November 16, 2015 (Week 48)

November 16, 2015

So this week,

Temple Visit

Monday we didn't do much, went to Dong De Moon so Elder Ashby could get some shirts.  I looked at some coats for winter, but didn't get anything... yet.  I picked up a pretty good coat in this house, so I'll use that until it doesn't work anymore.  After P-Day, we had a couple appointments canceled, so we walked around all night and did some calls.

Tuesday we went on a mini exchange with one of the APs. We taught Kim Dong Ho, and mainly it was just Kahng In Ho that taught most of it... us, nor the members really talked much. Good lesson though, Kim really liked it. Kinda hard though. Since he is a pastor, he can't really make it out to church... Catch 22 right now... He really likes reading the Book of Mormon though. We did some jundo with Kahng after, then he took off. That night was just English class. Pretty boring again.... teaching 60 year old guys who think they are already pro at English isn't that fun... especially when you are the only one teaching. Elder Ashby is helping all the white people learn Korean, so it's just me pretty much.

Wednesday I was with Elder Judd. He and Elder Han Jung Suk and the other people in our house. They both just moved in.  Elder Judd is fresh from America. He is from Syracuse Utah.  Elder Han lived in Draper for several years, so he's pretty much fluent in English, kinda nice. So we went on exchanges, which consisted of riding the subway to 4 different places to give members some treats, since it was PePeRo day. PePeRo is pretty much just a big candy company. So imagine a Hersey's day in America, where you go nuts with buying people Hershey's bars. So we did that, kinda took a lot of time, but was kinda fun.  We would stop by, and they would start laughing that we cared about PePeRo day, since nobody really celebrates it. Kinda fun to see them start laughing when we pulled out the PePeRo. (In America its usually called POCKY sticks, pretty good).  That night, we taught Lee Yoon Heng. He called us up, and wanted to meet. Turns out it was for a class interview thing, he wanted to interview us about our beliefs. So we kinda gave him a basic overview for his class, then agreed to meet, to actually teach, not just help his class out.  Nice guy though, he was really funny.

Thursday we finally had a meeting with a ward mission leader.  They finally called us one.  We met with him, and the first thing he said was "why are there no baptisms here?", which is weird, because the bishop told us the day before that members shouldn't ask that. He wants to focus on less-actives and retention, not just baptizing.  You wouldn't believe how many less actives there are.  Only 150 active members and about 500-ish less active... and about 80% of them have moved, changed their number, or nobody knows who they are... almost impossible to keep track of them. so yeah... kinda getting pulled two ways, not one way with bishop and ward mission leader... ought to be interesting... I would rather trust the bishop though.  Other than that, we didn't do much, just some jundo and calls.
Friday we just jundoed and did weekly planning.  We had dinner with other missionaries, and a member, that was kinda fun.

Korean War Memorial

Saturday, in the afternoon we met Jo Jin Suk, who called us and wanted to meet. We met him and had a good talk, that was a fun.  After that, we went back to the house, so we could make three batches of cookies for English, and our investigator.. so that killed a lot of time... later, running late to Lincoln and Ellie's.

Not a lot of time, but things are going okay. Kim and You are still meeting us, which is great!

Love ya,
Elder Mortensen