Eighty-Fourth Week Email

Well that was a full week. It was the thanksgiving week here in Korea. It's called Choosuk 추석 and we spent all week with other missionaries and members. I didn't meet one of our investigators last week haha but that's what it was like last year at this time. But we were able to meet a new family this week and I already love them. It's a father, mother, two twin boys, and a baby boy. And the twin boys are 11 (9 in real age) and are so great at english haha. They have english names of tim and kevin and it's just absolutely crazy/perfect when we teach them english haha. They are so funny and they were begging their parents to not send us away when we left. The Father isn't the biggest fan of religion but we are just planning on taking it really slowly. And the mother just seems like a member already. She's so nice and they showed up for a meeting at the church and she was just out in the parking lot talking to a member like they were friends. We're really excited to meet with them this upcoming week.

   We also spent some time with Brother Kim who we have been working with a lot for the past couple of weeks. He took us up hiking last p-day and it was pretty fun. It was never ending stairs but once we got to the top we could see all of Daejeon. We're actually planning on going up there today with the District for an activity. But it was a great time to talk about Brother Kim's conversion story and what has been going on in his life. It turned out to be just really good time to get to know eachother and he told us when ever we want to go on mondays we could go hiking with him.

   We also had just meeting after meeting this last week but now we can get out and just work. We spent our time inside all day last wednesday, thursday, and friday. At first I thought it would be a nice time to rest up but being inside as a missionary is probably the worst thing haha. Well sorry not a whole lot happened this week but I'm excited to see what's going to happen this week. I love all of you and I hope you have a great week.

Elder Jensen

So the first picture is of us going up the "never ending staircase". The second was a food called Kimbap. I couldn't even finish my first one on the bus ride from the airport to Daejeon when I came to Korea. Now I love them. And the last picture is of us going down the "never ending stairs". (much easier)

Eighty-Third Week Email

안녕하세요?

   Hey everybody! There goes that week super fast and I'm back here e-mailing you. It was another great week here in Korea. I'm with my new companion Elder Gibbons and it's pretty nice already knowing my companion so we don't have that awkward getting to know each other time period.

   It was pretty nice this week though. This is probably my first area that it has been really easy to find in. We hang up flyers around the city for our english program and our phone just goes off for the next couple of days. The problem we've had with that is pure english interest these days haha. We have been reminded that we aren't english teachers quite a lot lately from our mission president so it's been a fun time here in Daejeon. Daejeon really is an interesting city though. My area is absolutely huge. It's all city as well and there's just so many people. It's the older part of the city so there's a lot of apartments and we have the really nice downtown area where we have done a lot of street contacting activities. It's just a really nice combination and there's so much potential in this city. We have just been focusing on the ward while we have been here though and it's starting to show with the missionaries working a lot closer with the members. And if you think you're hearing a lot about member missionary work (you might not be) well it's being pounded into our heads over here haha. And I mean if you look at all of the people who have joined the church in our mission and stayed around about 90% is through the members. So we are told all this information and so are the member's here and then they tell us to do the work. It sounds pretty straight forward to me but there's just a small obstacle still in the way and what that is I have no idea. I have heard a million different thoughts and maybe they are all right but maybe they are all wrong so I guess all we can do as missionaries is keep on trying. It would be nice to have all the answers layed out in front of me but where's the fun in that.

    Well sorry I got off on one of those "deep thoughts" that I have been having lately. My favorite thing lately has just been to work though. I'm sure that surprises my family. That and I'm a cleaner in my house. But my last companion and I just did the things missionaries do such as street contacting and knocking doors and we have seen so many miracles come through it. We definitely  involved a lot more member work and that's the best thing we could have been doing but I realized how much I need a young missionary these days haha. They just have energy and want to go talk to people on the streets all day long. It can be a pretty good time. Don't worry though we actually plan a little better than that but with all of these meetings we have been having lately and all the talk that is going around it's nice to get out and go to work. I think that world wide broadcast talked about how the real work happens when we leave our meetings and go out and work. Sorry I can't remember it really well but we have a week full of meetings ahead of us. We have combined district meeting tomorrow, zone meetings all day wednesday and friday, Our p-day on Thursday because this week is the Korean Thanksgiving. I don't understand where everybody goes but the giant cities turn into ghost towns in Korea and everybody goes back the the country side to spend time with their family. So our entire mission to spend that time more effectively will be having meetings all day…. So I'll enjoy my free time today to work. 

