Raccoons and the restoration

Another week down.  So I'm sitting here, trying to think about what I should write, and I honestly can't think of anything.  Usually, I have a pretty cool story to tell or something funny that happened but, thinking about it, this week was pretty average.  Hmmm.  haha, oh well, I'll walk you through it anyway.

 

So It began last Monday, P-day.  We emailed, shopped, went home, cleaned the house, Elder McDonald finished unpacking and moving in, and I studied Korean for 4 hours until we had to leave the house at 6.  That's basically all I do in my extra time.  Study Korean.  It's good though, I'm really starting to actually learn it for real now.  Hopefully I'll learn it fast.

 

Tuesday was our first district meeting of the transfer.  We have some new people in our district so it was fun to get to know everyone that I'm going to be seeing each week for the rest of the transfer.  After district meeting, we spent the rest of the day trying to find less actives and then we had a dinner that night with one of our members that night.  Korean food is incredible, I'm never going to get tired of it. 

 

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were kind of all the same.  Full of talking to people on the street, searching for missing less actives, meal appointments with an investigator (they took us to a really nice american restaurant), and meeting with investigators.  We don't have that many investigators right now.  You can count them all on one hand.  But it's okay, because we're going to try to find more - hopefully we will.

 

Now, this is where it gets fun.  Saturday night, one of our members called us and told us that we were going to be teaching our youth in church because the youth teacher couldn't make it and that we could choose the topic.  So what did we do?  We taught them the first lesson.  Haha, it's practically all we can do.  So we went in there and had an hour long discussion about the restoration and why it's important, it was actually really good.  At the end, we committed them (we're missionaries! Of couse we committed them!) to pray about the message of the restoration to find out for themselves if it is true.  Haha, it was pretty awesome.  Then, the rest of the day was spent doing the same exact thing we did on Wednesday-Saturday.  However, at around 8:00pm, a pack (herd?) of 6 asian raccoons crossed the road infront of us.  Of couse, we snuck up to them in the bushes and tried to get close.  They eventually came to us and were sniffing us/ walking around us.  It was pretty funning.  Two young boys (11 or 12 years old) saw what we were doing and came in to join.  I started talking to one of the boys and then ended up talking about our church to him, and gave him a Book of Mormon.  He was really excited to be talking to an american and couldn't stop saying thankyou (in english) after I gave him the book.  I never thought raccoons would help me teach someone about the Book of Mormon, haha.

 

Anyway, so it was an average week, sorry for it to sound boring.  But, hey!  It's not!  Because I'm a missionary! And that's a pretty cool thing to be.

 

Elder Graf

The Start of a New Transfer

This week has been full of ups and downs. After we received our transfer calls last Monday, Elder Ward began packing his bags and I began to think "How in the world am I going to do this?" I'm only a third transfer, and now it's up to me to take the lead in all of our teaching situations and dealings with members and non-members alike. The days went by very fast. We spent our last few days together visiting with all of our members and investigators so that Elder Ward could say goodbye to them (they all loved him so much, he's been here since January). Wednesday night, our last night together, was spent having a goodbye dinner in the church with close ward members. Before we knew it, Thursday was here and it was time to go to the mission office in Daejeon to switch companions.

I can't believe my time as a greenie is already over. Elder Ward was really the best trainer I could've asked for. I'm so glad for the opportunity I had to be trained by him. We got to the mission office, found our new companions, said goodbye, and took off. My new companion is Elder Mcdonald. He's in his 14th transfer, so he's almost done with his mission. He also looks korean, but he was adopted into an American family when he was a baby so he's not really korean. The very first thing we did together was go to Costco, yes they have one in Korea and Elder McDonald had Adam Farrell's (an old missionary that is home now) old costco card. We stalked up with costco kettle sea salt chips, costco muffins, and got a slice of costco pizza on our way out. Ahhh, It was so nice.

Then my job began. It was really weird, but all of the sudden I could speak so much more korean than I thought. I was telling taxi drivers where to go, making phone calls with our investigators, introducing my new companion to the members, and giving book of mormons out to people on the street. I don't really know how to explain it, but all I know is that the Lord is helping me do this. I'm not fluent at all, I know nothing. But when I need to say something that is related to what I need to do as a missionary, I can say it. It might not be detailed or perfect, but I'm able to still say all that I need to.

Yesterday when we were riding the bus, I felt like I should say hi to the person next to me. So I did and after chatting for a little bit about where he's going, where he lives, works, etc, he told me "Wow, your korean is really good". I laughed and just said "No, I'm just a missionary. Have you heard about the book of mormon?". Haha, anyway, I ended up giving him a copy. Its incredible what the Lord can help me do.

Well I'm running out of time, but I'm doing great here in Gunsan. The church is true!

