Letter 5/12/2014

This last week was the most stressful week of my life. Sister Kei and I didn't know if we were going to make it! But it passed and we had a lot of miracles this weekend.

We started teaching the two teenagers that I told you about (on skype) who showed up to our ward barbecue and came to Sacrament meeting yesterday. And There was the woman we met late on Saturdaynight. We started talking to her on the street and she turned us away, as per usual. But after we crossed the street she came running after us. She said she's been wondering about Mormonism but she's always been scared to talk to the elders because they're intimidating. We're the first female missionaries she's seen so she was excited. We were able to be joined by a YSA (young single adult) in our ward. We decided to meet at a park because she didn't want to go to the church or her house and we didn't want to meet at McDonald's like she did. But it was raining when we met up. She still refused to go to places where she could feel the Spirit and we didn't want to cave and meet at a cafe or restaurant, especally on Sunday. The last few investigators that we taught in Cafes and/or fast food places ended badly. So we had to part without teaching her (she wants to meet again later). I felt bad letting her walk away but we hate cafes so much that we were willing to do it. They're too loud and they can't feel the Spirit. 

I was studying John 15 as an assignment for Zone Conference this morning. I really liked verse two. I thought it applied to the classic question "Why does God let bad things happen to good people?" Here's my answer according to John 15:2. If we do bear fruit we'll be purged to bear more fruit. It's a blessing. Being a 'good person' doesn't exclude us from God's will. He doesn't just let us keep doing whatever they want. He wants us to reach our potential, receive our greatest happiness and the greatest gifts of God. If we want these things we can't decide what God gives us. The Lord abides with His people and part of abiding is giving to us the things that ar for our benefit. God didn't say he will only give punishments to 'bad people.' If we have trials it means God is working with us. He gives us everything we need to obtain our full potential but it's up to us to decide if it's a gift or a punishment, just like our investigators don't always choose to accept what we have given them and change. Sometimes they see it as a weird punishment and a burden that we put on them. 

Fast Sunday just passed but maybe this will be helpful next fast Sunday. President sent this to us several weeks ago.

Recently, several elders and sisters have asked questions about fasting, including “Why do we fast?”, “How long should we fast?”, and “What is included in a complete fast?” I’d like to share answers to these questions with everyone.

Why Do We Fast?

The Lord has invited us to fast in order to gain spiritual power. Fasting helps us “put off the natural man” (see Mosiah 3:19) by allowing our spirits to exercise control over our bodies. While the body is saying, “I want food!” the spirit is saying, “Quiet down now. You’ll eat when I say you can eat.” 

In April 2009 General Conference, Elder Shayne M. Bowen explained fasting this way:

“What if there were a way to overcome our habits, addictions, and burdens? What if there were a way to gain sufficient confidence in the Lord that you could call down the powers of heaven? What if there were principles you could teach your loved ones that, if applied, would allow them to overcome personal weaknesses and draw closer to God? As we properly understand and live the law of the fast, these desired blessings can be ours.”

How Long Do We Fast?

According to Handbook 1 for Bishops and Stake Presidents:

“A proper fast day observance typically includes abstaining from food and drink for two consecutive meals in a 24-hour period.”

President Howard W. Hunter gave the following counsel in October 1985 General Conference:

“The fast contemplated on the day referred to as fast day, as defined by President Joseph F. Smith, ‘is that food and drink are not to be partaken of for twenty-four hours, “from even to even.”’ From even to even has been given the meaning of going without two meals—from the evening meal on the night before to evening meal on fast day.”

What Is Included in a Complete Fast?

Elder Carl B. Pratt taught the following in October 2004 General Conference:

“We are taught that there are three aspects to a proper fast day observance: first, abstaining from food and drink for two consecutive meals or, in other words, 24 hours; second, attending fast and testimony meeting; and third, giving a generous fast offering.”

