Hey everyone,
Thanks for all the letters. For time's sake I'll just try to respond to all the letters in this email.
Aunt Jen, I loved your email. You're family is awesome! Ty and Logan are so funny. I had a good laugh about that Santa story. Tell Tori congrats on the swimming and tell Justin congrats on making the basketball team. I'm glad to hear they're taking piano lessons. It's not always fun but it gets better and it's good to know how to play. There's only one other elder in my zone that plays the piano so I've played a few times since I've been here. I wish I would have practiced the hymns more. Thanks for keeping me in the loop with your family.
Grandpa and Grandma, thanks for the email as well. Isn't technology great? The MTC has kind of made me forgotten about technology. It's weird to see my teachers pull out their phones. Way to be on learning Spanish. That's so cool. I wish I could be learning Spanish right now. Haha. We make fun of the Spanish elders when they're complaining about the language. Sounds like you guys are doing well.
Family, thanks for your emails as well. Mom, thanks for facebook stalking my friends and telling me about their lives. I really appreciate that. (sarcasm) Kadin and Kylie, those are some good words to know. Tell Bro. Monson I learned "glue" yesterday. You guys won't have any idea what it is but he'll appreciate it. Basically it's like one of the hardest grammar forms in Korean and there's a bunch of different rules. My companion and I learned it and felt pretty awesome. Dad, I don't really remember Bishop Dooley. The name sounds familiar though. But I do know his nephew. He's in my zone. We had a good chat about Soda and Lava Hot Springs. There's also another elder from Pocatello. So I found some kindred spirits. Elder Gough is actually living on my same floor so I've seen him quite a few times and I saw Elder Herrin yesterday at breakfast. I love seeing the new missionaries. I hope I didn't look as lost as they do.
So this week my teach, Bro. Ball, was talking to us and kind of getting us back on track because we were feeling frustrated with the language and he said "embrace the overwhelmage." That became our district's motto. And this week had some "overwhelmage." Every Saturday, we go to the TRC. If you don't know what that is, it's basically where we do mock lessons with people who pretend to be investigators. Each week we have a new task and they progessively get more difficult each week. The first time we went, our investigators were the older district so it wasn't too bad. But on Saturday we had real people so it was a little more real. Our task was to introduce ourselves and get to know the person and their family and then set up an appointment to meet again in Korean. The people are usually RMs that speak Korean, but there's one lady who moved here from Seoul 7 months ago and she doesn't speak English very well. Guess who got to teach her. Me and my companion. It was the epitone of "overwhelmage." The contacting went pretty well. We said our lines and then she would answer and we had no idea what she just said. But somehow we were able to communicate enough to find out a little bit about her family and set up an appointment. So we go back about 10 minutes later to our appointment with her. Luckily we get to teach the lessons in English. Well usually that's lucky. We had to use really simple English and as many Korean words as we knew when we taught. There were times where we had a hard time getting a point across clearly but it wasn't too bad. But when we bore our testimonies the Spirit was so strong. There was a time she was on the verge of tears. It was amazing to see how the Spirit is the universal language and can touch anyone's heart. It just made me more excited to get out to Korea and experience that everyday. So yeah that's my first cool missionary story. Hope you all are doing well. Oh by the way, the mail is closed December 22-26 just so you know. I almost forgot. Also what's going on over in Korea? Did things settle down? My only connection to the real world is the weather. And the only window I look out of faces a building so it's not much help. Talk to you guys soon.
Elder Dorius
Hey Danielle--I do have the hook-up on Korea relations right now, and as Brad expressed a concern I'll give you some insider tidbits. I as an American will be out of country within 48 hours of any planned warfare, I don't know what the church does for the missionaries, but I DO know that means I can in the very least give you a 48 hour heads up. Also things are fine, we are all back to life as normal, and almost all political stuff is back to normal too. Its no big, but probably during the course of his mission this will happen at least 3 more times. Little attacks that we scarcely retaliate. Just from a military perspective, life as usual!
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