The joys of traveling‏

Hey everyone,

 

I'm glad to hear everyone is enjoying summer vacation and living it up to the fullest. Way fun. Tell Dana I'm sorry she broke her toe. That is really a bummer. I guess that's what you get when you go to the lake two days in a row. Haha. Danielle, I do know an Alexa up there. Her maiden name is Call. That's so weird she's married now. She was my senior ball date. Haha. But that's cool. It seemed like a lot of my friends got married in July, or else left on missions. It's your 5 year reunion? Haha holy smokes that's stinking old! Wow. Well I don't have a ton of time today. Our zone is getting together and watching The Best Two Years (woot!) so I'll just get to the point.

 

I got transfered. My companion stayed in Gireum and I moved to Monsoo. It's in Incheon which is on the western part of the country. Between my three areas now I've been all across Korea. So that's pretty sweet. My companion is from Utah. He's my first American companion since my trainer so it's kind of nice to have that again. And since he's from Utah we celebrated Pioneer Day yesterday. Yay! This is actually one of Elder Stanley's old areas and my companion served with him for two transfers so it's pretty fun to have that connection too. I can't remember exactly where he is now but I know which zone he's in. It's kinda far from us. So that's cool. You guys are going to find this really funny. Korea has a really good postal company thing where you can pretty much send anything anywhere. So every transfer the missionaries usually just send their luggage to their new area. I sent my luggage Tuesday afternoon and I still haven't gotten it yet. Freak. Well I got one bag. All my winter clothes. Apparently my other one is coming today. I'm getting bored with my same shirt and pants. I at least have 3 different ties to wear. Anyway. I thought you guys would appreciate that. I know I did. Ha.

 

My new area is pretty nice. I'm in a 4 man house but with just the two of us. Compared to my last mold infested shoebox this place is a mansion. The work is hard. We currently have no investigators but we have a couple potentials we're working on. One of them we're meeting tonight. So that was kind of a change afer having several investigators and having appointments regularly. But it's ok. We do lots of contacting and it's good practice. I actually am starting to feel a bit better with the language. It's nice having an American companion in the fact that he doesn't blow my mind with Korean and when he talks I can actually understand what's going on. But on the other hand it's a little inconvienent when things come up that are important and you could really use a Korean. Like when you lose your luggage and have to call the company and listen to a recorded message that lists all the options you can do by pushing any number from 1 through 9. But you know, that's cool too. If I had my journal, it would make a really good entry. Ha. Another cool thing is that I have my same district leader again from when I was out in Tae Baek. So that's fun. The ward is really good. There's about 60 active members that come out regularly. So this area has lots of potential and requires a lot of work and perserverance. Everything is good though. I can't think of much more to say. Oh I haven't gotten that package yet, but we have district meeting on Wednesday so I might get it then. I'll let you know. Keep having fun. School will be back in session before too long. Haha. Talk to you later.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

There's a fungus among us‏

Hey everyone,

 

Sounds like Can Cun was fun. Shocker. Even though you suffered some bug bites and sunburn. That makes me feel a little better. I wouldn't want you guys to have a totally fun-filled, pain-free trip. Haha. But now that I know the Moody's went to Hawaii I'm slightly jealous again. And the fact that you guys are going to party again next week doesn't help. But whatever. That's cool. I guess. So is Kylie going to girl's camp instead of the track meet?

 

This week has been pretty good. It was a little different than most weeks. Remember a couple weeks ago I told you about our house leaking? Well we also had some mold growing. At first it wasn't too bad, but during the past couple days it just took off. It was growing really fast and it was showing up in more places. A biologist would have a hay day in there. Or else freak out because it's so bad. We called our mission president and talked to him about it and he said to move as soon as possible. Luckily the other missionaries in our district are really close to us so we moved in with them. Their house is pretty big but there were three missionaries there already so now there's five. It's a little crowded and crazy. Right now we're just living out of our suitcases and waiting until transfers to get more settled in. We're getting tranfer calls tonight so we'll see where we're at and go from there. So that was fun.

 

The transfer is basically over. Holy smokes. This was the fastest transfer ever. My companion thinks I'm moving but I think we're staying together. I don't think President would make us move again. But we'll see. We both hope we stay together. The other big news is that the rainy season is over. Yay! But now it's way hot and getting hotter. We heard it's supposed to get up in the 30's. Hopefully St. George heat has prepared me well. It is nice to see some blue sky and sunshine again though. How's the weather in St. George?

 

Our investigators are doing good. No baptismal dates yet but we're working on that. We have a whole family that we're teaching that we really like. We teach their daughters English. Last time we met we gave them the Family Proclamation pamphlet and talked about families. This is my first "family" investigator so it's pretty fun and I don't want to mess up. Haha.

