Monday, November 25, 2013

Ninety-Third Week Email

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   Well we had another fun filled week here in Korea. We saw a lot of great things this week and met a lot of great people. We had a Stake Activity and a few missionary meetings so we were pretty much busy all week. The winter is definetely here in Korea. Last monday when we went hiking we did it in the snow and it was such an amazing day. And we also got hit by the Christmas fever here in Korea. Sorry we don't have to wait until Thanksgiving to start the Christmas Season.
 
   One of the great parts of this week was meeting Brother Lee and his daughter. Working in the Sunhwa Ward has just been so great. Between the Sisters and Elder Gibbons and I we have 3 families we are teaching. It's pretty funny because when ever Elder Gibbons and I put up flyers for english we have women call us and whenever the Sisters put up flyers they have men call them. And whenever we aren't able to get a priesthood holder for lessons the sisters just can pick it up. And to add to the teamwork our ward mission leader is just amazing. He works at the church so he has met all of our investigators multiple times. Our Bishop makes sure to stop by our english classes and he gets to know everybody well. And like I have said the theme of the past month has been the work of salvation so we have been working really well with the members and church has been the highlight of our weeks here in Daejeon.
 
   Well back to Brother Lee and his daughter. The office Elder's found him while talking to people on the street and He really needs help. He has gone to every church here in Korea and has a pretty strong opinion about all of them so he was very honest when he said that this was his last stop for churches and he would be really honest with us about everything. Well we went over to find his house and Korea is in the middle of switching address systems because it is impossible to find addresses here. So we didn't have his phone number and we ran around his neighborhood for 40 minutes and finally found his house. We got there and taught his daughter english and had a great lesson. His wife was from Russia and right now she can't live in Korea so that has seperated their family and with everything in life right now Brother Lee doesn't have a lot of options. And through all of this he's still trying to come closer to god.
 
   We also had to pass off the twins this week to the Sister's because we couldn't find a Priesthood Holder to meet with us but the Sisters did a really good job. It really makes a big difference when everybody works together. And right now Sunhwa Ward seems like a completely different ward. We're still trying to make the big push that President Shin wants us too but I'm just so happy to see the progress.
 
   Sorry this is a short one but I have to get going. I love all of you so much. Have a great week.
 
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Sunday, November 17, 2013

Ninety-Second Week Email

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   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.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Ninety-One Week Email

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   Well another week flew by and I really don't know what to tell you about. It was just all around a normal week. I guess i can be grateful for that. We had a lot of appointments cancel but we also met a lot of new people. We have been meeting our little family with the twin boys who are just hilarious. We designed our dream houses in english class and they made it pretty clear that they wanted slaves and not maids or butlers.... kids are too fun. Our little family is coming along pretty great. We meet them tonight and the two little boys love the Book of Mormon stories book. It's been really fun teaching kids about the gospel because you are a teacher to them. Everything you say is correct because they trust you. So we're trying to be very simple and clear and their mother has really appreciated it. I guess in their religious school they have been a little forced to learn a few things that their mom hasn't fully agreed with so it has been a little interesting teaching them. But Sister Kim loves the way we teach them and the boys absolutely love coming to the church to be with all of the foreigners.

   We also spent a lot of time this week with Brother Kim who has been doing so great. We went with him to the hospital to visit Brother Nam who will live in the hospital for the rest of his life. We got there and Brother Nam has been really sick this week and he couldn't have been more happy to see us. He was so happy to have a new visitor as well and him and Brother Kim could actually carry on a pretty great conversation. Brother Kim really enjoyed visiting him that he will be going back this week by himself. And Brother Kim was really able to open up more about his family. Right now Brother Kim is the only one who was baptized and he has felt a little opposition in going out to church but this time since he has been coming out he has been praying more and reading the Book of Mormon a lot more, and now it seems like his family is completely fine with it. He has had a lot of opportunities to actually talk about the gospel with his family now and He has loved coming out to all of the classes lately.

   We're still at the point of change in Korea these days. Every single talk we had at church yesterday was about doing missionary work. If you haven't read the power of everyday missionaries I strongly encourage you to do it. A Sister talked about when her husband brought it home and she thought it would be boring so she never started reading it. But last week she had some spare time and for some reason she just focused on the book and picked it up. She shared a really funny story about how her sons friends wouldn't come over often because they sometimes acted like brats and destroyed things. But as she changed her mind to now looking at them as people who aren't blessed with the gospel she has been having their families over for dinner and what not and they brought a family out to english class. All in one week She said that everything in the gospel just meant more to her this past week. Even waking up early for church to start the wrestle of getting her children ready was easier. She said now that there is a special spirit in their house they are dedicating themselves to living the gospel a little more and she is excited for the blessings in store for her family.

