Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Speaking as one having Authority! 3-8-15

Wow this week went by super fast!  I felt like it was just yesterday I was emailing everyone!  Great to hear that everyone is safe

This week was definitely a roller coaster and a half.  The first thing that I wanted to share is that for anyone looking for a great read in the bible, I recommend Ecclesiastes.  The writer really shows the beauty of the transitoriness of this world.  That everything is temporary, but with the knowledge of the plan of salvation, we know that everything from this world will be left behind, but our relationships, loved ones, etc will move with us onto the next life.  I'm eternally grateful for the plan of salvation and the knowledge of the gospel of Jesus christ in my life!

This week also we dropped our investigator David, the semi-crazy guy from last week!  WE taught him for 2 hours and finished our discussion of the plan of salvation, the validity of the Book of Mormon, etc with 2 Nephi 33:10-11:

10 And now, my beloved brethren, and also Jew, and all ye ends of the earth, hearken unto these words and believe in Christ; and if ye believe not in these words believe in Christ. And if ye shall believe in Christ ye will believe in these words, for they are the words of Christ, and he hath given them unto me; and they teach all men that they should do good.
 11 And if they are not the words of Christ, judge ye—for Christ will show unto you, with power and great glory, that they are his words, at the last day; and you and I shall stand face to face before his bar; and ye shall know that I have been commanded of him to write these things, notwithstanding my weakness.
What a powerful ending as I looked him in the eye and told him, with the support of my two companions at the time, in essence, "Well David, we will see you at the Judgement Bar then, and I and my companions and millions will testify to you of the truthfulness of God's word. "  He felt the Spirit as the words, not my words but the words of the Spirit, came from my mouth.  He told us he wants to be remembered as the man who told us that we believe in a false book and prophet and mock the bible.  As we left the cafe, my companions elder day and olson both said "Yeah, we will remember him at the last day."  It was slightly funny, but I came away from that cafe that day knowing that we were servants of God, that we spoke the words of Christ, and that the Lord protects and testifies through his servatns.  What an extremely powerful experience!  I know it sounds like we were rude, but we only spoke the things taht the Spirit gave us.  We told each other and ourselves not to argue or fight, and thats all he wanted to do and tried to prove every concept taht we believed in was wrong.  We spoke as ones having authority!  It was a great spiritual experience, and we walked home singing Called to Serve loud and proud.  
 This week we also had an awesome miracle of a man coming to the church and ringing our doorbell.  We answered the door to a wonderful: "I want to know about the Latter Day Saint Church."  We were in the middle of weekly planning, but you better believe we dropped everything to teach this man.  Taught for 30 minutes before having to go back and finish.  What a great miracle from God!  He was supposed to come to church on Sunday but didn't make it for some reason.  We don't have his number so we are praying that he will come again.  
Well this week was amazing, it all goes faster and faster and snowballs until we come to the end of our time.  One of my companions once gave me this reason for time going faster as we get older, longer, etc:  "Well if you think about it, when you were 5, the reason why it seemed like a year was so long was because it was 1/5 of your life.  Now your 21 and its only 1/21 of your life.  As you get older eventually its 1/60 or 1/80 of your life."  Some profound words, but true, as we get older, or longer into something, the time we spend in it becomes shorter because of its percentage, on the whole.  Remember that as we go about our time here.  Our time here on Earth is precious and needs to be spent wisely.  This time is a time for men to prepare to meet God.  I pray that each one of us is doing all we can to prepare to meet God. Reading the scriptures, regular church attendance and sacrament, temple attendance is all fine and dandy.  But also, spending time with your family (or husband/wife), practicing skills like music or art, increasing our learning, understanding, wisdom.  All of this is extremely important to returning to the presence of our Heavenly Father.  Remember this: Therein Lies wisdom brethren (and sisters).
I love all of you.  May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ fall upon all of you this week!
With much love, 

Elder Yamagata
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Hey family just gonna drop in this week! 3-1-15

Hey family just gonna drop in this week!

So first off, last monday I spent 60,000원 on stuff at a 문구... I dont want to talk about it.... 

This week we had a huge miracle of having a couple of lessons for the first time since a long time ago!  We met thought with a man named David.  A very fun and exciting man... haha.  he is obsessed with Daniel 9? I think, I dont remember.  He tried to prove to me and Elder Day, that Jesus is the Christ, with math!  Oh man that was such a hard lesson.  Finally got control of the situation and testified to him about the restoration, which he of course denied was true.  He has to, hes an investigator haha.  But anyways we were blessed with being able to meet him and he accepted a soft baptismal invitation so pray for him!!!

During district meeting this week we talked about Unity and being one with your companion!  Totally went by the spirit as I taught and the sPirit guided that conversation, of that I can testify.  It was powerful, and everyone realized their responsibility in the district and to their companion.  We ended with a group "amen on 3" that was super fun!  The spirit was strong! 

Also randomly this week a lady came up to us and stopped us momentarily, asking us to visit her mom in the hopsital, gave us the room number, and then left.  So we decided the next day would be perfect, and came to find a woman in her bed, early 90's and very frail.  It was a sad sight, but the daughter had such hope in us coming.  She fully expected her mother to be healed because of our presence alone.  She had us pray for her mom and then we left.  Suddenly got a call on saturday to go visit this woman again and again pray for her.  I saw even more faith as a lot of family members were there and all got up to welcome us into the room that the mother was in.  They all expressed reverence at our presence and it was amazing how strong the spirit was.  I got confirmation that that woman was not ready to leave yet, and she would yet have more time on earth.  It was amazing!

This week had been extremely hard on me in finding though.  These past couple of weeks piled on me and I started to lose hope in misionary work in kroea.  I was ready to give up on the older generation of koreans here.  "They are too lost in their own culture," I thought.  But Stake conference was this weekend, and Sister Christensen, our presidents wife, spoke to the stake on sunday.  She talked about testimonies and conversion.  It really touched me in a different way, inspiring faith and hope in me to continue to do my work.  I felt the Spirit confirm to me how important it was for me to keep talking with people and work my butt off and now let anything get in the way.  I felt renewed strength and hope for the korean people instead of wanting to "dust my feet" of them.  

Finally the last "event" to happen this week.  I had some deep impressions this week with the Korean Elder in my district, Elder Song.  I had a distinct impression that he was not fully trusting his companion with their investigators, area, etc.  I prayed about it and realized I needed to talk to him.  So I prayed again, asking for the gift of tongues to be active and his Spirit to be there as we talked.  I called him in and then began talking to him, the gift was there and the langauge was no problem. Eventually ended up talking to him about how I felt like he was "Older Brothering (theres no word in english sorry!)" us in the house.  Eventually we just worked out problems between us and the spirit immediately flooded us telling us that needed to happen!  It was great and we hugged it out at the end.  

So thats what happened this week!  Not too much but powerful expereiences for all of us here in the Dong Dae Moon!  We are excited for this upcoming week!  

Just wanted to share one thing from personal study this week from a talk called The Strength of Being Clean: a study of The quest for Unearned Happiness.  


"Happiness must be earned, like other good things, else it cannot be held. It can be 1deserved only where its price has been somehow paid. Nothing worth having is given away in this world, nor in any other that we know of. No one rides dead head on the road to happiness. He who tries to do so, never reaches his destination....No one is ever miserable who would truly pay the price of happiness. No one is really miserable who has not tried to cheapen life."

This was a great eye opener to me this week. WE have to constantly be stiving to be happy!  Happiness takes effort!  Work hard this week!

Elder Seon Hyeung Soo

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