Twenty-First Week Email

Hello Family & Friends,

Well I had such a fun filled/super busy week. So I'm pretty sure I told you about mission conference last Saturday. Well after that this weekend went like this: Friday we had 2 investigator meetings, and went to a fireside with another Investigator. Sister Dalton and Sister Stevens of the Primary Presidency (I think) came and gave great talks. We also had Elder Yashumoto (I honestly guessed at spelling his name) give another talk that night. We followed that up with Our English class and a Stake Testimony meeting with another Investigator. We had all of those meetings because Yesterday (Sunday) was a huge Stake Conference. It was so big because the Stake President who has been serving for 7 years was released and they were calling a new one. They actually called the second counselor of the Stake Presidency to Stake President who is President Oh. President Oh is from our ward and he has to be one of the funniest people that I have met in Korea so far. He knows a lot of English so just two weeks ago he was joking how he was no longer Brother Oh and that we had to call him Farmer Oh (Because he was going to quit his job and become a farmer). Then he made an excumminication joke and I was just sitting there laughing as hard as I could. He has also fed us like 4 times and his family is amazing. Our Ward helped out so much that day because they picked up two Investigators and took them to and from the Conference. Elder Allred and I were on a bus down with our other Investigator when a highschool student started to talk to us in english. I talked to him the entire ride down and he actually ended up going to Stake Conference with us haha. He had nothing planned that Sunday except for studying at a library right next to the conference center so he just thought that it would be fun to go haha. Well after we got his number and everything last night he called us and we're meeting him tonight with his Sister at our Church where we are having a ward dinner.

 

Sorry this letter is all over the place but my brain feels like that right now. We also woke up this morning and took one of our Investigators to our Ward picnic this morning. We had so much fun at a park clear out in the country side. We played a lot of games and ate a huge lunch so it was pretty fun. They played this game where they had ME read Korean sentences out loud and they would choose if it was true or false and whoever was wrong would lose. I honestly have no idea why they chose me to read Korean but I guess they thought it was pretty funny haha. I'm so happy that I have my sense of humour from my family because I constantly get made fun of here and I just laugh back at them haha. I think it's a lot easier when I can't understand some of the jokes haha. But it was such a fun time with our ward and now I'm e-mailing running back to our house and showering. And right after that we have to meet at the church with a our Investigator and that boy we met yesterday and his sister. I'm honestly just having a blast right now.

 

I think why it has been so great because everybody we're working with are making so much progress. Our Investigator who attended every meeting with us just loves everything about our church. He was talking with a less active who came to our stake conference yesterday in english and he straight up told him he started to meet with us for english but now he only comes for church haha. Our ward loves having him around too. Whenever we see our Ward now and Brother Lee isn't with us they don't even ask how we're doing, they always ask how's brother Lee? or where's Brother Lee? haha. We also found 4 new people in this last week that we have return appointments with and that attended meetings this past week so honestly it's just a good time right now. We have a lot of baptismal dates set but we still have a lot of work to do for those. We have regularly occuring meetings with some less active members who attended some meetings this last weekend.

 

Sorry I'm just super happy and super tired right now so this e-mail might seem a little strange to all of you. I hope that you can honestly feel that I'm just having the time of my life right now. I'm able to see so many blessings that our Heavenly Father gives to all of his children everywhere. And I get front row seats to see those blessings. Well i love you all but I have to go hop on a bus right now and get across town. I love all of you and I hope all of you have an amazing week.

 

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P.s. we have mission conference tomorrow so that's going to be fun. I also showed my family album to most of my ward today and they loved all of you. There was a pretty great moment where they saw my friends page and they saw me hugging a lot of people (girls) and they asked if I had a girlfriend haha. Hugging is a pretty big deal in Korea so they thought that I had a girlfriend. Well I had a huge smile and I said the most basic sentence in Korean that I could. 저는 선교사입니다. I am a missionary haha.

Twentieth Week Email

Hello Family & Friends!

