April 20, 2015 (Week 18)

April 20, 2015

Well, another week down...

Gogi (Meat) Buffet

After email last week we headed up to 연신내 Yeonshinne, which is the devil of the area. Super busy and super rude, but we headed up there for the gogi buffet. Gogi is just meat, so a wonderful meat buffet. you pick up all the raw meat you want from a bar, then proceed to cook it at your table. I tried a little octopus, Korean style bacon (super thick), duck meat, other plain meats, and delicious side vegetables. I also tried lychee, which is a little strange plant, and an awful flavor at lanis. You'll have to try it sometime.... the fruit wasn't bad though. So we had the buffet and stuffed ourselves, then just shopped and headed back for the day. For the rest of the night we found our appointments work (took forever to find) and had a strange lesson. He works at a veteran place, so he gave us books about the Korean war, and we could barely give him the Book of Mormon before he had to get back to work... We plan to meet him this week, and hopefully have a real lesson.   Kind of a quiet night besides that.

Octopus

Tuesday was exchanges with Elder Brantley, so Elders Herron and Whitlock could do dl stuff.  Since it was raining, we managed to walk just about everywhere it seemed in our area in less than like 4 hours. While up in gu pa bal we met this super old guy (can give Yzma from Emperors New Groove a run for her money). We said hi, then he started raging at us for being missionaries for Jesus. We kept trying to talk to him until he was practically screaming at us.  As we were halfway down the street, he was still shouting at us... kinda sad, kinda funny.   For dinner with Elder Brantley, I tried 순대국 Soon De Gook. It is pig intestine. basically imagine a ball of meatloaf with parts of bone in it wrapped in a thin layer of fat... not that good. I tried like 2 pieces then called it good.  The people by us were nice though. Koreans are hilarious. They saw we were white, so they kept telling us to go get the ice cream, go get the Kimchi, try this out, try this.... Koreans love their culture, you got to give them that.  If you are a foreigner not talking about religion, they will go the extra mile to make sure you understand Korea.

Wednesday was district meeting, where most of it was spent talking about street boarding ideas, how they are splitting the area to be more effective, etc. So after that, me and Elder Whitlock went up to the moon goo (imagine an Office Max and DI smashed into a little store called a Moon Goo 문구 ).  It's a wonderful place.  So we did that, worked on that project, then had a big family home evening with the ward.  They had like 6 families show up and we had dinner with them. Dinner was quite delicious, except they had pig foot......... meat jello is the best way to describe it.  You eat around the fat to get the little bit of meat.  I don't recommend it.   While there, we met some referrals from the sisters. A 31 year-old, no life, spends it in video games... One of the two had a job and a girlfriend, so he's got that going for him. The other ones name is 이 병길 which if you break down each block, translates to "this disease path", haha. Poor guy.  Some names here are hilarious how they break down.  We also got to deal with "umbrella guy".  He is a Nokbeon crazy that all the missionaries know.  He just shows up at the church looking for food.  So we (just missionaries) were celebrating a sisters one year mark with some cake when he just walks into the room and starts demanding food. We tried to tell him it was a private party thing,  but he kept walking towards the cake.  Elder Whitlock finally snapped at him to leave...

Not gonna lie, this week has been pretty mind taxing.  Every other day I wake up and think well, still in Nokbeon, nobody to teach, this kinda sucks... so I get quite depressed, then eventually grow out of it, and repeat the next day.  That also happened Friday after weekly planning.  I was trying to pass off lesson 4, and I got stuck trying to teach prayer. I know the vocab, the principle, everything, except I can't teach.  So I broke down again with that, and just gave up on it that day.   It's quite frustrating.

Saturday I was still depressed, and it didn't help that we were supposed to plan the Family Home Evening message for that night.  Elder Whitlock had me take lead, but I didn't feel like even doing it. We were role playing with the other elders, when I asked him where he was at, because I couldn't follow his Korean, and he just snaps and says not to use English... Sorry if I can't understand where we are at, so yeah... that didn't help my state of mind.  We later went to meet our 5 appointments on the day. Only met with one of them. His name is Ee G Sung 이 지 승 .  He is a 28 year -old strange man.  He hates the organ, and hates scriptures and prayer because he gave himself to the devil in order to feel confident. He says he drinks his own blood sometimes too, but now he wants to change. Really strange lesson, we really need to help him. It's kinda sad what state he is in. I hope we can help him overcome these issues.

