JAMES SAVED THE BAPTISM / Mr Jin Reunion / Red Dots 🔴

 Well this was quite a week! I'll start with the Mr. Jin Reunion...

Mr. Jin was my teaching friend in 속초, and came all the way to 춘천 this week to visit me! He talked to us about a lot of stuff, and told me how the missionaries invited him to be baptized. But he said he said no, because he wants me to come back to 속초 to baptize him haha. The chances of that are not super likely, but I said I would be honored if it ever becomes a possibility. He's been attending church still and reading the Book of Mormo,n so that's good. 

Red Dots 

We've had a couple interactions with some pretty interesting people recently. One was a lady who found our card on the street and called us, but upon further inspection. We found out she was a red dot (which means do not contact). Anyway, she said she'd come to English class that week and so we had no choice but to see what happens. She came, and even brought us some Ramen! Aside from mumbling to herself a little bit, she seemed pretty normal at least. 

She also talked about having like 5 husbands, one from America, one from Japan, one from Germany, which was weird but I figured I must've just misunderstood the korean. So anyway, my comp invited her to church. He said "oh by the way, we have church tomorro-" and then she interrupted, sticking her hand out for a handshake while replying "I know 10 AM? " so we were like uhh yeah, and she came the next day. My companion sat next to her and noticed she was taking some pictures of people, specifically the missionaries. He also noticed her screen saver, which ended up being her "German husband." 

It was Hitler...

She also was sending emails to a ton of random people with pictures of us, pictures of other random Americans, and pictures of Hitler, which is probably not good. So now we're kinda trying to figure out how to get rid of her  but she did buy us chicken on Saturday at english class so that was hype. My bad that ended up being really long.

The other red dot: 허용준 

I don't think he was actually a red dot but I noticed he had been silenced on kakao talk, which is a method we use to text people here. But I saw that he texted that his exams were all finished so he had time if we wanted to meet up. So I said yeah of course, and we decided to meet at a college campus. Not a second went by after meeting him that he pulled out his wooden spoons and asked us to film him playing the spoons. We were quite confused but just went along with it. After that he was like "ok, should we go get dinner?" 

He was so excited so we were like sure! We found out a lot of things, like he met with a lot of missionaries in the past, is absolutely the most happy person ever, and is very passionate about: playing the spoons, singing songs in Spanish, and making people smile! He's actually very sweet and we're gonna continue to invite him to activities and stuff, but it's very hard to get in an environment where we can teach him cause his attention span is all over the place, so idk if we'll continue teaching him. If you wanna see vids of him playing the spoons check the album 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/NE4hqKEuajBNpJgu5

JAMES SAVED THE BAPTISM 

I can't remember how much I've said about James, but I'll just keep it brief this time and say he's the crazy member in our ward. Anyway, we had a baptism this week and everything was going really well. We figured out the font and got the water a good temperature and everything, but before church started my comp said we should fill it a little higher, and I agreed so we turned it back on. 

Then, during the ceremony before the baptism, James runs in and starts yelling a bunch of nonsense. It was obvious not even the Koreans understood what he was saying. I was thinking "seriously james, today was not the today to forget your medication..." but since he was disrupting the meeting some counselors and bishop went and brought him outside the chapel to console him. All the other missionaries went out as well. And then for the next 15 minutes I kept hearing crazy commotion outside the chapel and I had no idea what was going on. 

Earlier during sacrament, James had been gathering a pile of tissues in a corner and was stepping them into the ground and making a mess, idek, but I was worried he like threw the tissues in the font or something like that. He always wanders in and out of the chapel and stuff so. But anyway, when we walked out to perform the baptism we witnessed the scene. All the other missionaries had snow shovels and were shoveling water into the bathroom cause the font overflowed . 

Chuncheon is one of the only church buildings in our mission where the font doesnt have a drain at the top in case the water gets left on. so the whole ward witnessed the scene as well, which sucked but the "whole ward" is only like 15 people so it wasn't that bad. Since I was gonna have to get in anyway they told me to go in and unplug the plug for a few minutes to drain a little more before we did the baptism. The baptism itself didn't go too smoothly either to say the least. This email is too long already so I am not gonna include any more details about that. But to sum it all up, james did indeed save the baptism 

James ^^ (just look at that smile )

Spiritual Thought 

Make Time For the Lord 

President Nelson 2021 General Conference

The voices and pressures of the world are engaging and numerous. But too many voices are deceptive, seductive, and can pull us off the covenant path. To avoid the inevitable heartbreak that follows, I plead with you today to counter the lure of the world by making time for the Lord in your life—each and every day

I love this talk by president Nelson, specifically this part, because it shows us that by making time for the Lord every day, we can receive strength to counter the deceptive things of the world. It later goes on to talk about how social media has a lot of false information, but through making time for the Lord, we can have the spirit with us, and the spirit, unlike social media, only speaks truth. I would like to invite you all to read the rest of this talk and find out how you can make time for the Lord in your life every day! 

젠슨 장로~~

Baptism for 방명현

This week was pretty crazy in a lot of ways 

First of all…

방명현 got baptized!! 