Sister Linda K. Burton, General Relief Society President and wife of former Seoul West Mission President Craig P. Burton, spoke about fasting in a talk at BYU-Idaho on March 2 of this year. In her talk titled “Tuning Our Hearts to the Voice of the Spirit”, she said:

“In order to increase our ability to hear the voice of the Spirit, we would all do well to fast for 24 hours each fast Sunday and freely give our fast offering to help those in need. President Harold B. Lee counseled: ‘The Lord said to Isaiah, that those who would thus fast and deal out their bread to the hungry, could call and the Lord would answer, could cry and the Lord would say, “Here I am.” [See Isaiah 58:6–9.] That’s one way to get on speaking terms with the Lord. Try it this year. Live the law of fasting perfectly.’”

I hope each of us will use fasting to obtain spiritual power by drawing closer to Heavenly Father.

Love,

President Morrise


Love you!!!!! Email you next week!

Letter 4/28/2014

As we were proselyting our way home from General Conference, Sister Kei felt like we should go over near our Daiso (a dollar store) We awkwardly stood around it, talking to people as we wondered why we were there. Everyone was especially rude. Why were we there? After several rejections we made our way towards Daiso again, and as we walked directly in front of the doors, we passed two girls, and I said hello. They told us they were from China. We communicated through English. They were super nice. They were just visiting for four days. We gave them Mormon.org cards. These nice and open girls had me thinking about China and I think it'll open up soon. "Soon" may be a half a century or it may be a few years. I think it was a matter of timing; we needed to talk to other people (some who I was sure was 'the one' because I felt I should talk to them) to get those girls at the right time.

 Sister Training Leaders go on exchanges with sisters in their zone to help them in their areas and train them during comapnionship study. They attend the monthly Mission Leadership Council meeting and give trainings at zone meetings. We have one per zone and we have six zones. Last transfer President tried an experiment to have two Sister Training Leaders together as companions in one zone. It's only been one transfer so we don't know how it's going yet.

This week was LOADED with craziness. Loaded. Be prepared. Let's see if you can keep count.

First, I've been sick since Thursday. I lost my voice on Friday and it's just now recovering today (I've moved down from dinosaur-status to frog-status). Missionary work is all about talking, so my dear companion had to pull some extra weight this weekend to make sure we met our goals in proselyting, as well as having to teach our protion of the Young Womens lesson. (We're getting YW callings in the ward as of next week) I was assigned to give a talk this week and I really didn't want to put it off so I gave the talk. It was a little rough between the coughing, scraggly voice, and vocally unpraticed script, but it worked. Hoozah.

We were doing some 가가호호 (onomatopoeia for door-to-door knocking) on Saturday and found a family that has been inactive for numerous years. Sister Kei picked the spot the night before, we just started walking around in there, I looked at a random entrance to a building at my right, and we went in. They were only the fourth door we knocked on! The mother was a little crazy but she was super nice. She had a dream about a Mormon missionary and promised herself that the next time she saw one she would buy them pizza. So she gave us money to buy pizza. But we can't accept money from people in our area. After telling her this (and after A LOT of explanation), she said she would order a pizza but we had to tell her that we can't eat wheat (Sister Kei has celiac, and Natasha gets really sick with gluten too). Fun times. So then she made her son go to the store and buy us fruit. It was so awkward. She wouldn't listen to our protests. But we're going to keep visiting them and send the elders to visit the sons.

We met a crazy man on the train on Saturday. Sister Kei was having a nice conversation with someone whenthis crazy man started yellling at her across from her but we couldn't understand him. He wanted us to go visit some religious gathering or something. We don't know. It scared away the person she was talking to, obviously. He wanted our card, which usually doens't turn out well, but he hasn't contacted us yet.

Brother and Sister Linda K. Burton (Relief Society General President) came to visit us this week! She and Sister Oscarson gave a member fireside on Saturday night but Brother And Sister Burton spoke just to us on Friday morning. He used to be the mission president of the Seoul West Mission (which was closed for a few years, and then re-opened last year as the Seoul South Mission). It was SO GOOD! They said some amazing things that our mission REALLY needed. This is the first time a female auxilliary member has spoken to missionaries. They recorded it for the experiment to see if they want to do it again. Answering questions was really scary because I don't know who's going to be watching it later! She said that in the council of deciding to lower the mission-age, one of the top selling factors was that that church would have more people who were familiar with counselling because missionaries do it all day every day as companionshiops, districts, zone, wards, and with mission presidents and ward leaders.

