so much better. 

Anyways, we went to Gijang (??), which is part of our Haeundae area, but it is really big and far, so we don't have much chance to go there. We visited some members which I enjoyed :)

Today we had a zone PDay, where we went to hike along the sea, though this was a different area than I've been to before. It was pretty fun and beautiful, and we ate at a sushi buffet at the end. :) Yay food!

That's really about it. Though I did find a verse I really liked. It was D&C 64:32-34. It's just really good. Kind of a summation of several things I've learned/am learning :P

 32. But all things must come to pass in their time.

 33. Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.

 34. Behold, the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind; and the willing and obedient shall eat the good of the land of Zion in these last days.

January 12, 2015

This week we had zone meeting, and as sister training leaders, we gave a talk. It was pretty fun, and it went well, though I think I needed to learn what we were talking about more than anyone else there :P haha, it was "finding", which I am SO bad at. :P  I did learn a lot through preparing for it though. I particularly liked D&C 100:3-8, because it is soo applicable as a missionary.

 3. Behold, and lo, I have much people in this place, in the regions round about; and an effectual door shall be opened in the regions round about in this eastern land.

 4. Therefore, I, the Lord, have suffered you to come unto this place; for thus it was expedient in me for the salvation of souls.

 5. Therefore, verily I say unto you, lift up your voices unto this people; speak the thoughts that I shall put into your hearts, and you shall not be confounded before men;

 6. For it shall be given you in the very hour, yea, in the very moment, what ye shall say.

 7. But a commandment I give unto you, that ye shall declare whatsoever thing ye declare in my name, in solemnity of heart, in the spirit of meekness, in all things.

 8. And I give unto you this promise, that inasmuch as ye do this the Holy Ghost shall be shed forth in bearing record unto all things whatsoever ye shall say.

This week we also did exchanges. We decided that it would be good for Sis Walker to leave her area and come over here, and Sis KimYeonSeob felt like she should go to the other area, so I was with Sis Walker again, and it was really fun. She's a really good missionary, and the English class loved her, haha.

On Friday, we visited an ooooooold Haeundae member, she's so funny. Every time we see her, she talks about how all the missionaries love her because she speaks really clearly and slowly. She thinks Korean has no grammar, and so it is really hard for foreigners to understand... haha, it is hard to understand, but I think it has more grammar rules than English :P but of course we just agreed with everything she said. She was just super cute.

Aerial shot of Busan. Gwangan on the left and Haeundae on the right

Famous Gwangan Bridge

There's not too much going on right now, mostly because we only have 2 investigators. Everyone either dropped us, won't contact us, are too busy, or we are waiting for them to not be busy.... next month. Haha. Soooooo, we've had a lot more free time than usual. So we've gotten some projects in mind that we are trying to work on. One is the area map on our wall, it is such trash and is almost falling off and is not clearly marked, so we scanned the map again and will put it up soon. We also want to make some street/sticker boards for "religious proselyting". We do a lot of sticker boards for English class, and it works really well, but we don't really have any church-based posters that are any good, so we want to make some new ones.

Yesterday was pretty cool, because we went to a member's house with a recent convert; his family opposed him joining the church. So we ate some really yummy Vietnamese food (we had rice paper, which you soak in water to make it soft, and then you wrap up some different kinds of fillings in it), and just talked with them. It seemed to do a lot of good for that family to help them realize we are not crazy :P Cool stuff.

Nothing much else going on, though I did accidentally glue my boot's zipper shut. haha. the zipper tab thingy had fallen off, so I got some really strong glue to glue it back on... turns out there was a hole in the zipper, so the glue seeped down onto the actual zipper. ooops. Fortunetly, I did it with the zipper all the way shut, so I can still squeeze them on, haha. But it was one of those "man I am so stupid" moments. :P

Anywayyyys. I can't believe it's week 5 already! next week is the last week of the transfer, and I'm still debating if I think I'll leave or not... This is my 3rd transfer in Gwangan/Haeundae, and usually missionaries only stay for 3 or 4, soooo we'll see soonish :P

January 5, 2015 - I had an interesting week

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

So, this week! Heh. Most of it was pretty normal stuff. I don't remember if I told you about last Monday, in which we went ice skating and I got a new Korean grammar book :) yay! We met that Gwangan member, and she took us to a buffet. One amusing thing she said was she likes to watch missionaries eat :P haha. She's fun.

Oh yeah! HAPPY NEW YEARS! It's 2015!!! I forgot :P In Korea, they celebrate New Years, but not as much as they do Solar, which is the New Years based off of the lunar calendar, I think... I might be wrong on that. But New Year's isn't their big holiday. But as it is, it's the day that everyone ages 1 year, no matter when your birthday is! So my Korean age is now 22. Hehe. The tradition for Koreans is they will watch the sun rise on January 1st, and eat Dokkguk..... Uh. Rice cake soup? The saying is you age for every bowl of it you eat. If so, I am now 25. Haha. A member had us over, and fed us, it was pretty yummy :) 

On Friday, we had "Mission Leadership Council Meeting," and as sister training leaders we go to it. It took up a lot of the day, but was really good. One thing I particularly liked was something Pres. Barrow's son said, who was on a mission 4 years or so ago. He talked about how if we are assigned to an area, there must be a reason for it, namely a person that you can find/teach/help, etc. I particularly liked that because missionary is such in Korea that it is easy to get a little discouraged, thinking stuff like "no one here will listen", "this area is awful", "no one has had success here in a long time", etc. But the Lord doesn't set us up to fail, there's a reason we are in every area we are in, and so we just have to keep that attitude in mind, rather than doubt. Good stuff. And then we got at SPECIAL treat, because you know that new movie "Meet the Mormons"? It came out in some theaters in America recently. Somehow Pres. Barrow got permission to show a screening copy to the leadership council, so we got to watch a movie! Muahaha! I don't know if you've seen or heard of it, but it was actually reeeeeaaallly awesome. I liked it a lot. If you can, I suggest watching it. 

