But until then, we are doing all we can to help this area grow. As I told you a few weeks back, our city does not have a church and we are given the privilege to be the first missionaries here to teach the gospel and help establish a branch in this city. Right now, the plan is to start the branch here next month. But, in order to do that, we need enough people to attend. Therefore, we need to do one thing: Baptize.
Easy enough, right? So I thought I could spend this week's email informing you about all of our investigators that we are meeting with on a weekly basis. My entire mission, I haven't really written home about any of our investigators. Why? Well, if you were an investigator, would you want a missionary to be telling everyone about your situations and posting all about your situation online? Haha, probably not. So I've chosen to respect my investigators instead of blabber all about them this whole time. However, this decision has also been a source of complaint for my family - they want to hear all the details. So fine, I will give them, but I won't include names - deal, mother?
Hilarious Genius: This is one of my favorite investigators and we meet with him every week two or three times. He is 45 years old, works at Hyundai Steel, has a wonderful family, is perfect at English, and knows so many random facts about the entire world. He LOVES to talk to us about anything and everything and LOVES to load us with facts and information about the world (he's like my spirit twin). His intention to meet with us started off as English interest only, but his desires have begun to change and he is becoming very interested in the gospel. The cool thing is this - 25 years ago, he attended Dixie State College in St George, UT, so he has a really cool (and random) connection with Utah and the church. Hopefully we can continue to help his desire in the gospel grow over these next coming weeks!
Hard Working Mom: She has two loud kids, a one room house (kitchen, bedroom, everything - one room), a husband that works all day, and lots of stress. She loves meeting with us and really finds peace in our messages but accepting them as truth has been really difficult for her. She has lots of other religion's missionaries coming to her too (Asian Bible Belt, remember?) and so she is just mostly confused with what to do. However, we KNOW that this church would help her and her family's situation, so we're trying to do all we can to help her see that.
The Newlywed: He saw us one day on the street and was blown away that there are fluent Korean speaking missionaries in this little town that teach free English. He immediately expressed his desire to meet with us and has since introduced us to his wife and all of his friends. He loves meeting with us, but more importantly, loves his wife that he married just a few months ago. The two of them are expecting a baby right now as well. Elder Otterson and I see this as a perfect time for them as a newly married couple to find the gospel and raise their future family in it - we're super excited for them as they continue to learn about our message.
The Prince William Lover: Oh, this one is a riot - we meet with her about once a week. She loves the church and everything and would love to be baptized, but her dad won't let her because the church he attends says our church is a cult. Yet, we still continue to meet with her to strengthen her faith until the day comes when she can make her own decision to join or not. And meeting with her is hilarious because she has an OBSESSION with Prince William - she wants to marry him. "But Prince William is marries to Kate!", I say. "And Kate is wonderful!" To which she protests that she is far better than Kate Middleton.... haha, it's really funny.
The Applicant: Getting into universities is really hard here in Korea - especially the big ones. Students literally are at school until 3 in the morning in order to study - I'm not kidding. This investigator is 18 years old and is currently awaiting to see if he got into Seoul University, Korea's most prestigious establishment. During his application and testing period, he had no time to meet with us, but now that he is just awaiting, we have begun to teach him. He is very smart and lots of fun and really looks up to us for guidance. He loves our message and expresses his desire to join our church, but says that he can't make any decisions until he knows if he got into Seoul University or not. So until then, we're waiting.
Well, that's only a third of our investigators - but I'm out of time! Now at least you have a little bit of a better idea who we are meeting with and what type of situations we are dealing with. Pray for all of them if you want - haha, use their code names.
Until next week!
Elder Graf
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