Here's one of the best parts. We got transfer calls on Friday night. They were moved because of the Burtons' visit. Sister Kei and I thought we were being split and we were super anxious, especially because I had reason to think that I would be training. Sister Kei had been preparing me for training all week. But that didn't happen. When we saw President Morrisse's name on our caller ID, we knew something was up. He told us that we will be staying together. And then he told us that we will both be Sister Training Leaders together (see the second paragraph of this letter for the details of what they do). He then quickly ended the call without saying much else. We both let out a little awkward laugh on the phone. Yes. I'm terrified. I'm only five months in and I'm going to be an STL. Sister Kei will still be my senior. We laid in bed in Friday night and couldn't fall asleep until past 11:30 because we kept repeating phrases like, "What's going on?" "What are we going to do?" "This is a joke." "How can I do this?" Everyone we told kept saying things like, "But Sister Stout hasn't trained yet. She hasn't been a Senior compaion yet." Yes, I know. I'm a baby. What am I going to do? I don't know. I'm scared, but I'm excited. I'm excited to be able to serve more. It will take up more of my time which means more time on the work and less time for anything else. But because we will be STLs together we're both a little bit less scared.

These are some of our adventures this week.

Letter 4/21/2014

They were from a high school right next to my house (maybe 15 minutes away). I haven't figured out yet if any of them were members. I had heard about the ferry but I didn't know that they were from Ansan until our investigator told us yesterday. It hurt a lot. (She is referring to the 300 students in the ferry that sank last week. This is so sad for her, and us, and all of Korea.)

Noah isn't a little boy anymore. (in response to photos I sent)

During one of our routine calling sessions to previous potential investigators we called a woman who was currently sick (bed-ridden) so we took her bread (and we wrote scriptures on hearts) and heart-attacked her door.

We went to visit a woman in our ward who is sick on Tuesday. We didn't want to bother her and make her get out of bed but we just wanted to heart-attack her door. Because we didn't want to ring up (to be let into the apartment building) we creepily stood outside her apartment waiting for someone to walk in so that we could slink in behind them. The first woman that came by asked us, "are you going to the 16th floor?" When we affirmed she opened the door, gestured with her hand to follow us, and told us to come in. These things don't happen. As we were waiting for the elevator she told us that she know we were going to the 16th floor to visit our member because she used to be a member and hasn't attended our ward in a while. She got off before we could talk very much but we noted which door she went to and which floor she got off at. She was super nice and friendly and told us to come visit her later. So we did - 5 minutes later. We got her name and number. When I was looking through my planner that night I noticed that we had tried to visit her on Sunday night (I had forgotten) but we had only found that she had moved, thinking that she was lost forever. (this is a pretty common occurrence) But we found her two days later!

Do you guys know about the dangers of microdust? (we think she is referring to the yellow dust that blows in from China in the spring - we aren't sure if we know of all the dangers, and aren't sure we want to know....)

It was raining pretty hard on Thursday night so we went down into the subway and rode it back and forth on our area, talking to people on the subway and in the stations. In one station we found two women (SEPARATELY) who were inactive members of the Church!! Yes, this happened. Neither of them lived in our area (one lives in the other mission) and wouldn't give us their information but we thought it was incredible that we met them. We got the name and of woman and gave it to the sisters in her area.

I'm glad to hear that you had a good Easter. We kept forgetting that it was Easter. We both reminded each other repeatedly because we kept forgetting. No one mentioned anything about it at church (expect for y prayer in RS). People didn't even know about it. I talked to several members and as I tried to make small talk I asked what they were doing for Easter but no one I asked even knew it was Easter. It was really sad. (we had a very different Easter experience in our ward. Everyone seemed to know, and the Young Women decorated eggs and passed them out after sacrament meeting. White eggs are rare here, they all seem to be brown, but the Young Women did really cute things with the brown eggs, painting faces on them, adding pompons, etc).

