Monday, July 14, 2014

Almost the End of JULY?????


Holy Moly how time flies when your not paying attention!  Definitely has been a fast week, lots of stuff happened but we will keep to the important stuff! 

One of the biggest things that happened this week happened when going through some OLD records.  Not like days or weeks, more like 10 years back when we were inspired to do some former investigator calls.  This normally is not a big deal, most people are open to meeting and learning again and so we thought to fill out our investigator pool we would do some old calls.  About 1 1/2 hours in in the hot wet heat of Seoul, I hear some screaming from my room in the form of "NO WAy, NOOOOO, NU UH!!!!!"  I rushed in thinking something bad happened, and Elder Anderson hands me a record of a Kim Ju Your, someone I do not know.  I read the rest of the info, about 60, family lives in Canada, very well off, address, phone number, etc.....I grab the phone and typed in the number with hestiation, but fast because I wanted to know. Well it turns out Mr Kim Ju Your, baptised in 1993 (Wow when I was born), and refound in 2004, is Matthew.... Our most prominant investigator who had a baptismal date 2 weeks ago.  He just turned into a less active.  Hahaha, although we were kind of let down at the time we are excited to be able to teach him the gospel again and get him reactivated!  What a doozy though as our zone leaders and even Mission President were surprised to hear that! 

 

I had exchanges with Elder Kim Mi Gi this week, as his comp went on exchanges with Elder Anderson.  We walked alot, tried to do some walk jundo.  Met some pretty rude people who just keep saying yes to everything you say and then curse at your repeatedly for bothering them.  This happens frequently and I was tired of it.  Luckily, we had an appointment with someone, and the best part is that it was on the river down the street!  So we taught this man, and about 10 minutes in I decided to take an impromptu nap for about 5 minutes hahaha.  I woke up quickly and found out that we were walking to some benches up above on the bridge so he could show us something.  Woke me up a little.  Went back down and decided to stand instead of sit, and luckily I did because we saw a massive snake about 2 minutes later!  That kind of ended the lesson and we were on our way, not without first taking a picture of it!  It was soooo fat!  The rest of our day was really slow.  We walked a lot more, and it was scorching hot that day! 

Saturday we had President interviews.  As I walked into the room with my Mission President, that sense of peace and happiness that always accompanies him settled on me.  I told him his OK three years as a mission president would be wayyyy better than my best two years.  He said yeah, gives you something to look forward too when your older!  I wouldnt mind serving as a mission president, I would really want to!  We spoke of many things together, angels and demons, family history and convert retention, patience and anger, everything that was on my mind.  It was a time where I could learn from the vast amounts of wisdom that my mission president has!  Its amazing how 40 years can really give someone a better perspective on life! hahah^^.  I had a great time with him and was able to also learn about some things like Patience as he talked to me about my mission so far.  Great time!  Speaknig of Patience... 

Patience is something that I have been working on for a couple of weeks now.  Ive been searching the scriptures and talks and seeking the wisdom of other people, and giving myself up to much prayer to find more patience.  And I have found that knowing principles to build patience is good, and you should learn those first, but ultimately, those principals have to be tried and tested and applied to your life in real situations.  I have had several experiences this week where my patience has been tried and some I back away from and dont allow anger to over come me, and others I have almost fought people on the street.  It is a good examination of what I need to improve on and hopefully those things that I learn to have more patience become habits and I never again have to worry so much about losing my temper on someone.  Plus I found a good scripture in Proverbs 29 He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding: buthe that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly.

 

 

I am trying to understand people more when I contact and when I do anything to further the lords work.  I pray before hand and then try my hardest to be patient with everyone and it definitely is working.  I love it!!!! 

Anyways thats about all that happened this week, it has been unusally quiet here, today we have practice for a multi stake missionary fireside musical that we are putting on.  I am in a couple of the scenes as the main missionaries companion or people in the MTC.  It is super fun and exciting!  Me and Elder Anderson are killing it out here and we are super excited for transfer calls next week.  By the next email I will know where I am going!!!!! 