-Elder Graf

Having a Cow

Wow, I love being a missionary.   Seriously, coolest thing ever.  This week we found and met with three different new investigators.   Two of them are college-age siblings.  They called us because they saw our English advertisment in the newspaper.  The first time we met, we just introduced ourselves and what we do as missionaries/English teachers and how we teach English for 30 minutes and then talk about or church for the other 30.  They said they would be fine with the 30/30 program and we scheduled to meet again.  Then, we met again just barely on Saturday and it was super good.  We taught them common phrases and expressions for 30 minutes and then took them on a tour of the church for the other 30.  During the tour, we talked about why we come to church and who God is.  They don't have any religious background, but they were really open to our message.  We showed them how to pray, and they said the would when they got home.  At the end as we were saying goodbye, they both said that it was really fun to meet with us and that they're excited for next time.  Sweet!

 

Then, later on Saturday, we had our big English Class.  About 10 people came this week and I was going to be teaching the class while Elder Ward worked with the kids who don't have many English skills in another room.  But it's okay, I actually know English so teaching it can't be too hard, right?  Anyway, I wanted to share with them popular and fun phrases to say in English.  One of them: "Don't have a cow".  Oh boy, I didn't think that one through.  As the time came for me to explain it to the class and why we use it, I went into a little too much detail.  It went something like this:

 

"So, 'don't have a cow'... This is a really common phrase usually used when you're telling somebody to calm down.  This is what having a cow means:  Giving birth to a baby is really painful I'm sure."    ......ummmm.... In my mind, I was thinking why did I just say that, over half the people in the class are over-40 years old korean moms.  How would I know about child birth?  But I already started to dig my hole, so of course it would go deeper.... I continued.... "Child birth is no fun.  Someone who gives birth to a baby is in a lot of pain and is freaking out, probably really angry and loud too"....  WHAT IN THE WORLD WAS I SAYING..... "So imagine this:  Giving birth to a cow.  Cows are really big right. Like. Really big." ....awkard.... "If you were giving birth to a cow, uhhh"   ....I started realizing how awkward I was sounding and tried to dig myself out... "Well, hmmm, cows are big...... ummm,  yeah.  heheheh, birth is painful right?  Um, so cows and birth with pain and freaking out.  Yeah, that's right... freaking out.  Don't have a cow"

 

And that's how I explained it.  Hahahaha, dang it.  I'm not sure they quite unstood.  It probably also didn't help that I was using hand/arm expressions when I was describing how big a cow is and what it would be like to give birth to it.  Anyway, they're all fluent at English now. Yay for English.

 

Anyway, it was a great week.  Full of funny stories, full of missionary work, and full of Korean - that part is getting better.  We're getting spoiled too, one of our past-investigators who is REALLY rich took us out to a fine dining restraunt on the side of a lake where food on the menu was over $200.  That was INCREDIBLE.  Also, we just got our transfer call and I'm staying here in Gunsan, Elder Ward is leaving.  So I'm here until at least September!  Yeah!  Too bad for Elder Ward though, he really did so much for this place and all the members/investigators are going to miss him.  Anyway, until next week!

 

Elder Crap

Back to Primary

I remember when I was in primary and Mom would stand next to me and whisper in my ear everything I needed to say in my talk.  Then, when I was in Valiant 10 or 11 or so, I was old enough to read my own - that was a big deal.  And yup, that was basically yesterday.

 

So my talk was in Korean, that's pretty cool, right?  Was it understandable?...... mmmmm sure, haha, ask the members.  Basically, all week I worked on it.  First, I chose a topic - faith.  Then, I wrote it out in English.  Then, I spent the rest of the week translating it.  I wrote the entire talk in Korean and finished late Saturday night.  I didn't have anytime to practice it before, but I knew most of the words and grammar forms so I felt pretty confident.  So there I was, sitting up on the stand, and I realized that I would of course forget everything the second I said "hello" up at the pulpit.  But it's okay, I had it all written out right?  Right. So that's what I did, haha, I just read my entire talk.

 

It turned out okay, I guess.  I mean, I only butchered a couple words.  As I started my talk, I tried to make a lot of eye contact at the beginning, but as the talk went on I slowly stopped doing that as frequently and just keep reading it.  By the time I finished, I realized I hadn't looked up in five minutes.  Dang it! haha, oh well.  I bore my testimony on faith, said how important it was, forgot to honorify God when I said he will bless us (that's a big deal in Korean) and said amen. DONE.  So I read my talk like I was in Primary, but all the members afterwards said it was good.  I asked a 15 year old member what it was on and he said "faith, right?" and that was enough success for me haha. 