Lawrence Baptism

Sunday we were supposed to meet 방 석 규 to transfer him the the elders where he lives, but he cancelled to due a light rain, so we kinda just dropped him.  He has cancelled like 3 times, due to rain and being to hard, and etc.  We had to drop him cause he never keeps commitments either... kinda sad.   Then went out to ui jung boo 의 정 부  for another baptism. A guy named Lawrence that Elder Whitlock taught before transferring. He used to live with a prostitute, then we he wanted to live separate so he could get baptized. She called the cops on him for being illegal, so he has been on the run for a month now.  He finally got that settled, and was baptized. Really cool baptism. I got to play the piano for it, which was cool.  African converts are super strong. It's awesome to hear their testimonies.  So we did that then headed down to Shin Dang 신 당 where the Piano Guys were performing. All the missionaries came, even ones that live an hour and a half away. Two of the Piano Guys, the cello player and producer, served in Korea, so they wanted to come back. They each gave a little message and then played a couple pieces.  Super cool experience.  You'll have to see if you can find their video in front of the Brazil Jesus statue.  Cool story for that.  So we did the Piano Guys, I got to see my MTC friends again, then headed back home. We got home at 10:25, so was fun haha.

So yeah, that's been my week, up and down, but looking better each day now.

Love you all,

Elder Mortensen

April 13, 2015 (Week 17)

April 13, 2015

Cherry Blossoms in Bloom

After email last week, we tried some wonderful Dash (oops sorry, I meant dog) soup for P-Day. The restaurant itself smelled so bad, it clogged my nose for the rest of the night. Super strong and really bad smelling. The dog soup itself wasn't bad. Dog meat was a little too chewy for me, but it was still overall pretty good. That was the highlight of P-Day.  During shopping I asked for some broccoli, and an old guy told me in English stuff, then the grandmas by him started telling him that we were good at Korean, so we started to talk to them about why we were learning Korean.   Kinda sad though, that missionaries are never super good at Korean.  People who have been here for a year and a half are still not super great at Korean. Elder Ringwoods talk about his companion is still true today about Korean.  Some missionaries just give up on it though, and just struggle the rest of their mission.
This week cherry blossoms just came out in full force. The river path was just lined with them. It was a great view. We also went on the river a lot this week. Monday we were jundoing [proselyting] along the street, then we saw the grandmas dancing again. We decided to check it out since we were right there. That was awesome. Just a bunch of grandmas dance exercising at 8 at night under a bridge. We joined in for a minute, until some lady started "hitting" on me... awkward...   The next day we saw a bunch of grandpas playing chess under a bridge too, that was quite hilarious to see. Old people here are really strange.

The next day we went down to where there was a college and looked around to see if there was a good place to streetboard around it. It's like Snow College, where it isn't the best school out there. Turns out its not even our area, so we kinda had to scrap jundoing there. The college itself wasn't bad, but half of it was just a big sport court. They don't have fields here though, it's all just dirt. Kinda lame to see.  On the way back we started talking to some guy who asked why God lets things like war happened. We were talking to him for a while, super nice guy and great at English. Then, some old lady came up in the middle of it, and asked if we spoke Korean. She then grabbed our butts and walked away.... weird things happened here. But the guy was super cool. Wish he wanted to meet with us.

On Wednesday, we had a zone conference where they wanted our house to do another number. So we went over and I got to play more piano. That was cool. They sang "Brightly  Beams our Fathers Mercy." Good song.  After conference, we tried out streetboarding at one of the subway exit points. That was cool. I originally just stood by the poster, but Elder Cazier came and sat there so I went and jundoed around the crosswalks. It was weird seeing 11 other missionaries all jundoing around the same intersection. It was cool to just go off by myself and rely on only me for it. Elder whitlock somehow got 5 appointments out of it, and overall we got like 40 people in the hour we were out there. So it was pretty fun, and somewhat worked. Elders Herron and Brantley already got a progressing investigator out of it, so it was pretty successful.

Thursday we had no plans, so we went to our random area, Jee Chuuk 지축. That place is a barren wasteland. We went outside of Seoul for it.  There was nothing there.  We stepped off the sub and just looked around lost. We saw like 3 people there in 30 minutes, so we just headed back to 구파발 Gu Pa Bal and jundoed there. That's a nice place.  Fairly new, and super cool. You'll have to google map it.  Elder Whitlock also finally quit his ridiculous diet. He realized how much attention he put on it and how that wasn't the best option.  So he finally quit that and is getting back on track for missionary work.