Well another week in Korea has flown by. It was a pretty strange week though mainly because I talked to my family haha. They are just a strange bunch haha. Anyways not a whole lot happened this last week except for saturday. Saturday was our Mission tour! When we have a mission tour everybody in the south end of our mission comes to Gwangju and we have an all day meeting. We were visited by Elder Don R. Clark of the Seventy. He also chose three missionaries out of all of the three zones that came to Gwangju to have an interview with, and of course I was one of those three haha. I guess I'm just a super lucky person. Well after a pretty fun interview where i told him about my day to day life as a missionary we had a 3 hour lesson. But we were lucky enough to get a free lunch that was pretty good. After lunch though we had another 3 hour lesson and It was a pretty good time. He pretty much insulted everyone haha especially all of the Korean traditions and Utahns for saying "yup" all of the time. He even pulled Elder Allred up to the front and used him as an example of companionships. He had asked me about my companionship in the interview and he pulled me up to the front and made me tell everyone what I had said about my companion. Luckily I love my companion and don't hate him so I said some pretty good things I think. I also was able to see a lot of the people that i went into the MTC with so that was pretty fun. We also had 8 Elders sleeping in our tiny apartment on Friday night. Literally every part of our floor was turned into a bed.

 

Well the Missionary work is getting pretty fun especially when I'm out street contacting. I'm now teaching short lessons out on the street by myself with the Book of Mormon. The Blue Book of Mormons have pictures in the front and I usually teach with those. Yesterday was awesome though because we had so much time to go out and street contact 전도 that we talked to over a hundred people and taught 11 lessons about the Book of Mormon and gave out 4. We also got a ton of numbers so that's pretty much why I love Gwangju because there are so many people who love to talk to americans. It's always fun getting yelled at or told to go away because I literally don't understand if they are saying bad things and I still hand them our flyers haha. Elder Allred loves that I still try to give them a flyer after they yell at me or say something really offensive haha. It reminds me of a story we were told at the MTC about how an Elder got to a new area that was known for being bad, but he set a goal to find 10 new investigators in the first week. When they met that week for a zone meeting he found out that the entire zone had only found 11 new investigators in the past week and 10 of those new investigators were his haha. When all of the other Elder's asked him how he did it he responded, "I guess I'm just to stupid to know that was a high goal." haha so I'm happy that I am to stupid right now to understand people saying bad things and that I can still give them a flyer haha. And I promise that wasn't the main point of the teacher's story at the MTC.

 

Well our Investigators are coming a long pretty fast. We had to drop a few but are still super busy with lessons all of the time. We had all of our Investigator's at church yesterday so that was pretty hectic trying to be around all of them but luckily our ward is amazing and we had a friend sitting with all of them during sacrament. Our Ward of course isn't near as big as a normal Utah Ward but they do so much for us and I'm so grateful for all of it. After all of the help we get from them they feed us every Sunday after church so we can just go straight out and street contact right by the church. It still blows my mind that I can be on the other side of the planet but still have the exact same feeling here when i attend church. And I'm just getting more and more use to everything here. I went to shake Elder Clark's hand on Saturday and I still bowed and I almost didn't shake his wife's hand haha.

 

Well Everything is great in 광주 Gwangju. The language is coming a long because it has to. If I can't speak I can't teach so I'm still spending as much time as I can learning. I love talking with the Native Korean Missionaries because we'll switch between some Korean and English the entire conversation. But all of my sentences are very simple but they usually involve sarcasm still haha. The Koreans love joking around so it's a pretty good time. Well i have to go because today is Elder Allred's birthday! We're off to meet with the other Elder's and have lunch. I love all of you and I hope you all have a great week.

 

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Nineteenth Week Email

Happy Mothers Day!

