Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Letter 10/6/2014

We have our 'culture night' FHE (family home evening) activity this Thursday so we've spent a lot of time preparing for it.

We at times offer to teach our English class students one on one to help them learn English better and so that we can teach them the gospel (30 minutes of English, 30 minutes of gospel) but they usually turn us down because they're not interested in religion. So Sister Blickenstaff and I took a couple of our students out (one sinlge girl and one family with two boys) out for dinner. We went to a restaurant with the girl and we made dinner (curry rice) for the family at the church. We wanted to make Chinese beef and broccoli but after a series of events that prevented that from happening, we just put the beef and broccoli into the curry. I've never had curry like that and I'm sure they haven't either but it all turned out well.

At our service project we help mentally handicapped men and women stretch and play sports. One girl is really hard to understand so she was really angry with us the first time we went because we couldn't understand her and she called us "바보"(Bubo - Fools) but we became friends this last week.

On Wednesday morning at 8am I got a call from our fix-it man telling me that he was coming to fix our shower. We let him in and got back to studies. When companionship study came around I popped my head out of our study room to see what all of the noise was, I saw that our tub was GONE! "자매님! (Jamae-nim! - Sisters!) We don't have a tub anymore! Only a dirt floor!" They then put in tile on the floor so that our bathroom is just a giant shower. The problem was that we couldn't use the shower for two days! So we just hopped over to our neighboring sisters in 영등포 (Yeong-Dong-Po), announced to our ZLs (Zone Leaders) that we were leaving our zone, and were able to use their shower and have a sleepover (missionary sleepovers consist more of just enjoying each other's company and not getting hyper because no one wants to put off going to bed). And then we hopped over the river to the temple the next day.

After the temple on Thursday we went to Gangnam to meet Sister Blickenstaff's recent convert. We had lunch with her and tried to help her get excited for the temple.
We taught two women for the first time this week. I had met one woman on the bus about a month ago and she rejected me when I called her again but she suddenly called us wanting to meet. She and her cousin both wanted truth so they came to us because they liked the impression they got from us. We were excited. We met them at a park and we split up and taught them both seperately. The woman Sister Blickenstaff taught loved the first lesson until Joseph Smith came up and then she got mad because "Joseph Smith is not mentioned in the book of Revelations." The woman I taught was nice. She had a lot of doubts about the Bible and was confused by some scientific evidences to prove the Bible to be wrong. I tried to teach her to ask God for her answers (James 1:5, Moroni 10) but instead of getting excited about that, she got excited that I receive answers to my prayers and asked me to be her oracles, receiving answers in her behalf. But that's not going to happen.

Letter 9/29/2014

I'm wearing the cute black and white floral button-up shirt you gave me. The last time I wore it a woman said to me, "You bought this in Korea, right? It's so cute so I know you bought it in Korea."(it's from Old Navy in the U.S. :)

We spent a lot of time this week visiting less actives to make sure that we visited them all by the end of the week. We had a good turn-out for our special sacrament meeting! It was an exciting day! We all ate food together afterwards and it was fun to see the less actives talk with the members while they ate.

On one night we mapped out which less actives we would visit and in which order. After we got off our bus and walked towards our first destination, I realized that we were standing in front of the apartment where the second LA lived, not the first. I was annoyed wih myself for making a mistake, expcially because it would take extra time to have to go back to the first apartment. We decided to just go the the second less active first (confused yet?). We happened to have a PI (potential investigator?) in this same apartment that we hadn't been able to make an apointment with yet and since we were standing closest to her house we decided to go there first. When the PI answered her door, she told us that she was so happy we had stopped by right then because she hadn't been home all day and she was about to leave her house again. I was annoyed for my mistake but it turned out to be for the better because we wouldn't have met her if we had followed our plans!

While I was on an exchange this week I taught a woman in their area (the area where the sister she did the exchange with serves). As we were talking, she asked us if we can feel the Spirit all of the time because she really wants to feel the Spirit all of the time. It was so sweet to hear her say that she wants to feel God's Spirit because she knows how it will bless her. She said that she had become a better person since she started meeting with the missionaries and she has been trying to be nice to her family and more like Jesus!

We had president interviews on Friday. We were able to have 20 minutes, rather than the normal 15. I love talking to my president because he always says the perfect things. And he always makes me feel like I'm the best missionary, even though I'm sure he says the same things to other missionaries. He knows how to uplift me. I've learned a lot from him and I'm so grateful to have him as my mission president.