Eating Crepes

For Conference we made some delicious crepes. We had jam, strawberries, bananas, whipped cream... oh man, so good. I love crepes. We had those then headed over to the church. Elder Ringwood (Area 70 in charge of Korea) and Elder Anderson (learn to dance/music) and President Uchtdorf nailed there talks. I loved all of those. President Uchtdorfs priesthood one was great. I loved it.   We all just crammed in the Visitor Center for it, and watched there in English. In between sessions we had jja ja myung on Saturday, and just a rice soup thing for Sunday. Both super good and filling meals. Conference was great, super good talks the whole way through.

Well, this week for teaching sucked. We had 5 people bail, including a really cool potential. Kim Kee Ram says he is too busy to meet, so we may not be meeting him for a while, if ever. Lee Ho Kyung speaks super fast and slangy, even Elder Whitlock can't understand, so we gave him to the Zone Leaders, who have a Korean in the companionship. Bang Suck Gyou bailed on us for General Conference, and we are planning to transfer him to Shindong ward, which is like 10 minutes from him, not and hour to our ward. He is always too busy to meet, so hopefully he can meet with Shindong more often. So right now we have 0 people, and only a couple lessons planned right now..... not too much fun.

The language is coming along.  Lesson 4 has a ton of new vocabulary so I'm stuck on that, and my English is slowly going. Since English and Korean are so different, my English grammar is getting thrown out the window. Instead of "I see the ball", Korean is "I ball see". It's soo backward. So now my English makes me sound dyslexic. But yeah, That's fun being in language limbo, as it were.

Grandma's Dancing

Personal study was Ammon and Aaron.  Great stuff in there, I just barely hit Ammon boasting in the Lord. Went over 2 Cor. 12, and read Shiblons story. All great things. I recommend going through those chapters. Aaron really related to me right now.

Love you all, keep it strong
Elder Mortensen
Psalms 147:3-4

April 6, 2015 (Week 16)

April 6, 2015

Mountain Dew Find

Alrighty, well besides having the cold, this week has been much better.

Just a heads up, my emails may sound awful, but trust me life isn't as bad as my emails make it out to be. It is just a place for me to vent and just get everything out, but after that I'm much better. So don't worry too much about me. That being said, if I keep up with the raging/depressing emails just send me a Gordon B. Hinckley-type message to get over myself. It's frustrating having an up and down every time email.

 So after email we ran to Costco, got pizza there (sooooo good), and I picked up some muffins and Lucky Charms!  You better believe I ate all 15 muffins in less than a week.  That was most of my meals actually. Kinda over them, but it was a splendid week of muffins haha. That took up most of the day, with travel and time there, and whatnot. Today, we are not doing much, just shopping, might make Book of Mormon cases so they don't get ruined, go get some grandma pants (I can't wait, you'll have to get a picture later). I bought me a Mountain Dew this week.  It was soo good. I've missed that sweet drink, haha.

So this week I have played a bunch of piano.  One called Through Deepening Trials (hymn variation) for the musical number the other house elders sang this Sunday, and for the baptismal service here soon we are practicing.  So I'm the official pianist, and I love it. I love playing the piano, all my stress just disappears after I start playing. Riley, keep playing, and just learn hymns.  Learn like one every two weeks. It will help you out a ton on your mission.  I can play a lot more than I thought I could, so that's sweet that the Lord has blessed me with this gift. I may try to learn guitar from Elder Brantley here soon, so that will be fun too.

Weekly people update:

Bang Suck Gyou: We taught him on Saturday night, but he hasn't read or prayed, and he can't meet for a while, so we don't know what to do with him. We are trying to transfer him over to the close area, since he technically lives over there. He is really nice though.

Lee Ho Kyung: Our new less-active. He came to church for the first time in a couple years. He brought his non-member girlfriend (who already wants to get baptized, by the end of this month!) We met him on Wednesday, and he stopped coming because of a smoking problem, but he wants to come back. He talks super fast and slangy so we can't understand half of what he says though, haha.