   I do have a few stories I want to tell all of you about though. So with Elder Allan leaving we were able to meet pretty much everybody in about 3 days. We just had appointments after appointments this last week. I think what I have really loved here is working with all of the members who haven't been coming out to church for a while. We had an appointment with Sister Go this last week and we have just started working with her to help her. She really enjoys the church and knows that it's great for her to be going out but she just felt like something was missing. Well we were on our way home trying to go fast so we just met her with our recent convert out on the street and we just talked for a little bit. Elder Allan wanted to say goodbye but we were just talking. Elder Allan just asked about her faith after she said the Book of Mormon was no fun. It didn't even seem like that big of a question because they were joking a little bit but she wanted to start with baby steps to come back out to church. So the really interesting part was that when she came out to english class for the first time in months and months she asked me about Ether 12:12. I was just completely blown away that she picked up the Book of Mormon when she didn't even have one in her house for years. I asked why she started studying again and she said that the question Elder Allan asked in passing kind of stuck in her head until the next morning so she decided to "try". That's the only word she would use. It was just such a great thing to see because she was completely surprised by the fact that she picked up the Book of Mormon as well but we just talked about faith and she has been studying daily ever since that day.

   Well I'm blessed here in Korea. I'm not exactly sure why I can meet some of these people that are just so amazing but I guess I'm not really going to complain about it and just keep trying to meet them.

   I love all of you so much and I hope you have a great week!

Elder Jensen

Eighty-Second Week Email

안녕하세요?

   Well another transfer call pday and I am actually staying here in Daejeon in the Sunhwa ward. I do have a pretty interesting companion though. So I don't know if you can remember or not but when I was in the MTC we had a friend Elder Gibbons who went home. Well he came back to the mission a few transfers ago and now he's going to be my companion.

   Other than the transfer news we had a really great week last week. We also saw some pretty great miracles. We pretty much knew Elder Allan was going to leave so we used that to our advantage to visit a lot of people and talk to a lot of the people we were working with. One of my best friends here who's name is Minnie has been working with missionaries for a very long time. Well we talked to her the other day after english class and Elder Allan is just amazing with people. But we just listened to her. We listened to her and I think that has made a giant difference with everybody we have been working with. Elder Allan and I have been doing training lately these days and it's not because I'm an "old experienced wise missionary" (trust me I'm not) but I tell him the common mistakes I have seen as a missionary. Missionaries who sit down and use a form as a check list to see what they have to teach people. If you're familiar with missionary work you have seen those forms before. We also focused a lot these week on asking questions and listening. It was completely different. Elder Allan did such an amazing job with it that we just saw some amazing things. But I also had to give a talk yesterday in sacrament so a few of our members who haven't been coming out to church helped me with my talk and came out to see me stumble my way through the Korean to give the talk. And our member's absolutely loved these people. Minnie has to be the most popular person in the ward and she has so many friends. I was completely blown away. There are so many amazing people that we have been working with who have some of the best relationships with the other member's but for some reason or another they haven't been coming out to church. We also had brother Kim come out the last 3 weeks and he's planning on introducing us to his family sometime. And the exact same thing happened with Brother Kim and the members. They absolutely loved having him there and it was such a welcoming for him to come out.

   Without even noticing it these two amazing people had such a great time at church and I'm just praying they will keep on coming out and having a great time. Minnie even blew our bishop a kiss as we were leaving and he has to be one of the best people I know because he just caught it and blew one back and made Minnie just lose it. It was such a great day at church yesterday.

   We also had a great time with our Bishop this last week. He took us out the other night for some dog soup and we had the best talk about the ward. Our Ward hasn't been exactly known for missionary work ever but Bishop Lee is just the best. I've never had this kind of relationship with my Bishop and Ward Mission Leader before and it makes such a difference for working. They are really active with contacting some of the members who haven't been out to church for a long time. Especially with some of the new rules for visiting less actives where we can only go with members unless we already have a good relationship with them, makes visiting a little difficult. But they are very active and we are seeing a difference.

   Life is great and I hope everything is going great for all of you. I love you and I love being here in Korea.

Elder Jensen

Eighty-First Week Email

안녕하세요?

   Here I am again haha. Another fast week and a lot happened but I'm not exactly sure what to tell you about. We did have a few interesting meetings this week. So as a district we all head over to a very busy place and we do surveys on religion and english, or we just go out and set up a table and street boards and talk to people once a week. It's really fun and I'm sure a lot of missionary's probably didn't have these kinds of activities but Korea is a pretty great place. Well we went down to the busy part of my area last week and set up pretty much all of the activities. We do have a 16 missionary district so we set up a few stations and it turned out really nice. It was a vacation day because it was Korea's independence day so there was a flash mob of kids from a arts high school and they played one of the most amazing songs I have seen. But as they were packing up to leave I was asking people to fill out some surveys and I just hear "hello Elder are you from Utah?" This little high school kid who is really good at English was standing there with his friends. I was just blown away and we just talked for a little bit. Well turns out that he did a home stay program with a family up in Idaho and they were all really active members of the church. We couldn't talk long but he just told me how he would go out to church with the family and how he was just Mormon when he lived there. It was sad that he had to leave fast but I got his contact information and he took a 45 minute train to come to Daejeon to meet us last night. It was such a fun lesson because he knew everything about us. So it basically came down to just talking about how he felt when he was going to church. He really surprised us by saying he felt just safe at church in Idaho and he felt the same way when they would read the Book of Mormon every night as a family. It was such a fun lesson and he should be coming to our YSA activity tonight for the stake.

