Monday, June 11, 2012

Letter from Korea~June 11, 2012

I don't know if anyone except me noticed that this last week on June 7th I hit my year mark in Korea! Which means that I have lived four years of my life in South Korea. That's about 20%.

Last week on Monday after we emailed we didn't really have much to do so we went back to the apartment with our zone leaders and worked out for a few hours. Once P-day ended my companion and I had an appointment to meet up with a few kids to play basketball with them and their friends. So we played basketball with them for a while then we gave them each a Book of Mormon and introduced it to them. We were supposed to meet up with them again tonight but the kid we are closest with has to get surgery on his gall bladder this week so we can't meet for a little while. We also spent a little bit of time cleaning and re-arranging our apartment.

Last Wednesday we went to Kangnung for a combined district meeting. We learned about using the Book of Mormon in finding and teaching. It was a really good training and we learned a lot. After we made it back to Wonju we walked home and dropped off our stuff and headed to the downtown area to do some streetboarding.

Thursday we taught English at the school for North Korean defactors and then we contacted people on our way home. Then we met with a lady named 정현아 and her two children. She was a referral from the Daejeon mission. She wants us to teach English to her 6 year old daughter. The mom actually has a little bit of church interest so I think it will be great as we continue meeting with them. It was pretty crazy with the 6 year old girl and her 4 year old little brother but it was fun to play with them for a while and try to teach English to them.

On Friday I was actually kinda sick. We had weekly planning meeting and then I slept for a little while to try to get feeling better. Then all of our appointments cancelled on us and it was raining so we spent some time working on records and organizing everything in our house.

Saturday was English day! After we taught English and went out to eat sushi we went and got drinks with one of the Golden Voice members. He is a really cool guy and loves to talk with us so we talked with him about his beliefs and had a good conversation with him. He told us about how he first met missionaries a long time ago and how his view of our church changed so much as he met with the missionaries and talked with them and saw their examples. 


We miraculously had 9 people come to English class! It was crazy. We had so much fun. We had everyone laughing sooo hard as we practiced English with them. I had everyone go around the room and say their name and a little bit about themselves then everyone else chose what kind of animal they looked like. haha. They loved it. Everyone came to the conclusion that I look like a polar bear. Then we shared a message about gratitude and talked about all of the things that we are grateful for and challenged them to find things that they are grateful for and write them down. It was cool to see how the whole spirit of the room changed as we went from practicing English to sharing a gospel message and bearing testimony. 


After English class we met with 정진택. We talked with him for a long time. He's reading in Mosiah 3 right now and he's really liking it. We went over it with him for a while and he told us some stories from his life and we learned a lot about him. I really love it here in Wonju and I've made so many memories and relationships with people. It will be hard to leave and not know when I'll ever see the people here again.

On Sunday church was really good. One of the recent converts from about five months ago was asked to speak so we helped him prepare his talk for church. He gave a really good talk! We had a new investigator come to church. His name is 김상기. He's in junior high school but he looks way older than he is. We met him on the street and he said he wanted to come to church so we met up with him on Sunday morning and took him with us to church. He was having a hard time sitting through the meetings but after I gave him a Book of Mormon and told him about it he promised me he would read it everyday. He has lots of potential. 이상혁 was at church too and we sat together. He is such a funny kid and he is doing really well. He's so prepared to be baptized. After church we went a member's house for lunch. We heard her whole conversion story and it was really amazing. It's so cool how much people change when then start living their life with the gospel. We did some other member visits for the rest of the day.

It was a really good week. I'm out of time now though so I've gotta go! I love you all!!

-Elder Rife

No comments:

Post a Comment