Kim Kee Ram: We were at ward mission meeting, when he came to the visitor center. Lived here all his life, but finally came inside the church. Very Christian, very open and curious. We taught him the first lesson on Thursday then wanted to meet on Friday about the Plan of Salvation. He feels that the Book of Mormon and Bible don't line up, and the bible never references the Book of Mormon directly. He has super deep questions, too. Like according to the Plan, the fall was necessary. But if God is just, why would he make falling necessary? Why would he already plan on us failing and being cast out? So yeah, we tried to help with his questions. Hopefully he doesn't get too caught up on the little things though. We will meet him this week again.

Well, let this be said that this week is the week that Elder Whitlock hit the "trunky, I'm dead already" phase. On Wednesday, he heard about how some disobedient, crap elders got made Zone Leaders this week, so he feels cheated. He didn't want to be District Leader again, or come into Seoul, but he got both instead. So he feels cheated, and ready to just leave the mission and just go home. Lately he has been more obsessed with getting six-pack abs for Cancun after he gets home than he seems to be focused on the mission. So roles this week have been reversed, with me helping him to try and stay focused and work hard through mental breakdowns.

Personal study is weird. I jump around on random tangents,  so I jump all around and I find awesome answers to other questions and worries I have. It is pretty great. Here are some highlights:

James (the whole book is super powerful) 1:2-4
D&C 64: 31-34
Isaiah 50:6-7

Every person talks of faith, hope and charity. I never noticed that before.
There are some other awesome revelations I get, but those are the highlights.

Spam, Korean-Marketed

Easter was pretty quiet since it was Fast Sunday. Nothing too special happened. The other elders sang, and I just turned pages, since I couldn't learn the piece fast enough, and I sound like death this week with my cold. The new video "He Lives" came out, so that was cool. but "Because of Him" is my favorite. It hits me every time.

That's been my week, today we are getting dog soup, so that should be exciting.  Please don't worry about me, I'm doing great here, even if my emails don't sounds like it. The language is coming, the people are alright. It just sucks when I can hear and understand, but since I can't talk, i feel like an idiot. But don't worry.

Love you all,

Elder Mortensen
  -John 14:18

March 30, 2015 (Week 15)

March 30, 2015

Exotic Car Shop

Ok, week 15, it will have to be a bit quick.
...
P-Day was Outback Steakhouse (freaking delicious).  I got Alice Springs Chicken, a whole lot of bread, and Chocolate Thunder From Down Under. Super fattening but worth it. After, we hit up Dong De Moon, which has the famous 3 dollar ties. So many ties. I picked up 5 for me, and a couple Korean ones for you all.  Eventually I'll send them home.  That took up most of the p-day.  That and shopping.

$3.00 Tie Shop

Tuesday was literally just jundo [proselyting] . We walked for 6 hours around the streets of Seoul. our one appointment cancelled cause his grandma died on Monday, so he was busy that day.  That night though, we were walking along the river, and we saw a bunch of elderly people line dancing under a bridge at 8 at night haha. It was quite hilarious to watch.

On Wednesday,  due to the whole ton of jundo we do, my achilles has started to rebel against me, and has been like scabbing/blistering on me. So that has killed to walk around with, but hopefully it can heal quickly. Missionary foot has finally hit me, and it's not fun at all. We were talking to someone, and since I couldn't understand a word, I kinda zoned out for a little while and watched a kid chase around pigeons and a dad push his girl around learning to do 2 wheel bikes. They were all so happy and smiling.  It was weird to see. but I couldn't help but just smile and feel good. That was the highlight of my day, possibly the week.  Funny how random things like that just make your day a whole lot better.   We also found out that Elder Lee, (Elder Cazier's trainer) got called to the office, (we are pretty sure due to drama here).  So Elder Cazier gets a new trainer this week.  He left wed night to get trained.

Thursday was 12 week follow up, so I saw all my friends from the MTC again. Elder Hansen is still hilarious and doing well, Elder Green and Carmen look way different, and I couldn't really talk to them.  Funny how being gone for 6 weeks kinda kills a friendship. We were still cool with each other, just didn't have that much to talk about anymore. Elder Cazier didn't go due to lack of a trainer so it was kinda weird.   But they just talked about patience, and working hard and keep going. That was a pretty good little seminar thing.  Except during role plays, Elder Whitlock played a Jehovah's Witness as a person, and just ripped into me, so I got kinda down and frustrated with that. That was were my week felt like it spiraled down for the worse.   After 12-week, Elder Whitlock signed up for classes, so I watched some Mormon messages, and got some Yiruma from him.  Look Yiruma up, he's got some good piano music.

