Endure to the End

{July 8, 2012}

Hey everyone,

 

Sounds like the reunion was fun. I'd be fine with going there every year just by the sounds of it. So was Clark AP?! How come I didn't know that? Of course he would be. He's the man. Haha what the crazy? Malea's mission president is Pres. Dorius? Haha that's way funny. Do you know if we're related to him at all? Way to go Danielle for sharing the gospel! That's way cool. I totally know what you mean about how it can be a little scary talking about the gospel to someone who has never really interacted with our church. But with a little study and practice it gets better. Even a habit. My companion is talking about church with someone right now haha. We're riding the train into Seoul today for our P-day and I just went through my greenie area! It was way cool to see it again and to see all the mountains and scenery. The countryside is beautiful this time of year. Yup. I'm right on the ocean. If fact we visited a less active lady last night who lived right next to the beach. We see it almost everyday so that's been fun too. Yeah the location for the 2018 Olympics is in my area. That makes it a little more inticing to come back and visit it. I'll have a few connections and such. We have an investigator who supervises all the construction and stuff for it so we've been getting the update on things. It's been good.

 

Well this week was really good. Our new mission president came to Korea at the first of this month and he came out to our zone and met all of us. He's sweet. I'm really excited to work with him. And his wife is going to be a good mission mom. She's been learning Korean a bit and she bore her testimony in Korean for us. It's been a little different having trainings in English, but it's good. I think he'll have some good ideas to help move the work forward.

 

I think the Lord decided to teach me a little more about patience and hard work this week. It was finals week at all the schools so some of our investigators couldn't meet because they had to study, so everyday was full of finding. It was tough. I also realized that this is going to be a time of strength and diligence because there were a few times where me and my companion just wanted to throw our planners away and give up. Our plans weren't working out and we were getting burned out on finding. But we stuck with it and went out everyday and did the work. And the Lord blessed us. Yesterday was one of the best days of my mission as far as enjoying the work. Two kids we've been meeting with decided to come to church. To be honest, we didn't really expect them to come, but they did. We also have a super sweet couple that has the cutest little baby I've ever seen that moved into our branch a few months ago and the husband wanted to come with us to visit a member in the hospital. He never met him before, but he decided it'd be good to go and visit him. Then he wanted to go visit another less active who lives way far (the one by the beach) and met with her as well. He's just an all around good guy and wants to be a good person. It was so fun. Then that night as we were going back to apartment to eat dinner, we got a call from a family who wanted to come to church and they wanted to meet right then. So we took off to the church and met the dad and one of the sons. Oh my goodness they're golden! They said they'll come to church next week and it sounds like every week after that and the son wants to come out to our youth activities. It was such a cool miracle.

 

Our investigators have been doing pretty good. Our really mature high school girl is doing really well. We met her on Saturday and we actually had a pretty rough lesson. We weren't able to practice it and run through it beforehand, but when we bore testimony about what we were trying to talk about, she seemed to feel the Spirit and understand what we were trying to say. We're hoping to get her a baptismal date in the next week or so. That's probably the most exciting thing with our investigators right now. We're shooting for our other two families to have dates soon and get baptized as families. It's going to be pretty exciting.

 

The weather has been really nice. We thought the rainy season started when it just poured all day long one day, but the next few days were just clear and sunny. It's been a little strange actually. This time last year it was pouring rain all the time. So we're hoping we can get through it without too much rain. We got caught in that down pour and had to walk home in the rain. It was pretty cool and we felt like real men again, but I probably won't do it again. Haha.

 

Well that's pretty much been our week. I could go on about all the doors we knocked and all the people we tried to talk to but I don't want to bore you. Haha. We're looking at a pretty good week this week coming up so hopefully we'll have some good stories next week. I'm going on exchanges this week with the elders in my greenie area so I'm going to see my recent convert again and some of the members. So stay tuned. Have a good week and I'll talk to you later!

 

Love, Elder Dorius