June 8, 2015 (Week 25)

June 8, 2015

Another week bites the dust...  

Elders Song and Mortensen

Tuesday was exchanges with Elder Herron.  First time in 3 transfers, since he has been in the other district. Being with him is interesting.  His Korean voice (everybody changes their voice when they switch, its hilarious sometimes, not sure how bad mine is though) sounds like a little kid, so when jundoing with him it's super funny to see him talk with people though. He is super nice, works hard, and is very friendly, his voice is just funny.  We went and confirmed that more less actives have moved out of their address.  The system here is crazy.  I'm not sure how they get baptized, give an address, and then just leave.  Super frustrating how we are trying to bring them back, when we can't even track them down. We did English class together, and that was interesting. I sat next to a lady who kept making up weird sentences. We were talking about school, and we were making sentences for a student named "Garrett" (courtesy of Elder 이) and she kept saying weird things, like smart and handsome, and he looks in the mirror and laughed... I was kinda weirded out.  Our message was alright. Elder Herron took it down a path, and it was hard for me to keep up.  I hate getting lost when they take detours in Korean that I can't follow very well.  Overall a pretty good day with him

Wednesday was pretty good.   For jundo, to try and shake it up, we took our DVD player out and showed people the "Hope of God's Light" video.  The first guy we ran into was a gangster dude that we got an appointment with.  Interesting dude, has some health issues due to smoking and drinking (welcome to Korea) (not sure if I explained hospitals here, they are interesting). We showed him the video and talked with him about it. Good lesson, really applied to his life.  We then had a lesson with 이현철. That was pretty good.  He asked a lot of questions, and seemed interested.  Good guy, we are meeting him on Wednesday.  We ran into a lot of other cool guys, one guy named Thomas who we met with later.  

Thursday we had zone conference.  Good lesson on becoming a whole disciple of Jesus, and following him all we can.  So I started trying to figure that out,  When we did pass off with Elder Perry.  It was going pretty good until I asked him a question and couldn't understand a word he said, so I got lost in the Korean and didn't know where to go. I get so focused on trying to understand his answer, that I lose my spot in the lesson, and I can't even respond to his answer.  Super frustrating. He then said stuff about how God gives us what we need, and what we need is all we ever really wanted.  So now I'm trying to figure out what the heck I need too.  So all these different thoughts started to pull at my mind, how to deal with people, the language, myself, the fact I'm almost at 6 months, and still feel like no progress has been made. 20+ things stretching my mind, and I'm trying to figure out how to juggle all of it.  On top of that I have to walk around for several hours a day getting rejected by people on the street.  So not the best week for that. That night we had a big FHE with the ward, where you bring investigators and some families come for food and a game.  Pretty good, except I can't sit there and just talk with our investigator. 이용훈 came and brought his friend, and I couldn't just sit down and talk with them, because he is so quiet and I can't understand him.

Friday was alright. We met with Thomas, but it was a super awkward lesson.  Elder Yetter would drop the lesson on me at really awkward points in the lesson, so I wasn't sure how to go with it, or I would start, and Thomas wouldn't understand a thing I said, so that kinda killed my motivation to help out in the lesson.  If the guy cant understand what I say, what good am I doing then?  So Elder Yetter kept trying to get me to take over and whatnot, but everytime I started, he couldn't understand me... nice guy though.  After that we had a dinner with a couple more youth. Elder Yetter loves to eat and hang out with the youth.  He is trying to get a good rapport with them to get referrals, or get them to help somehow, so he always talks with them. It's good to a point, but I feel like he is too focused on them sometimes.  Good meal for me though. I somewhat talked with the youth we were there with.

Saturday was a baptism for one of the other elders. That was fun. I got to play the piano for the musical number for missionaries, but it was weird. The bishop kept having private talks with the guy for a long time. The guy baptized didn't even get to share his testimony at the service. Kinda weird. good experience though. After we had watermelon in a sprite/cherry powder kind of punch drink. pretty good stuff. After that and some jundo we came back because one of the priests said he needed help.  Turns out that he was helping someone else with their homework of describing how America is different from Korea... kind of a waste of time.  English class that night was super awkward.  The other elders didn't prepare anything, so it was me and Elder Cazier winging it by ourselves in the basic class. We spent about 40 minutes just trying to get them to talk about how school is for them and whatnot.  Really awkward when we still had like 15 minutes left and nothing to talk about.  They shared a message about the Atonement, and I gave a pretty solid testimony during it. I felt the Spirit during that, it was definitely the highlight of my day.

Sunday kinda sucked for me. Elders quorum and Gospel Principles was a bunch of guys slurring their Korean and talking about marriage, so I couldn't really understand much. Testimony meeting I sat by the Zone Leaders investigator, since they had 3 come to church. So I sat by myself the whole time, while the investigator dozed off in testimony meeting. After that we dropped off Elder Song at Seoul Station, so he can go back and do military.  He has to go back for former military training. Everybody in Korea has to do that. It's weird.  So I'm in a 3-some until Thursday.

That's been my week.  Hopefully this week will be better.  Tomorrow we are going to the temple, so should be good to go there and relax.

Love you all, take care
-Elder Mortensen

Group pic, Companion Elder Yetter far left