I love all of you back at home and I pray for each of you every single day!  Hope all of you pray to have Heavenly Father help you with all of your trials and problems ^^ 

Have a  great week!!! 

Elder Sun Hyung Soo 

Elder Yamagata
 
Click on the link for pictures:
 
 
 

근녕 주


그래서 재가 저금더 한글 쓰고싶어요!!!!! ^^

 

Ok Im done with the korean now!  Too much thinking involved there!!! So hows everyone at home?  Hows the weather? Let me tell you, 90 and 80% humidity is HOT!!!!!  Im sweating my butt off every single day!  This week hasnt been too eventful!  But we have been having a great time here in Dobong, usually just because me and Elder Anderson are super funny together!  We love hanging out and doing work together!  And we KILL it when we hit the streets!  We havent found many new investigators but we are working hard to do so!  

 

Lately Ive been thinking back to my own conversion story, and how I came into contact with the church.  How I investigated and how I eventually came to my own conviction that the gospel was true.  I have been wanting to relate those experiences to the people I meet, but it is so hard to relate the feelings I felt and the things that I did to become converted to the gospel.  We have been thinking about what we can do to get more people interested in the gospel, it's very hard.  Most people barely listen to us past hello, and I can tell you how many more "Next times"(translated from Korean, they literally just say next) I have had this week.  I had one man tell me "No" when I walked up, I hadnt even said hello yet!  Hahah but its whatever, we work hard every single day, talking to everybody, and hope that God will put us in the way of the one who will listen!  

 

In terms of a little cultural tidbit, because everyone likes learning about other countries!  Schools here are still not on break, they dont go until the beginning of august and then finish beginning of september.  Most of the kids still go to academy too!  Its incredible how much they study and spend time in school, but I have heard from several koreans that even though they study alot, most koreans dont learn anything!  

 

On to other mission stuff!  We met an american named Matthew the other day (different from our other Matthew, from now on the american matthew will be referred to as W&D) and had dinner with him.  He shared with us that when his homosexual uncle died, most of his family said he was going to hell for being that way.  After sharing that, elder anderson turned and told him "As a Set apart representative of Jesus Christ, and speaking on his behalf, I can tell you he is not in Hell."  The spirit was sooo strong as he uttered those words, and W&D was very happy to hear that!  It was a great lesson and we shared bits about the plan of salvation with him.  Very fun!  Later on in the week, the sisters called us and told us that they had a referral.  This man is named SHAKA hahah, and he is from you will never guess...... no really guess......

 

LAS VEGAS!!!!

 

We called him and set up an appointment, he is a nonmember but called and said he wanted to do FHE with us!  We are really excited to meet him and he was super excited to hear that I was from Vegas too!  He invited the whole District over to his house to have fhe so we are all really excited to be doing this!!!!  He seems really cool and fun!

 

The only downer this week was our other Matthew.  We just set a Baptismal DAte with him last week and we have already lost it.  He didnt come to church this past sunday and told us he doesnt want to learn anymore until he sells his houses which could take a while.  We were a little bummed about that.  

 

Something funny that happend this week is that the Ward gave us the CMIS list for all the members in the ward, and told us to visit all of them and report back any nuiances to the Bishop.  There were approximately 300 members, 40 are active.  We visited almost 4 pages worth already and almost none live there anymore, Its very sad how many unaccounted Less Actives there are in Seoul, but just shows us how much we need to work on getting them back to Church and activity.  

 

Well enough of me rambling, we are about to go play a giant game of soccer and have some fun!  I hope all of you at home have a great week and enjoy your time with each other!  Pray for all the missionaries!!!!

 

Elder Sun Hyung Soo (Yamagata)
 
Click the link below for pictures

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/117955201172198470717/albums/6033137585034322801?cfem=1