Tuesday, December 8, 2015

December 7, 2015 (Week 51)

December 6, 2015

Alright, let's see how fast I can type with cold fingers... (the place where we email from is freezing)

World's Smallest Man
First thing...I'm getting transferred to the east coast of Korea,  Gangneung.  My companion might be either another Zone Leader who is about to die, or an elder one transfer below me... (The AP called a couple days ago asking if I was ready to go senior companion... they've never done that before that I know of.)

Monday we visited a member for his birthday, then came back, ate, and played ping pong and some games with the district.  That was pretty quiet, but I'm good with that.  After that, we went over to Nokbeon again, for exchange number 3 with Elder Apigo, haha.  That was pretty fun.

Tuesday with Elder Apigo we studied, then jundoed for a couple hours, then we bounced back to Shin Chone for dinner with Elder Grey (a temple missionary... Being temple missionary here would be pretty sweet, by the way).  He is a super nice guy.  He has been here for a couple months, and has been learning with us to learn Korean. He's a really nice guy, that was a fun dinner, before getting told that we had to teach English class and give the message, with no prep time... that wasn't cool, but it turned out alright.

Wednesday we had zone meeting.  The whole thing was on the new Christmas video, "A Savior is Born".  The mission is doing a huge initiative to push this video, and getting members involved. Let me tell you, it's kinda hard to get stuff going online when you have no access to the Internet... (Pres. Sonksen said we are never getting iPads here in the mission... kind of a bummer, but I'm fine without one) so yeah, zone meeting was kinda boring, not a whole lot of new stuff.  They've already talked about the new program a lot before this.  After that, we were supposed to meet a couple of people, but they bailed on us cause of unknown reasons... kinda lame, but we got to go to a member meal, which was cool.  They bought a ton of Sahm Gyup Sar (the thick bacon) with lettuce and hot sauce and rice... such a good meal, it was almost like a buffet there was so much.  That was a good time, we showed them the new video, and shared our Christmas testimony.

Thursday we jundoed for a while, then met Kim Dong Ho, our pastor buddy. That was interesting. He started to go off into Revelations about the one man who will be standing at the last day when Jesus comes, and pulling out more weird Revelations stuff... It's so frustrating when people pull out Revelations... it's super figurative and everybody points to random stuff to fit their point of view. We tried to teach him, but Elder Ashby got a little mad with him, and it was overall just a weird lesson. Turns out, he might be part of a church that nobody likes, even more than us... really weird church, they go to over churches acting as investigators, then stand up in the middle of worship service and start proving the pastor to be a fool, just to get more people to join their church. Plus, all their churches are hidden, and nobody can tell where they go.  It's a really weird church...

After that Elder Ashby had more Zone Leader stuff to do, so I talked with Elder Bluhm, who served out in 강릉 (Gangneung)... so I heard a lot about it, not knowing I would be going there in a week. That was pretty fun time.

Friday we planned, then jundoed... not much exciting happened that day.

Saturday we jundoed, and did English class.  Nothing exciting, until that night.  We did caroling.  That was pretty fun time, singing Christmas hymns in the cold.  Right after we stopped that, we got the call that I was leaving.  Elder Judd is leaving too, that's all for our district.  Pretty fun time.

Group picture
Sunday we went to church, said goodbye to people. Then that night we had dinner with Ahn Gyung Chan. He loves the missionaries and had us all over. Really good meal, really nice guy.

Not much else happened this week. Tomorrow we have temple, then I leave on Thursday! I'm stoked to go live on the coast and just become kinda forgotten out there, so to speak.

Take care, love you all

-Elder Mortensen

Mark 12:33-34

November 30, 2015 (Week 50)

November 30, 2015

And yet another week goes by...

Playing Pilgrims
Monday we played soccer, ate chicken (a lotttt of chicken......) then got some food from a member, then we taught Ee Yoon Heng. He is doing good, progressing slowly. He is scared of member pressure (big issue in Korea) so he doesn't want a member at the lesson, and doesn't want to come to church... but other than that he is doing good, I guess. Hard to tell if he just learns, or is trying to honestly find the truth. He's a really fun guy, I hope he finds the truth here.

Tuesday after studies me and Elder Judd went on splits so Elder Han and Elder Ashby could go to some leadership meeting, so we jundoed around for a couple hours (about 5 hours, to be exact) and man, that was kinda cold. I hadn't pulled out the gloves or scarf yet, so it was a pretty cold day.  We met some cool people, especially one old guy.  He had us sit down and asked us what we believe about the afterlife, so we taught him the Plan of Salvation for about 30 minutes. I love people like that. I'm not sure if I'll ever see him again, but who knows, maybe that changed something for him.   After we switched back, we met Kahng Bong Doo. We sat down with him, and that was about all I did. Elder Ashby started going one direction, then the guy took it some other way, and I got lost and so we all just kinda stopped talking. Elder Ashby couldn't understand him either... so yeah.. that was an interesting lesson.  After that was English class! I love English class! It's so much fun! (hopefully you note the sarcasm...:) )

Wednesday I went with Elder Collins on an exchange!  That was pretty fun. We had a district meeting, then we were supposed to meet our pastor, Kim Dong Ho, but he bailed on us, so we had play practice for our play this Saturday.  That was pretty fun, although a lot of time... After that we jundoed around for a bit, then came back to the church so I could talk with Elder Han. We talked for quite a while, but needed. It's good to talk with others and get perspective on things. He was good about it. He's super nice and a good guy and he helped a lot. That night we taught Ee Yoon Heng again, and did the Plan of Salvation. It was kinda funny, he got so caught up on the the concept of hell.  Every five minutes, "so where is hell?" "Hang on, this is Spirit World.." "Is hell a kingdom?" "No, not really. All of these are good places, places of glory." "So where is hell? "We don't really believe in that kind of hell"... It's really interesting how different our church believes, when you think about it. IF (but it's not) IF it was false, we would be the biggest frauds ever. Priesthood, Plan of Salvation, Prophets, Book of Mormon, Temples, we do a lot of weird stuff from the world's perspective.   Sorry for that tangent... It was pretty crazy though, he couldn't understand we didn't believe in a hell haha.

Thursday we changed back, did some more play and choir practice, since we were still really rough. We did that, then had ward mission meeting. That was interesting again. One of the first things the ward mission leader asks is "so why don't we have baptisms?" "uh... I dunno, you tell me." (Our district is killing it everywhere except baptismal dates.)  All of us are doing good, just the dates are not happening. Kinda weird, even the APs called and asked why we have no dates.... so yeah, getting a little pressure on that.  After we went to the Fillmore's house for Thanksgiving, that was fun. President Sonksen gave us permission to go there longer than usual, so we got to just hang out as a mini mixed family. It was super fun, tender mercy for God giving me an awesome Thanksgiving.
Pizza with the group

Friday was pretty much a lot of jundo.

Saturday we had a Thanksgiving play performance. I played the piano. It was videoed, but for some reason it won't email. Sorry....

Sorry, out of time, doing alright though.

Elder Mortensen

John 15:9