Friday... nothing really happened on Friday.  Weekly planning took like half the time, cause we have nobody to talk about. We literally had no actual lessons this week, just a couple street ones. we had 8 planned this week, they either gave us wrong number, didn't show up, cancelled or gave some excuse. So ya, that was quite depressing.  We had a guy text us from the internet about English class, then the next day we ran into him on the street. It was pretty sweet! He seems to have a little church interest, so we will try to teach him this week.

Saturday we had a Visitor Center shift with the bishop, since our three appointments, then cancelled. So he talked about getting the ward involved with missionary work. He is a great bishop, this ward is pretty great.  Then we had a good English class, somebody gave us his number there, named DK, and wants to meet again. That was cool. Not sure if it's English or church interest though. that night we made cookies for Sister Fuller going home and had some pizza for dinner. I felt like crap after, that pizza was no bueno. haha

Sunday was alright.  For first hour, they had the ward combined to talk about being social media missionaries, cause all Korean sites just hate on the church, especially naver.com. It's the Korean version of Google, so it really hurts us. We've had a couple appointments fall through because they looked us up on Naver.com.  So that was good. Elder Lee and Sister Fuller gave their farewell talks in the ward sacrament meeting. After church we had a role play for the 3 lesson. I blanked so hard on it, that I just gave up and couldn't get through the lesson. That sums up my week. To start it, I was feeling great, then as the week went on I kept getting stuck and frustrated. It's not even the language that's the problem. It's the lack of progress, no lessons, no investigators, I suck at teaching, and etc. I keep telling myself to just be patient and work them out in time, but I still find something else to get stuck at. Everywhere I turn to try and get better and work around is just a new roadblock for me. I take 1 step forward and shoved 5 steps back. And yet I recognize the need for patience and I'm trying to stay positive, but this is just wearing me down. It so hard to try to be patient when I don't know how to do it. Every time I ask for help, I get a little bit better, then somehow fall back down. So yeah, that's my life right now, slowly turning downwards, as I try to fight it and stay positive. I don't know what else we can do to find someone to teach, walking around all day everyday with nobody to teach sucks.

Well, yeah, that was my week, a slow slide down to frustration. Don't worry, I'll figure it out somehow,  I just hope it comes soon. I know God works is his own ways, it just freakin sucks right now.
  -Elder Mortensen

Love you all

March 23, 2015 (Week 14)

March 23, 2015

Meeting up with Elders Cazier
and Hansen getting Foreigner Cards

Well, happy one month in the country! I can't believe its already been a month here. Time flies. It's kinda scary.

So, this week I went on my own for food this week, so I have had a lot of rice, eggs, ham and cereal, haha. The next couple weeks should be pretty good though. I've gotten some more ideas for what to eat for cheap.  As far as other foods go, we had a member-meal this week. For it, we had burgogi meat, chicken wings, octopus, and kimchi ribs. All of it was so delicious! Octopus is quite delicious, it is really squishy and chewy but quite tasty. I wouldn't mind having that again. Oh man, I was so stuffed by the end, and she even gave us leftovers to take home. She is the Relief Society president so she was super nice. The husband was alright. I did a Plan of Salvation role play for our thought, and he corrected every sentence out of my mouth.  Even the pickiest details he corrected. He also said we only recognize the Atonement, and not use it. That's a lie, and he said we won't be just by our desires, just our actions and choices... So I'm not sure how much I should trust him on stuff. His wife kept telling him to stop judging me, and let me get through the role play. I felt pretty down after that. We also stayed like 20 minutes over, so that was a bad move on that. But we got a family referral from the wife, so hopefully that will go over well.   Other food, we had some chicken and chips at some medieval-themed restaurant. The food wasn't too great, but the atmosphere was pretty legit. It's hard to describe, but it was pretty sweet.  We had ice cream and churros after that, and man, honeycomb with vanilla ice cream is delicious! It was super sweet and rich. Needless to say, we were pretty full that night, haha.

Variety of Name Tags

I also got the comics you finally sent, mom. I got the February ones on Thursday, and the March one on Sunday, so I don't know how long that took to get here. But thanks for the comics, there were some great ones in there. I also got more nametags this time my Korean only ones.  So now I have an abundance of tags to choose from haha.

