Well another week has flown by here. It was a pretty good week though. We spent the weekend at the church for stake conference and the rest of the week was filled with meeting new people and all of the people we are already meeting. It is always nice to have the entire stake together because you can always see the strong relationships that the Korean Saints make here. Most of them have lived in a couple different wards here in Daejeon so everybody knows everybody.
We did find some pretty sad news out this week. We went over to visit our Investigator Brother Shin on Tuesday but he was running late coming back from the Doctor. So we were walking around putting up fliers for english class when Brother Shin walked up and he just looked sad. He talked to us a little bit and told us to come to his house after we were finished. So we finished up and headed over and usually Brother Shin opens up his door with a big smile on his face and yells hows it going but he was silent. We sat down and since we are his foreign missionaries who know nobody in his life he just told us that he got back from the hospital and he was double diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and a special lung cancer. But he kind of cracked a small smile and told us that if he studies hard that he can fight the Alzheimer's and the doctor said that the lung cancer was early enough they could work with it for a while. He said the doctor gave him about 10-15 years if he did everything right but he just looked at us and said that he was already 80. His sons and daughters were all grown up and had families of their own, and his wife passed away 8 years ago. He told us that he was planning on passing away sometime during those years anyways so he had to realize that everything was fine and he was just shocked that he could find out such news. And Brother Shin has such strong faith in God. He has now been a Jehovah's Witness for 40 years now and still takes his small bag out full of magazines a couple times and week and talks to people on the street. He also has to be on of the most patient people I have ever met. It has been pretty interesting to meet him because he gives us our time to talk and he listens and reads everything that we ask him to but once we pass a part in the lesson where we bring up other church's, such as talking about the Great Apostasy, it just sets him off haha. He will go off for 20 minutes straight about every church and everything he feels like they do wrong. Elder Gibbons and I just sit and patiently listen because of the culture and He is a Grandpa (that is his title that people will call him in Korean if they don't know his name) and we are so young. So not that we ever focus on "how every other church is wrong" (because we don't and there's enough people in the world to do that) we have just been focusing more then ever on receiving our own answers from Heavenly Father. And it has been nice because we have had some great discussions with Brother Shin and he is one of the happiest old men that I have ever met. He told us the other day that believing in God is saying this church or this church is the best but he believes that outside of his own religion that Mormons are the best haha. And then he said, "Number 1" (for some reason Koreans love to say that) and it made all of us chuckle a bit.
It has been really nice to spend time with Brother Shin though because he has seen so much. He speaks four languages right now and is working on English. He remembers very well when the Japanese were here and what life was like under the military government. He's full of the strangest knowledge about a lot of subjects that you would never think about. He taught us about Ginseng the other day and how there are two places in the world that are the best place for growing Ginseng haha. He has his little Desk in the corner of his room where he loves to study all day these days. He is also very determined to fight the Alzheimer's off by doing something he has always loved.
I have just met some amazing people on my mission like Brother Shin.
Well our little family is doing great and we are meeting with them tonight. We are also going hiking today on the coldest day of the year so far... it doesn't make sense to me. But I hope all of you have a great week and I love all of you.
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