We missed the ark

{Sept. 18, 2012}

Hey everyone,

 

Thanks for the pictures. Those were way fun to see. Who the heck are those kids that look like Kadin and Kylie?! And is that Dallin Moody? He's looking big. He must be pumping some iron. Were those my cross country shorts that Kadin was rocking in one of those pictures? How much of my stuff is he wearing now? I feel like my whole life just got taken by my dong saeng. That's little brother. Or sister. And Kerry had her baby?! I was actually thinking about that the other day. I remember when you guys told me she was expecting another one but then I never heard about it again. Well cool. Good job Kerry for getting her here on an even day and for missing the 13th. I can't wait to meet her.

 

Well this week was pretty good. It was transfer week but we stayed the same here. That wasn't a huge surprise. Elder Stanley got a good shake this round. He got transfered and is training. I talked to him yesterday and he seems to be doing pretty good. We did a lot of less active visiting this week. There were a couple up by a pretty nice beach out here that we tried to visit but one wasn't home and we couldn't find the other. The beach was way cool though. We did have a pretty good miracle with another less active though. It was the last one on our list for that area we were working in and the night was wrapping up, but we hurried and visited him. We knocked on the door and nothing happened, but we could kind of hear something moving inside. So we knocked again and then waited. The door finally opened and there was our less active member! He thought we were something bad outside so that's why he was a little hesitant to open the door. Haha. But he's way sweet. Luckily he had a really good relationship with the missionaries that taught him so he was open and friendly with us. He's even texted us some pictures of Jesus he drew back in the day. So that was cool. We were going to visit him again last night, but there was a typhoon. Which is why I didn't email yesterday. It was pouring buckets yesterday. I have never seen it rain like that in my whole life. It was unreal. And it was super windy. We were right in the middle of the typhoon this time so it was a lot worse than the one before.  Our president even called us the night before to warn us. He said it was expected to rain about a foot in 24 hours and we heard there were 90 mph winds. We managed enough courage to go out and grab some groceries, and by the time we accomplished our mere 10 minute walk to the store, our shoes and pants were soaked. So to avoid the danger of being blown away or drowning, we got permission to email this morning.

 

We are heading in to Seoul today again. We have our temple session tonight and then tomorrow we have a special conference with the area president, President Ringwood. It's going to be good. The last one was amazing. So we're pretty excited for that. There was a missionary in our branch who just returned home from Busan and we had dinner with him and our branch president's family. The members were just ranting and raving about how great he had become. It was kind of funny, but pretty cool. We were pretty excited because we thought we just got a solid member to teach with whenever, but he left to go to school yesterday. Lame. But it was kind of fun to hear about how they do things down in Busan and got some good ideas for our missionary work.

 

That's about all the excitement I can think of. It doesn't quite sound as eventful as having Japanese kids for 10 days, but it was still pretty good. Hopefully you can have a little more time for relaxation this week. Talk to you next week!

 

Love, Elder Dorius

Pictures!

1. Here's the beach I was talking about

 2. This was me and my companion last night. We had to send in some pictures for a slideshow

3. Here's an Asian picture I took. Haha. Slightly rediculous.

God bless America.... and every other country

Hey everyone,

 

I can't believe you guys are still hitting the lake. It must be a little warmer in St. George than it is here. I'm not sure what the temperature is exactly but I think I saw somewhere that it's 26 degrees. It's about perfect. And the occasional ocean breeze is nice too. But I don't think I'd want to be out on the water right now. That time seemed to pass here. Congratulations on the new job Danielle! That's way sweet. But that's too bad you guys are killing everything in your house haha. I agree with Mom. I might have to think more about visiting you guys. Maybe you should just come hang out with us in Utah. It might be good for your health. So are there international sisters at the St. George temple? I didn't think they'd have Japanese missionaries there, but that's way cool! How long do you have your Japanese kids? What else are you going to do?