   We just met a bunch of new people just like that kid all week long. And we had some great meetings. We did had our Recent Convert in our ward come out to one lesson to help us but our investigator wasn't able to make it. But we hadn't eaten all day so our Recent convert just took us out to dinner and he really needed it. When he came he was really quiet when he is usually so sarcastic and loud. So it gave us a great opportunity to just have dinner with him and we talked a lot. It basically came down to it was just one of those days where he didn't feel too great and him and Elder Allan have the best friendship so after about half an hour we were all just laughing again.

   That has to be one of the best things about missionary work these days. We are meeting so many new people and building really great relationships. We were talking with our other recent convert who is preparing to go on a mission and he really loves being with the missionaries. We go with him every week to visit a member who is in the hospital to give him the sacrament and he's probably one of the best people that I know. High school seniors are the busiest kids every in Korea but he still finds a way to tell his teacher that he's sick and leaves the study time to come out and do a survey with all of us missionaries. I really hope that we aren't affecting his study and his education but he has been preparing so much to go on a mission when he finishes high school. I wish I would have taken that time as seriously as he is right now and he hasn't even been a member for a year. I absolutely love the new people I get to meet and talk to on a daily basis.

Well I have to get going. I'm spending the entire day cleaning and rearranging the house. I'm sure that my family did not believe that I would do something like that but I'm exciting to clean haha. I love all of you and I hope you have a great week!

Elder Jensen

Eightieth Week Email

안녕하세요?

   Well there's another week that flew by. I can't even begin to tell you how much happened this week. It felt like every plan we had all week long fell through but by the end of the week we actually had a lot happen.

   I went on about 3 splits this last week so I think that's probably why I didn't feel like anything happened in my area but we saw a lot of miracles this week. I had one of the most confusing moments of my life. I had 5 different really old men calling me daily and wanting to do the english program. And every single one of them had a really thick accent and apparently they all thought I was fluent because they spoke really fast haha. Well after we finally got everything planned out we get to english class a my phones starts going off because nobody can find the church. So I went out trying to find all of these older men and it was a pretty interesting time when I have been in the area for 2 weeks and my companion is a new missionary. But after all of that confusion we actually sat down with Brother Yang who has to be one of the most receptive people I have ever met. He would listen really well and than think for a few seconds and would ask the best questions. He would actually connect some of the dots in his head as far as why we believed this way and why we believe that way. At the end of the lesson he just told me that he had always wondered about the mormon church and he said that everything so far sounded great to him. He had a lot of similar beliefs about religion. We then talked about his beliefs and he brought up some really good questions that he has always wondered about.

   Just like I was blown away by learning a new language and learning how much it takes to understand a new language, I think I have been equally blown away by what it takes to teach. Teaching is still probably one of my weaknesses, but I have never taught the exact same lesson twice. Of course it's because people are different but just being in a mission where every missionary talks about how they teach and how this method is good for this situation and this method is good for this other situation, most of these methods just end up contradicting one another. So now I have come to the conclusion that I can prepare as much as I can and I can have a plan in place but when I finish the lesson, we talked about nothing I had planned. That's where the spirit comes into play with everything I'm trying to do these days. I've seen a lot of people say my way is best and others argue with that but I'm basically at the point where if I could do everything God's way I would be the happiest person in the world. I know that I have to use all of the knowledge and experience He has given me and try my hardest but there are some days where I would rather just know what He wanted us to do here and I could just follow haha. I guess that's why I really like that quote of "pray as if it all depends on God, and work as if it all depends on you." Well that's Elder Jensen's thoughts of the week. It probably makes a lot more sense in my head but I guess we'll see how you think about it. I can see so many faults in my self and things I need to work on but they can become strengths so now I'm just trying to follow God's path for me. Mainly because my path doesn't work out a lot of the times haha.

 

   Well I love all of you and I hope you have a great week. I'm already looking forward to this next week.

 

젠슨 장로

Seventy-Ninth Week Email

안녕하세요?

   Wow I can honestly not believe it's already Monday again. This week just flew by way too fast but it was still a great week. Elder Allan and I just went out and went to work. Right now we're serving in the Sunhwa ward. The ward here in Daejeon split and my ward had 15 members move out of the area so now we have one of the biggest most populated area's in the mission and our ward is very small. Well our Bishop sat us down yesterday and told that to our faces and gave us a really good pep talk. But we made a lot of new plans with the ward that I have never really tried and we got some new ward missionaries so I'm really excited to see where this goes.

