Seventeenth Week Email

Hey Family & Friends!

 

   Well this week was great as usal. We have been so busy time has just flown by. So this training program for new missionaries is getting pretty... fun.... haha we have an extra hour of companion study and language study everyday so we don't leave the house until after lunch most days. Elder Allred said that I will probably go crazy just like he has haha.

   Some of the cool things we did this week was english surveying alot. It's always fun just to say hi to a ton of people and they usually laugh back at you because you're speaking english. And it's always fun to hang out with our district and the other district. All of the other Missionary's just watch me and Elder Anderson talk and laugh about what we talk about. They thought that it was hilarious when we walked into a coffee shop last week called Coffee and cat. There's like 30 cats in this small coffee shop and apparently people just hang out with cats and drink coffee. I would e-mail from that coffee shop but I'm allergic to cats.

   So this will be a shock to everybody that knows me. I can now eat onions, peppers, tomatoes, and seafood. Our Ward Mission Leader took us out to a pretty expensive seafood place last week. They served us a grilled fish that they basically just cut a couple times and threw on the grill. They also served us this crab soup that had all of the pieces of the crab in there and it was so good. The one that I was super scared about was the raw crab that they gave us. All you do is bite on to the crab and suck the jelly like meat out haha. I hope this is disgusting some people out because the best part was that you would take the head shell and put rice in there and stir up the crab brain and all of the juices and eat that haha. It was suprisingly good haha.

   We also got invited to the bishops house for the first time. Our Bishop is a super busy man and Elder Allred has never been there in the 12 weeks he has been here. Elder Allred said that it was basically because I was their first greenie in a long time and that they love me. We had dinner with the Bishop and his family, the Ward Mission Leader and his family, the Second Counselor in the Stake Presidency and his family, and the Sister's we share the area with. Turns out Elder Allred and I weren't on the same page about the message we were going to share at the end of the night haha. I thought we were going to give a family message but he started to share a message about the Book of Mormon and Christ. When He turned to me I gave my best testimony I have given and after we shared the message the Bishop's wife chose me to pray. After I prayed they just complimented me so much haha. I was basically silent the whole night because they were talking about day to day stuff so I didn't understand a thing. So they were happy that I could atleast talk about Church related stuff haha. I'm so grateful for what they taught us at the MTC haha.

   Another awesome thing that happened this week was we challenged one of our Investigators this week to be baptized and he said yes. He was the one with the Girlfriend who is a member in France. He told us straight up that he wasn't planning to meet with us when he came back to Korea but when his girlfriend dragged him to the church a couple weeks ago he had a really good time. He loves to help me with the language alot and we have another appointment with him this week. So that's always fun to look forward to. I'm so happy that all of our Investigator's understand how hard it can be when it comes to learning a new language so they are patient when I have to pause for a second or two. They always encourage me and write new vocabulary in my vocab book for me haha. I hope Tawni doesn't edit this out but I was showing an Investigator my family book and he thought my family was very handsome. When I talked about Tawni and how she can be a princess he taught me how to say princess complex in Korean haha.

   Well I'm off to go to a amusement park/zoo today with my zone and the other zone so that should be a great time. I love all of you and I hope all of you are having a great time in Korea.

 

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Sixteenth Week Email

Dear Family & Friends,

 hmm... What can I say about the last week.... I broke my camera, I can't speak the language, and I eat the strangest things.... I love it haha. I don't really love the fact that I broke my camera but I just laughed so hard when it happened. I also had my first split this week with Elder Smith who is our zone leader. It was so fun to work with him and go out and teach a lesson and 전도 (proselyte (jun-do)) I'm starting to lose some of my english vocabulary. I'll try to say proselyte sometimes but I can't think of the word in my head so I just say it in Korean. A pretty fun word is 가가호호 (ka-ka-ho-ho) haha it means knocking doors. 

 

I also had my first interview in the field with President Furniss. He is the most amazing guy and I respect him so much. I also love talking with Sister Furniss and she usually brings sweets and feeds us so it was pretty nice. He gave me so much to work with and he's just full of so much wisdom, which always makes me think of how much growing up I still have to do. I just love President Furniss and Sister Furniss.

 

This week was an awesome week with Missionary work. It's been a little frustrating because most of our investigator's are student's and they have had testing this week. Korean's take their education very seriously. Growing up they go to school and usually after schools or on weekends they go to an academy. So when it's testing week they basically don't look at their phone. But we still had so many awesome times with 전도ing and teaching lessons with less actives. There's a couple less actives who just love us. I was walking down the street with Elder Smith and I just heard someone yell 장로님 (Elder) and it was a less active Sister and she would not let us leave without buying us a ton of fruit. She found out that Elder Smith was going back to his area the next day so she bought him some fruit and bread haha. She is just so nice so we stopped by her house and heart attacked her. That's when you hang all of the cutout hearts on their door and leave messages on them. We also taught her and her family a quick message and invited them back to church. So we'll probably just give her a call every saturday and invite her to church.

