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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