私は日本人です

Recently I've become very interested in Japanese. It started when we started attending our Japanese class that one of the sisters teaches at the church cause we have a teaching friend that goes to it. Now I can't stop learning it, I'm too invested  I gotta start at some point though if I'm gonna achieve the big 3 (Japanese Korean Chinese) 

Anyway that doesn't really have anything to do with anything else that happened this week. I did meet a Chinese lady on the subway though. I tried to talk to her but I was really struggling not to speak Korean and I had to use Google translate cause I forgot a few words

We had a few miracles this week! One of them was when 2 new people came to English class! We forgot 

to ask one of them, but one of them said she got our business card when we were handing them out by the station and she came to class! And the other guy said he wanted to come to church on Sunday. He didn't come, but hopefully he will next week. But one of our other friends came to church for the first time! He's been attending Japanese class, and then randomly when I turned around at church he was just there haha. And it turns out he's a lot more passionate about religion than we though. Idk if that's a good or bad thing yet. He has quite a few strong opinions. But he seems to like our church so far so that's good

On Sunday there was also a baptism in our ward for a high school student that the other elders have been teaching. He's way cool and the baptism went really well. We also ate a big lunch after church at the church, which is pretty rare for a big ward like ours cause it takes a lot more work. I had to dry all the dishes after so I missed ward choir practice 

Spiritual Message:

 

"These days I spend a lot less time hating myself for what I have done and a lot more time loving Jesus for what He has done.”

This is a quote from the general conference talk "worthiness is not flawlessness". I like it because there is nothing we can do to change the past, but as we spend more time focusing on Jesus Christ, and what he did for us rather than what we have done, we will be able to become more like him and we will spend less time disliking ourselves for our mistakes 

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SNS ELDER?? 🫨

The call came at 9:20 PM on Monday night when me and Elder Beardall were in an ice cream shop. It's a long story why we weren't quite home on time (we wanted ice cream). Anyway, we knew it was President Kim because Elder Beardall changed his phone ring tone to a different one so when he calls we would know. I took the phone and president told me the news: "from tomorrow you will be taking over the role of SNS in the mission. Call the SNS sisters in the morning and they'll teach you everything."

He also told me I might be taking it over at some point like the week before, so I wasn't super surprised but I was still surprised it ended up being so soon. So now I'm the first Korea Seoul mission SNS Elder! They used to have a tech Elder but this is a lot more stuff. 

Some of my new responsibilities in addition to regular missionary work are: 

- Making all the ads for the mission and posting them on Facebook and Instagram 

- ordering materials for all the missionaries 

- attending all the zone conferences and presenting at them 

- president also said I'd need a driver's license so I might be driving soon 

Other than that the rest of the week was super busy and I didn't take any pics (my b) so I don't remember that much right now 

Anyway I'm out of time cause we had zone p day today but next week I'll take pictures 

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k pop demon hunter word of wisdom keepers

Okay I was gonna start this email off differently but we were just at McDonald's and one of our teaching friends was there so we decided to eat with him. And this grandma was there too with us, I think it was his friend or something, but instead of eating, she literally just ate 7 things of ketchup. Not even ate, she DRANK it. Like she opened it and just slurped the whole packet. She liked it so much I even gave her mine. It was crazy 

Anyway, the past few weeks have been pretty routine. We're meeting with a lot of people which is good. A lot of them just won't come to church, but we did have a few miracles. Even though none of the teaching friends we invite have really been coming, we had someone come last week out of nowhere and we were able to teach him and he said he'd come once a month from now on. Idk why once a month but we're trying to meet with him sooner than that. Another miracle was yesterday another random guy came to church cause one of the sisters teaching friends brought her friend out of nowhere. So we were able to teach him as well and hopefully he comes again! 

Last week at our ward family home evening we talked about keeping the word of wisdom. Then for the activity we made a "healthy" word of wisdom dance to the song golden from k pop demon hunters cause its popular with the kids these days. If you wanna see the vid check out the Google photos 

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

Family Home Evening!

at last 

Seoul Sky 

Crazy Week 🫨🫨

This week was honestly not that interesting. My pday changed so that's why I didn't send this yesterday. Missionary work is a lot easier in Seoul but also more boring cause every day is pretty similar. We've been teaching a lot of people recently, usually doing 30-30, which is like 30 minutes of learning English and 30 gospel. We actually have a lot of teaching friends that come to church a lot. Like one grandma has been to church like over 100 times now haha but apparently she won't get baptized yet cause she's holding a grudge because some people baptized her granddaughter in America and they all wanted to get baptized together but now they can't so she won't get baptized yet. Idk. But there's a couple other people who have been to church like 10-15 times and they always come but they just avoid us and leave right after sacrament, idk what the deal is haha. But the teaching is going well at least.