 

Well this week has been a little different than most weeks. We went on exchanges with one of the district leaders in our zone and his companion. I was with the district leader and while we were eating dinner, we got a random call from our mission president. It turned out that this missionary I was with was being transfered into the office the next day and that his companion would be working with us for a week. So we got him back the next morning to pack and then we sent him off with the office elders and we've been working in a threesome since then. It's been pretty fun. The missionary who's with us is from Germany. So now when we talk to people we always say "he's from Germany, he's from Australia, and I'm from America." I think people get a good kick out of it. It even helped us out with this one contact. We were knocking on doors and were getting nothing, and then finally at the last door of 15 floors, a lady was willing to talk with us. She was asking a little bit about the history of the church and how big it is and stuff and then we explained how we were from all over the world and she seemed pretty impressed with it.

 

I'm trying to think of what else happened this week. We had zone leader council. That was fun. Oh we found out that mormon.org is in Korean now, as well as in tons of other languages, and so we're going to do something with that for part of this 50 year anniversary of missionary work in Korea, we're going to try to have all the missionaries have a little profile on there. I think it's going to be pretty cool. It's still kind of in the planning process, but I think our president wants to do something with that. He's pretty smart. 

 

Hmm...this week seems pretty uneventful now that I'm looking back on it. But at the same time it kind of has. It's just missionary work. Nothing wrong with that, but it can get a little repetative sometimes. Shoot I don't think I spelled that right. Anyways. Maybe I'll just wrap it up and let you get on with your lives. Haha my companion is freaking out right now because his dad just gave him a countdown for his mission. Don't get trunky! Just remember Pres. Uchtdorf's talk about always being in the middle.

 

Talk to you later!

Love, Elder Dorius

Survived the Typhoon

{Sept 3, 2012}

Hey everyone,

 

Well we survived the typhoon. It didn't turn out to be as big as everyone made it sound like it was going to be. One day was super windy and then it rained pretty hard for a little bit. Then it was just rainy another day. But I think our little nook of woods didn't get hit too bad. We were mailing some letters off and saw a little news and down in Taejeon there was some flooding and more damage. Seoul didn't get hit too badly either. Is Brad's companion Brady Berryessa?! That's so crazy! Danielle said something about him having a companion from St. George but I didn't hear anything else about it. I can't believe that. I didn't even know Brady was on a mission. I feel a little out of the loop. But that's super crazy. So you guys are hosting the Japanese kids again? Are you going to host some Koreans again? You should if you can. Don't they come in January-ish? I'd be able to actually meet them this time. Oh yeah I forgot about Labor Day. Sheesh. All I know are the Korean holidays now. Chu Seok is coming up soon. Gotta get ready for that. It's a big one.

 

This past week has been pretty good. Even though the typhoon wasn't sandbag worthy, it did put a little kink in our missionary work. We had a way sweet miracle the other day. We got a random text from a guy asking about one of the old missionaries that served here. He was saved in our phone in the member group so we thought he was some old less active or something. Then he just asked if we could meet and of course, being the safety precautious and "stranger danger" oriented missionaries that we are, we agreed. We planned to meet him after church so we asked our branch president if he knew who he was and he didn't know, so then we thought it was an investigator. So we finally meet him and as we were talking, we realized exactly who it was. There was an investigator last year who met the missionaries, got baptized, and then suddenly moved to Seoul before getting confirmed, and now he just got back to Gangneung and met us. It's kind of an interesting situation. Our mission president said to just get him confirmed and get him active in the church again. So we pretty much just walked into a confirmation. Which is way better than Free Parking. That might help you game players understand just how cool it is. ;)

 

Speaking of games. I introduced Pass the Pigs to the youth in our branch. They thought the pigs were...mindblowing. That's a good translation. But one of the young women must have been paying her tithing because the windows of Heaven opened up for her and she destroyed us all in just one turn. So then nobody thought it was fun anymore and we just played Uno. Haha. It was fun though.