 

 We also have an older man who is great friends with the Bishop and the Stake President. We randomly stopped by his house one day and he was just so happy to see us. He runs one of the most successfull english academys in gwangju while working at his other job. He's a very busy man. But he's trying to meet with us twice a week and he stopped going to church a while ago. He still talks about the church with such great love and faith. He stopped going to church when his son was young and is actually going to try to come meet with us with his son. We had a chance to talk with his son who loves to speak english and seemed to really like us. But anyways we met with him last Friday in the church and he just wanted to ask questions about why we were serving missions and a lot about the church. He told us that he loves to meet in the church because it's so peaceful and he actually brought his old Book of Mormon wich was an old translation. He started to look through it in front of us and there were a lot of notes from his friends (The Bishop, and the Stake President) and it really got to him. He had forgotten about the notes and it really made his day to talk about all of the amazing experiences he had growing up in the church. I think it was a great time for him to reflect on all of those times that he had with his friends and in the church and he's going to try to make it to sacrament this week. He also took a new Book of Mormon because he was really interested in the new translation. We'll actually meet with him tomorrow and I'm so excited because he's just the nicest guy ever.

I love my mission so far. It's crazy and sad to think I have almost been here a month already. Time seems to be flying by. I love this Area and I love all of our Investigators. I love our Ward and they treat us so nicely all of the time. I catch myself thinking sometimes that I don't want to leave this area but at the same time I look forward to all of the new experiences and relationships I get to build in the future. I just hope I never let a second go by without appreciating the time I have.

I hope all of you never forget that I love you and I pray for all of you. I hope you have a great week and I'll talk to you next week.

 

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Fifteenth Week Email

So I just tried to get a haircut... They didn't cut anything on top and they thought I was cute.... They basically made fun of me for an hour straight and Elder Allred was laughing with them the entire time haha. Picture four 40 year old women talking to me like I was a child and laughing at everything I said haha I'm so mad right now.

 

Anyways this last week went by so fast. It felt like yesterday when I e-mailed all of you. But this week was so great. We taught alot and talked to so many people. I play the American card so much here. I start talking to them and they think I'm adorable (they say that all of the time) and than they get caught off guard when Elder Allred starts speaking Korean to them. That also works really well when we are out doing english surveys. Elder Anderson and I just say hello to a lot of people and Elder Allred or Elder Birmingham (Elder Anderson's trainer) start talking to them.

 

The Language barrier is so much bigger than I thought it would be. But I know that it's just going to take a lot of time, studying, and practice to get better. I'm so grateful that they had us teach so much at the MTC because the only place I feel a little more comfortable is teaching lessons.  Basically my entire vocabulary is church related so as long as I'm talking about the church I feel so much better. And that's the entire reason why I'm out here so I'm so happy for what I learned at the MTC and what I'm continually focusing on out here. It's crazy to think I haven't even been here for 3 weeks yet but I can't even begin to tell you what I have learned. Every night after planning my mind and body are exhausted and I basically fall into bed... which is a very hard thin mattress.

 

We had a couple of awesome lessons this week. There's this guy who has a girlfriend in France who is a member. When he went out to France a few months ago the missionaries taught him a couple lessons in english. He's basically fluent in the english language. Well when he came back he told those missionaries to contact the missionaries in his area so they called up our office and we were told that he wanted to visit. It's been hard arranging visits with all of our investigators this week because it's testing week in Korea so our Investigators are super busy. Well he showed up to church yesterday and we had an amazing lesson with him and his Girlfriend and we are meeting with him on Friday. It was cool to see how they interacted with eachother because she can speak a little english and a little Korean and he can speak a little french. But I'm pretty excited to meet with him this weekend.

 

I guess I'll tell you another story about how much I love Korea. So they have these things called Go-Gee buffets which means meat buffet. They are pretty cheap and you can eat as much as you want. Well after a quick survey out by our College we went to a Go-gee buffet and that's when I learned never go to a go-gee buffet with a Korean. Sister Lee (이보배) had me eat an octopus, one of the hottest peppers I have ever eaten, chicken feet, and... The rear end of a chicken.... I'm not going to explain any further on that last one... But she apologized and sent me home with some pumpkin oatmeal and Sister Terry made me biscuits and gravy... I just realized that everybody treats me like a child out here. 

