Sixty-Fifth Week Email

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   Well it's raining really really hard outside right now and guess which companionship left their umbrella's at a store last Saturday? haha anyways what a wonderful week to be in Korea. Not a whole lot happened this last week but we were still able to see so many miracles.

   My week started off with a split with my zone leader. I always love splits because they are never just a normal day. Something always happens while you're on a split and these days I'm doing splits once a week. Anyways every single one of our plans fell through for two days straight.... I had no idea what was going on but Elder Crowther and I still managed to get so much done and it was so much fun. Our teaching styles are completely different and it worked out really well.

   After that Elder Hughes and I went all the way up to Daejeon for a meeting with all of the new trainers and new missionaries. It was a pretty interesting meeting... They separated the new missionaries and the trainers and started asking them questions about the training program. But we all learned a lot and it's always such a great time to receive training from President Furniss. Especially because he is leaving very soon and we will get our new mission president who is President Shin from the MTC Korean District Presidency.

   But by far the best part of my week was Sister Go and Geehyun coming out to church yesterday. They showed up and pulled out their Books of Mormon and their little note pads and just waited for anything to come up so they could take a note and show me haha. We also had Sister Jang, who is always trying to help us with anything, sit next to her and they had such a great time. But probably the best part is that I went with Geehyun to primary.... haha that was super interesting. I honestly don't remember anything about Primary other than the song scripture power. But the Primary teacher Sister Hwang is a elementary school teacher and she knows how to handle children haha. I even got yelled at once and called on a lot for answers. I felt just like a child but Geehyun had such a great time. We learned about the Priesthood and the spirit and he was so involved. Sister Hwang would hold up pictures of Joseph Smith receiving the Priesthood and she kept on asking who gave him the priesthood and Geehyun would just ask me who gave it to him, and I would tell him, and he was the only person who would answer haha. It is a pretty hard question for such young kids but that's when Sister Hwang told me there's no cheating haha. We also sang a lot of songs and he really just had a fun time with all of the youth in the ward. And everything I heard was that Sister Go just was so involved in relief society and Sister Jang took really good care of her all day.

   Well that's my week in a nutshell but it was filled with so many more miracles and I just want to tell all of you about them all, but I'm out of time. I love all of you so much and I hope you have a great week.

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Sixty-Fourth Week Email

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   Well as always I had another amazing week in Jeonju this week. And the week ended in a perfect way with Conference. And honestly Conference was just so amazing. Our district was focusing on preparing our investigators for conference and also preparing ourselves for conference and it was just such a great weekend. As always we watched it a week later and we all met in the stake center. All of the missionaries all watched conference in english in a separate room while all of the member's watched it in Korean in the chapel. I think the best thing about this week though was a new Mother and Son that we met.

   About two weeks ago Elder Hughes and I were walking back from church when this women yelled at us from her care and motioned for me to come over. I said hello and she asked if we were LDS missionaries. She used the old Korean name for the church but I still said yes and she said she was very busy and had to get going but she use to go to our church when she was little with her Mother and older sister. But she told us that she wants her son to start going to church and she asked for our pass a long card. So I gave it to her and she had to drive off real fast. Well last monday she gave us a call on our ride home from the P-day activity and wanted to meet. So she asked if we had time that night and just like that we had an appointment in 2 hours, not dressed, and needed one of our Member's to go with us to visit haha. Well luckily every part about this wonderful ward is so strong, including the Priesthood holders. The first Member we called just asked us when and where and he would meet us. After a great time with Sister Go and Geehyun (her son) we set up appointments for the next night and the next week. We found out that she was really young but she remembers the foreign missionaries coming to her house to visit her Mom and older sister and she just remembers how much fun she had back then. She has just been so accepting and was so willing to start reading the Book of Mormon and she really wants to be a good example to her son. She also said that she would come out to General conference so we were very excited for that.

    Then yesterday I realized that the church in Korea is the exact same church as America. Of course the Gospel is the same every where but the first session started at 10 and at 9:58 here comes that caravan of minivans and small suv's full of our member's families all running into the building haha. Anyways that made it a little difficult to get Sister Go and the family that we are going to be working with to sit together but it all turned out great. And this Stake has just grown up together and it's honestly such a great feeling to be sitting with all of them in between sessions and eating. It just feels like we are at a giant family reunion and it was really great for Sister Go to see that.

   Well I have to get going but I can tell all of you that my prayers were answered this weekend as we listened to the Prophet and our other Leaders. I learned so much and I hope I can never forget some of the very important things that I learned. I love all of you and I hope you have a fantastic week. I know that I will.

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Sixty-Third Week Email

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   Well I hope everybody is having an amazing conference weekend. And if everybody is wondering I will be attending conference this next week. Korea has to wait one week for translation but it's amazing how fast it gets done and how fast we can get it. Well in Korea everybody meets at the stake centers to watch all of conference and it's such an amazing weekend. It seems like last week I was up in Suwon with Sister Kim and Junesoo coming out to General Conference but turns out that was 6 months ago. Time needs to go a little slower right now. Just my opinion.

   Anyways this was a very fun week so far. I still feel like I'm terrible to Elder Hughes but he's just doing amazing. We have been out all the time that we could because we had a busy schedule this last week with the new training program, service opportunities, spending time with member's, and helping our little Korean companion Elder Kim get ready to go. That was some sad news is that Elder Kim is probably on a plane right now on it's way to Utah still. Well it's really good news because I'm really excited for him to go to Hawaii but I'll miss our little Korean member of our family here in Jeonju. We also were able to go out and visit a lot of members this week and work with them a lot. Our new Bishop who has come into the ward has just been so amazing with helping the ward's missionary work to get going. We spent some a lot of time inside our member's house this week teaching our lessons to them and they had such a great time it seemed like. We have been building some relationships with our member's and it makes the biggest difference in the world. We spent time moving a couple hundred 80 pound bags of salt for member's this week and some of them told us that if we don't call them to have an investigator over for dinner in the next couple of weeks that they would be sad haha. And I also came to the realization that I have been in Jeonju since early December. And I really want to just stay in Jeonju forever and I hope I can be here longer. Time is flying by right now and it feels like I can be doing so much for everybody in this area and I love everything about it. I feel like I just need more time for everything these days but by the time I hit my bed on Sunday night I'm just gone haha. I love everything about my mission and the people I'm meeting everyday in Korea. I have also just grown to love the gospel and especially relying on it more than I ever have before in my life. Doing weekly trainings these past couple months have just made me focus more on a lot of the things I wasn't focusing on a lot before. It has been such an amazing time to just learn at all times and I'm so grateful for that knowledge that I have always feel like I have lacked.

   And Elder Hughes my new companion has been just amazing. I feel like I'm learning just as much as he is these days and we have just done nothing but work this past week. He had a very busy first week and we're going to try and do even better this week. I also feel like I have just been horrible to him haha. I thought of me standing on a diving board when I was little and my Dad in the pool telling me to jump and that he would catch me.... but he didn't haha. But hey I can swim now. But don't worry Elder Hughes has just been amazing. He was the first group of missionary's to come out of the MTC with only 9 weeks of training compared to the old 12 week program and he has just amazed me. He has such a strong testimony and he came out here to get to work and it has been a great week already.

Well I love all of you and I hope you have an amazing week because I know I will.

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