Sunday, June 17, 2012

Letter from Korea~June 18, 2012

Last week was awesome!! I'm really short on time today though so I'm gonna have to write quickly.

On Monday we spent some time doing P-day things since Tuesday was temple day and we wouldn't have time to do them; we cleaned and shopped and emailed. Then we proselyted for a while. At night we met with 이주원 and he gave us a little tour around Wonju and took us out to dinner. We made a little progress with him. We gave him the Book of Mormon and challenged him to read it. He is a pretty crazy guy; he's always busy and is all over the place so when we meet he never wants to just sit and talk. He always wants to take us somewhere and do something. So we're trying to figure out how to approach him best.

Tuesday morning we went to Seoul and met up with other missionaries for lunch. In the afternoon we had our temple session and then we went out to eat dinner with my Korean grandparents. It was good to see them and talk to them. They are going to Utah next month and are so excited! My Korean grandpa told me that he's going to go to my ward and bear his testimony at fast and testimony meeting in English, so he's been studying super hard. He's amazing. After dinner we rode the subway to the missionary house where we were gonna stay the night.

Wednesday we had our last meeting with President Lee. He bore a powerful testimony to us. We sang "God be with you till we meet again" and said our goodbyes. I'm pretty sure every missionary was crying. I'm for sure going to miss President Lee. After that my companion did pass off for a while so I went with one of the AP missionaries and ran some errands and then just studied while I waited for Elder Kim to finish. He passed! We finally made the journey back to Wonju, which took a while. Once we were back we went to 이상혁's  house and taught him one last time and finished up the preparations for his baptism.

Thursday we taught English to the North Korean kids! We are really good friends with them so it's so fun to spend time with them. After class we talked to one of the teachers from the school for a while; she has interest in the gospel. She loved talking to us and said that she wants us to share good words with her each week. So we're gonna give her a Book of Mormon and meet with her each week after we teach English. We met up with 한창훈, our investigator who has 3 kids who are all less active. We went and visited him at his house and talked for a while. He's really nice and loves to meet with us, but he drinks and smokes like crazy so it's hard to teach him when we meet with him. We talked to his son for a while and shared a message with him and set up another appointment for Sunday (yesterday). Then we went and met with a lady from Golden Voice and her two sons and played basketball with them. She wants us to help her sons and to be examples for them. We hope to get closer with them and be good influences on them.

Friday my companion and I were both pretty sick but we went to the church and cleaned the baptismal font and then we went and visited 안순을 and her son and then we took her son out to dinner. They are both less-active. We promised the son that we would take him out for dinner for his birthday so we took him to get 샤브샤브.  My treat (my dad's treat). He is now reading the scriptures every day with his mom and is praying too so we are making progress!

Saturday we had golden voice and then we went out to lunch. We visited some potential investigators at the supermart that they run near our church. Then we went to English class. This week four people came, but that's better than none! We met 정진택 and shared Alma 40 with him about the resurrection. He's been progressing really well lately. He told me that I can't transfer or he will call my mission president and tell him to send me back. haha. He's a really great guy. After that we had dinner with some of our members. It was like this huge seafood spicy mess. It tasted good but it destroyed my stomach.

Sunday was 이상혁's baptism! Church was great and then we all ate together before the service. Elder Kim did the baptism and I spoke at the baptism. It went great! After church we picked up two new investigators, really nice ladies, who are doing the 30/30 program with us. Then we went to 한창훈's house; he made us a barbecue. He drinks like crazy and was starting to drink so we asked him to stop, but he wouldn't stop. He's a taxi driver and he drives a super expensive car for his taxi so I decided to try to commit him to stop drinking. I asked how long he had been drinking for and how much he drank each day. He said two bottles of 소주 a day for 20 years.. Then I did the math and told him that he could have bought a brand new Chairman (the car he has) and a lot of other stuff if he had not used his money on alcohol. That's not including if he hadn't used his money on cigarettes too. It worked! It made sense when he thought about it that way and he said he would stop drinking! So please pray for Brother Han to stop drinking! After that we proselyted the rest of the night..

I have to go now. I love you all. Thanks so much for your support.


-Elder Rife

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