Sunday, October 18, 2015

Korea: Week 2

 So that kid that was gonna get baptized had to get the date postponed cause his parents aren't for it anymore :/  Anyways, this week was pretty sad because we didn't get many teaching appointments cause most people cant meet til the weekends. Anyways on Saturday, 3 appointments cancelled so we only got a few lessons and just went street contacting.  I got 2 phone numbers this week! So they'll be coming to our english class and we'll give em an intro to the church.  Also, another tender mercy from the Lord was since we had so many appointments cancel we we're pretty down, but on Sunday there was a man sitting in the chapel who came by himself and so we talked to him and now we have a new investigator!  So the Lord is always looking out for us, despite our stats not looking too great this week he knows we tried.  

 Also there was a guy on the bus yesterday who sang "예수님,예수님, 예수님, 우리의 구주입니다!" and a bunch of other crazy stuff for a straight 45 minutes....then he tried asking me if I knew jesus and I was like "well...I actually do, let me tell you about his church" haha.  

광주 Gwangju is the bomb, I love it here but we drop about 50,000원 every 2 weeks just on travel because we live so far away thats about 1/3 of our total budget.  Our area 농성 is so expensive food wise we have to go to super ghetto grocery stores ways away to get our stuff.  McDonalds is pretty cheap here! haha and you'd be hard pressed to find free refills or water dispensers anywhere.  Anyways, we have about 7 progressing investigators we've gotten recently and it'll be exciting when they get baptized in the next month or so.  


Trying on Glasses... just for fun!

Downtown

District meeting

Silk Worm Larva 

P-DAY

Sunday, October 11, 2015

First Week in Korea



Well the flight was super long!!  The Arctic wasn't exciting because there were clouds everywhere, but Russia was awesome! We ended up flying around the south west of North Korea :\  As you know know my pday is Monday here which is basically Sunday there!  So we got picked up from Incheon Intl Airport by President Shin and his wife and they drove us down to the mission home in Daejeon.  We stayed there for two days. We went to a Korean bath house which was super awkward at first, but it was quite relaxing by the end of it.  Then the day after we got there we went out proselyting in Daejeon with missionaries that have been there a while and let me tell you, there's so many people here and it smells really bad in the city...haha.  There's not much sanitation in Korean cities, but it was super fun!  Daejeon is rough spot in the mission though so not much success up there.  

Thursday we had transfer meeting and I got my trainer!  Elder King from Rexburg, ID has been here about 7 transfers and I'm learning a lot.  I got sent to my first area which is Nongseong Ward in Gwangju!  Apparently it is the most productive part of the mission right now.  It definitely smells better down here ha.  We have a baptism on Saturday which was committed before I came. We also just met a guy yesterday and committed him to baptism after the first meeting!  He's golden, so humble and awesome.  

The Church building we have here in Gwangju is the 2nd biggest in Korea and it more beautiful than 95% of Utah Stake Centers.  4 Stories and the church spent $20,000,000 on it!  So fancy, we just need to get more members to come out. 

 The food is super spicy here.  Something I'm getting used to is 'Food Trash'.  There's a separate trash for all food scraps that we have to take to a different location.  There's so much to tell you about Korea!  I love it but I'm so glad we live in the USA...The quality of living is 5x better.  Anyways, I'm getting better at talking with people, but my conversational Korean is iffy still, and I CANT UNDERSTAND 90% of what they say unless they slow down, they use so much more casual Korean here so I don't even pick it up.  It's gonna take so much work and time before I get it but I know I will if I stay diligent.  Anyways, that's about it from here...I guess we walk a lot like about 10km a day? and we live super far from the church so we take the subway a lot. I'm excited to be serving the lord here.


Eating the spicy food....

Elder King,  My first companion in Korea.

Vocal point came to my last Devotional at the MTC.


Flight to Detroit 

Flight to Korea 

Russia 

Incheon, Korea 

The church building in my first area. 
 Nongseong Ward in Gwangju

Random Street

Our Apartment 

The View 

Our Beds..... 



President and Sister Shin 

Friday, August 14, 2015

The MTC



My Comp Elder Bradshaw is cool, he's from Payson, UT and 90% of the missionaries here are from Utah.  The whole District and Korean Branch really get along!  We're all friends and the Korean is coming along.  Half of us are going to Daejeon and the other half are going to Busan. Then the older classes are going to Seoul and Seoul South, Arcadia, Ventura, Anaheim and Morris Town, NJ haha.  The 3rd day they already gave us an investigator who only speaks Korean! So my comp and started teaching her and I felt so dumb speaking with her the first two times haha.  But its crazy how we've had 5 lessons and I can already have a conversation with her about her life and religion!  I need to learn a ton more vocab because that's really the only thing that matters but the Gift of Tongues is REAL.  The MTC is great now and the days fly by after the first week, it's hard to think we'll know so much Korean at the end of the 9 weeks because of how little we know now but I have faith...I really needed this, I needed to foster my relationship with my Heavenly Father more than what I had been doing. 

Mission Prep


I took my endowments out on July 23rd in the Spokane, Washington Temple 
My amazing parents 

  I was set apart as a missionary by President Larson on August 2nd 
President Larson said, "Forget all the advice that you've been given up to this point! You need to rely on the Spirit 24 hours a day. The Spirt will tell you what side of the road to walk on, whether you walk with your head up or down. Which door to knock on, and who to talk to... Work so hard that you have to take a nap for 2 days when you get home."

My Mission Call



I can't wait to serve the Lord and the people of Korea for the next 2 years as a representative of Jesus Christ!!!