Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Ninety-Sixth Week Email

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   Well hey there. That week seemed a little too fast. But last week had to have been one of the best so far. We didn't have a second to think and it was just amazing. And it's finally starting to feel like christmas around here.
 
   We have just been out and about meeting everybody we can. It's one of those times on my mission where our main plan takes about 3 minutes to plan everynight. We have just been really blessed lately and we really need to keep it going this week. We have had a really big focus lately on referrals lately and it finally came together this last week. Brother Iem our highschool student brought 4 of his friends to our lesson last week and we have seperate appointments with 3 of them now. And these have to be some of the funniest kids I have ever met. They kind of give me the feel of hipsters in a korean high school. But Brother Iem's parents have always encouraged him to find a religion for himself and everything has just been making sense to him for these past couple of weeks. We're really excited to meet with him this up coming week.
 
   I honestly can't explain really how this week was though. Everybody we have been meeting kept commitments and it feels like the commitment that we gave to each of them fit perfectly for this week. We would even get text from Brother Iem in the middle of the night again having a conversation with himself like he does occasionally. He gets excited and ask us a question about Nephi and then about 30 minutes later he will say nevermind and tell us his answer that he thought of. And for being so funny and non serious all of the time Brother Iem has some amazing questions.
 
   All of us missionaries also recieved phone calls this week from our favorite little 11 year old twins while they were at school and I personally had to talk to 10 elementary school students this week because Tim and Kevin wanted their friends to hear a "foreigner speak korean in a funny way." Still not sure how to take that but we are still meeting with our little family. We are just a little stuck still until we can meet with their Dad one of these days and talk about the boys coming out to church. Sister Kim their mom has to work on Sunday mornings but she still thinks that if her sons had a relgion it wouldn't be a bad thing. She also packs a back pack with a small pharmacy store incase one of us missionaries isn't feeling to well. She would honestly be perfect in the relief society.
 
    Another thing that was going on this week was our 20 minute role play visits with members. We have 5 family "investigators" in that program these days. And members still think it's pretty fun to give us everything they have when we go to meet them but we always leave by warning them that we will be inviting them to baptism next time we come.
 
 
    Well that was basically what is going on right now in Daejeon. We have a couple christmas parties this week and absolutely no time. So I'm really hoping we can just build on what we did last week and keep the momentum going right now. I really do love it here in Daejeon and I hope my family knows that I'm still getting picked on enough. My entire sunday school class thought it would be fun to talk about their last transfers of their missions in english.... just so we understood perfectly I guess. But I guess all that time with the old man and the siblings (I still survived my childhood) prepared me in a good way.
 
   Well I have to get going but I love all of you. Have a great week!
 
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No Ninety-Fifth Week Email

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Ninety-Fourth Week Email

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   Another transfer call day and..... Elder Gibbons and I are staying. That will make 3 transfers with Elder Gibbons.  And I couldn 't be more happy about being here in Daejeon.  It's nice because all of our investigators know us really well so I'm excited for another six weeks.
 
   We did have a pretty interesting week with all of our appointments. We had to go with our back up plans and we were calling some pretty interesting audibles and making some back up back up plans as part of our planning sessions. But for some reason we ended up at home at the end of the night doing things we had absolutely no idea about before the day started.
   But lately we have still just been so happy with the change in everything over here in Korea when it comes to missionary work. Every week I get up in priesthood and talk about our past week, investigators, and our plans for the upcoming week. Well this last week after I talked everybody started to speak up about who they were working on bringing to church, and less active members they were reaching out to. Well we took up 30 minutes of the hour long block with nothing but missionary work and the Priesthood holders making plans together and with us for when we will meet these people. I still remember when I stood up just a couple months with a schedule for visits and it was completely silent haha. We also got completely random phone calls from some members telling us to get to there house becuase it was too cold outside haha. One thing you have to make really clear in Korea is that your meetings do need a missionary purpose or else members will kidnap us sometimes to have fun. President Shin has been trying to put a stop to that since he came but some of these members have too much fun with it. Especially in the smaller country areas like my second one. That branch president had too much fun with missionaries haha. But we as a mission have been keeping track of our gospel teaching time and that's what President Shin has made up a lot of programs for. So we have just been spending a lot of time role playing and then going out to our members houses for member role plays and members love to put us through the ringer. We taught a family where the son was budhist, the mom was catholic, and the father was a member of one of the Korean churches here in Korea that is pretty famous for finding our missionaries and not being so nice haha. So I feel like our members are really finding a lot of fun with all of this missionary work going on lately especially at the expense of the missionaries sanity haha. There's nothing like telling a member that you had plans to go out to the church to make some flyers and go put them up and they just laugh at you while they bring out fruit and hold you against your will. The Korean people have that gift and they really enjoy using it some times on these foriegn missionaries in their wards.
   Other than all of that I went on a split with Elder Barney who is in my district this last week and it was so great. We met a young high schooler name Cheol and this kid is just too much fun. He and his family have to be some of the nicest people I have met in a long time. His parents are very strict budhist but they have strongly encouraged Cheol to find his own way that makes him happy. And after we met him out on a bridge we have just had so much fun with this kid. I wake up to the funniest text in english with some pretty interesting questions like, "why did Nephi and Lehi leave gold and silver behind?" and about 20 minutes later just a text that said, "nevermind! found out why. haha see you tomorrow."
So Elder Gibbons and I just laugh at the text we have been waking up to lately. And we have still been meeting our little families weekly. Pretty funny story there though. Sister Kim (The twins mom) works at a old person hospital as a nurse. Well just like you are never suppose to tell a relief society member that you are feeling sick, you should never tell a Korean nurse that you're not feeling well haha. She brought a back pack that we called a pharmacy and right there in the church she pulled out a needle with, "pain reliever." in very broken english. So after not being able to refuse this unlabeled syringe from this woman I met a little over a month ago the Sister missionaries thought it would be funny to call President and have him to talk to Sister Kim about it and they did that strange Korean thing where they speak really fast and the next thing I know I'm getting a really big shot.... not in the arm. Anyway that was my living in a foriegn land moment for the week. But Tim and Kevin our little twins are just hilarious. They fight over who gets to say the closing prayers during english class and they pray for the strangest things sometimes like the sandwich that they ate at school earlier that day haha. It's great and they actually asked their Dad if they could come out to church but we're still working on that entire thing these days.
   Well it was a little scattered but we had a great week. Never really have a clue with what's going to happen. For example I just got called by my zone leader saying that we are changing our zone meeting tomorrow into two meetings and he is going to the other one out in the country side and I have responsibility over this one tomorrow..... fun. Well I have to get going so I love all of you. I pray for all of you all of the time and I hope you are all happy.
Elder Jensen