Something that I noticed about all the people in it was their example of service. Ah. So awesome. Anyways. You'll just have to see it. But one thing that I really liked from the movie was, paraphrasing "I can't be perfect, but I can be perfect in trying". Bam. Haha.

Friday was the good day...... And Saturday was the.... bad day :P It shall forever be remembered. :P Haha. Why was it bad, might you ask? Well. In the morning we have a children's English class, which I don't like too much anyways. After it ended, we were helping clean up and such, and suddenly a 1 year old boy tripped and hit his lip on a table. He bashed up his lip pretty bad, and was bleeding quite badly. So his mom took him and ran to the hospital. We couldn't come because we had other appointments and such to go to, but luckily a member was in the church at the time and went with her. We later heard the boy got stitches. Poor thing. 

That in and of itself would have been enough to upset our day. However :P Right after, we had to travel to Haeundae by subway, and about halfway there, I started to feel weeeeeeeird. Namely, dizzy. I recognized the feeling from that one time I passed out in high school before a symphony concert :P So I was thinking "crap. no. NO. Heavenly Father, please NO!" hahaha. It didn't work well, unfortunately. I was standing facing Sister KimYeonSeob, and informed her that I was "feeling weird." Next thing I knew, she was kind of holding my shoulders as I kind of knelt in front of her. Hahaha. Ooops. So I sat down, and felt better-ish soon. Not too many people noticed, which is fortunate, I guess :P It was really fast. Though Sis KimYeonSeob told me my face was yellow/white, and I felt kind of weird for the rest of the day, though I felt pretty normal after eating and a few hours. 

Hahha. soooooo, that's the exciting things that have been happening here in Korea. Haha. Man. I'm still trying to figure out how that happened. I think it must have been a mixture of it being slightly warm on the subway, having not eaten lunch yet, and maybe shock from the boy's injury. Which is weird though, because I usually don't have problems with blood. Sooooo. whatever. It was okay though. We got through the day just fine, which was probably a miracle :P

Beyond that, on Sunday we had a fireside in Haeundae, and one of our investigators was able to come, which was nice :) She really enjoyed it, and said she felt very warm and happy. It was about the New Years, and specifically about families. It was super good, and fun. The missionaries did a little skit of a "good example" and "bad example" of a family, haha. It was ridiculous :P

December 29, 2014

There's not too much to say about my past week.. Because of Christmas, we weren't able to meet with a lot of people, or didn't want to bother anyone during it, so we did a lot of caroling! Haha. We handed out our whole stack of Christmas cards, about 700. I was quite happy about that. When we first got the cards, I thought there was no way we could hand them all out, but we made a goal, caroled till our throats were sore, and did it! Haha. It helps that I'm white. :P It was funny to observe, but somehow when a foreigner was the one handing out cards, the cards disappeared faster than when the Korean missionaries did. Muahaha. We like to joke about our foreigner powers. 

On Tuesday, all the missionaries in our mission came together for a Christmas party thing. It lasted all day! First we had a sort of meeting with talks about Christ and such from the mission president and others, and then afterwards we ate on the floor. Something I'm noticing is I will probably have a hard time using tables when I come back to America. We always eat on the floor, and it just feels so normal, though I'm pretty sure Americans don't do that... Every morning when I eat breakfast, I eat it on the floor, even though there is a perfectly good desk right next to me :P Somehow my mind has equated eating with sitting on the floor :P It also helps that

Korean houses are heated through the floor, so it's nice and warm :P Anyways. After we ate, we did some performances. Some people danced, or sang, or did skits. It was pretty fun to watch :P And then we got to watch a movie!!!! It's the only time in our whole mission that we get to :P Haha. So we were all pretty excited about it. Hahaha. We watched "Ephraim's Rescue" which is a pioneer movie made by the same people who made "17 Miracles". Good ol' Mormon movies. :P It was a super good movie actually, I really enjoyed it, and recommend it if you haven't seen it. Though I maybe only enjoyed it so much because I haven't seen a movie in 8 months. :P Who knows.

On Christmas morning, we had a small Christmas thingy. Even though I already opened the box my parents sent and knew what it all was, I left it all in the box and didn't unwrap the few things that were wrapped (minus the peanut butter... :P) until Christmas morning. So we drew a Christmas tree on our white board, set everything we had received in front of it, and then opened the wrapped things :P Hahaha. I enjoyed it, and Sis KimYeonSeob liked the journal my parents sent her :) Fun stuff! Then Skyped with my parents and that was awesome. The rest of the day was just normal stuff.

Things are going well here. though we haven't been able to meet with too many people lately due to the holidays. Even though Koreans don't really celebrate Christmas, they get the holiday off, and also New Years is coming up, so a lot of people are going on vacation, or are just busy. :P

Our Christmas Tree

Sister KimYeonSeob with a new Journal

December 21, 2014

Hello! Things here are going pretty well. It has only been a week since Sis Kimyeonseob became my companion, but I feel like we've already been together for forever! Haha. Time is a weird thing. She has the funniest giggle. Haha. I try to talk mostly in Korean with her, but sometimes I just can't :P so it's good she's pretty okay at English :P Yay!