Jundo (proselyting) was pretty good this week. We got a couple appointments set up, and we met some guy that said the Book of Mormon was too long to find out if God was there. He also said I was a depressing influence, when Elder Whitlock was talking. So that got to me.  I felt bad for being so quiet, and I got over it pretty quick, but that kinda ate at me for the while. I also met a guy who gave me a bread treat, but as soon as I said "missionary", he took it out of my hand and walked away, haha. Some people are strange.  Nothing else too special for jundo.

People we taught:
  - Bong Suck Gyou: He is our top investigator, and he came to church for the full 3 hours! He is super nice, and hopefully will progress further. He has taken the first and third lessons so far.
  - We met a guy named Shin Ye Moon, who is a poet.  At the beginning of our lesson, he said he had no interest, but agreed to meet anyway.  He gave us his poetry book, and told us to read it, haha.  Kind of a pointless meeting, honestly.

Our other appointments fell through though :(  Hopefully the coming weeks will be better.   We got a couple referrals of less active and nonmembers from the ward, and when we said we had a kid named Peter,  Elder Lee and Cazier started getting his information. So Elder Whitlock after talked to Elder Lee about stealing people. He's stole two almost three from us, and two from the Zone Leaders. So people are mad at him. So it's kind of a drama right now with that. Hopefully it will blow over soon.

Personal study this week was King Benjamin's talk. I just realized his overall theme is how worthless we are and how we rely on God for everything, so pay him a little respect. I love his speech, so powerful. I also read in Preach My Gospel, Christ-like attributes on patience, and they have some sweet scriptures there. I would recommend going through those and Alma 5:26. Awesome scripture.

View of Seoul from The River
Bridge in the Area

  hmmm... I can't think of too much else. The language is coming along better. Elder Whitlock and I had a 20 minute role play discussion on the Atonement and I could understand a ton, I felt like. I also rocked my pass-off of the Plan of Salvation, so I'm feeling awesome right now. The Lord has answered my frustrations by helping with that, and I can seem to get a better gist of where the conversations are going during proselyting. The Lord has blessed me so much.

 Love you all, have a great week

--Elder Mortensen

March 16, 2015 (Week 13)

March 16, 2015

At the War Museum

This week has been a whole lot better than last week.  Thanks for the prayers, I'm sure you prayed a lot for me.

The weather here is finally starting to pick up, although a couple days last week were brutally cold with the wind. We are still wearing sweaters, although I don't wear the gloves and scarf as much now. It's weird seeing families outside playing in parks here. Korea is a really old country, and since it's been winter nobody has been out. I guess January and February are the worst months, so I will only have one full winter, and catch the front end at the end of my mission. I can't wait for warm weather. It beats freezing any day.


So Tuesday was temple day for us. We did that, which was awesome. The temple here is crazy small, which was weird to me. but it's a really nice temple, and we got an English temple movie (yes!) so that was a great experience. I also picked up a dual English, Korean Preach My Gospel from the distribution center there. After the temple we went to the war museum. It covered everything from ancient wars to huge exhibits for the Korean war. They had a lot of cool stuff, that was awesome. We also ran into a couple former Korean missionaries. One lives off 104th South and 13th West. Small world, haha. I took lots of pictures there, don't worry. So that took us three hours.  Didn't even see all of the museum.  We had to go back so we could get haircuts and shopping in. Haircuts actually turned out better than I expected.  They actually cut hair here really well!  Elder Herron got one and they shaved off his sideburns, so I was a little worried about mine, but it still looks good. We stocked up on fruit too.  We got pears, apples, oranges, kiwis, bananas, grapefruit, and a pineapple. It's awesome how much fruit is here, and it's super cheap at the market by our house.  So that and cereal have been my main foods, along with other Elder Herron concoctions here and there.   That night we went and proselyted (jundo) in a place called Su Sek Dong.  It took us 40 minutes just to walk there, and there was nobody there when we finally got there.  Some places we're assigned here have literally nobody, it kinda sucks.  The ward wants us to branch out of our little routine spot, but that's where everybody goes...

