The Lost Letter

5/9 Thursday 2013 

It's been a few days since I wrote. Life has been a touch crazy.  I got a buzz from my comp. It's super short. 
As I pen these words I am eating some 덴항히게 deng chang chi-ge. It's super good, and it was made by Elder Cho, our new Korean ZL.  He's super awesome and doesn't speak that much English.  It's an adventure.  Today we had a finding activity in San bon (dang, it's hard to write Korean in English) [note: the letter is covered with Korean characters. I remember feeling this way about Chinese, too, but it doesn't make the letters easier to read.] and me and Elder Newton talked to this really awesome guy for about an hour.  he's an American who has lived all over, kind of a vagabond wanderer, so a little like what I wanna do.  But not really after listening to Elder Holland's talks [korean…]  Anyway we talked about why religion is important and materialism and hopefully we can meet with him next week.  Super cool.  And he speaks Mandarin, Mom!  and was in Taiwan about the same time as you. So you might have seen him :).  He loves missionaries.


Also, we got a text today that said: "Hey! I want to know about Mormon!" So we were super stoked and met her that night, we didn't know she was a gril though so we had to meet outside because no men.  She is way cool.  Asked to come to church and loved the Book of Mormon.  We'll probably see her on Sunday! Stoked! It was a tiring but satisfying day.  Ate a whole pizza for lunch.  Still not chubby...

I love you. The gospel is TRUE! Stick with it and it will stick with you. Remember, blessings are received through obedience to laws so obey the law so you can get the blessing. [lots of Korean.]

5/10 Friday
OK, so today is a compilation of goofy things that happened this week. So: as we were riding the elevator up to go home a little family got on and the girl asleep in her mom's arms proceeded to pee her pants.  It got all over the elevator and the family semi-awkwardly got off without saying a word. it wasn't until later that we realized that it wasn't an odd occurrence for us. It was just normal missionary goofiness. Shenanigans happen all the time and so it doesn't ever phase me. Weird. Also a lady told me my fly was down the the middle of English class.  Later as we were walking Elder Clawson taught me how to say that in korean. So we're just walking don the street practicing away when it hit me. It would be so weird to be walking along in Bellingham and seeing a Korean saying in broken English, "My fly is down. MY fly is down. My FLY, no… my fly is DOWN!" No wonder Koreans think we're wacky.

Also we've been practicing for the Law of Chastity lately (Draw the lines) […? It really says this. Guesses? Anyone?] Also we have an investigator that loves to rub Elder Clawson's head. So there's that.

Today I realized that we set baptism as this huge goal but that its really the way to align yourself to keep the rest of God's commandments. Through baptism we commit to Christ and prepare to follow Him for the rest of our lives. Baptism is incidental. If you have real intent, its the enduring to the end that matters. So Endure!

5/11 Saturday

So I think you liked a day in the life at the MTC so here it goes again. For Thursday.

6:30 Get up and pray. House is super quiet.

6:35 Get up and get things ready to go play some b-ball.  Moaningly [?] putting shoes and socks on.

6:40 Snag a ball and the other Elders go hoop it up. We play two on two and run around a lot to get exercise. I'm kinda tall so no one likes me :9 I can kinda score whenever I want to so I try to pass a lot. Elder Woodford is getting way better. Oh and I can dunk on Korean sized hoops. So it's pretty fun.

7:10 Run home across the ninja bridge. There are these little pads that look like [he drew a picture] across the river. We see who can do all of them two at a time.  The Korean joggers look at us skeptically.

7:15 Shower, shave, eat, play guitar. Most mornings we'll eat oatmeal or a smoothie. Sometimes rice and [Korean] dried seaweed.  Elder Clawson plays guitar, we listen to the neighborhood trumpet player.

7:59 Realize that it's 7:59, frantically get ready to start study.

8:00 Start study! One of my favorite parts of the day. I usually read a chapter from the BoM, NT, and D&C. Go more in depth. Then PMG and investigator's questions if there are any.

9:00 move on to comp study, role play, study PMG and do training reme [?] together.

11:00 Lunch! Kim chi soup, Donkas or spaghetti, or one of Elder Clawson's concoctions. Always delicious. We play guitar and swap stories. Lots of fun.

12:00 Language study! Read PMG in Korean, read BoM in Korean, read and practice grammar and to keep the house good and spiffy, Elder Clawson quizzes me on vocab while I clean the kitchen. I mostly work on lessons.

1:00 time to make some calls! We call off of old investigator records and potential sheets. Talk to tons of cool people, Koreans will like sigh in agony and hang up. Throws me for a loop ever time. They will go  "Aaaaaargh!" when I say, "Hey! It's the missionaries!" and then…click.

2:00 Time to go to a district finding activity. We talk to some cool people on the subway and then I go with Elder Newton. We found a random guy from Chicago and after a 5 minute Korean convo, told us in perfect Chicago accent that he's from Chicago.  He wasn't super into it so we gave him our cards and left. Then cool guy from Taiwan.

4:30 Travel home, talking all the while

5:00 Dinner! Elder Cho made his special soup and it was delicious. Chatted and ate. Elder Clawson plays some more guitar.

6:00 went out and talked to people for a couple of hours. We do almost all street contacting. Just talking to people, lots of college kids. Suddenly, a text! "Hey! I want to know Mormon!" "OK, let's meet at 8," replyed us. (Sorry for the bad grammar, Korean has killed my brain…)

Keep talking to people, then go to meet her at E-mart (giant everything store, think Fred Meyer but more so and 9 flavors of it). Help a guy with his groceries while Elder Clawson finds her and gets some small talk going. Because she turns out to be a woman and we need a man to meet inside, we met outside the church. Turns out the bishopric had a meeting that night so she met all of them! And we got some quizzical glances. Lesson went great and we hurried home.

9:00 Rush into the house and plop down to plan. A very operatic version of True to the Faith is sung in Korean. We plan and after Elder Woodford yells, "There's someone coming! Probably to inspect!" We frantically whip the home into shape only to find that one of the member's little daughters brought us pizza and some delicious beef.  They're so nice. We finish and I give Elder Clawson a haircut while we chow down on pizza.  We write in our journals and spread out on our beds. Then pray and sleep. Very busy and totally awesome.

Oh, we had peanut butter and jelly rice today. It's exactly what it sounds like.

5/13 P-day

Didn't do anything special today. Just cleaned and went to Costco. We bought 3 12-packs of muffins so we're pretty set. It's gonna be a gain weight week. I'm at 88 kg and about steady. I'm getting stronger from working out every morning though! You'd be surprised. So funny story of the day is that a week ago a little kid who we're befriending came and gave us a bunch of coffee which we couldn't drink (duh) and that same day the APs came and saw it as our apartment got inspected. So everyone probably thinks we drink coffee now.

Also we found a hunting knife in the couch. And a thousand pens. And some really old consecrated oil. It was really good to talk to you today! I miss all of you but in a good way.

I feel the power of your prayers. you kind of live on the extremes. You work your guts out and the joy of success is so great, when you see someone who has really seen the savior work his marvelous healing power. But to see people turn away from it and reject it is so sad. Uncle Colin talked about how hard it is not to take that rejection personally.  It is hard. But if you are working hard and really desiring people's salvation and eternal happiness what more can you do? That's where you must find joy, in fulfilling your purpose wherever you are.

I love all of you! Read Matthew 11:28-30. He will heal you.