   We just had a week where we saw so much happen. We met a new friend this week and him and our member are the exact same person. Our member was baptized this year and he's going to be one of my best friends. But we called him up to meet with our new investigator and it was creepy how similar they were. They both even wore the exact same pair of crocs which is unheard of in Korea apparently but I've never really had an experience like that before. But that relationship made the biggest difference during the lesson and Brother So our member did amazing. It was a simple introduce everything and get to know eachother and teach a little bit kind of lesson. But by the time we finished our new friend got our member's number and they have already texted a little bit. I wish I could just explain to all of you how similar these two are and how great the just hit it off but I guess it's one of those things you have to see.

   We had a few other pretty great experiences. We met with our friend John is an american living here teaching english. John has to be one of the smartest people I have ever met when it comes to education and history on religion. He was a part of the seventh day adventist religion and we had such a great conversation. I don't know how to explain everything we talked about but I had the worst feeling the entire time we were talking. Not because we were bible bashing or anything like that but when John talks about all of his thoughts and all of his views on religion it was just so sad. He even had to stop at one point and he apologized for talking about those kinds of sad things. I kind of sat up and looked at Elder Allan and we both had this blank empty looks on our faces and I could only imagine what we looked like to John. And after we talked for a little bit he did mention that he loved that about our religion. That we are always so happy and that happiness plays such a big role in our lives. But the reason why I was so sad by the time we left is because he told us that he's not happy. He told us that he really enjoys sitting down and talking about things like that and he doesn't really have an idea on what he believes and that's okay to him. He is completely content with not finding happiness and just really talking about these things with all sorts of people. That was normal to John and that is how he has come to believe in everything he believes and I can always respect somebody for having that much desire to study and ponder about things but I guess when everything was done he told us to our face that he wasn't happy, and he was content with that. That's still something I can't really wrap my mind around but the walk home was a quiet one and I felt so sad. I was content for a while in my life and I don't regret that time but now I'm sitting in a Korean coffee shop with the biggest smile on my face and I'm nowhere close to being content. I haven't been comfortable since I left Jeonju and that's such a great blessing to me. The most important lesson I had when I was learning how to swim is when my dad told me to jump off the diving board and he would catch me... we all know how that ended. But I learned so much on my mission when I went co-senior with Elder Pobst. I learned even more with Elder Hughes when I was training. I guess the main point I'm getting at is that it's really easy to be content but that's where I saw my progress slow and that happiness we talked about with John slow down as well. And talk about getting out of your comfort zone by being in a country where none of the foreigners are 10% fluent in the language and culture almost seems opposite in every way. And I love it.

   Well that's Elder Jensen's thoughts on the week. I hope I have more to tell you next week and I hope all of you have an amazing week. I will.

젠슨 장로

Seventy-Eighth Week Email

안녕하세요?

 

   Well I'm now in my new area with Elder Allan who is from California. All I can say about this area is that I just love it so much. Elder Allan and I have just gone out and worked. These young missinaries are the best and it's really nice to have somebody who just wants to do the funnest parts of missionary work like contacting and knocking on doors. We worked really hard and he taught such a great lesson on the street yesterday and he's just pretty great. And the Investigators I have been meeting and talking with are just amazing. We are working with Brother GS and I have never met anybody like him. He came out to this giant English Village that President Shin hosted and he has been meeting us a lot and coming out to church. He came out yesterday to a baptismal service for a young girl in the other ward and he's just so receptive. He absolutely loved it and when some of the member's spoke very bodly like koreans do sometime he was just so sure about his answers. Like when a member asked him when he was getting baptized and he said in 3 weeks he just smiled. He's a pretty amazing friend already and him and Elder Allan are just the best of friends.

 

   But it's just been hitting the ground running these days. I almost became a little comfortable in my last area and now I'm here. We're meeting a lot of new people and people here in Daejeon are just so nice. We talked to this man on the street the other day who was wearing really dirty clothes and had a small dog and he was so nice. He told us his daughter lived in california and bought us some drinks, and told us to follow him. So we walked down the street with him and he pointed to our right and said this is my building and we were looking at this small run down two story building thinking, "that's nice." But it turns out he was pointing to the 15 story building behind it that he was completely redoing. But he was probably the most humble man I have met in a while and we talked about the gospel and the Book of Mormon and took off. He told us to call whenever or just stop by anytime so we're going to see him hopefully very soon. Things like that have been happening left and right since I came here and I'm excited to see what's going to happen.

 

   Well I have to get going but I love all of you and I'll talk to you next week! Have a great week!

 

젠슨 장로