This week was mostly just normal stuff. We did get stuffed a few times this week though. One day we had an appointment with a member, and she fed us a lot... Then the next day we had a lunch appointment with some members, and Elder Himmer and his parents, 'cuz they came to see Korea a bit before he goes home. So it was a buffet, and we ate a lot. and then for dinner we went out with a different member... ahhhhhh. too much love.

This week, we didn't get to meet with too many of our investigators. We were preparing a lot for Christmas stuff, and a lot of them were busy. And 2 of them just randomly stopped contacting us, so we'll see what happens with them :P

The ward Christmas party for Haeundae and Gwangan was at the same time, so we had to choose one to go to, so we went to Gwangan. It maybe needs a little more missionary love :P It was pretty good, though kinda short. There was a message at the beginning to start, and then after some performances. First was the missionaries... we sang Silent Night in Korean and English, and I played violin a little. EH. I'm trying to forget about it. :P Then there were some cute little girls dancing, they basically just jumped up and down the whole time. Super cute! We ate after a few other performances, but that was it. There was a guy dressed up in a Santa suit, but he didn't look very convincing :P 

Cute little girls dancing

Yesterday we also went caroling! It was super fun, but super cold! We just stood at a place at Haeundae beach and tried to sing stuff, but we probably didn't sound too good. :P But it's okay. we had fun doing it, and handed out Christmas cards. The sad thing is there's not much Christmas spirit here :P and they associate Christmas mostly with churches, which also aren't highly looked upon, sooooooo. Whatever. It was fun :P And hopefully people will actually look at the video, 'cuz it's super awesome! Haha.

The scary kind of Santa

December 15, 2014

Things here are going good! My 5th transfer has started today! Wooo! I've been in Korea for approximately 6 months now. Craziness! Sister Hingano is on her way home now, and so I'm still sister training leader in Haeundae and Gwangan, and my new companion is Sister Kim Yeonseob (김연섭), who was just companions with Sister Stratton! Haha, cool stuff. And get this. Sister Hill and Sister Stratton are going to train this transfer and next! So they don't know who their trainee will be yet, because those people are arriving tomorrow and such. I'm super excited for them, though they are both really nervous, ahaha. I'm sure they well do great.

Anyways. This last week with Sister Hingano was good. Man, I'm going to miss her. She's a really good person, and she has soooooooooooooo much love, and is just all around fun :) I'm sad we only got 1 transfer together. I don't remember too much from this week, and I don't have my planner.. haha. So.. The things that stuck out this week was we caroled outside Shinsegae (world's biggest department store) to hand out some of those Christmas cards! It was super fun, and we will do it again, though maybe at the beach or something.

Also this week, we had a meal appointment with a member. I thought it wouldn't be so bad because it was at a restaurant.... but I feel like we got a 3 course meal :P First was some meat that was really yummy and you cook it at your table and eat it with lettuce (good stuff). That on its own would have been a good, filling meal. But then she ordered some kind of soup and rice. Also very good, but that would have been enough for a small meal. And then she also ordered dessert, which was bingsu... shaved frozen milk stuff? I don't know. But we were sooooooooo full. Haha. What's sad though is even though I was stuffed, I was like "Hm. If I had to, I could eat more." This is what Korea has taught me. Haha. I have infinite stomach capacity potential. :P Haha. 

Everyone in my district got new companions, so it is really different this transfer. There will only be 3 foreigners, and the other 5 are Korean. Something funny happened this transfer with Elder Lees, who was trained in Gwangan and did 3 transfers here; he just got transfered to Haeundae. Haha. He didn't go far. :P However, there are only 2 foreigners in Gwangan, and 2 in Haeundae ('cuz of me :P) and so we aren't sure what we are going to do with our English classes.... we usually need 3 in one area to maintain it... eh. whatever. We'll figure it out.

Anyways, things are good here. we have a lot going on in Gwangan, though Haeundae is still kinda dead... :P We are hoping to find more people soon. I'm excited to serve with Sister Kim Yeonseob, she seems like fun :) She has only been a missionary for 2 transfers longer than I have, so it's my first time with a companion who is going to actually STAY!

I'm glad to be here. Today we had a transfer meeting where all the missionaries going home give a short testimony about whatever they want to say about what they learned on their mission, and I always love listening to them. You can just really see how much their missions have meant to them and how much they have learned. Something that I noticed is that even though they have all had different, unique experiences, there's one theme that recurs. It's that no matter how weak or inadequate we feel or are, God loves us, and He sent Jesus Christ to help us; and if we come unto Him, those weak and inadequate things don't matter. We can overcome them and become better people because of the Atonement. It just all revolves around love. It's easy to think, "how could He love me, while I am so small, weak, and make so many mistakes?" But again, those things don't matter. It's our potential that does, and He knows we have infinite potential to become better, if we just LISTEN, haha. Anyways. I just really liked transfer meeting today.

December 7, 2014

Things here are going pretty well, mostly normal stuff. We have a lot of Gwangan investigators, but sadly still no Haeundae... Ugh. But we met most of the Gwangan people this week, which was good! :) Some of them seem like they have a lot of potential, and so we'll see where that goes. We are meeting with 2 Chinese people, and so communicating is always fun :P But they are really nice.

This week we had a zone leader meeting in which we established some new "standards of excellence" for goals and stats, etc. They might be a little on the high side, but I think in general they will help missionaries try harder to push themselves and do better. Also, we got some super cool cards to give to people with a link to the new Christmas video the church made! They look legit, and I'm excited about those. If you haven't seen it yet, you should look it up! It's called "He is the Gift" and it will give you Christmas-warm-and-fuzzies. :P Haha.  

