Sixty-Ninth Week Email

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   This was another great week in Korea. I need to find another way to start my e-mails off but I guess that isn't a bad way to start it off. Anyways we had a pretty great week in Jeonju as always. I just love this city so much and it's just been so great to be here. I realized I came here the beginning of December last year and the time has just flown by now. But don't worry I still tell President Furniss in my weekly e-mails that I'm so happy that I can finish my mission in Jungang ward. I'm really hoping the subtle hints work like they did when we wanted to turn into a four man house.

   Anyways I had a really neat experience last night with one of our friends Brother Shin. We hadn't been able to meet with Brother Shin since the first time we met him the downtown shopping area and he met every missionary in our district, our other investigator, and two of our members all at one time haha. I was hoping that wasn't super overwhelming for him but it turned out pretty fun. Well we met Brother Shin last night and he's just so much fun. He's in highschool but he's been training to become a professional Thaikwaendo (I have no idea how to spell that in english) fighter. He trains six days a week and it's been hard to find a time to meet with him but we were able to somehow find a time to meet between both of our schedules last night. And the lesson was just amazing. I have done that same lesson so many times  but it always seems to be so different. Just seeing how one person can so easily accept the message of the restoration and others it does take time. But I think the most amazing thing was to see Brother Shin come in and tell us about what he's been reading in the Book of Mormon and how he takes it to practice with him and tells his friends. We watched the restoration movie last night and he said that he had read about all of that at the front of the Book of Mormon already and we just talked about it. It was so great and when we went to give him his commitment he seemed just ready. It just makes me want to go back in time when I was in high school and hit myself on the side of my head haha. Brother Shin just seems a million times more mature than me when I was his age and it's been really nice just being able to meet with him. And for everybody who has ever been on a mission some of the sweetest moments are when your investigator prays for the first time. Brother Shin had only prayed once before in his life and by the time he finished it seemed like he had been praying for years. I'm excited to see the relationship I can build with Brother Shin and to see how much he can grow from everything he's doing right now.

Well sorry this letter is short this week but I have to get going. I love all of you so much and I hope all of you have an amazing week. I know that I will! Love you!

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Sixty-Eigth Week Email

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   Well this has just been such an interesting week haha. I had two splits, a korean traditional wedding, and I just love the people that I'm meeting with these days so much.

   So I guess I'll just start off with the beginning of my week. So I started off the week having an interview with the Sister's investigator who is being baptized this Saturday. Her name is Sister Lee and she is just so amazing. She actually married an american who is a member of our church and she has been meeting with the missionaries for a few months now. But the thing that surprised me was that after we got the interview done we all met together and that's when they invited us to the wedding. And it wasn't just an invitation but we were all asked if we could be a part of the Korean Traditional wedding. And Korean traditional weddings are very different from american weddings. I hope all of you can see the pictures but they have a ceremony with the groom for about 10 minutes where he is given a wooden duck and eats all of these korean traditional tea's and side dishes. And once that is all done the Bride gets carried in inside a wooden box by 4 men. And those 4 men were me, Elder Hughes, Elder Lyons, and Elder Zaleski. And by this time we had gathered a very big crowd because we were all foreigners and it was so interesting to see haha. We had a bunch of people after the wedding wanting to take pictures of us with all of the Korean traditional clothing on and it was just such a great time.

   Another really fun thing that happened this week was we were able to meet with Sister Go and her son Geehyun. They are just so amazing and we did have a really fun time trying to find a member to go meet with them. We had everything planned a week in advance but whoever is familiar with missionary work knows that all of that can fall about 2 hours before the appointment haha. So I get on the phone and called every single Brother in my ward and of course it was the day for the ward picnic in another city. But luckily my Ward Mission Leader is amazing and dropped everything he was doing to come meet with us. The funny part was that he lives really far out in the countryside and he was with his family. So instead of one member I showed up with a family of members haha. But Sister Go has a great relationship with half the ward already so it was such a great lesson. We had given her the commitment to read the gospel of Jesus Christ and the first thing she said when we started to follow up was just baptism. That is all she said when I asked her what she thought about the entire chapter and that's how she responded haha. But we had a really great lesson and we were able to explain everything really well and it felt just like we were talking. And after we finished we were talking and Sister Go was talking about some other members and talking a lot about our ward and my Ward missionary leader's wife just laughed and said that Sister Go sounds like a member. But we have a lot of plans this week and I'm just so excited to see how it turns out.

   Other than all of those amazing things it was just a week of work. I was able to get splits going and splits are always amazing. I have never had just an average split. Something just amazing always happens like we take a wrong bus and we end up in the middle of nowhere where we found the most amazing person ever. We introduced ourselves to him clear out in the middle of nowhere, where they have probably not seen a foreigner in a long time, and he responded by asking if we were going to tell him to believe in Jesus Chirst. But about 30 minutes later he gave us his phone number and he has driven into town to meet the missionaries twice and came out to church. And apparently he had an amazing experience at church because he actually knew one of the member's who had never really talked to him about religion because he knew how Brother Kim felt about religion. So that was such a miracle and I'm so excited to see what's going to happen in the future.

   Well I have to get going but I love all of you and I hope you have an amazing week. I know that I will have one^^ (Korean smiley face)

Elder Jensen

Sixty-Sixth Week Email

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    Well this was another great week in Korea as always. But I think the interesting part is that we received our transfer calls this morning. This has probably been the most shocking transfer plans ever. But don't worry Elder Hughes and I will be staying another transfer in the Joongang ward. But there are two wards in my district and the other ward is the stake center. What is happening is Elder Crowther my zone leader is coming to live in our house and replace Elder Brown. The other ward will lose two elders and be a two elder ward. And the two sisters we have right now will split the wards and both train. And the rest of our zone has some pretty crazy transfer plans as well so this transfer is going to be great.

   Well last week we had some really interesting appointments. First was Sister Go and her son Geehyun. They are just so much fun and it was Geehyun's birthday the day before so we took him some banana bread and he ate it so fast. But we were able to have such a great time with them and Sister Go is already a part of the relief society haha. We sat down together in church yesterday and she was just friends with the relief society sisters and we have a dinner planned at our member's house this week. Food and eating together is such a big part of Korean culture and it's going to be such an amazing time. And we did make our way back to primary this week and Geehyun had such a fun time. It was a little less intense this week but don't worry my ward missionary leader's wife still picked on me a lot, and all of the primary kids are so hilarious. But I am still amazed with how the primary program has changed because all I remember from primary was popcorn songs and throwing my scriptures in the air while singing scripture power haha. These little children are standing up and saying what kind of blessings we have received from the priesthood. And don't worry Geehyun and I worked as a team again to answer some questions and I got yelled at again.

   We were also able to meet a really cool new friend. His name is Jayhoon and he is really really good at english. It was really interesting because we walked out of a restaurant in the downtown part of our city and here is the entire district doing a street boarding activity and Jayhoon met our entire district. And because it was a Saturday night here comes one of my best friends Jeansol who we have been meeting for about a month now, and right after that here comes Sister Jang and her husband from our ward who always helps us out all of the time and give us food. And they take all of us over and buy us a quick waffle from a street vendor and we just all had a quick conversation. So here's a strange group of foreigners and Koreans standing in the middle of the street just eating waffles and having a great time. Jayhoon actually might come out to our zone activity today because he had such a great time with our district last week.

   So it was a really great week and we have some bigger plans for this week. I hope all of you have an amazing week and I love all of you so much.

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