I’ll call you…when it rains

We got transfer news this week and me and my companion are both staying. Which is good cause I've got some people I wasn't ready to say goodbye to just yet, also it’s Thursday so I can't be missing that. 2 new elders are coming back to 속초 though! Pros and cons of that:

Cons: there goes my personal bathroom, clothes room, and other room that we don't use 

Pros: everything else

It's gonna be awesome! And the weather's finally getting warmer here, today was the first actual warm day in a while 

Highlights: we met with a man named 함영달 this week. We found him while calling old random numbers and set up a meeting. He came and picked us up, and we went to a park, and we started talking. Almost immediately, he pulled out two books, one titled "when that day comes" and the other, "the traces He left behind". So, I figured we were about to get into a deep doctrinal discussion. Turns out, he wrote the two books. And he spent the next hour explaining in depth all the connections between Chinese characters and Christianity and things like that.

I tried to explain why the Chinese language has so many connections to God and Jesus Christ, but he wasn't very interested in that. He signed the two books and gave them to me to keep though so that's fun I guess. Also, right before he was leaving he was like "so whenever you wanna meet again you should call me!" And then was like "WAIT. No... I'll call you. I'll call you...when it rains...." and I swear I remember him waving his arm through the air in a Wizarding manner as he said when it rains, maybe for dramatic effect. For a second I felt like it was in a Disney show or something. But anyway, it rained all weekend, and he didn't call so yeah idk 

We have our English class on Thursday nights, but recently we have two more additions: English class on Saturday afternoon and English class on Friday morning. The Saturday afternoon idea just started when someone wanted to meet for English at that time, so after a few weeks we started inviting the people who couldn't come on Thursdays, and it turned out well!

One day, we got a call from someone we know saying her daughter wants to learn English. So, we called her daughter, who invited us to her English club. To our surprise, we found 5 really nice people who all want to learn English who were just trying to learn on their own through this little club. We attended the club and became friends and then ate some food after. They invited us to keep attending, which we accepted, and we're going try and move this club into the church and combine it with our other class. Hopefully that will work, because when we teach the English class at the church, the short spiritual thought at the end is sometimes the only way we get to share about the gospel to people in the church building, which can play a big role in a lot of these people's conversion, since most of the time they wouldn't listen otherwise.

We heard a statistic the other day by our mission president, and I think it was like 70% of the baptisms in our mission are people who originally had interest in learning English and were found through English class. But for a lot of them it takes years of coming to our church and English class before they are ready. So that's why I think putting a lot of effort into just getting people to the church regularly even just to learn English is important. 

Other highlight, we found a new guy who's 75 and crazy at ping pong who came to play with us.

Picture of us after randomly seeing 남순덕 at the market today so we went to eat together.

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Also, Happy Mother’s Day! 

I think I'm becoming famous among the 학생들

We played soccer with some students a couple times and ever since then we've been running into them on the street all the time. We usually talk to them and try to set up another time to play when we see them. But today when we were walking, we heard some students yelling "jensen!", and we were confused and turned and saw some new students i don't even remember meeting. So maybe the word that we play soccer with kids is spreading or they saw one of my cards, but who knows? Nonetheless we got one of their phone numbers and hopefully we can play soccer this week. 

We took some pics at the beach cause the lighting was perfect 

This week we met with our new friend Abdulkadir. He's from Kenya and moved to Korea a month ago for college. He's way cool and hopefully we can meet with him again! Sorry I don't have a pic with him.

We've also been working a lot with our English class recently. My favorite student is 김재학. He's prob in his 60's, absolutely no gospel interest, but is just dying to learn English. He's really bad at it though. When he first came about a month ago, he couldn't even introduce himself. So I've made it my personal goal to help his English improve. I figured if he's not willing to listen to the gospel right now, if I try super hard to help his English, he'll start wondering why I care about him so much, and when he asks that's when we can strike again with the gospel. And it's already working, cause his heart is softening and he brought me some bread as a gift last class haha. Also, now he's able to talk in English about his daily routine, the weather, his hobbies, and more! (not actually more that's about it) unfortunately his favorite hobby is drinking haha, but baby steps for now. 

Met with our friend Daniel on an exchange. He's too cute. He's too loyal to his pastor right now though so he can't come to church.

Jesus Christ will forgive and heal you as you repent. He will replace your guilt with peace and joy. He will remember your sins no more. In His strength, your desire to keep His commandments will increase. He will change your heart and your life. Little by little, you will grow and become more like Him. Your covenant connection with Him will bring you greater access to His power.

Promised blessings of repentance ^^

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No Letter

 No letter this week, but here are some pictures! 

생일과 부활절

Tried to find people who like Korean chess (we found some, but they wouldn't give us their numbers)

Birthday at zone conference

I’m not gonna explain these ones

A part of President Nelson's most recent talk that I liked:

As followers of Jesus Christ, we should lead the way as peacemakers. As charity becomes part of our nature, we will lose the impulse to demean others. We will stop judging others. We will have charity for those from all walks of life. Charity towards all men is essential to our progress. Charity is the foundation of a godly character. Let us plead with our Heavenly Father to fill our hearts with greater charity—especially for those who are difficult to love—for charity is a gift from our Heavenly Father for true followers of Jesus Christ. The Savior is the Prince of Peace. We are to be His instruments for peace.

My favorite sentence is "charity towards all men is essential to our progress". In order to progress, we need to have charity for everyone. This can be hard, but I know that praying daily for charity is a great place to start. So this week pray for charity! I know that you'll be able to love more easily and have more patience with the people you struggle to love 

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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

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It's not the same 😔🍕

Thursday night pizza has not been the same since the other elders left 속초 😞

But we did get all of their teaching friends hehe

Also 방명현 is getting baptized this Sunday! He didn't pass his interview the first time cause he forgot who Joseph Smith was but that's okay, he passed the second time with flying colors. I'm very proud. And since there hasn't been a baptism in 속초 in a while all the members are also really excited

We made a friend who came to play pickleball with us and he's super awesome actually. We're hoping to meet with him again this week

Crab ^

Anyway that's all I guess 

Watch general conference! (I still haven't yet ) 😬

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