안녕하새요!
It has been another week of exciting missionary work in Korea!
Things continue to go well here in our area. Things have been kind of quiet this week in terms of lessons but other than that things are bustling along! Elder Luke and I have dropped a few of our investigators who have been meeting with the missionaries for a long time and aren’t progressing but are continuing to work well with 정대영 형재님 and 박신곤 형재님. We haven’t been able to meet with 박신곤 형재님 as much as we would like because of his busy school and work schedule and 정대영 형재님’s parents still have not allowed him to be baptized but everything continues along well. With 정대영 형재님 we have finished teaching all of the lessons with him and this week have been reviewing the baptismal interview questions with him to see if there is anything we need to recover and it has been going great. He is such an amazing investigators and has so much faith, despite things not being easy at home for him to be baptized. This week we had an interesting experience with him in that he told us that he might not come to church because he was going to another church. Elder Luke and I didn’t know what to say when we heard that as we talked to him over the phone. He explained that one of his friends who he hadn’t seen for a while invited him, and he might go. He was surprised when we accepted his answer and told him that he could chose what he wants, even though we wanted to see him on Sunday. We didn’t know exactly what would happen but on Sunday there he was, white shirt and tie and sitting with us on the front row of sacrament meeting. I don’t know how he made this decision exactly, but he asked us “why don’t other churches have the sacrament?” which allowed us to teach about the restoration and more about how Christ established his church on the earth and we follow those same teachings. He told us how he had gone to other churches in Korea, and they gave him free pizza and even money on his birthday. It is comforting to me that even though our church is kind of small in Korea and we have lots of commandments and work required of the members, but in the end, our church teaches the true teachings of Christ.
This week Elder Luke and I had an interesting experience, as were invited to a lunch appointment with one of the members in our ward. We had been trying to meet with this member for a while when he called and invited us over for lunch on Tuesday. We went as normal but when we arrived he told us, the rest of the guests will be here in a minute. We soon found out that not only us and the member would be visiting but President Barrow, Sister Barrow, and the AP’s would be coming as well. We had a really great meal and visited together, but as we were cleaning up one of the AP’s comes up to me and whispers “you have the message right?” Of course elder Luke and I had prepared a spiritual message to talk about ,but we now found we would have to do it in front of a large assembly of everyone. Together Elder Luke and I taught about General Conference, receiving revelation, and shared a scripture that we thought was pertinent. Of course, I was worried about my Korean and doing everything, but we had a very powerful discussion with everyone about what we had prepared and even heard testimony from everyone that was there. On the way out, President Barrow expressed that he was impressed with our teaching, so even though it was a nerve wracking visit, all turned out for the best.
We are continuing to search for new investigators this week and have been trying to give out as many Book of Mormon’s as we can. As always as we do this we have had good results, rejection, and even some interesting experiences. We found one person who were were able to set up an appointment for later this week and might become a new investigator! We were also able to get out several Book of Mormons and testify to others. On the other hand, I was almost hugged by a drunk man who talked to us all about he had met with the missionaries in the past, and we got yelled at by a guy on the subway who was a missionary from another church and told us all about how we should go back to America and we did not know Jesus Christ, to which I responded “sorry, i don’t speak Korean well.” Even thought people respond differently to our message it is good to know that as we open our mouths and work hard, even if not everyone responds well, we can find interested people and good investigators.
Well, I may have written a sort of scatter brained email, but things are going well here in Korea an I know that I am doing the Lord’s work!
Have a great week!
Love
Elder Lees
Elder Lees 