I went on exchanges with a Zone Leader Elder Pans on Wednesday.  That was pretty good.  When we jundoed he would always take over at the end, so that was frustrating but he gave me good advice on being here. He said to love the people, because they can't help just working. Their ratio of working hours to productivity is the lowest in the world. They literally just work to work. They came out of their own industrial revolution just like 50 years ago, so they are still feeling the affects of that. The elderly here are all bent up from working 16-hour day crappy condition jobs.  Look up Park Chung Hee, and the conditions during his time.  He hyper-sped Korea into the world scene, but it screwed half the population in the process.  So that helped me to just love them and realize that they don't know any better.  Kids here slave away at school because they don't know that you can take a break and still be well off in the world.  So he said that and tried to give language advice. That is the most frustrating thing about the language.  Nobody knows how to learn it.  Every answer I get is "it just came one day, I don't really know how." They just say be patient, but my mission is already 3 months down, and I don't want to waste 5 more just trying to get the language.

Pi day (3.14.15)

Saturday was pi day (3.1415) so Elder Herron and Brantley wanted to do pies.  We ended up making 9 butterscotch pies. It was also Sister Olson's b-day so we had a apple crumble cake that night too. So from the hours of 7-9, we had an individual pie, cake, chocolate pies (similar to ding dongs), and fried chicken. Oh man, we all wanted to die by the end. Elder Brantley ended up throwing up that night too. We still feel the affects of it. So fattening, but so delicious.  Korea does fried chicken right (Brad you have no idea).   Rewinding to earlier Saturday day... we taught a guy named Sheen Jay Jeek (신 제 직) at 9:30.  He only believes in the 4 Gospels, Isaiah, and Revelations.  So he basically argued for no prophets, no Book of Mormon, and that everyone has the Holy Ghost, due to the Pentacost. We tried to show him how he was wrong, but he quoted scriptures that he neither believed, nor did they make sense.  So that was a waste of a hour.   A couple hours later we taught Kang Gwee Dong (강귀동).   He is better, but he rambled a lot how his dream is to have robots and humans fuse to create immortality. Hopefully he will progress out of that weird dream. Our appointment right after that was with Jung Day Hoon (정 대 훈).  He is a student who is really quiet. We asked questions like 3 times before he told us "I don't know" .  So it was a really awkward lesson.  He seems really nice, hopefully he will progress too.   30 minutes later we had an intense English class. Two old ladies were there, a mean old lady and Jasmine.  Nobody likes Jasmine there.  She is rude, half the time drunk we think, and just loud. So, the mean old lady should of been in intermediate, but skipped to advance, so we had to go super slow for her. Jasmine kept snapping at her to hurry up and move on, so they started getting into a shouting match. Whitlock and a 18 year old named Alex, (super cool) started yelling at them to quiet down and behave. They still wouldn't stop, so Elder Whitlock was about to throw them out, they were so rude to everyone. So yeah, we had that then pigging out on desserts the rest of the night. Saturday was super busy.

Sunday, church was alright. I understood a lot in priesthood, since it was faith in Jesus as the topic. So that was awesome, then Gospel Principles class came... some old guy taught and I got soooooo lost, it sucked. I didn't get anything out of that.  Sacrament was alright. I still can't understand anything they say... You know how I hate kids.... (no offense everybody) but Korean kids are opening my heart.  They are so funny and can be quite adorable. (I think that's the first time I've said that about kids...(weird)). One kid gave us all superhero names.  I'm Hawkeye i guess, then measured our biceps to see how big we were.  He was hilarious. Later on the way to the subway,  I ran into a group of kids who were shocked when i said hi in Korean. They kept following me to the subway.  They were all pretty funny. We were going to the subway to travel 80 min to Ui Jong Boo (의 정 부) for a baptism. Elder Whitlock baptized one of his investigators from the military base. That was cool to see that. He gave an awesome testimony about being free from and conquer.  So that took most of our Sunday, we just came back and ate before night time.

Personal study this week has been boss.  I never really cared about Jacob, but man, he doesn't hold back in his book. I studied that so much this week. Here are some scriptures from study.

Jacob:
  2:6, 7, 9
  3:9
  4 (18 especially)
  5:41

2 Nephi 33 (especially 6 and 11)

Love you all.  This week has been much better, glad to hear from you all.

-Elder Mortensen

March 9, 2015 (Week 12)

March 9, 2015

Elder "Batman" Whitlock

This week has been pretty rough, not gonna lie.

Going from hearing about Conner baptizing everybody under the sun in Mexico, to proud people and nobody in Korea is a rough transition.

