Happy Chu Seok!

{Oct. 1, 2012}

Hey everyone,

Ok today was a good email reading session. I felt like there was a good variety of emotions. I quite enjoyed all of them. The pictures were also a plus. I like the one of Kadin trying not to throw up in the band. Good job Kadin. Maybe you should go do the drumline. It's way more fun there haha. The twins had way good times in the 5K! I was impressed. And way to go Mom and Dad for bringing up the rear. That actually takes a lot of effort. Chu Seok has been pretty good. We got to go over to a member's house Sunday afternoon and have lunch with them and then play some games. The last time we visited them I introduced Pass the Pigs and they loved it so much they requested that I bring it again. We also made little snack things. I don't really know how to explain it. We flattened out pieces of dough in our hands, put some sugary stuff or red bean paste in them, folded them up, and then steam them. It was pretty fun. And our members were really impressed at how well we could do it. Beginners luck. Or just foreigner luck. Something like that. We also had a zone activity in Won Ju and helped a member there with some yard work at a house she just moved into. Then yesterday we spent our whole P-day cleaning our house and reorganizing stuff. So it was a pretty good holiday.

 

Here's some pretty cool news. Our mission is doing a blood drive! I didn't think we would be able to because we're chuck full of vacines, but apparently they still want our blood. It must be healthier or something. But I'm way excited for that! It's a part of the 50th anniversary of missionary work in Korea.

 

We had a pretty lucky find this week as well. Unfortunately it wasn't a golden investigator, or any investigator for that matter, but it was 50 bucks! We were heading towards a member's house and we decided to just walk and try to talk to people along the way, and a little piece of paper caught my eye and it was a 1000 won, which is about a dollar. Thinking it was my lucky day, I bent down to pick it up and then another paper caught my eye. It was 50000 won, which is about 50 dollars. Then I realized I probably couldn't just take that and buy ice cream for me and my companion. We tried to find the person who lost it but no luck there. Our mission president said it's basically our money now and we can do whatever we want with it. We actually still have it, but I'm pretty sure we're just going to give it to fast offerings. Since we couldn't help the person who originally lost the money, we might as well give it to someone else who needs it.

 

I had another "I love Korea" moments sometime this week. Most little kids when they see us wave and say "hello" and we do the same to them and usually that's the end of the conversation. But one kid got pretty brave and decided to try out some more English that he learned. Now usually it's something like "Where are you from?" or "Where are you going?" but not this time. This kid was original. After his nice greeting to us he said, "I'm in the bathroom!" We just gave him a thumbs up and replied with "Good job!" It made his day. And mine.

 

I can't really think of anything else that happened this week. Oh I did pack up a box of stuff to send home while we were cleaning up the house. That was a little weird. I'm just going to mail it by boat so it doesn't cost me a fortune. So don't expect anything too soon. Other than that, I think that was our week. And it's looking like this week is going to be pretty normal as well. The blood drive isn't until the 17th so I'm just going to be getting ready for that and try to beat all my old times from high school. I'm going for a new personal record. It should be good. Have a good week! You'll have to keep an eye out for all the good talks at Conference and give me a heads up. Talk to you later.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

A good week

{Sept. 23, 2012}

Hey everyone,

Well it sounds like everyone has had a fairly normal week. Haven't seen that for awhile. It's Swiss Days already? Dang. Hopefully I can do the 5K next year. I might need that year to get back in shape. My companion and I have been going outside to exercise the past couple days before it gets too cold and I realized my lungs need to get back in shape. It will be good to start running a little more. How often is Danielle planning on going to St. George? Isn't it a little longer of a trip than Provo? That will be fun though.

This week has been really good for us. We went into Seoul on Tuesday and I went to a market to try and find some souveniers, but didn't have much success in finding good stuf. I did get a pretty cool table runner and placemats for Mom's table though. Hopefully it works out. They said it's 2 meters long and I figured the table could probably make that work somehow. I heard about a pretty good market place that has good souveniers and stuff so the next time or two I'm in Seoul I'll have to go check it out. Does anyone have any suggestions or have anything in mind that they want? I'm kind of getting a big box together of just stuff (books, clothes, etc...) to send home and I'll probably put those in that. Unless I have room in my bags. We'll see. But I'll try to get everything together and get it sent off so it can get to America around the same time I do. Anyways. Wednesday we had a mission tour with the area president and it was so good! I think it was better than the last one mostly because Pres. Ringwood served his mission here and just went off on how great a place Korea is and how blessed we are to be serving here. He talked a lot about Moroni 7 and faith. I probably can't tell you everything about it right now, but maybe later. It was really good though. It was definately a good boost of motivation and I think it attributed to a lot of the other successes we saw this week. For some reason, our street contacting has been pretty rough, but now it's totally flipped around. We've gotten a lot of phone numbers and some return appointments and some pretty good potential investigators. A lot of it also came from just trying to talk to everyone, like what Mom said. Going the extra mile. So it's nice to have our hard work finally paying off again. We also picked up a new investigator this week. He kind of reminds me of my last mission president. He is a retired English professor at one of the big universities here and just loves to study and learn. I felt a little uninteligent after seeing his volumes of books for his PhD on F. Scott Fitzgerald and my only remark was "I read the Great Gatsby once." He could be a really good investigator, but he is just curious about Mormonism right now. He doesn't really have any intentions of doing Mormon stuff like praying and going to church right now. But he did say maybe in a year or two. So there's hope.

Let's see...I'm supposed to tell you that I will be emailing you next week on Tuesday. It's the biggest holiday in Korea this weekend (Sat., Sun., Mon.) so most places will be closed and we won't be able to email. Oh and to answer Dad's question about North Koreans, yes I have met some. There was a less active mom and daughter in one of my old areas that escaped from North Korea about 5 or 6 years ago who we met a couple times. And there's the occasional old person who's from North Korea. They're not too common. One of my old district leaders had some guy who was kind of in the middle of escaping and trying to help his family meet them and wanted them to help him escape or something. It probably could have been a cool story but I don't think anything happened.

Well I can't think of anything else that happened this week. That was pretty much it. The weather is pretty nice here too. The nights and mornings are a little chilly but the day is just about perfect still. I'm trying to savour it because I'm pretty sure it's not going to last too much longer. I think it was around Conference time last year we started wearing suit coats again and then it just went downhill from there. I'm just hoping we don't get snow.

Thanks for the emails and stuff. Hopefully you have a good week and I'll talk to you later.

Love, Elder Dorius