 

I can't even explain how much I love Gwangju. Our Area is huge and there are so many people. We have a lot of colleges in our area so there are a lot of people my age who like to speak english to me. The 풍향 Ward is awesome. After Church yesterday we had a couple lessons and no time to run home to eat and our bishop knew that so they made us food downstairs and sent us home with a lot of rice and kimchi. And Rice is expensive in Korea so that was so nice of them. Our Bishops name is Bishop Yoon and his daughter was actually in my zone at the MTC. She came in for the last 3 weeks that I was at the MTC and I showed him and his wife a picture of the two of us and his Wife hung it up on the pin board haha.

 

Well sorry this letter is so short this week but we're off to go have another sport's day with our zone and the other zone in Gwangju. I love all of you and I hope everything is going great back in the US.

 

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Pictures of When He Arrived!

I grabbed these from Sister Furniss' blog, and had to share! I'm so excited that all the missionaries arrived safely. And come to find out they have record breaking numbers with this group of missionaries being the LARGEST group to arrive yet.

Ryan Fourteenth Week Email

Hello Family & Friends,

Happy Easter everyone... I already had mine... Like I said I'm the cool kid. Haha I promise I'm growing up out here but it's pretty slow. Well anyways I had such a great week in Gwangju. Since it's Korea they have Conference a week later so that they can translate it. I can't imagine a better way to spend my Easter Sunday than listening to conference. There were so many amazing talks and I had such a great time with all of the other Elders.

   So on Saturday we had english class at 11 and that's always fun. We have two grandpa's and a younger mom who come to our class. Their english is amazing so it's pretty fun to teach them and just have conversations with them. Well we invited the trio of College students to the first session of conference and they all said no, so we weren't really planning on having anybody go with us. After english class Elder Allred checked the phone and we had a couple missed calls and a text. Sister 노애란 (no-eh-ran) texted us and basically said she was on her way to the church and she wanted to go to conference so that was awesome. We are about 45 minutes away from the Stake Center so we showed up pretty late but she actually really enjoyed it. She kept on asking questions like why are we serving missions and she asked a lot of questions about the prophet. She said he looked so old and cute haha. But it was kind of cool to talk back to her in very simple Korean and tell her why I wanted to serve a mission. Pretty much whenever Elder Allred is having a normal conversation I'm completely lost but if we're in a lesson and talking about church related things I can usually follow along. Except I wasn't able to understand a single thing that was going on in General conferance so I haven't seen the first session yet. After that we went over to the 시내 which is basically the coolest place ever. It's like the gateway but more stores, more people, and more of everything. We ate real fast and started a survey booth. We just set up a table with a bunch of surveys on it about english and we start speaking english to everyone. They love English here so we had 150 surveys filled out in 45 minutes and it was so much fun. All of the Missionaries love doing surveys in the 시내 (sorry it's pronounced she-neh). After that we went back for the second session of conference. It was awesome to see the MTC choir there because we knew so many of those missionaries and Elder Anderson and I were standing super close to the TV and we would lose it everytime we saw somebody that we knew haha. But I loved Elder Holland's talk about the workers all getting paid the same wage for the day when some showed up for only an hour. I'm not going to lie my mind went straight to that's not fair and than Elder Holland basically gave me a good old spiritual check. I love Conference for that reason. I'm just some 21 year old kid who can be quick to jump to conclusions so fast. I'll be the first person to admit that I need to work on a lot in my life but I know that I can't fix all of it over night. It's learning experiences like I had during that talk that just shows me that I'm human and I'll always have room to improve. Like Elder Holland said the Workers who recieved the work in the morning didn't have to worry all day long about finding work. They agreed to the pay for that day so they knew what they would recieve. The workers who had to worry all day long trying to find work were truly blessed by the employer. They were blessed even more by the genourous wage. And after the morning workers argued to the Employer he responded "why should you be jealous because I choose to be kind?" It's the strangest thing out here in Korea for me. I spend all of my study time focusing on how I can better teach these people that we're meeting with and all of my focus is on them. It's amazing how I focus on them as much as I can and I have been learning so much for myself. I think this principle could have been applied to my entire life. Reaching out and always trying to focus on others I'm sure I would have learned so much more in my life. I hope I'll never pass up an oppurtunity to help someone out.

 
 So after that session I was given permission to go on a split... With Elder Anderson (The same Elder Anderson who came to Korea with me a week ago haha) We basically can't say anything and the area we were in was new to both of us. We knew enough of the 시내 to get around but that's it. We were laughing so hard that we had both been there a week and we had permission to go walk around together haha. Well we actually ran into Sister 이보배 (ee-bo-beh she calls herself my mom) and she was so mad at Elder Allred and Elder Anderson's companion for letting us go alone. She followed us to make sure we didn't get in trouble or get lost. It was such a fun time with Elder Anderson and it's always nice to see people from the MTC.