This was such a miracle. We had been planning for the baptism all week and making preparations, and finally, the night before the baptism was supposed to take place, we got a call from 방명현. As soon as we picked up the phone, Elder Moore walked in the front door of our apartment. Since Elder Moore got transferred, he had to pull strings to come back to 속초 for one day only to baptize 방명현 since he found him in the park and taught him for months. 

We didn't know he was coming the night before, and it's a few hours of travel so we were a little surprised when he showed up. But right as he walked in, 방명현 told us over the phone that he fell down from a really high place at work, and hurt his leg, and would not be coming to church or getting baptized the next day. We tried everything we could, even had a member call him, but pushing only made the situation worse and we had to text in the group chat, the night before, that the baptism was canceled. Keep in mind, all the members had gone out of their way to prepare food for a potluck that they had thrown together for the baptism they were planning on. We received texts throughout the week from members saying how excited they were for the baptism. It was supposed to be the first investigator baptism in 속초 in 10 years, so I can understand why they were excited.

We all prayed together as an apartment, and after that I layed awake, wondering how I would ever fall asleep with all the stress I was feeling (I fell asleep 5 seconds later)

The next morning we got to church, and decided to start filling up the font just in case. And 2 hours later, 방명현 was baptized. I won't go into too much detail, but I know that God is a God of miracles, and without Him or the spirit, which has affected 방명현's life so much already, this could not have been possible. Even the fact that our mission president told Elder Moore to come to 속초 a day early was a miracle, because if he hadn't, we would have received the call from 방명현 and then texted elder Moore not to come the next day because the baptism was off. But it was an amazing service and the members were so happy 

Other highlights: 

I became a blueberry farmer 

우리는 즐거운 시간을 보낼 뿐이다 

좋은데를 찾으면 사진을 찍을 수 밖에 없죠

아무튼

젠슨 장로 

Straight to Sokcho Baby

It's only been a few days since my last email but a lot has happened!

-박선재 was baptized!! It was a great service, even though the entire YSA showed up after he said he didn't want more than 10 people there haha 

-exchange at the 한강 on valentines day

교대김밥 (best 식당)

So yeah I'm getting transferred to 속초 (sokcho) this Thursday. 속초 is a lot more countryside and it will be a way different experience than the city! I've had 속초 on my bucket list of places I wanted to serve since the beginning, and when transfers got closer and I started telling everybody how I was most surely getting transferred to 속초 (i had no idea). I also predicted I would go there during our transfer predictions.

Everyone else in my district also guessed i'd go there just cause of how much I said it haha. And sure enough when transfer news came my wish came true  I'm super sad to be leaving the YSA and all the people I've become close with but I will for sure be returning one day. Also when I told everyone in the ward that I was getting transferred to 속초 they all apologized for my loss which made me a little nervous... not sure what that means but I'm still hyped.

I would like to bare my testimony on the importance of going to the temple! I recently had the opportunity to go to the temple here and it was an amazing experience, in which I was able to have a lot of questions answered. So I'd like to invite you all to visit the temple as soon as you get a chance, and also prepare questions you'd like to have answered in advance. Going to the temple with is an act of faith and I think there's close to nothing better you can do to show your faith than to attend frequently.

"Spending more time in the temple builds faith. And your service and worship in the temple will help you to think celestial. The temple is a place of revelation. There you are shown how to progress toward a celestial life. There you are drawn closer to the Savior and given greater access to His power. There you are guided in solving the problems in your life, even your most perplexing problems." (Russel M Nelson - "Think Celestial!" October 2023)

젠슨 장로

선재 was baptized!!

exchange at the 한강 on valentines day

교대김밥 (best 식당)

Ice Ramen

Highlights: 

김재희 was baptized this week! She was our teaching friend, but wanted to get baptized into a different ward, so one of the ward members of that ward baptized her. But she had a great ceremony and one of our other teaching friends was able to come too and witness it!

We had zone p day today for 설날! (Lunar New Year). We had a ton of fun activities so it was pretty hype.

I tried a new food this week, 냉면 (cold Ramen/ice Ramen) if you look you can see the chunks of ice in the Ramen. It's like a slushy consistency. It was actually really good surprisingly. The water is like vinegar with a bunch of stuff in it like cucumbers and other stuff too. I'm pretty sure it's exactly what watercress salad would be like if it was a real thing, but with noodles (if you know what watercress salad is, you have my full respect)

We went on a fun exchange.

Spiritual thought: 

I finished the Book of Mormon this week, and one of my favorite verses I read was in the last chapter: Moroni 10: 32- Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.

I love this verse because as one of the last chapters of the Book of Mormon, it teaches us to "come unto Christ" which is actually the whole purpose of the Book of Mormon, to help us come unto Christ. I also like that it says if we love God with all our heart, might, mind, and strength, his grace will be sufficient for us.

I don't have a lot of time so I gotta go. 

젠슨 장로

Days since last throw up: 0  (great way to start the Lunar New Year) (there's always next year)