 

So I would like to start this letter off by telling everyone how much I love my Mom. I am the person I am because of what I have learned from the people around me. I spent more time with my Mom and Siblings growing up than with anybody else. I miss those days of just being a kid and being loved non stop by our loving and caring mom... And getting food made for me haha. A thing that I have been trying to focus on out here in my mission is love and charity. My Mom is one of the most loving person that I know and she never wants to let us down and I think that she is such a great example for me. I still think my earliest memory that I have was that we were riding in the van somewhere and I kept on telling my mom that she was black haha. When I was little I only knew white people, black people, and asian people. She would laugh and tell me that she was brown (Navajo Indian) but I would still disagree with her haha. So I tell everyone that I thought my mom was black for the first 5 years of my life. I'm so grateful for everything my mom has done for me in my life and I want to tell everyone that I love her so much. As well as all my other moms that have influenced me in my life, you know I love you all!

 

Well I talked to my family today and it was the strangest thing ever. Isla and Kairie both talked to me and it was so strange to hear them. They have gotten so big. But this week was a pretty great one in Korea. The weather has been so nice this week and it makes me really not look forward to the rainy season. Apparently it rains for a month straight and it's super hot and humid all the time. And my umbrella already broke this morning so now I have to go buy another one haha. I usually don't brake things but for some reason everything is breaking on me out here haha. When i talked to my dad today he told me about the e-mail where I said I broke my camera and he just laughed and said that i was still Ryan.... whatever that means haha.

 

Well we had some great lessons this week but our investigator with the baptismal date wasn't able to come to church so we have to reschedule so that's never fun. But we made some great progress with a few other investigator's. One is Brother Lee and he loves coming to church. He's about our age and at first he just wanted to show up to church and meet people. Well our ward loves him and we have a schedule of dinner's to take him to with a few of our member's. And after church we asked him if we could start the lessons and he was fine with it. He wants us to help him quit smoking and he wants to talk about baptism next time so that took us by surprise when he said that.

 

We have also been struggling finding new people. We are constantly street contacting and knocking doors. People love the few lines I can say in Korean and I'm definitely playing my american card a lot over here haha. Native Korean missionaries hate it haha They always talk about how American's never have a problem with finding people because everybody loves to talk to us... It's a little true. But other than finding people the Missionary work is going along great. It's pretty nice to have every second of my day planned but the only down side is that time is flying by so fast. I passed my 5 month mark last week and that seems so crazy to me. It feels like I just walked off that plane yesterday.

 

Well I love my mission and I love all of you. The language is coming along... slowly but it's still coming haha. The people are great and i love them. Have a great week everyone!

 

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Eighteenth Week Email

Dear Family & Friends,

So as always another awesome week in 광주 (Gwangju) and so many things have happened. So I'll start with last monday when I went to Family Funland with our zone and the other zone in 광주 and it was so much fun. There's a lady in our combined english class named Sunny and she basically runs gwangju. She always loves talking to all of the missionaries so she decided that she would call up the owner of the amusement park and tell him to let us in for free haha. We thought that they would just let us in to go to the zoo but Sunny showed up and the owner with a camera crew haha. They took us on a personal tour and let us do a bunch of awesome things like feed the elephants and hippo's. Than once we were done they had a picnic prepared for us and they fed us so much food. I was so blown away that they would do all of that for us. After we finished eating we played a great game of ultimate frisbee and my team won. I know that's not really a surprise right? haha I'm terrible. Anyways it was just such an awesome day and we made Sunny a card for this week's english class.