   Anyways I have to get going I'm sorry I can't tell you more about my weekend. It was such an awesome weekend and I'm sure this week will be just as great. There's just so much I want to tell all of you but I hope that the one thing you can get out of this e-mail is that I'm having the greatest time out here. Sure it can be hard to get out of bed some mornings but by the time bed time rolls around I have so much to write down in my journal. I love Korea and the Korean people. They treat me so nicely mainly because I'm a foreigner. The best thing is is when little kids call me a foreigner in Korean and I respond back in Korean and tell them "no I'm Korean" they lose it everytime haha. Well I love all of you and I keep all of you in my prayer's. Have a great week!

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Thirteenth Week Email

Hell Family & Friends,

How's the past? Just wait until you see the sun today it looks so crazy... not really I just want to be that cool kid who lives in the future haha.

 

  So South Korea..... haha it's just different that's the only way I can explain it. That's a bad explanation but at the end of the day they are people just like us but I can't understand a single word they say.

  

   So I'll just get right into it. My new companion is Elder Allred from Ogen, Utah. He's a big kid who is probably the nicest person I have ever met. We weren't allowed to go shopping until today so he has just been feeding me. I'm serving in the Gwangju east zone and I'm serving in the the poong hyang ward. Gwangju is a huge city and it's about 2 hours south of Daejeon. I introduced myself and shared my Testimony at church yesterday. I love that ward they are super nice and they love greenies. Elder Allred told me on saturday that they never put stuff in the missionary box by the front door at church and when we left church yesterday the box was stuffed with a bunch of treats and he said that's because of me. It's so strange I can travel to the other side of the earth and I can sit in church and feel the same love that I do back in those chapels and classrooms in Utah.

  

   So in Korea they have the huge churches everywhere and they can be 7 stories tall and have giant crosses that stand really tall. Our churches are just like ours back at home. They are older but they have all the classrooms and they are kept super clean at all times.

  

   There's so much going on I don't know what to talk about. We have two Sisters we share our area with. Sister Lee (Korean) and Sister Terry (she's from vegas). Sister Lee calls me her son and she made me a planner that has a bunch of decorations on the outside and a picture with four bears on the inside. I'm the baby bear, I have an older Sister (Sister Lee) and my mom and dad (Sister Lee and Elder Allred) haha it's great. You'll see it in some pictures when I send my card home.

 

   So as soon as I got down to my area we were put to work. We had two appointments and our meeting with our Ward Mission Leader. Our first lesson was with an Grandpa who wants to learn english. English is huge here! Pretty much everything has an English word on it and all of the parents want their kids to learn it. So We offer a free class on Saturdays to teach english and if they show interest we can teach them one on one with a half hour of english and a half hour of Gospel. We have 7 people coming to the Saturday Class and 5 people who are taking lessons. Our second lesson was with a group of Three college students (노에란, 오혜미, 김진영) (no-eh-rahn, oh-hyeh-mee, kim-jeen-young) and they started attending church a couple weeks ago. We are also teaching a ten year old boy named 정호윤 (Jeong-ho-yoon) who has recieved all of the lessons and had a baptismal date but his mom didn't feel like he was ready. So now we're trying to meet with her because 정호윤 loves showing up to church and all of the activities and he has such an amazing Testimony of the Gospel for being so young.

 

   Well other than all of that it's just been an amazing time. I'm trying to get use to the food and that can be hard sometimes. Everything has a fish taste. So I stick with ham and rice for breakfast, lunch, and Dinner. I'm a little scared because I have FHE tonight with the second counselors family and I'm not sure what they will feed me. Elder Allred said that they love to feed greenies the wierdest things they can find... So yeah I'm a little worried about that haha.

 

   I guess if you can get anything from this e-mail just know that I love it here and It's such a crazy experience. I'm still getting used to sleeping on a really thin hard mattress and I love chopsticks already. I love all of the study time in the morning with Elder Allred because his Korean is amazing and he's the most patient person ever. He teaches me so much and he has me do a lot during the lessons and translates them for me. I like walking up to people and trying to talk to them in Korean and they are so patient with me because I'm a foreigner. I'm sorry this e-mail was all over the place but I'm just all over the place. So much has happened and I want to tell all of you everything but I'm pretty much out of time. Well as always I love you and I hope everything is going great at home.

 

Elder Jensen

 

P.S. I guess you need to send everything to the mission home and they'll send it to me.
(Address on the right side of the blog, towards the bottom).