June 13, 2016 (Week 78)

June 13, 2016

Oki doki.

Branch President and Family

Monday, we went on the hike with the branch members. That was cool, good time. The festival was pretty sweet. A lot of sellers, some amusement rides, all that jazz.  There was more cultural stuff that we wanted to check out, but due to the hike, that was kinda hard.  After that was just Family Night.

Tuesday I was with Elder Coleman on exchanges.  That was a good time. Today we started out our advertising at the festival. We found a little bridge in the middle of the two walkways, so we set up camp there, and then advertised for Gospel and English, but when nobody really went for gospel, we focused more on English, since everybody here is affected by that.  It's hard to describe how much they study/like/need English. You walk down a street and can count more English academies than cars on the road it seems. After, we met So Hahn Suck, the 89 year old recent convert. Good man. Nothing else super special happened..

Wednesday was an interesting district meeting. I planned it all in just regular English, then just felt the need to do the whole thing in Korean, so it was a little rough, but it was good. Talked a lot about the Spirit.  There's a great talk called "Know thyself, control thyself, give thyself".  Kind of an older one, but really good.   After that, I did teaching program with sister Jo Hey Won. Pretty much role play the missionary lessons, memorize words, and work on better teaching. It's a pretty fun thing now, hated it as a greenie though.  Then we met Gayan. He is from Sri Lanka, and is studying here at school. Good guy. We talked about religion with him, comes from a Buddhist background but doesn't really care about religion, kinda just thinks all are good.  Hopefully he is willing to try out our church, not sure though, funny guy though.  We did a little advertising, then met Go Young Ook with sister Jo Young Ah. It was kind of awkward, we all sat on a bench outside his lab, read Enos, and tried to apply it to him.  It went over somewhat well, but after, she says,  "yeah, he doesn't have any interest, just English/friend interest. I kind of feared that already, but it was hard to hear. So we dropped him. We might visit occasionally, but teaching side is over... sad.

Thursday we did more advertise, and English class, nothing too special.

Friday we had weekly planning, then we went and did advertising, then came back ate, and walked to some less-actives houses again.. Again, nothing really special.

Saturday we had sports day with the entire church district (stake). We played soccer, tennis soccer, had a race (I came in second, behind Elder Coleman! wohoo, I'm not too out of shape!) and ate a ton of meat. More than healthy, thick bacon and duck meat... (duck is really good).   A kid named Thomas came, cool kid from Guatemala, he is here studying, and his family is all Korean.

Thomas

Sunday Thomas came to church, that was cool. We had a good lunch, then advertised, then met Thomas again.  He is a normal 16 year old kid, likes books, games, pop culture, but seems to like our church.  Hopefully we can help him before he leaves next month.

Well, take care,
Elder Mortensen