 

Another fun thing that happened this last week was I went farming. One of our members owns a pretty big farm and he's getting a little older. He has two sons but they are super busy at all times so he really needed the help. Well he tried moving two of his planting houses down a few rows and what he planted didn't grow very well...so he decided to move them back where he started. The growing houses are made up of hundreds of metal poles that are arched and huge plastic rolls that they cover that with. Well when we got there we had to pull every pole out of the ground and lay it down. After we pulled all of them out of the ground we had to put them in piles. They were pretty heavy pieces of bar and we were just constantly bent over all day and I still hurt from that day. And Koreans don't really drink water ever so I was dying by lunch time. I walked into their house and I have never had the feeling of cold water splash on my face feel as good as it did when I washed my face that day. Another thing that Koreans do is that they eat the same kind of food for all of their meals. Well we got in and they cooked us a bunch of meat with a lot of spicy kimchi and the entire time I was just dying haha. Elder Allred felt so bad for me and I think he finally realized it and asked for a giant bottle of water for me haha. But as soon as we walked into the chapel yesterday he was just so happy to see us. He walked straight up to us and asked how we were feeling and I told him that I was an old man in Korean and he just laughed so hard. It was such a cool day to be up the the country side of Korea and actually helping a member with service. Another thing about Korea is that they have so many spiders. Just walking through that field the ground was always moving with some type of spider. At first I was watching every step but after lunch time I really didn't care. I looked down so many times to see a pretty decent sized spider on me and I'm not going to lie the first time it happened it scared me a little bit haha. I had that feeling the rest of the day that something was just crawling on me haha.

 

Well I've had so many fun times this week but I thing the most important thing happened to me last night. So we have an Investigator who lived in America for a while. I'll first tell you how I thought about him. I thought that he only wanted to talk in english. He records our conversations and he said that he did it so that he could listen to himself speak english later. I didn't believe that. He would always tell us that he visited a bunch of other churches and he would always ask the same question about who killed Jesus and who is responsible. After a while I thought that he was just getting a bunch of other perspectives from different religions and posting about it on his website. I was also getting frustrated because he would talk for an hour straight about religious law and he would always trail off into something else. I was getting frustrated and to be honest my attitude towards meeting with him wasn't the best attitude. When we asked him to pray a couple weeks ago he did it in a mocking way. He would always go back to the fact that he had 99% belief and that he couldn't get 100%. I was starting to focus more on the fact that I didn't really want to keep on meeting with him instead of the reason I'm here. After last night I couldn't have been more wrong about him. Through my flawed and immature way of thinking I assumed those things about him. I found out that I have never met someone looking for more truth in their life than him. He showed up late but he brought us some chocolate's and some gifts from cheju-do which is a famous vacation spot in Korea. He really opened up a lot last night about why he believed in God and why he was searching so hard. He told us that he knows it can be hard to be around him sometimes and a lot of people have given him a hard time in his life. He had such a great testimony of forgiveness because he has seen how it has affected his life. He told us that he's just trying to find something that feels right to him. He also told us that he was building a website so that he could establish a better future and that he wanted to have stability for a family. Our discussion with him couldn't have gone any better than it did. We taught him most of the first lesson and when I was speaking he was very encouraging for my Korean. It was a side that we had never seen of him but it's honestly because we never really tried to get there. I taught him how to pray in Korean and than in english. He offered the closing prayer and he did nothing but bless other people in this world. It was probably one of the most humbling experiences in my life when it comes to thinking and assuming about people.

 

I sat in my chair after planning last night and I have never felt so stupid. I thought about the second talk Elder Holland gave to us at the MTC. Elder Holland has a way to cut through all of the nice talk and go straight to the problem. He's very straight forward and like I said he's an intimidating Apostle sometimes. But he told us how some missionaries will complain and always think about how much they are going to miss in life when they go on a mission. He promised us one thing that we will never get as close to real life as we will while on a mission. That is so true. I'm not going to lie I miss all of you at home and it seems like there is so much going on. But at the end of the day I wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now. Every morning when I roll out of bed (straight to the ground because my bed is an inch thick) I am so happy to think that I don't have to wonder about what I'm going to do that day. I know what I'm going to every day and every night I'm so grateful that I get the oppurtunity to do it.

 

Well there's my deep thinking on the week and I hope I didn't put any of you asleep. I love all of you so much and the things I have learned in the past 4 months I would have never learned in my rut back at home. I hope all of you have a great week and I'll talk to you next week.

 

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