Elder Benny Yamagata: Busy and Fun week!

This week has been busy and fun! Ive met with several investigators, and had several others ignore us completely! Ive jundoed for hours at a time, only to contact 15 people and get 3 numbers. Ive felt the happiness of having a successful lesson, and the pain of being stood up. Its definitely a crazy life as a missionary, but I wouldnt want to be anywhere else.

Something that is taking a long time to get used to is Jundo. 전도. Literally, its street contacting and trying to find people to teach. Its not something that was very big in Las Vegas, and in fact I never heard of it until I got to Korea. We walk down to busy places here in Ilsan, and just start trying to talk to everyone. Normally, this would be easy for me, as everyone who knows me knows that I love talking! But throw me into a different language, and I start to stutter! This week we only proselyted for 10 hours, which I guess is extremely short! Me and Elder Smith contacted 130 only this week, 20 less than last week. But it is such a hard thing sometimes. After getting shot down so many times eventually you just want to give up, go home, and just study. But you cant. These people NEED to hear the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, and we are here to give it to them! I can't let my selfish desires keep me from sharing this great message. Ive had so many crazy experiences doing this though, and this week even got my first number, in korean, by myself! I actually lost my companion for about 5 minutes while I walked about a quarter of a mile with this man! Of course, afterwards my head got as big as texas and I was rejected hard the next couple of times, my bad..... But Im still getting used to this style of Missionary Work. It always seems like in Vegas the missionaries were always working with the ward and getting referrals and always going to appointments. Here in my ward, they havent given a referral in a long time, its too much Boodam. In korea, you dont put pressure on anyone, and they have a hard time telling you how it is, unless it means to buzz off. It goes so far as to even limit how much home teaching is done!! They say its too much Boodam, or Pressure, to go to other peoples houses and try to help and strengthen them!! Its just one of those cultural things Im going to have to get used to!

We are losing a lot of our investigators in these upcoming weeks, the new wave on Gunday is starting and all the males are leaving to do their military service, no bueno! But we picked up some really cool kids and one of them looks really interested in the Gospel, so maybe we can teach them for a while here! We had a long lesson with them on Saturday, but most of it was just getting to know them. They seemed interested some what in the Gospel so we will keep trying to teach them and hopefully get them on the path back to our heavenly father.

Last night we had a long conversation about Revelation and The Priesthood, and it just gave me a renewed determination to read and study the scriptures to receive answers to my questions, my own personal revelation. I strongly encourage everyone to start taking notes while they study too! I started writing down all my thoughts and impressions this week and have definitely noticed an increase in answers and also in the amount of understanding that I have! I have came to a standstill on progress in the Book of Mormon, only because I have so many thoughts and answers that I spend most of my time writing it all down and pondering through everything!!!! So definitely consider starting to take notes!!!

Well I hope everyone has a good week and stays safe!!! Tomorrow is temple day so its my actual p-day as well. First time to the seoul temple so it will be fun!! Have a Great week!!!!

Elder Yamagata