 He is the Gift

I think the absolutely COOLEST thing I did this week was we made Kimchi!! It was super fun. I took pictures. It was with a lot of the members, and
I really liked it. Though it smells pretty strong. There was a big vat of this red sauce stuff with some other ingredients in it, and there was some prepared cabbage heads (I think they did something with salt for like 8 hours), and then we put some gloves on and rubbed the red sauce all over the cabbage. Then it will sit for several months to ferment, but you can also eat it now, which we did. It was pretty yummy! It was pretty funny though because some members who didn't have their hands all in the sauce would come up and pull off a cabbage piece and hand-feed us it while we made it :P Hahaha. 

Other than that, there's not much going on. Just normal stuff. This week is the last week of the transfer, so Sister Hingano is going home in a week! It's crazy! And now I'm getting really curious about what will happen with our area, who my next companion will be, etc. When this transfer ends, 2 more sister areas will close because so many are going home, so I'm hoping my area won't close again, but we'll see :P I think there's a good chance it will stay open. Who knows. We'll know on Thursday :P Haha. 

Anyways, that is all, besides a terrible phone call we had! Sometimes we look over old records of people that missionaries met with, and call them to see if they have interest again to meet. So we were doing that, and there was a REALLY old record that we called... It was the right number, but her son answered, and he said she died 8 years ago! It was really embarrassing and kind of horrifying :P We said sorry and hung up. AH! We felt so bad. 

December 1, 2014

Things here are going pretty well. I had a bad cold this week, but am mostly over it now. It started on Monday with just a sore throat, and then I felt like dying on Friday and Saturday :P But it's okay. We met a lot of members this week, and not so many investigators because we don't have any anymore in Haeundae (which is extremely depressing :'(  ) But we met with some new people in Gwangan! So that's good! Gwangan is exploding with new things while Haeundae is kind of dead. :/ Uh oh. But we are trying to find more people in Haeundae... we have a lot of potential investigators, but nothing solid yet.  Ah! But it's okay. 

Gwangan Bridge

Busan Area. Haeundae to the right and Gwangan to the left

Anyways. This week, one of the new people we met was this recent college graduate who lived in America for 10 years, so she's basically American and she actually believes in Christianity and has studied a lot. It was such an interesting lesson for us because it was mostly in English (though in the future we'll probably do more Korean), and she has such a strong belief! That's just not usual. We left that appointment thinking "oh. That's what it must be like to be a missionary in America." Haha. She's awesome though! She is just a reaaaaaaally good investigator. She's so willing to talk about things and express her opinions and read and study, it's awesome. I'm super excited to meet with her more. The other new person is actually Chinese, and is studying at a college nearby. So now we have 2 Chinese investigators! It makes communication interesting. I'm not sure how we are going to teach lessons to her yet... Haha. Probably with a dictionary on hand :P

Sister Walker and her trainer, KimGyuRi

me and Sis Hingano! :) we had yummy food together

This week we did exchanges with the other sisters in our zone :) So I went to Daeshin with Sister Walker, who is still training (she's in her second transfer), and Sis Hingano went back to our area with KimGyuRi. It was really fun and interesting. My cold was starting to come on in ernest, but I was still fine. I was able to relate really well with her because I only so recently finished training, and she has been feeling a lot of the things I felt when I was trained. So I hope I helped her. She definitely was very open with me and her feelings, so that was good. She has had some BIG family issues recently, and so we talked a lot about that. She's going through a rough time because of that, but her heart is in the right place, she's a really good person. With all that though, we ended up talking before going to bed, and we only went to bed at midnight.... aaaaaah. I was super tired ('cuz of my cold) but I just let her talk because I think she just really needed to let out some pent up thoughts and feelings and just talk. So I let her, and tried to help her. The next day we had a Zone Meeting, during which Sis Hingano and I were in charge of a teaching practice thingy. It was pretty fun, though I was really tired :P 

A RIDICULOUS hill that I climbed with Sister Walker... it was hard

  The lunch we had after zone meeting :) it was good :D

  Oh right, THURSDAY was THANKSGIVING! :) On that day, we actually went to a concert, which was weird. It was an orchestra concert that a member invited us to, and we got permission, sooo. Haha. It was awesome, because the orchestra played movie soundtracks. The last one was a mash up of a bunch of John Williams music, which was my favorite :) After we got home, we ordered some chicken and had our Thanksgiving dinner :P

This is how we celebrated, haha. as you can see, we had "turkey, mashed potatoes, and pie" :P

The only other interesting thing we have done is today we went back to that cliff/ocean side I sent pictures from before, but this time we went as a district, and we went the WHOLE way, rather than just about 1/4 of it. So it took us a few hours and was a hike, but I really enjoyed it. It was a little chilly, but the water was clear and pretty :) I'm also pretty sure I could see Japan... And I'm not kidding! It was way in the distance, but there is no way something that size was just a random island. Sweeeeeeet :) Sis Hingano had a hard time hiking 'cuz she doesn't do stairs and hills well, but we managed, and she was happy when she accomplished it.

Twas fun! :)

Gwangan bridge and skyline

Pictures from the cliffs we went to today. Fun!

