Slow but steady‏

Hey everyone,

 

Thanks for the emails today. And the novel from Danielle. Ha. It was fun to read. You guys sure are busy as heck. It sounds like you're even busier than I am. That's cool that grandpa and grandma are serving another mission. You'll have to let me know where they go. Do they have a guessing map up? I'm going to say Florida. That'd be a nice place. They can go hit up Disney World on their P-day. I'm glad you guys changed the seat covers in the alero and gave it a good cleaning. Oh I sent a package off for you guys the other day. I'm not sure when it will get there, maybe a couple weeks, but you can at least look forward to that. Are you still working on sending that package to me?

 

Well my week was pretty good. We actually picked up three new investigators. One was a former investigator that Elder Stanley and his trainer actually originally found. We were walking to our church one day and he passed us in his car and asked us if we were the new missionaries here. He recently quit his job and has lots of time and really wants to meet with us. He's pretty cool and fly at English. We haven't been able to teach him anything yet because he's been working on this report for college but he came to church yesterday and we're planning on meeting him tonight. It's at least another person in our investigator pool. Our other two is a family who moved into our area awhile ago and was meeting with the missonaries in their last area. We met them for the first time on Saturday and just hit it off well. They have two little boys who pretty much became our best friends and the parents seem to like us as well. I really like the feeling in their home and think they have good potential. Our other little investigators are doing good. They've been doing their reading assignments in the Book of Mormon and kind of expect our little discussions before we play ping pong and expect us to pray before we eat. So that's good. We want to start giving them a little bigger commitments and getting more principles taught. We'll see how that goes. So our area is doing pretty well right now. Hopefully we can keep seeing progress and try to get some baptisms coming in.

 

Those are pretty much the highlights/cool things of the week. We went hiking with the Elder's quorom Saturday morning and then went out to breakfast. That was sweet. It was at Incheon Grand Park. You should look it up becuase it's actually a pretty cool place. I've been there a couple times now. It is pretty crazy to think about how long I've been out. I think today is actually my 8 month mark in Korea. Woot. Time is moving fast. I feel like by the time I'm comfortable with the language and have figured out how to really do missionary work, it will be time to come home. I guess that's why grandpa and grandma are on their 3rd mission now. They probably have it mastered. You should talk them into coming to Korea and helping me out. Haha.

 

Well that's about it for me. I can't really think of anything else I can ramble off about that's worth rambling. I'm excited for conference though. Pay good attention and give me a heads up on which ones to watch out for. I've been reading old takes every once in awhile to get pumped up. I found one from 1991. There's some good stuff. Anyway. Talk to you guys next week.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

At Least Someone Cares

Hey everyone,

 

Umm did you guys have such a boring week that you had no need to email me? That's unheard of. Surely something happened. Even if it was just work and school you can still email me. Oh I got a email! Well I'll just give you the update of my week while I wait for you guys.

 

Oh I just emailed you guys a few days ago. Haha. We've had a pretty good few days since then though. Our new investigator brought a couple friends with him when he met us and we ended up picking them up as investigators too. They all go to the same school, which is right next to our church, and are pretty good buds. We've just been meeting them after school and playing ping pong. We tried to talk about the Book of Mormon with them but because they're all 14 year old boys and have been playing ping pong, it's a little challenging for them to concentrate. So I don't know how much is really sinking in, but we gave them all a Book of Mormon and told them to read the introduction page. We'll see what happens. We might have to get a bit creative.

 

On Saturday, our district leader's ward had a little musical program thing and they invited us to perform/watch. I performed. My companion watched. It was way fun. There were a few little kids playing their little tunes on the piano and a couple other members played the guitar and then my district leader played a couple songs and his companion rapped. It was sweet. I played Dumb Song and they loved it. I don't think Koreans play much "jazz" piano so they're usually pretty excited when I play stuff like that. It's times like this that make me really grateful you guys made me stick with piano.

 

Well thanks for replying. That's about it from me. Tell Kylie to beat up Kadin for not caring and that I'll beat him up too when I get home. Glad you guys are having a good time with the Japanese kids. I can't remember any Japanese either. Hopefully you can keep up with them. Talk to you later.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

Email from London

From London:

Eat more KimChi!

Happy Chu Suk!‏

Hey everyone,

 

You guys have Japanese kids again? That sounds fun. And you're still boating. Ugh. That sounds fun (sarcasm). I understand how busy you guys are and how hard it is to send off a package. I still need to send one to you guys. I've been moving some pictures from my memory card onto my translator before I send it home so that's partly why it's taking so long as well. Maybe I'll try to get that off to you sometime this week so you can get my ipod and then if I'm not done with the rest of my pictures, I'll just send that later. That's cool you guys took the Japanese kids to the temple. It sounds like they had a pretty good experience. And that's cool one of your Korean girls is coming over for Christmas. It'd be sweet if I could say hi to her when I call home. Maybe even practice a little Korean. And Danielle, that's fun that you have your Korean teacher again and that she's having a baby. Korean babies are the cutest thing in the world. I've been emailing Jordan a bit. He's almost out of the MTC and he said he can already understand about 80% of what his teachers say. Man. What I would give for that. I'm coming up on my year mark and I still barely know what's going on. Oh well.