As far as people/lessons go:
 -There was a dropped old man named Kim Jung Yong, who we visited on Monday. He keeps complaining he can't read, and God won't help with material needs, so we had to re-drop him. That sucks.

 -We met a kid on the street named Jung Say Yong who wanted to meet us and was willing to bring a friend. He came, but an hour early during one of our other lessons with our 1 sort of investigator, so elders Lee and Cazier stepped in and taught them, so they took those investigators.

-Our 1 investigator Bong Soak Gyou, met us on Saturday after delaying us twice. We met, he hasn't read the Book of Mormon, and still hasn't come to church... not that great of a guy.  Kinda sucks we kept him and lost the 2 new ones...

Those are our only actual lessons we taught. We had like 7 make appointments, but bailed, including our super contact Earl. (I'll talk about him later). So yeah, our investigators/lessons kinda suck right now. Everybody is always too busy, or just doesn't show up.

Since we have nobody, we go out and proselyte all day long. For that we just walk down streets and talk to people who will listen. Door to door sucks here,  because the men are never home during the day, and they mostly all have walls and gates in front of their homes, so they would never hear us. Plus all homes have a camera system built into the front door so they can just pretend they aren't home. I'm getting better at that, but it still sucks that I can't understand them at all.  So this proselyting (전도) (jundo) is alright, expect all the appointments usually fall through. This week we had a zone conference where they wanted us to use the Book of Mormon when doing jundo and like read verses and stuff like that. We have met some pretty prepared people who have been open with us, it's been pretty cool. One guy met missionaries before, and was super open and had questions about our church, one was a pastor who wanted to read the Book of Mormon and asked about marriage and all that stuff, then we met a mafia member and Earl on Thursday. I'll explain that, cause that was a fun night.

Thursday night we went to Pizza Hut, because it was the last night for their buffet. (Korean pizza is nuts, I didn't have my camera, so you might have to look that up) (whoever said that you get skinny from healthy food in Korea lied, I felt so fat I've ate so much)  So we had that, delicious fattening pizza, then headed out to jundo.  We ran into a kid named Earl who was studying to go to a top college in Korea. He goes to a Christian church, but doesn't grasp the concept of faith in something you can't believe. We showed him all the verses about faith and praying to him and he seemed super interested, and super ready to learn. (Didn't show up to the appointment due to a "secret") but during the lesson, a random guy came up, asked if we were Mormon then left. He came back and gave us his old version Book of Mormon and said he used to be a member till his wife died.  After, he joined the mafia, and felt bad every time he saw the Book of Mormon in his house, so he gave it to us and walked away. Strange, but awesome.

Korean has sucked for me lately...  I know to "be patient" "it will come" but I feel after three weeks I haven't progressed at all. I still don't understand a word at church, and I can't explain anything in English, let alone Korean. So I've just gotten frustrated to the point where I just check out for the night and don't care, or just about break down during a role play. I freakin hate role plays. We had one yesterday about teaching people and getting to know them, and so for a quiet person like me, it kinda sucks being the one asking everything.  Because I know for me I would hate someone asking me questions, and I feel like I'm intruding. So yeah, I'm just frustrated.

This weekend was the worst in my life it feels like. I woke up feeling sick, managed to get ready for the day, then threw up a couple times. I felt decent so we tried going out and working. Our 1:00 appointments bailed, and our 3:00 showed up when we were supposed to meet another guy at 2:00. So we lost the two new ones and our one investigator keeps promising to come to church, but hasn't for the past 4 weeks. He has a baptism date for April 18 now, but who knows if he will actually do it. So yeah, that frustrated my night, and I really didn't feel like doing anything. Sunday I couldn't stay awake because I still can't understand a word during all of church. I used to like going to church, but now I dread it cause I know I can't understand them.  After church Earl bailed on our appointment set up.  When we asked why he just said it was a secret then said to meet next week. Who knows what that means. Everybody does that here. They say we should meet, then just keep pushing it back, or eventually just hang up on us as soon as we say missionaries. Role playing for companion study was the worst I've had ever, then after dinner Elder Whitlock felt awful, so we stayed in while I attempted to do calls.

Meat Kabob Stand

Needless to say, I'm kinda struggling this week. I know the church is true, I just wish God would work a little bit faster than he does sometimes... This is getting so frustrating. I feel like I haven't progressed at all, and that the work here is going nowhere.

Hopefully your weeks are better than mine was,
  -Elder Mortensen