   It seemed like all we need here in Korea was just one week to experience this giant change. We are sitting here thinking about how close it is and all of us missionaries keep on hoping it will happen this week. And maybe the entire world feels like that right now with all of the talk about missionary work. But we all took a step back this last week and Korea has come a long way since I came to the mission. The change is happening and I'm so happy that I could be here for it. There's still so much room to grow but we're making progress over here with missionary work. And if it has to be one family a week that just means we'll be there in a couple months in this ward haha. The wards are a little smaller. I really hope I'm not recognizing this just because I'm a missionary but I really hope every member can feel that spirit when we go to church. When I came here I felt like we did have the missionary church and the member church but these days I actually feel like I'm attending church. They include us in everything and they work with our investigators. We had 4 people volunteer yesterday in priest quorum to come teach our little family.

   Well I love it here. We have a lot of work to do this week and I'm excited. I hope all of you have a great week and I know that we will. Love you.

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Monday, November 4, 2013

Ninetieth Week Email

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   We had a pretty fun week here in Daejeon. I have no idea what's going on but it feels like every week that passes by the focus on missionary work is just growing. Our ward is a little small and on occasion there has been some of those awkward times during fast and testimony meetings so Bishop told us to be ready to talk if one of those silences came up but that time never came. Every member who stood up talked about how they shared the gospel this past month. We had a few investigators out to church as well and you could just feel the energy in the ward. Sorry I know I'm a missionary but there's a big change happening over here right now and we love it. One Sister in the ward even told a story of how she wouldn't buy her sons smart phones because they would turn into phone zombies, but after all of the training we have been receiving from the church, stake presidency, and ward she thought of drawing up a contract for her sons to have a monthly family missionary coordination meeting and discuss how they are using their new smart phones to help share the gospel. I was completely blown away the entire meeting. Another Brother got up and talked about President Uchtdorf's talk at general conference and how he had the same desire to actually be doing the work. So as he was working this past week in his family owned restaurant he got the opportunity with a long time friend and they are meeting twice a week and he's teaching him about the church. He told everybody how he has already planned the dates to meet with the missionaries and his baptismal date haha. Another Sister talked about bringing scripture study back into her family when they haven't been out to church for years. She made the decision to come back after she got home from New York and she was talking with her father and suggested reading the Book of Mormon together and they started to do that. She talked about how her family still isn't at church but that they all made one step together and it was an answer to her prayers.

   I was just blown away. We just watched each member get up over and over again and talk about these experiences and I couldn't have been more happy. A missionary goes to an area for 6-18 weeks on average and they are just being told over and over again to help the members with their missionary work. Missionary houses are a little creepy because we have a giant map with all the members houses labeled on it. We have a giant record book full of member records that have notes about the members from missionarys for years. Next to our Investigators we are thinking about members all the time. For missionaries they are just crushed when they have to leave an area but for members it's just another set of missionaries coming in haha. So as we make efforts to visit with members and try to help them as much as we can, we are so happy when members are doing missionary work and telling everybody in the entire ward about how happy they are.

   It was just an amazing week. And after all of those amazing experiences our phone was just going off from other missionaries giving us referrals for people who wanted to meet in our area. We also get to meet Tim and Kevin tonight (the two twin boys who have been coming out to english class). Sister Kim their mother has just loved bringing her three boys out every week. She told us on Saturday that all the boys ever talk about is Jensen teacher and Gibbons teacher (Teacher in Korean is a title that they have to stick with a name for respect on older men or just teachers) They even tell their friends at school she said. And I could not have been more blessed to get a couple packages this week for halloween. Elder Gibbons can be a little soft and got cornered by the twin boys and another younger girl from english class and they made him do a special pinky promise to exchange candy this week. But we HAD to bring american candy haha. So thank you so much Dannielle and Tawns because I can't imagine what would have happened to Elder Gibbons if we didn't bring american candy. because that Korean pinky promise means a lot. But Sister Kim told us how she has been just enjoying so much coming out to english class and she sees the other young men from our ward and how respectful they are. And she told us that she has been thinking about her sons having a religion and how it would be a great thing. So we scheduled to meet the boys twice a week and the whole family on the weekends. The father has had a lot of bad experiences with religion in the past so Sister Kim is really worried about that but he seemed like a really nice man.

