Another week has already gone, and it was a really busy one too. On Tuesday, we went to Gwangju (a really big city) for mission tour to say goodbye to President Furniss. It was really sad to see them go - even though I've only had them for one transfer. They really are incredible people and their farewell talks to us were so good. Mission tour took all day on Tuesday and then Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were full of contacting people on the street and hunting down missing church members by visiting old addresses and seeing if they still live there or not. There's over 400 addresses that match this criteria here in Gunsan and 99% of the people don't live here anymore. So we have to go to each address to figure out who and where that 1% is.
Saturday was awesome because we had a stake activity in Jeonju where all the wards in the stake came together to perform songs for each other. Elder Ward and I, however, weren't able to come to any of the practices for our ward's performance earlier in the month so we had no idea what the songs were. On the 45 minute car ride over, we were given the sheet music and quickly tried to memorize the Korean and the tune to a song we had never heard before (that was a really hard task, haha). Then, when we performed, apparently we were supposed to dance side to side taking three steps each way. We didn't know about this until during the performance. So just imagine Elder Ward and I akwardly swaying back and forth, bumping into each other and other members in the ward, singing a song we didn't know and you'll get the picture. It was really funny though.
Sunday, oh Sunday. When we arrived at first, the Bishop came up to me and told me I was going to be saying the opening prayer. I've said the sacrament prayer every week basically, but that's easy - all you do is read it. The opening prayer, however, is all just from me. Great. I say prayers every day in Korean with my companion, but that's about missionary work stuff. I'm not going to get up to the pulpit before church and bless all of our investigators and ask that we find a new investigator as we street contact. So I was clueless what to say haha. Anyway, I got up to the microphone and began.
I swear, the second I said "Our heavenly father" my mind blanked. My mind wanted to say "thank you for the opportunity that we have to come to church today" but all that came out was basically "We come to church. Thank you". But that's okay, right? The point still came accross okay. So I continued. I wanted to say "Please bless that when we partake of the sacrament, we will remember thee". That's when I lost it. For some ridiculous reason, I couldn't remember how to say sacrament. In sacrament meeting. When I'm going to partake of the sacrament. I couldn't remember the word for sacrament. Haha, oh boy. So what came out was just pure jibberesh. In English, it would sound like this: "Please bless that when we partake of the flembershergah..., we will remember thee". Great. Inside me, I felt like my mind was saying RED ALERT RED ALERT. ABORT. ABORT. But I had to continue. I wanted to end quickly though, so I figured I would just say "Please bless us to feel thy spirit" and then say amen. Easy right? But in my panicking state, all I said was "Please bless us to feel thee..... In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." Feel, in Korean, literally means to physically feel. To touch, like rub and feel. So I literally blessed us to be able to rub and feel Him.
And that was the opening prayer for Sacrament meeting. Thank you, thank you, I'll be here for two years.
Then, right after church, all the missionaries in the Zone had the opportunity to go to Jeonju again to watch the Leadership Training Broadcast, so that took all day when you incorporate bus travel each way. But the broadcast was really good, we're all excited to get iPads haha. The aspostles said we'll get to use facebook, right? Right. So we were all joking "what about instagram? twitter? pinterest? myspace- no wait, no one uses myspace." But yes, those changes I guess are happening in missions all over the world, but they probably won't hit the Daejeon mission for a while. It'll start in America and slowly, if ever, make its way over here.
Anyway, that brings us back to today. I'm out of time, so I've got to go, but things are going great!
OH, and PS, they messed up on my new name tag and my name in Korean is now Elder Grape. I'm not sure if it's better than Elder Crap yet..... My name is just hopeless in this language haha
-Elder Grape
No comments:
Post a Comment