Elder Dorius in Korea: What an eventful week

{June 17, 2012}

Hey everyone,

Holy smokes. Danielle should had an eventful week. Way to buy the Hyundai. That made me happy. Haha. I love trips to the ER! It's so great when you're there in the middle of the night with no one else around and you're doing all you can to not die and you still have to wait in the waiting room. Maybe you did have a kidney stone. That's kind of how I felt. It was definately rated four stars and two enthusiatic thumbs up. But I'm glad you're alive. Congratulations. Also congratulations to Kylie on her PR! Way to go! That stinks you didn't get to move on but it sounds like you still ran a good race. Mom, I printed of that registration form yesterday at our church. I'll try to fax that sometime today or tomorrow and I'll probably through the real one in the mail just in case. Oh and thanks for the video, but I already have that one on my translater. Speaking of technology, did you get a tablet? What exactly is that? Is it like an ipad? You must be technologically advanced nowadays. Haha. Oh yeah. Happy Father's Day! I kind of completely forgot. Sorry. But I still love you and appreciate everything you do for me. Did you get some good Father's Day gifts?

Well like Danielle, my week was also pretty eventful. Not quite as eventful as buying a car and going to the ER, but as far as missionary work goes, it was pretty busy. This week we picked up four new investigators. One guy is a little older. He works for New Skin so he was in Utah and went to the temple and talked to some missionaries there and wanted to learn more. He seems like he's just more curious than actually searching for the truth, but we'll see. We finally picked up our preacher friend. He's cool. He uses the Bible like crazy but that's ok because our church believes in the Bible. He's open to reading the Book of Mormon and praying about it. He even said that's what you have to do in order to know the truth of the scriptures. So I'm excited to see how that turns out. Then our other new investigator is this guy who wants to learn English with his son. As we were talking, we found out that he plays tennis every weekend so I told him I played in high school and he wants to play with us. He goes with a pretty big group of guys and they hit all morning long. Once again, this was an experience that God does love His children and answers their prayers. I've been waiting for this my whole mission. But here's the kicker. This week is transfer calls and it's looking like I'm the one who's going to go. NO!! My golden opportunity is slipping away. But we still don't know. We'll find out tonight and I'll let you know this week.

We went to a wedding this week. The less active son of a lady in our ward got married and the whole ward was invited. It was cool, but kind of crazy at the same time. It seemed like they just put the bride and groom up there, said some stuff, moved them around and did other stuff, and then they were married. Maybe it was meaningful to them. I don't know. But it kind of made me not want to get married like that. I think I'll go with a temple marriage. Speaking of marriages, is Mary married? Ha. I think I heard somewhere that she was getting married on the 15th, but I never really heard for sure. If so, that'd be pretty funny because I was at this wedding at about the same time as her wedding.

Our mission president gave his farewell talk this week. He talked a lot about happiness, which we all saw that coming because he is seriously the happiest guy in the world. Whenever we see him, he always has a huge smile on his face, even when things are hard and when it's really easy to not smile. He also talked about his conversion and how he thought he found happiness through smoking and drinking and worldly things, but when he became converted he realized the gospel brought him true happiness. So it was a good meeting. It's going to be strange to have a new president. Especially an American. But I'm glad I got to serve under Pres. Lee for the time I did and that I was able to hear and understand his final words of advice to us in his native language.

You're also going to be glad that I got to perform quite a bit this week. At that meeting I played the piano for my zone leaders and a couple sisters who sang Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, in sacrament meeting I played the piano for my companion and one of the young men in our ward who sang Abide With Me, and then all the missionaries in our stake were asked to join this choir that will be singing at a fireside for our mission president, so we practiced for that on Sunday. Lot's of music this week. It was fun.

Well sorry this turned into a novel. I updated my journal this morning so everything was fresh on my mind and easy to remember. Haha. I've been texting Elder Stanley a bit today talking about rooming. I don't know if you've looked into that much or not but we decided pretty much anything will probably work. We just don't want to be on campus. But if you can find something close, that would be good. We're pretty easygoing. If there's anything we need to do or need to know just let us know I guess. I don't know how college stuff goes anymore. Haha. Anyways. Thanks for the emails. I'll send a few pictures. Talk to you next week!

Love, Elder Dorius

Pictures:

1. Here's me and my mission president and his wife.