 

We took a ride on the Reading Railroad and went to the other district's district meeting in my old greenie area. That was fun. We recieved a good training on prayer. And now that the month is over, our focus on the Book of Mormon is changing to the Sacrament. The mission is focusing on recieving revelation through church attendance for ourselves and for our investigators. It should be good. And since it's a new month, we're heading into Seoul today to take a walk on the Boardwalk and have our monthly zone leader council. 

 

Well that's about all the important stuff I can think of. I don't need to bore you with anything else. Have fun playing your games! Talk to you later.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

Grab the Sandbags!

{Aug 27, 2012}

Hey everyone,

 

Thanks for the emails. I especially liked the blog insert from Danielle. (See blog post here) I have seen that movie so I knew exactly what was going on. That's so funny. You guys are STILL going to the lake?! What's the weather been like there lately? We had a couple days where the temperature dropped a bit and it actually got a little chilly. We even wore long sleeves for a couple days. We also found out from the mission office that there's a typhoon coming in tomorrow and if we need sandbags we can go pick them up at local community centers. That should be exciting. Luckily we live on the 13th floor so I'm not super worried, but I'm not quite sure how our day is going to turn out. We might have to park the bike. Congrats Kadin on passing the Eagle board! Especially since you get to go on the Eagle trip. Those are fun. Are you going to the same place I went to? Oh and I just used my credit card this last week. I bought a sweet vocabulary book while we were in Seoul. So it should be good.

 

Well this week has been pretty good. The girl that got baptized last week was confirmed yesterday so now it's official. We just have to fax in the baptismal record. She's already read through first Nephi and is still asking way good questions about some of the scriptures. I'm not really looking forward to the Isaiah chapters, but I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get there. We had zone conference this week. We went into Seoul on Tuesday, had our temple session in the evening, spent the night, and then headed over to the conference in the morning. It was a way good meeting. Our mission president's wife gave an awesome talk about grace that pretty much changed my whole understanding of it. She referenced a book by Brad Wilcox that sounds way good. I can't quite remember what it is. "His Grace is Sufficient" or something like that. You should check it out sometime. Then our president talked a little bit about the history of the church and missionary work in Korea. This year marks 50 years since missionaries came to Korea so our mission is trying to think of something cool to do to celebrate it. But he talked about looking back on history and remembering the sacrifices of others and see how far we've come now. Holy cow. The first missonaries in Korea were so solid. Their stories kind of made me feel like scum, but it was also some good motivation. So it was a pretty good zone conference.

 

We also had kind of an interesting experience this week. One that I've never had on my mission. I don't know if I've told you about our member that was in the hospital or not, but for at least the past month we've been visiting a super old and the epitone of frail and fragile member in the hospital, and we found out that he passed away this week. It was kind of sad but he's definately a lot better now. His health was getting worse and worse so it was time for him to go. But he didn't really have any family and was just an old guy who lived by himself, so instead of a funeral our branch just had a special worship service thing for him. It just made me grateful for the plan of salvation and the gospel.

 

We had a cool miracle last night. We made some brownies and were going to take them to our branch president, but instead of riding our bikes, my companion felt like we should walk. So thanks to my blueness I didn't put up a big fight and just agreed, and along the way we talked to a guy who had met with missionaries before and even had a Book of Mormon and had read a little bit of it. He wasn't quite ready to make an appointment or give us his phone number, but we gave him another Book of Mormon and he said he'd read it and if he had a change of heart he'd call us. It was pretty cool. It could've been a little better had he made an appointment but reading the Book of Mormon is good too. I just took that little flake of gold and put it in my bag.

 

Well hopefully you guys don't have too rough of a week. You'll have to keep an eye out for the weather here. God might be cleansing this part of the world with a flood again. Wish us luck. I'm not planning on getting washed away so I'll talk to you next week. Have a good one!

 

Love, Elder Dorius