November 24, 2014

While you are all eating turkey, I shall order chicken (because you can order everything in Korea) and probably buy a cake. Turkey is not a thing in Korea, unless you go to Costco, and it's probably expensive :P And tasteless. I also did see a pumpkin pie there... it was tempting, but I was fairly certain it would NOT taste as good as Dad's, so I didn't bother getting it :P Ah. I would feel sad about missing Thanksgiving and stuffing myself and all that, but I usually eat a huge amount of food every week anyways, so it's not like my stomach is missing out on anything :P

That one time we got a lot of fruit, 'cuz people love us

Anyways :P This past week has been pretty good. We had a meeting with all the zone and sister training leaders, and we are trying to set in motion some new things in Korea with social media and the internet. The idea is that (at least in Korean) a lot of the time, when people search our church online, they find bad stuff about it, which if you track, it comes from just THREE people! What the what. So they want to kind of change that, and have actual church websites come up instead. So we want to get the members more involved in online sharing of church stuff and the like. That way also, if their friends see those videos or pictures, they might have interest in learning more. It's cool stuff.

We are hoping to try to have a fireside sometime next year to show members how they can use the internet for good, and also maybe have a new calling in the ward to encourage stuff. We'll see how it goes :) 

Makeshift cupcake tins, because these things don't exist in Korea

Making cupcakes my parents sent me for my birthday

Yeah for cupcakes!

Oh. So we met that one investigator for the last time. She decided that she likes English more than the Book of Mormon, haha. She's busy, so she chose to go to English class over meeting with us more for just Gospel. I hope that one day she will be interested enough again to learn more, but I at least feel good that we tried our best and she has a good foundation in the important things we teach. She came to English class on Saturday, so I hope she continues to come :)

We met with a member who basically lives in a marble castle! It was crazy how nice her HOUSE (not apartment, which basically everyone lives in) is. Living in Korea is SOOO expensive, so I don't even want to think about how expensive that house was. She had several chandeliers and a maid. But the food was good :P Haha. She also gave Sis Hingano a lot of socks because the ones she had had holes in them. And then later bought her some stockings :P And she gave us a lot of persimmon, which is really common in Korea, by the way. I had never even seen it in America.

We tried to find a member's apartment the other day. It was a bit of an adventure. We weren't sure exactly how to get there when we got on the bus, but we got out at the right stop (by guessing) and even found it! BUT, they moved... we had the wrong address. But we had fun visiting a sketchy apartment. :P It was good exercise, I guess. And very educational.. :P 

Our apartment it tiny!

Yup, that is the entire kitchen

Remember that one eccentric member we meet with a lot from Gwangan? We have been so busy the past few weeks that we haven't met, which is kind of a shame. She's so funny to listen to. But we thought we had an appointment with her this week, but what ended up happening was she took us to a restaurant, paid for the 4 of us, and then left. :P Well. That didn't go as planned. Haha. 

Anyways. Earlier this week we got a random call from someone who didn't tell us her name, but asked us if we knew someone (who we did, she's a member in Haeundae and is in Seoul right now on a mission), and then said she wanted to eat with us. Sooooo, we did. Haha. We didn't know what to expect from that appointment. It turns out it was her parents! They aren't members, and from the conversation we had with them, they really don't know ANYTHING about our church. They didn't know that all missionaries serve for 18 months (or 2yrs), and why their daughter doesn't call, just emails. It was interesting. They were SUUUPER nice though. They took us to a well known restaurant (it sells Gamjatang?? which is pork spine soup. sooo good), and it was soooooo good. They were really happy with the amount we ate and kept commenting on how well we eat. And afterwards, they insisted on buying us fruit, so we got a huge bag of apples and persimmon. They tried to buy more, but we insisted we were fine :P We hope to meet with them again. 

As far as spiritual things go, I read this suuuper good talk that Sis Hingano gave me. It was really long but I really liked it. I'll probably email you about it some other time, but it was basically about how it is important that the desires of our hearts are right, and that we are continually changing and learning. One interesting point was that even if we DO good things, if our hearts aren't in the right place, it doesn't profit us anything. We don't BECOME better if we don't want to do the good things we are doing... if that makes sense.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

November 17, 2014

I thought of a few things that would be nice for Christmas. Ibuprofen. I don't trust Korean medicine stores or doctors very much :P It's different. Also, my ears have been super irritating and itching. I'm doing my best to keep them clean and such, but if there is any sort of lotion for super dry skin like that, or something, that would be niiiiiiice. :P

 

So this week was a little unusual. All of our appointments except for LeeGumHee cancelled :P Oooops. But we also got a lot of new contacts and an astounding number of referals too (usually we got none... this week we got 2!). We also got some requests from members to visit some less active members, one who we already met with, and was super nice :) So hopefully we will be meeting with a lot of new people soon. Which is good, because our number of investigators is starting to dwindle... We are going to drop at least 2 more investigators, sooooo. We'll need more :P Speaking of LeeGumHee, we will see tomorrow if she will continue meeting with us. We have been doing the 6 week English program with her, and the 6 weeks is up tomorrow, sooo we'll see if she wants to continue meeting for Gospel-only lessons. I'm really not sure what will happen with her. I hope sooooooo badly that she will continue meeting us, I really love her and she has such good questions all the time and I can really tell she thinks about what we say... But she also super likes English, and reading the Book of Mormon is hard, as well as praying. She's just very confused, and I want to help her so bad. We are praying so hard for her! AAh!! At the very least though, I can definitely say we have fulfilled our end. As missionaries, we have the responsibility to teach with the Spirit, and thus give people the opportunity to feel the Spirit and choose. We've had some really good lessons with her, so I feel good that at least we have done all we could, and now it's up to her. 

 

This past week we also got a lot of member love and had 2 meal appointments (last transfer we hardly had any). It was pretty fun, the members are all very sweet. Some are eccentric, but still fun.

