Seventieth Week Email

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   Well what another fun filled week in Korea. Life is good and it's warming up really fast. It finally made it up into the 90's with a fair amount of humidity so now it feels like summer again. But the nice thing about summer is it just seems like everybody's moods are so happy. Elder Hughes was talking to me when he came here and everything was dead outside and it was gray for the first week and he was really surprised, but now it's bright and Korea is just amazing with all types of flowers and vegetation.

 

   Well now that you have the weather report it was a great week. We spent the last week as a district with a very big focus on finding new people to meet with. And one of the best things about being a district leader s hearing about everybody's day at night. And this week was just full of amazing stories. it has been nice because we have this Present for President Furniss before he goes home and that's to write all of our miracles and make a little paper crane and send them all to him before he finishes his mission. So for the past week in our districts we have been using the word crane instead of miracles and this past week has just been filled with cranes. Our mission was hit with a pretty bad cold that has put a few people in bed in our district, including Elder Hughes so those are always interesting days. I opened up one of our 4 inch ring binders full of records and spent the entire day on the phone and it was really interesting to be able to contact all of these people who have meet with missionaries before. I'm always happy because most of these people even though they stopped meeting the missionaries just love us. So I always find myself in some interesting conversations with the people that I call and sometimes I hang up and Elder Hughes ask me if I was talking about North Korea or water purification haha. So I always enjoy making phone calls.

 

   Other than a few sick days all of us missionaries were able to meet with the Bishop in our ward and he is just amazing. We were able to make some really amazing plans for the ward and it was probably one of the greatest meetings I have ever been in as a missionary. And Bishop Kim was all over the place teaching us Korean to giving us a lot of direction for the ward so it was a great time. We are also in the process of working with the ward to plan a fireside and everything is turning out great. The ward pretty much makes it all possible and I cannot stop continually thinking about how amazing this ward is. I would be more than happy to spend some more time here and don't worry President Furniss is very aware of it haha. Well I have to get going but I love all of you and I hope you have an amazing week.

 

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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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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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