 

Well that's about it. Everything is still the same. Except my house. It's now a giant petrie dish. Well not really. It's a small petrie dish. This week might change things up again with transfers. I'll keep you updated. Talk to you next week.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

 

1. This is me saying goodbye to the mold.

 

2. I just love it so much.

 

 

Singing in the Rain

Hey everyone,

You guys are jerks! I have no sympathy for you and the rain. It's been raining here since yesterday evening. I had totally forgotten you guys are in Can Cun until you told me. The pictures were nice but I couldn't look at them too long. Except that iguana was pretty cool. I'm sure you guys had way too much fun with him. Oh Danielle tell Mary that she wrote me awhile ago and I sent her a letter like a week or so ago. So I think the ball is in her court. Haha do you talk to her much? Oh and congrats on passing your test! That's way cool. You're finally a nurse now. Yay! Is the weather supposed to turn out better in Can Cun? You didn't plan another trip during a hurricane did you? Haha.

Well this week has been good. We had combined district meeting and the zone leaders asked my district to do a special musical number. And boy did we ever. I played the piano, my district leader played the guitar and our companions sang. Well rapped actually. It was sweet. I have it on my camera so when I get that other memory card I'll send mine and you can see it. But I think my district leader is going to email his recording to us because it's a good recording. So one way or another you'll get to see/hear it. We picked up three new investigators this week. One was a former investigator who we invited to our English class and said he wanted to meet again and talk about the Book of Mormon and stuff. Another was a referral. He's pretty golden. He actually lived in Australia for a while and met the missionaries there. It turns out one of my district leaders in the MTC was one of the missionaries he met with. It was a cool connection. He's received most of the lessons and he feels like he knows them really well so he wants to study the Gospel Principles book. I have a really good feeling about him. The only problem is that he's going back to Australia in a month or two so if we want to baptize him we'll have to do it quick. The last one is a guy who randomly came to church yesterday. He said the church he goes to is too far from his house so he decided to come to ours. Boo ya. He really liked the hymns so one of our members who was next to him invited him to come to church early next week to sing the hymns. It was really cool. As far as our other investigators go, not much has changed. Unfortunately. We meet them all just once a week and we teach them all English so the gospel isn't making as big of impact as I would like. We're at least staying busy though. My companion and I wrote a song to sing to our members. My companion has a little guitar so we packed that around and performed our song for the first time this week. It's about eternal families. It's cool. That's about all that happened this week. We had interviews with the mission president. He said he can tell that I'm happy and because of that, he's happy. My mission president is great. So yeah. It wasn't exactly a trip to Can Cun but it was still a good week. Have fun with your iguana friend. Hopefully he doesn't eat you. Talk to you next week.

Love, Elder Dorius

It's the 4th of July?‏

Hey everyone,

Thanks for all the emails. Those are so fun to read. I totally forgot it was the 4th of July today until I read your guy's emails. It made me miss Soda Springs too. That place is great. You guys are going to Can Cun without me?! Not fair! I'm way jealous right now. Be sure to pack a swimming suit and a change of clothes in your carry on. It was a good thing I learned that lesson because my luggage got lost when I came to Korea too. Travel just isn't good to me I suppose. But really for Can Cun all you need is a swimming suit and shorts (preferably your own) and you're good to go. Lucky ducks. So is Kadin and Kylie both on student council? You kind of mentioned that but didn't really tell me. That will be fun. Thanks for the music mom. Except you only sent the first page of Road Trip. I think there's 8 other pages. So if you could find those and send them too that would be great. And I did think of something else you can send to me. If you can. By chance do you have any old calendars with pictures of Christ? We had a couple nice pictures from a calendar and bought a cheap frame and gave it to a member. It turned out to be a really nice gift. So if you have old calendars laying around we would like some. I think that's all I need for now.

So this week we have been pretty busy. Because of the rain, we've been making lots of phone calls. We had tons of former investigator records that we called and ended up making quite a few appointments and even picked up two new investigators. We looked through all of our stats from this transfer so far and we've picked up two new investigators every week. We have a lot on our plate right now. It's really good. I think this is the busiest I've been on my mission. Except the only problem is they aren't progressing much. Nearly all of them have English interest so we're trying to build a lot of trust and work our way in with the gospel. It payed off with one family we picked up this week. They were former investigators who actually dropped the missionaries because they asked them to pray, or something like that. So we just did English and got to know them and now they want to take us hiking and said we can teach them scriptures in English. So it's a start but I wish more of them had more gospel interest. We do some walking but we mostly ride the bus or the subway. The rain doesn't really slow down Koreans. They're machines. They just grab their umbrella and go. We still play soccer with my ward if the weather is good. But since it's been raining we play jok-ku which is like volleyball but with your feet and with a lower net. It's sweet.

Well not much more exciting stuff happened. Today we're meeting up with a bunch of other missionaries and playing ping pong and games. Did I tell you they have Catan in Korea? I've actually played it quite a bit. Doesn't get much better than that. Except my zone leaders kill me every time. Grr...Anyway I need to email my mission president and whoop someone in ping pong so I'll wrap this up. Have a good 4th of July and have fun eating your BBQ. And DON'T have fun in Can Cun. Talk to you later.

Love, Elder Dorius