For the first time, I began to feel this week that I am actually doing good missionary work but our golden family dropped us this morning. It was a little more than we could handle.

Letter 4/14/2014

I thought the same thing about Elder Packer!! I even wrote it in my notes. (I wrote to her that his talk seemed like a final, farewell testimony) 

Sister Kei and I especially liked Elder Perry's talk on obedience. 

As part of the program our President has us doing to learn the lessons an improve our teaching skills we have to write a talk for each lesson and give the talks in sacrament meeting. I wrote a talk for Lesson Two last transfer but I lost it in the move. I'm giving a talk in a couple of weeks and I really wanted to find it because I don't have time to write a new one. I spent a couple of days tearing apart my desk and drawers (including my clothes drawers) to find it, to no avail. As I was praying to begin my personal study one day this week one of my drawers popped into my head. Immediately following my prayer I turned around to open the drawer and found my talk sitting on top of a pile of papers. I had definitely looked through the pile of papers in the drawer before but I hadn't done it with God. It made me think how often God must be helping me because I can't do anything by myself, even find a piece of paper that I lost. It emphasized one of my favorite scriptures (especially since coming on a mission); Alma 26:12. With God I can do all things.

Wasn't the General Women's Meeting really good? I kept crying. I thought this entire Conference was astounding. I've never felt so much guidance, love and direct calls to action. 

Letter 4/7/2014

I got the iHerb package!!!! It came on Tuesday afternoon! I was so excited as I carried into our house that I couldn't maneuver the racks of drying clothes (we don't have time to finish on Monday with four sisters) that I was running into walls and we sat around it like children on Christmas, squealing as we pulled each item from the box. It must have been really expensive! Thank you! My (and our) tumm(ies) will be most happy!
(We discovered that we can order health food from iHerb and have up to 15 obls shipped to Korea for only $4.00!!! This is blessing our lives, as well as Natasha's)

I tried the kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) recipe and we both really liked it! And we roasted the seeds!

Are you going to the Women's meeting with Mims (Mia) this week?

We met with an investigator yesterday and she told us she thought religion was just a man-thing and she coulsnt' understand why girls, like us, would get excited about it. She always acts stern and hard when we teach her but when she sees the elders later at their English club she tells them that she really likes us and seems to him to be making progress.

We went to the temple on Thursday and saw the new-old movie! (the new first of the new movies just came to the Seoul Temple). We came straight home and slept for three hours.

We're going to 어의도 (Eouido?) today to ride bikes under the cherry blossoms.

Letter 3/31/2014

It was a good week. It was a really tiring week. We did a lot of walking, climbing stairs, and our bodies are pretty sore.

This week we randomly stopped by a Less Active's house. As we were heart-attacking her door she came home and invited us in (yesssss) and then she asked if we were the missionaries that had called her earlier. No, we weren't. But then the doorbell rang and the elders were in the doorway. It was an awkward moment because they had actally made an appointment with her for that exact time but we didn't know about it, showed up first, and swooped in. But they couldn't come in because there weren't any men home. We talked with her for an hour and she asked us to come back and teach her the lessons again because she wants to understand it better. It was amazing. LAs usually send us packing. But she was so nice and hapy to see us. So we're really excited to help her.

We've been organizing our records (it was bad times) and we have a huge stack of previous investigators whose numbers are wrong but they have addresses. So we've started to visit them and we've found that most of them are still living at these addresses. So we're excited about that. There are a lot of them. 

We taught a previous investigator who moved so we had to refer her to the other mission (Seoul). She spoke a lot of Japanese and that was fun.

The cherry blossoms are all in full bloom! They've started falling!

My area is right on the river so we get to see it sometimes! My area is pretty small.

I lost our phone yesterday................. I got home and realized it was gone. But a nice man found it and will give it back to us on Wednesday. In the mean time, we are borrowing our flat-mate-sisters' phone while at home.

We had Presdient interviews this week. I love my president. He's the best.