 

First talk down, hopefully I won't have to give another one for a while.  I'm actually out of time to write anymore, but REALLY QUICKLY, this last week was really good.  Transfers are coming up next week, so I might be leaving Gunsan.  That'd be really said, I love it so much here.  We found more less actives and 3 new investigators, how cool is that? Super cool.  Anyway, so we're doing really good.  Until next week!

 

Elder Graf

Piece of Cake

This week was FULL of planning.  Two weeks ago, President Shin came and told us about his new goals for the mission - to have 2000 active members per stake within 3 years.  So, Elder Ward and I did the math and figured out how many people we need to baptize and how many we need to re-activate by the end of this year for our ward to be on track towards the stake's goal.  Right now we're at 25 members, and by the end of the year we need to have 60.  So, we got to work and spent hours looking through the hundreds of people in the old church records again and marking where they are on our map.  Because of Old-Korea's street/address system being basically the most random thing in the world, finding them on the map is hard enough.  Then we have to go find the house in person, sometimes it's impossible.  There's so many people, and we definitely have a long way to go.

 

Later in the week, President and Sister Shin came and visited our house for interviews.  When we informed them about our master plan of 60 people and how we're going to do it, Sister Shin just said "Easy! Just baptize 20 people and reactive another 20!".  Piece of Cake, right?  Haha, I love how positive and determined our mission president and his wife is.  It's a big goal, especially for Gunsan, but it's TOTALLY possible and President and Sister Shin completely believe it is as well - 할수있어요!  So we got to work again, and BAM - found two new investigators and five less actives.  And, the investigators came to church with us yesterday as well.  Awesome, right?

 

So, the work is going well.  There's a lot to do, there's not enough time, but it's going to be all worth it.  So there I was on Sunday after church, feeling all postive about missionary work and all when the 1st counselor in our ward came up to me and announced that I would be giving a full talk next week in church.

 

World.  Shattered.

 

You would think that they would have learned their lesson a couple weeks ago by making me give the opening prayer when I said that we're grateful that we can partake of the flerbeadlkjf.  But nope, they apparently have the courage to listen to me butcher their language up at the pulpit for 20 minutes.  Piece of Cake again, right?  Right.  Haha, whelp, you'll DEFINITELY be hearing about this upcoming talk in next weeks email, I'm sure it will be a riot.

 

Anyway, that'll sure be fun.  Talk to you all next week.

Elder Grape

Star Spangled Banner

Another Monday already?  The heck?  Where does the time go on a mission??

 

Anyway, life is a party as a missionary as always.  Today was kind of a let down though.  Our whole district decided we wanted to go to the beach in Buan (just to play on the beach, not in the water of course).  Super cool, right?  We bought water guns, a volleyball, towels, and we were READY.  We even got approval from our Mission President (don't worry, Mom, this was allowed).  Anyway, Elder Ward and I woke up early, got ready, and quickly went to the bus terminal for the 1 1/2 hour ride to Buan.  There, we waited for the rest of our district to arrive from their areas.  When they got there, we all went to eat lunch and then started to go to the beach.  But first, we checked the return bus schedule to see what time we all had to leave to go back to our areas and OF COURSE, Gunsan had one bus leaving in 20 minutes and another in 4 hours.  Because 4 hours would be too long and we wouldn't get back home in time, we had to take the bus RIGHT THEN to go back home.  So we went to Buan just to eat lunch and then leave and come back home.  Everyone else went to the beach without us.  Oh well, other time I guess.....  Haha it was fun seeing a new city though, especially a beach/touristy city like Buan.

 

Lesson learned, check return bus times before you go.  But anyway, mission work in Gunsan has been going really well.  This last week, our new Mission President, President Shin (pronouced sheen), came.  He is incredible, we are all so excited to be working with him.  He's definitely set the bar for us high.  While investigators are awesome, he really wants to make the focus also on members and less actives to strengthen the wards and stakes.  Right now, our stake has about 300-400 active members.  It's President Shin's goal to make every stake in Korean have the church standard of 2000 active members per stake.  So Elder Ward and I quickly jumped on finding all the less actives we can even more than we were before.  So far we've only found two or three, but we still have about 300 more to hunt down. 

 

As far as investigators go, we had an awesome experience this last week.  We're teaching this wonderful person named Hahni.  She is from the Phillipeans and is married to a Korean.  She can't speak Korean though, so we had her attend the American Air Force Base Branch with us this last week.  Earlier in the week, Elder Ward and I noticed it was the Fourth of July, and then said something like "cool" and that was the end of our celebration.  But at the Branch on base, the branch president during the meeting's opening said "We will now begin our meeting by singing the Star Spangled Banner after which brother so-and-so will offer our opening prayer".  It was kind of nice to have that small slice of home and July 4th while we are over here in Korea.  Yay for America!

 

Anyway, that's the end of my time, so I have to go.  Until next week!

 

Elder Graf

Jibberish and more

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