Thursday this week was kind of pathetic. We had THREE appointments planned, but ALL fell out. Good thing we have back up plans :P A lot of our extra time this week was filled with various choir practices, because on Saturday there was a big Busan music thingy where all the Busan Wards came together and did various musical pieces. So, because we are missionaries AND cover 2 wards, we had 3 different songs we had to practice. There was a missionary one that went really well ("If the Savior Stood Beside Me"). The one that Gwangan did was kind of funny, because it was mostly "ooooooh, aaaaaah, look its fall! there are leaves! Look, it's fall!!" (translated). And that ward is a lot of older people who can't sing on pitch very well, so sometimes I had to supress giggles. It was fun though. And then Haeundae has a lot of musically talented people, and we did this really intense song. It was SO HIGH. I am NOT a soprano, but I astounded myself with how well I could hit some of those ridiculously high notes. :P Still. My throat is not happy with me. I think I'll stick to alto. Twas a fun night. Some of the other pieces were really pretty, or really funny. One ward's youth did a dance, and it was really funny because some of the Elders participated, and it was from the High School Musical movie thingy. SO funny. Anyways.

 

Yesterday, we made some cookies and delivered them to an old woman in our ward whose husband died last week. It was really sad, because when we arrived she and her daughter had been crying. We tried our best to help and comfort them, but there's just not much you can say about stuff like that. Sis. Hingano is so sweet and gave them hugs. Ah. Heart wrenching. 

 

That's about it. A few things I was thinking about this week was how much I've already changed. When I think back to when I was training, and to where I am now, it's quite different. It's difficult to explain, but I'm definitely learning and growing a lot. Another thing I was thinking about that I really like was from an old church Liahona magazine that I inherited from Sis Bussio when she left :P There was this really good article about enduring the the end and such, and the author shared a story about how he took over his father's business after he died, and he always prayed to try to know what to do to help the business. As he did that, he never felt like he got much direction or guidance, and usually just ended up doing what he thought was best and moving on. This really frustrated him, but one night he had a dream with his dad in it, in which he was all "some guidance would be really nice here!" and his dad said something like "honestly, we don't care much about the business up here." the essence of it was that what we have and experience does not matter as much as what we BECOME through those things. It was just really thought provoking. 

 

For me and my mission, I suppose it would be easy to go and come back much the same. But that would be a waste. Whether I have a lot of investigators or none, or WHATEVER, it doesn't matter nearly as much as what I learn through the experiences that I am given. This applies to any part of life. It doesn't matter if a business is successful or not, as long as we learn though it and become better because of whatever experiences we have. It's just interesting.

 

November 10, 2014

Things here are going well. Sis Hingano is really nice and we are getting along well. It has only been a week, but today we joked about how it feels like we have already been companions for forever :P Time is so weird. It goes so fast, but so slow. On Tuesday there was a Zone Leader and Sister Training Leader (STL) meeting, and it was pretty cool, I guess. It was really fun afterwards because we got to eat together and Sis Hill was there :) She's always so fun to talk to, haha. I hope we can be companions or something sometime during our mission, but I doubt that'll happen. It would be too much fun :P haha.

But yeah. STL... It honestly doesn't mean much :P haha, we just do exchanges and talk during zone meetings. Eh. Oooh, and it means we get to call all the sisters in our zone without having to get permission :P But there's only one other set anyways.. :P Haha. Oh well. But it's fun.

 

This weeeeek... not too much happened. We had a District Meeting, and it's weird how 3 new people can make the district feel so different :P Should be fun though. Umm. Honestly not much happened for most of the week. One day we spent a lot of time preparing for the Halloween party that had to get pushed off a week because of a big member meeting. All of our appointments fell through, so we made pumpkins and such all day :P We met with our usual investigators, though we determined that we need to drop 2 of them (for lack of actual interest), and another one dropped us (I think because Sis Bussio left) because she said she was busy. Sad. BUT. A new person called us the other day because she saw some posters we put up about our English program. So maybe she'll be interested. Maybe. 

 

The lady who we have high hopes for, 이금희 (LeeGumHee?), is still doing well. She is still not certain of Sis Hingano, but as time goes on I'm sure she'll get more comfortable again. But she's still as sweet as ever, and still asks such good questions. I can tell she really actually thinks about things. So I hope she will progress and we can help her find answers to her questions.

 

 

On Saturday we had our Halloween party. It was pretty fun! We had several game stations for the kids to go through. I did face painting, and there were other things like a bean-bag toss, laser (string) maze, bowling, and fishing. Little things like that. :) The kids had fun, and then we did Jeopardy and 2 pinatas (which I made). One was filled mostly with paper scraps and had a few pieces of candy, and it was hilarious to watch the kids' reaction to that :P They were so confused. And then we gave them the real pinata with all the candy :P Still, pinatas scare me. Hordes of children mobbing each other for candy. But these kids were actually pretty good and cute, and they went around and shared a lot of their candy with the missionaries. Super cute. 

 

On Sunday, there was a Primary kids program during Sacrament. It was suuuuper cute with all their songs and short talks and such. There is this 3 year old who is ADORABLE. She had this one sentence at the very beginning. "I am a child of God", and when she said it, she just continued to stand there and stare at us all and had this huge frown on her face. It was soooooo funny. She didn't look very happy about being a child of God, hahaha. 