Letter 3/24/2014

The recipes were very exciting. (I sent her some gluten free recipes using rice flour or no flour) I got them as I was walking out of our apartment building for the last time, on our way to 신도림 station for transfers. We made the banana pancakes on our first night together. If you have more recipes..... we would REALLY appreciate it. Even stuff like the cauliflower buffalo wings, soup recipes, pudding recipes, flourless choco cake, quinoa recipes (we have a nice stash of quinoa), anything.

We're in the 목동 (Mok-dong) ward. It's a little smaller than Ansan with maybe 40~50 people. Our inactive list is larger than our member book, which is very common. We also have a gigantic binder full of people's records and we don't know who they are. I think some of them are inactive or they moved and their records were lost. We know they exist but the church doesn't have their records anymore. They're like the lost tribes. My area is super teeny tiny compared to my last area. We live on the border of our area and we share our apartment with the sisters in our neighboring area (화곡) (Hwakok). I really like it so far. 

I've been here for five days and I feel like a completely different person. Completely. Part of it may be the new area. Part of it may be the ability to eat food that doesn't hurt me (her new companion has celiac, so they can eat gluten-free food together). Part of it may be that I don't dread meal times. Part of it may be a new, American companion. Part of it may be living in a four-man house. Part of it may be that the transfer was inspired. Inspired. There were a lot of things that were making me really sad but I didn't recognize it and didn't know how to deal with it and now that I'm out of it I can see that I don't have to be that way and I'm SO MUCH HAPPIER. So much. But really. My journal entries have made a 180 turn. My anxiety is much lower. It's just good.

So I'm excited to be in this area. And I love Sister Kei so much. One of the first things I thought was; "I CAN EAT FOOD NOW!!!" We can cook together! We can look out for each other and give each other advice. We can buy food together. It's one of the most exciting events to take place in my life. Sister Kei and I were both born in Glendale (Arizona) in 1993. Her mom remarried a Korean man so she has four half-Korean siblings.

There's a gluten-free bakery in the Daejeon mission (that's where we are). I don't know where it is, though. There's a lady in the English branch (they actually have like a couple hundred members) that meets in 영등포 (Yeongdeungpo)(there are actually two) whose family has celiacs. We is super nice and gives us food! Her name is Angela . She likes to talk and I'm sure she would love to give you advice.  She has one black daughter and two Korean boys as well as biological children. I don't agree with all of what she says (because you CAN buy gluten-free soysauce and gochujang in Koreans stores).

So we went to yeong-deung-po on Saturday morning to help them clean the church (as a service project for us) and to meet up with her to get food she bought for us (SO NICE!). She even made us a chocolate cake. You can add Sister Kei's mom too. But I don't know here name.

The only people we have to teach are English Investigators (ENGLISH!!!!!), a mother and daughter. So we spend a lot of time finding, or trying really hard to find. Sister Kei has been helping me to talk to people and get over those issues. We also try to serve a lot, teach practice lessons to members, and visit/heart-attack our Less Actives. There is one Less Active that the sisters had never been able to meet because she was always gone when they stopped by. But she opened the door to us last night! Miracle! She said she didn't want to come back to church because she hasn't been in 7 or 8 years but I asked if we would teach her practice lessons because we need practice and she said maybe (there may or may not have been truth behind that) so have hope. It may still require some time.

There's a super nice man who sells strawberries in our 시장 (market) and we try to talk to him and we purposely casually walked by with the elders after English class on Saturday night so that they could meet because we see a lot of potential in him. And he gave us a reduced price on strawberries. So we ate them with yogurt and brown sugar yesterday. So yummy.

The elders used to live in our apartment until the sisters moved in in December. andddddddd it's gross. I haven't seen any yet but they're had problems with cockroaches. Yeah. Super cool. So I put a little DE (diatomaceous earth) down in the places where they saw them.

I really like my life.

Our ward mission leader is super on-the-ball. He and his wife have a little baby and he's going to medical school right now. One of the elders in our ward is a greenie. I like little baby greenies. They're so cute and baby.