   Well I'm excited for this week and we will be really busy. There's a lot of change happening over here and it's a great time to be in Daejeon. I love all of you and I hope you have an amazing week.

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Eighty-Ninth Week Email

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   What a wonderful week. Transfer weeks are always fun and this transfer brought a lot of great changes so we're all happy. And I don't know what happened but it seems like everything fell into place for every companionship this last week and there's just so much excitement going on in the Daejeon Stake for missionary work.

   Well we started off the week in a trio with Elder Peterson so it was basically a small version of the MTC. But between the Sunhwa schedule and the Doonsan schedule we were all over Daejeon for three days. Last week we ended up going to every area in the Daejeon zone except for one. We were just all over the place and had no time to do anything it felt like but it ended up to be a good time. Right off the bat on Monday night our schedules clashed and we decided to go with the Doonsan missionary's schedule. So we went to go visit a member and her husband who was in the hospital. They told us that they would be moving back to the area where she was baptized in a couple weeks but that her husband wanted to start taking the lessons and to be baptized. He told us how religion has been important to him his entire life and he wants to be with his wife in everything so he'll get baptized. It was so great to see them make that decision and we promised him how happy he will be with all of it. And this entire time their young little boy was just running around jumping on us and trying to beat us up. If you weren't looking he would kiss you on the cheek and just be a crazy little kid. So we just talked with them for a little while and headed out for the night with a great feeling knowing that an entire family will be living in the gospel together.

   After that we just had appointment after appointment. We went from last week with only one to this week with having our days planned about 90% of the time. We met with Brother Shin who is our older Jehovahs Witness. We have been having some great lessons with him and he's so excited to hear our messages. He does reassure us every time that he has been in his religion for 40 years and knows the bible forwards and backwards but he has really enjoyed the Book of Mormon lately. We had given him some of our family english pamphlets and when we met with him last week he introduced us to a family that he knows and we are planning on meeting with them this week.

   We also had english village out in one of our countryside branches last saturday. We had rooms set up like post offices, clothing stores, restaurants, and movie theaters. People would come in and we would only speak english and they would pretend to be in america for 3 hours. It was a ton of fun and Elder Gibbons and I were in charge of going out on the street and wrangling people in haha. And there we met Karen who lived in Texas for a year and was basically from america. She has studied about so many religions and she had some LDS friends back in Texas but she knew very little. She had actually started looking at the church websites a little over a month ago and reading a little bit about our church but she was surprised when we stopped her on the street. She stayed for all 3 hours and was happy to get a Book of Mormon and set up some times to meet with the Sister Missionary's down there. 

   That night we had to hurry back in time to make it to Joon's baptism. The Elder's in the office have been teaching Joon for a month now and I have met with Joon on splits about 3 times. I was also able to do his interview and saw him come out to all of the events we had this past month. But I couldn't believe how fast he progressed in the Gospel and was so prepared by the time he was baptized. I was sharing an experience of how I felt the spirit that week one time and it made everything completely worth it. And he stopped me and asked if the Elders had told me about his prayer experience and I said no. So he told me how he was praying 3 weeks ago and he just got the weirdest most comforting feeling and ever since then he decided to read, pray, and come out to church and he said that he's still getting used to that strange comforting feeling but he's going to do everything he's been taught to do so he can continue to feel that way. He also bore an amazing testimony at his baptismal service and now he's just part of the ward. Already has relationships and friends in the ward. He's been marking his scriptures and I'm not going to lie when I looked around the room at all the investigators there I saw young kids with piercings, old men who said their hobby was drinking, and others who have more than once told the missionary's that they are only there to learn english. I thought of how different they are in every way and Joon was the exact same with his beard and lifestyle. And all I could do is just remember what President Uchtdorf said during genreal conference. The church is designed to nurture the imperfect. These people don't have the dockers and button up shirts that most people assume we wear haha but these people are making the biggest changes in their lives to live according to the gospel and they slip up sometimes. But we can still see what direction they are heading in and I couldn't be more excited to see a room filled with all of those different people. And then I thought about how I slip up most of the time but I'm happy I am now in a place I need to be to learn the absolute most that I could from those experiences and have so much help from everybody around me. And now I'm happy for Joon and he seems so happy and is about to face some of the challenges that come with change. But he's in the perfect place to make all of the changes that he wants to make.

   Sorry i'm getting into the mood again where I'm just typing everything that comes to mind. There's so much that happened this past week that I want to tell you but times up. I have to get going but I hope all of you have a great week and I love all of you.

Elder Jensen