We met with this guy named Harry for the first time by texting random people. The lesson went well and he's catholic, but he also sells stuff internationally, and I think he might be trying to use us to get an inside scoop on what Korean products would trend in America so he can sell them internationally. The reason I think that is because he kept asking us what Korean products would trend in America so he could sell them internationally.

Other highlights:

There was a live bunny inside a gas station 

Spiritual Thought:

Russell M. Nelson "Overcome the World and Find Rest"

As we strive to live the higher laws of Jesus Christ, our hearts and our very natures begin to change. The Savior lifts us above the pull of this fallen world by blessing us with greater charity, humility, generosity, kindness, self-discipline, peace, and rest. Now, you may be thinking this sounds more like hard spiritual work than rest. But here is the grand truth: while the world insists that power, possessions, popularity, and pleasures of the flesh bring happiness, they do not! They cannot! What they do produce is nothing but a hollow substitute for “the blessed and happy state of those [who] keep the commandments of God.” The truth is that it is much more exhausting to seek happiness where you can never find it! However, when you yoke yourself to Jesus Christ and do the spiritual work required to overcome the world, He, and He alone, does have the power to lift you above the pull of this world.

I love this talk, because it tells us that searching for happiness where we cannot find it is impossible. It often takes spiritual work to receive the happiness that God wants to provide us with, because we must strive to keep the commandments. But that spiritual work is worth it, because you could work your whole life to be happy by trying to obtain worldly things, and once you received it, you'd realize you're not actually happy. Because true happiness comes to those who keep the commandments of God. 

Or to those who eat a troll  () (if you don't get the ref please watch trolls) 

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Off to 송파 (Songpa)

I spent the first half of this week saying a lot of goodbyes in 속초. Some were more heartbroken than others. Mr Jin made me promise to call him every single week...  unfortunately I won't be able to keep that. But I'm sure he'll be fine once he meets the new missionary. We got a call from 방명현 the day before I left and I thought it would be to say goodbye but he just asked if I ate lunch yet and then asked for me to send him somebody's phone number. Some people never change I guess. We had 5 meals with different people on Tuesday and Wednesday before leaving on Thursday, and there was also a lot of people I wasn't able say goodbye too (sorry Daniel and 김청래). 

식사 with Lily

Mr. Jin farewell party

On Thursday I came to 송파. The difference between this place and 속초 is night and day. Way more young people here, and way more people in general. We actually get referrals, and it's actually people who are able to meet with us! We've already had some good lessons and been able to set up more for this week. I don't know many of our teaching friends yet, but apparently we had some that came to church and I just didn't see them. For some reason they like coming to church but they avoid the missionaries lol. We'll see what we can do about that. This area will take some getting used to for sure. My new companion is elder beardall. This is his last transfer. He's way cool and shares all his snacks with me. He loves gaming, especially minecraft. This should be a wonderful transfer.

Me and Elder Beardall

Sorry that's all I have time for gotta prepare for cardfest  (where you hand out as many cards as you can after pday between 6-8, winner gets ice cream)

I JUST ATE DOG IN SOUTH KOREA 😱 (real this time)

DISCLAIMER: If you like dogs skip this email 

First of all, for everyone who might hate me after reading this, I'm very sorry

It all started after district council on Wednesday. Actually let's just start before district council. On the way to district council we were about to get on the bus, and there was a grandpa standing there, waiting for the bus as well. He was wearing one of the usual grandpa vests, so I said "wow, your vest is so cool!" And he said "really??" So we began talking. But then our bus came and we sat in different seats so we stopped talking. But a few minutes later he stood up and I just assumed he was getting off. But then he took off his vest and starting walking over to me. He said since I thought his vest was cool he wanted to give it to me as a gift haha. I tried to deny it but he insisted. So I took it and then we talked more and I got his phone number and we're actually gonna meet again on Wednesday! And I got a free vest  it's actually super beat though and smelled quite terrible when he gave it to me lol but I washed it so it's all good now. I plan on wearing it when we meet with him haha

Anyway, then we got to DC and did that and stuff, and then we had to decide what to do for lunch. Most of us were low on money, but luckily we found a stray dog, and you know the rest is history! 

Jk haha that didn't happen. But we did eat dog soup for lunch. It actually tasted and felt pretty similar to beef so we asked the worker but she assured us it was dog. It's becoming more and more rare to find though and is becoming illegal soon I think. Maybe it's already illegal idk. Super nutritious though actually. One of the words for dog soup is 영양탕, and 영양 means nutrition, and 탕 is soup. 

On a sad note though, I'm getting transferred  I will miss 속초 and all the friendships I've made here. I will be returning someday. I'm getting transferred back to the city, to a place called 송파 song-pa. I don't really know where it is geographically but I think it's somewhere around Seoul.

김태완

Enos 1:12 And it came to pass that after I had prayed and labored with all diligence, the Lord said unto me: I will grant unto thee according to thy desires, because of thy faith.

If we want to receive answers to our prayers, we have to pray with more diligence. Take some time this week to think about what that could look like, and then try it!

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