 

So as you know, this week was Korea's biggest national holiday, Chu Suk. It's similar to Thanksgiving. Pretty much everyone goes back to their hometowns and spends a few days with their families. Monday was a full P-day so Sunday night, we went over to our zone leader's/district leader's house and spent the night with them. It was way fun. Monday we just hung out. There wasn't really much to do because everything was closed. But it was nice to just relax and hang out for once. Tuesday we had a special zone conference. They had a few musical numbers. My district leader, who is also a rock star, asked me to play the piano for him for a musical number. He had a cool arrangement of "How Great Thou Art" on a cd so we spent a little time during our marathon P-day to figure it out and play it. It was pretty fun and it turned out pretty good. So that's my new claim to fame.

 

Last week we picked up a couple of those kids we met on the street as investigators. We've just met them a couple times so we don't know too much about them, but they're nice, innocent kids. We're meeting at least one of them tonight so hopefully it goes well. We also got a referall from some other missionaries. It's a familiy with two little boys. We haven't met them yet because of the holiday but we talked to the dad on the phone and he seems really nice. Apparently they're a really good family and really like the missionaries. So we're starting to see a few things pop up here and there. Now that the holiday is over we'll be able to meet more regularly and see more success. Oh I just remembered some other news from last week. I had dog soup. It's called bo shin tang. It actually was pretty good. A member took us out to dinner one night. So London better watch out when I get back or else I might eat her. Haha. Just kidding. They breed certain dogs for the meat. Anyway. I thought you might like to hear that. I haven't had too many new cultural experiences lately.

 

Well that's about it for now. I'll try to get this package off to you guys as soon as I can. Tell your Japanese boys hi for me. If you can. Haha. Good luck with that. Talk to you guys later.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

Tae Kwon Do kids‏

Hey everyone,

 

Well it sounds like Mom and Danielle had a good weekend. And Grandpa and Grandma. They even pulled through with the family updates. I don't know what happened with Dad and the kids. Hopefully they're still around somewhere. So Ty and Logan didn't take their eye exam very seriously? Now they get big six inch coke bottle glasses. That's what you get when you don't study. That's crazy Amanda is in college now. I feel old. But that's good that everyone is busy and doing good things with their lives. Those pillows and such you guys made are pretty legit. Oh before I forget, with that music, would it be possible to put it on a mp3 player or something? That way I can just have that little gadget and not a bunch of cds. I was planning on sending my ipod home if you want to wait for that and put some stuff on it. I'll try to get that package sent off to you guys soon. There's just not much time to do things like that as a missionary. As far as other stuff I need/want I think I'm good. Maybe some more recent family pictures would be fun.

 

So we had transfers this week. My companion left and I stayed here in Mansu. My new companion's name is Elder Rossi and he's from Salt Lake. This is his fourth area in this zone so he knows Incheon pretty well and he already knew a lot about the area before he even came. It's been good so far. It's always a little weird at first getting used to each other but I think it will be good. My district leader is the same and his new companion is one of my best friends in the mission so that's cool. We've already done a few finding activities together. It's a good group. We possibly will have a new investigator by the end of the day. On Friday we were just out contacting and talked to these three kids going to their tae kwon do class who thought we were pretty cool then they called us later that night and wanted to meet. One has been texting us everyday and seems to really like us. He almost came to church yesterday. So we're pretty excited about that. This kid kind of reminds me of my recent convert over in Tae Baek. Just a young innocent student who really likes the missionaries. We're just going to meet them and play ping pong and have fun and build a good relationship. That's what we did in Tae Baek. So I'm pretty excited about that. It will be the first new investigator in over two transfers in this area. We're overdue. I'm thinking this could be the little spark we need to get things up and running again. Other than that, everything is same old. The weather is really nice right now. It can probably be classified as "perfect." Everything is starting to cool off and the leaves are starting to fall off the trees. Supposedly it will be like this for about a month and then it will start getting chilly again. That's depressing. I better wash the mold off my coat before I really need it. Next week is a huge national holiday in Korea. It's called Chu Suk. Apparently everything just shuts down. It's like Thanksgiving. Everyone goes and visits their family for a few days. It's so big, the mission president told the missionaries last year to not visit people because this is basically the only time they have to be with their family and they do not want to be disturbed. So we get like a week long P-day next week. Yay! I'll let you know how it goes. Well that's about it here. Still loving it and working hard. Tell Kylie Moore's mom hi haha. Talk to you later.

 

Love, Elder Dorius