May 25, 2015 (Week 23)

May 25, 2015

At the Peak

Alrighty.... After email we actually hiked 북한산 [Bukhan Mountain] for P-Day. Hiking in Korea isn't a long huge endeavor, but it is a pretty brutal couple of hours. We were pretty much just rock climbing for half of our climb up to the top, but it was pretty fun. Great view too. We got to see Seoul plopped in the middle of mountains again, helps a person gain perspective on how little we are.     After P-Day I tried passing off with the zone leaders. For that you review vocab, How To Begin Teaching, scriptures, a jundo, and a lesson.... so much stuff.  I did scriptures and jundo just fine, but when it came to How To Begin Teaching, I couldn't figure out how the heck to get to know the person (seeing how I never did that before the mission) so I froze up there. Elder Pons tried to talk to me about how all they ask is that you try and just get it out, so I felt even worse for not being able to do that. We had a pretty long talk about it.  After that, we went and jundoed for an hour, then planned. after that Elder Yetter tried his hand at talking with me. He actually did a great job, he helped me out a lot more than anybody has. That was a good talk, but I was still in a funk.

The next day during lunch, Elder Herron/ Elder 송  have a great member to help teach their investigator, and since he is rich, he took us all out to get 삼겹살. That is just suuuper thick pieces of bacon, that you can make into a meal.  Once we ate like our 4 pieces between me Elder Herron and Elder Yetter, the member would request another round.  We probably had like 5-6 rounds of the meat.  He also bought us Sprite, so we are ballparking that he spent around a couple hundred on the meal... not cheap.  Later that day we met with 이용훈 and got some food and taught him. The meal was great for getting him to open up and talk with us, and he started to actually have a conversation with us. The lesson was the gospel of Jesus Christ. After the lesson he agreed to a baptismal date (the 6th of June, but that has to be bumped back a week, since he missed church due to his dad being sick). I should be stoked, but I'm just afraid that he doesn't really know what it is, or what repentance/faith is. I know he just barely heard of the stuff, but I just want to be sure that he actually knows what is going to happen.  The Less Active rate in Korea is ridiculous. On paper we have like 80000 members, but probably only 5-8000 are "active" members.  Super crazy how life gets in the way here.  So that was the highlight of the day. That night Elder Yetter tried to talk to me about my funk I'm in, but I dunno, I guess I'll get over it eventually, probably whenever I finally pass off.

Wednesday was cool. District meeting with Elder Herron was strange. He was super scatter-brained, and always had like half finished thoughts, that never really connected, it seemed. But it was a great meeting none the less.  It was about hope and enduring to the end.  Great guy, I could tell he really cared about this subject, and that really helped me out a lot.  After that we met with 방석규.  We taught him the plan of salvation, and he took a bunch of notes and stuff. Seems pretty interested, but won't commit to baptism until he gets some conviction.  He has agreed to read, come to church, and even English class though. He seems like he has a sincere desire to know, just wish he could get that answer.  After him we did some jundo, and the last person we met was 이진복.  He is like 40, and feels super lonely and doesn't really like his church.  He wanted to see our church right then, so we took him there, and he agreed to meet the next day and come to church (didn't both times, and now isn't answering calls....) super cool when we met him though.

Thursday was just a lot of jundo. We had like 3 appointments cancel on us, and so we jundoed for like 7 hours that day.  However, one guy we sat down with, owned a restaurant that we were at.  So his son in law brought us free Cokes, so that was cool.  That night we ran into a guy who volunteered to buy us drinks, but when he did, he got us tea.  So we waited for a minute, then went back in and exchanged it haha. People in Korea can be nice, it's just super rare haha  I also finally got letters from you (General Conference Ensigns and comics). Letters from Grandma and Grandpa Mortensen and Emily Mortensen. Will you tell them thank you?  I'm not sure how to send stuff from here.  By the way, I sent some things home with Elder Whitlock.  Hopefully he gave them to you.  Either mail or called, I'm not sure. If not, call him on FB or something.

Friday was a lot of sitting around. We sat around in weekly planning until 3, then had visitor center from session from 6-8, so we didn't have a lot time to do much.

Saturday was good, yet kinda bad.  We met with a guy named 이희수.  He is a Chinese guy who has been looking for a job here for a year.  Nobody here is nice to him, some guys cheated him out of his money, and he has no way to get a job, or go back to China to see his son. Also his wife died a couple years ago.   So his life is pretty crappy right now, so that's why he agreed to meet us...to see why God isn't helping him out right now.

Sunday we got 방석규  to come to church.  He seemed pretty interested and involved with the meetings, hopefully that will help him.  We just jundo-ed and studied after meetings.

Catching Crabs

Today we woke up at 5 to get ready to help the ward with a ward picnic today. Since it is Buddha's birthday, Korea takes a holiday.  So we got permission to go to Seoul South Mission, and have the picnic on an island off the coast.  Super cool.  We got there and hiked around the island for a while, then went and ate lunch.  After that, the tide got super low on the beach, so we could walk on mud for like 10 minutes, and still not hit where the tide was. The people here go nuts trying to catch these little crabs in the mud.  Some people got like 50 of them.  So many people were going for them, it was quite fun.  Spent all day out in the sun though, so we are all kinda fried.  That's why I'm emailing so late.

Love you all, sorry the email kinda died right there, gotta run,
-Garrett

Group shot on the peak