 

Overall, things are going well. It is really interesting being the one who knows where stuff is and such. I've never had to lead an area before, so it's quite interesting. So far we haven't gotten lost, and we have met all of our investigators, except for 1. Yay! I hope together we can help our investigators and wards. That's about it. I have been learning a lot about so many things. I don't even know how to start to explain all the things that seem so much clearer and all I've learned :P I'm really grateful for the blessings I have to learn so many things and serve others. Even though sometimes it's really tiring, it's great :)

 

November 3, 2014

One short transfer with Sister Bussio. I learned a lot!

Things here are pretty good right now. I think I forgot to mention last time that last week was the last week of the transfer, so today is the start of a new transfer! And guess what! I have a new companion! :P Haha. Sister Bussio got transfered to another city, and she's pretty bummed about it. She only has 1 transfer left in her whole mission, and she would have preferred spending it in Gwangan and Haeundae. So now I am with Sister Hingano, who is from Hawaii :) She's pretty fun. I met her while in Daegu, so I'm pretty excited to serve with her. However, she will also go home at the same time as Sis Bussio, so we don't know what will happen to this area. Either Gwangan and Haeundae will close, or I will be here for 3 transfers. Who knows :P I'm hoping it doesn't close, but 4 areas had to close today because so many sisters just went home. OH. And me and Sis Hingano are "Sister Training Leaders". They are like the sister version of zone leaders, but we don't do as much as them :P It just means we go on exchanges with the other sisters in the zone (and in our zone there is only 1 other set of sisters, so that'll be easy :P) and maybe speak during zone meetings :P So it'll be pretty fun! 

 

This is my first time being the only one who knows where stuff is, so that's interesting! Usually I just followed people around :P But now I have to know where things are :P

This past week has been pretty good. Sis Bussio was really stressed because she hates transfer call week, and she was quite devasted when we got called on Thursday night. Like sobbing-on-the-floor kind of devastated. So I did what I could to comfort her... It was interesting :P But fine. She became so emotionally drained by Thursday and Friday that she didn't do much crying Saturday and Sunday. I was pretty proud of her :P It would probably be pretty rough. I'm not much of a crier though.. But she'll be great in her new area. She is a very diligent missionary, so I don't worry. 

Fooooooood!!!

 

Anyways. So last week was really quite uneventful. We weren't as busy as usual, because appointments got cancelled and someone dropped us. Sister Bussio was able to say goodbye to some of our investigators, which was rough for her, and also for the investigators. But they'll keep in touch, so it's fine. Oh. On Tuesday we visited that eccentric Gwangan member. She unfortunately had time to cook this week, and we experienced the return of the anchovie rice balls. Ugh. Or was that last last week? I don't know. In any case. We had to eat more of those. 

 

I don't have my old planner with me at the moment, so I honestly can't remember much from this last week. Hm. In English class, some men from Iraq came. They were super friendly and nice, but their accents were too hard for the Korean students :P It was really interesting to talk with them. Anyways. I can't think of very much more... That one investigator who is doing really well is still doing good. We hope she'll continue to progress and be awesome. She understands very well that in order to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet, she has to read the Book of Mormon, so she wants to read it, which is good :) We also have this Chinese investigator (teaching her is an interesting mixture of Korean, English, and Chinese) who says that the Chinese translation of the Book of Mormon is really easy, so she's pretty good about reading it. It's pretty cool :) And one investigator we thought had dropped us contacted us back finally. She had been in a hospital for stress, but now she's better, and she really likes meeting with us enough that she brought a friend :P Pretty cool.

That's about all I can remember.. :P 

 

Overall, things here are good. I'm really glad to be in Gwangan and Haeundae and to have all the experiences I am having. I am learning so much about faith and such. I'm trying to make the most of the time I have here, and do the Lord's will, and be the best missionary I can be :)

 

October 27, 2014

On Tuesday, we went back to that soup kitchen for old, poor people, and it was quite an adventure because it was POURING all throughout it. There were some pavillions, but it was difficult to get every spot covered, and we were running back and forth between them delivering food, so we ended up leaving it looking like we recently showered in our clothes :P It was really fun though, and I was very touched by the people we saw there. There are all kinds of people serving there, and all kinds of people coming to eat, and it was really sweet to see the care with which some of the others served. There was a man who gave an old woman his rain poncho before she left. Super nice. It was just really touching to be able to see such kindness, and also to be part of that. There were some people there who were so sweet and grateful to us. It kind of hurts your heart :P

Anyways. We had a big Zone Conference on Wednesday. Our zone (South Busan) is super small, it's just 2 districts, so maybe 14 missionaries? :P Haha. But it was really good, and we learned a lot from it. We did some teaching practices to try introducing the Book of Mormon and how to read it to people. Often a problem we have with our investigators is (if they read it) they have a hard time understanding it. So we have been trying to impliment the ideas we got from the mission president. So when we introduce it, we try to tailor it to some question that either we know they are struggling with, or something they tell us they want to know about, and then show them exactly where to read, and give them a structure. That could be anything, but typically we start with a prayer, read, think, read again, and pray again. That way they know exactly what to do rather than just glance over it and give up because it's too hard. We'll see if it works :) We've already tried it with some of them. So we'll see. Seems like a good idea.

Anyways. On Thursday we met with that eccentric member again. This time she took us to a really expensive Chinese restaraunt. She was in an extremely good mood, so she talked a lot about random stuff, and afterwards insisted on buying us bread :P Uh, okay :P

There's one investigator we started meeting a few weeks ago. I think I mentioned her before, she's the one I love sooo much and we taught the ABCs to. We are now on past tense :P Anyways. For someone who started out with us by saying that she is not religious, she has more religious interest than any of our other investigators! She is soooo amazing and we are praying soooo hard that she accepts the Gospelllll... AAh. She has such good questions and she has such a desire to find the truth. She wants to pray and have a relationship with God, and she would like to have a church, but there are so many, and it just confuses her. "Why are there so many churches?" is a question that recurred, so we decided to teach her the Restoration. With time restrictions, we only got to slightly introduce Joseph Smith, but she seemed really fascinated by that and asked good questions, and we wished so badly that we had more time, but we promised to answer next time (tomorrow!). 

She reminds me of that scripture, where it goes something like people are trying to find the truth "but know not where to find it" or whatever. 

"For there are many yet on the earth among all sects, parties, and denominations, who are blinded by the subtle craftiness of men, whereby they lie in wait to deceive, and who are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it"—  D&C 123:12

Because I can tell she has such a strong desire to know the truth, and so we are trying our best to help her. She's so sweet. She brought us bananas yesterday, haha. And in Korea, food = love. Man. I want to help her so bad, it hurts :P Pray for her, please! And us. :P We aren't perfect teachers, but we are trying hard..

Today there was another 5k with the whole mission. It was kind of a big deal, because I think literally EVERYONE in the Busan mission was there, even the Jeju Island missionaries, who basically never get to come to stuff because they have to fly to get here. And we got sweet running shirts. But now my legs are tired :P If you were wondering, it takes me 37 minutes to go 5K. It was fun to see people again :)

October 20, 2014

 We visited some clifs and the ocean. Nice...


We are meeting this one lady who is soooooooo sweet. She is so kind it hurts. :P We are teaching her English, and we hope she progresses with the Gospel. Initially, she said she is not religious, but yesterday she prayed at the end of our lesson! It was sweet! We have a lot of hopes for her, but we'll see.





That one member that gave us the nasty spicy, dried anchovie filled rice balls met with us again (every other week). This week she thankfully did not have enough time to cook for us, so she bought hamburgers! I was quite happy about that. 

On Wednesday, we had a District Meeting, and I was in charge of the teaching practice part, so, with the topic of trying to share the Book of Mormon while talking to people, we paired up and roleplayed doing that for 5 minutes on a bus, 3 minutes on a subway, and 1 minute at a stoplight. Haha, it was pretty intense :P But I learned a lot, it was pretty fun :P If only it was so fun for talking to real people :P Real people are scary :P

We had a wonderful meal appointment with a member, which was largely due to the fact that she is a wonderful cook, and young, so she doesn't try to stuff insane amounts of food in us :P It's usually the older people who do that.

On Thursday and Friday we had exchanges. In the past times I've done that, I went to another area, but this time I stayed in mine, so that was different and exciting :P I luckily did not get lost and we had a pretty good day. We didn't have any appointments, but somehow things to do seemed to pop up out of the woodwork :P A member requested we visit a recently moved-in family, and then we helped the Elders prepare for the Halloween party we are going to do soon. We are going to need to put that together really fast.. :P While on exchanges we also did proselyting as a district, though I don't know why, because we just ended up splitting up and just setting a time to remeet... But anyways. 

This experience inspired me to write about the various ways of rejection in Korea. Haha. 

1. "I'll tell you next time". 
2. "oh, I'm too busy" and usually that means for eternity :P 
3. "I'm Buddhist". which means they don't want to listen to you 
4. "I'll call YOU later" which means never. 

 Its kind of amusing, because variations of these are always what people say :P They usually just beat around the bush because Koreans are typically too nice to say they aren't interested :P 

Friday morning was interesting because the mission president and his wife randomly popped by our apartment! It's a good thing Sis Bussio wasn't there, she probably would have had a panic attack :P But it was super cool. They were there during personal study, so they sat on our floor and studied with us, and towards the end he shared some of his thoughts on what he had been reading (Mark 10, I think). It was really awesome. He noted on how Christ in that chapter was always allowing all people to come unto him, even children, and he was always INVITING them to come and asking them what it is they want, rather than him just going and fixing whatever was wrong. I think He wants us to figure out for ourselves what we truly desire and need, and then for us to ask for it in faith. That process is important, I think.. That way we are actively acting. Anyways.

This morning was.... weird. We went to Nampodong, which is like Banwoldang in Daegu, so it's a big shopping area with literally everything, and if you look in the right places, you can get good stuff for super cheap. It's great. 

Nampodong at Night

But anyways. On the way there, we were on a subway with the elders, and a man comes up to Elder Lees (who is 1 transfer newer than me), and asks if he's Mormon and all that stuff, and then starts telling him that he's wrong, that Mormons don't understand God and Christ and such. He wasn't being very nice. Poor Elder Lees didn't understand really what was going on and that he was being proselyted to AND insulted. I didn't understand much from what that man said, but I did catch a few things that were not nice. Stuff about us going to hell, I think, because we don't understand the Bible. I was thinking "well.. I do recall there being a part in the Bible about loving your fellowman..." Haha. So that was interesting. He was being super loud and we mostly ignored him while he informed the other passengers about the us :P They looked irritated by him :P And so we got off at our stop and were on our way to eat lunch with the elders, when a really old drunk man came up to Sis Bussio and I and he tried to hold my hand. It was weird. .... Thankfully the rest of our day was devoid of drunk or crazy men. :P 

So anyways. Things are going pretty well here. I can't believe we are on the 5th week of the transfer now, time is going by so fast! But I'm learning a lot, and Sis Bussio is pretty great. We are trying our best to take care of our area and our investigators, and things seems pretty okay right now. We have a serious lack on investigators in Haeundae, but we are hoping to find new people soon.