Happy Independence Day!‏

Hey everyone,

 

Justice! Everyone is finally back in school. No more boating emails that make me trunky. Woot! It sounds like you guys filled up your last week though. After the new ping pong table I wasn't really expecting a new car. But that's cool. You guys are practically Korean now. Haha. Sorry about your car Danielle. That's rough. To answer your question, we do get the Ensign way over here. The church is still true even when you're not in Utah. It's called the Liahona though. I did read that story. I liked it. We hear that kind of stuff a lot as missionaries. The biggest name on your name tag is Jesus Christ. Except I have my name on there twice, one in English and one in Korean. Haha the principle is still the same. Oh yeah. Sorry I didn't email you guys yesterday. It was Independence Day in Korea so the place where we email was closed. We didn't really do anything cool. Our neighbors had a party but didn't invite us. Lame. So my companion and I just cleaned our house and played Monopoly. That was fun too.

 

My week was pretty good. I went on exchanges on Wednesday. My district leader came to my area and I went to his. His companion and I were in the same district last transfer so it was pretty fun to go on exchanges together. He taught me some Korean slang haha. On Thursday there was this misterious "President visit" scheduled on our calendar. I guess every once in a while the mission president visits a house but nobody knows who he's going to visit. Well it just so happened that he visited the house I was at during the exchange. It's a four man house with the zone leaders so that makes since, but we were not expecting it. So that was a surprise. We visited a member this week who lives a little off our map so we weren't sure where it was exactly, but when we got there, we found out we have the ocean in our area. Or at least really close. It was sweet. We also found this way sweet lake by this members house. I'll send some pictures. Sunday night we had a pretty cool experience. If you remember, this week was our big zone goal week. We changed our goal to 10 lessons and 150 contacts. So Sunday comes and we're way close to our goals. We just needed 3 more lessons and 15 more contacts. We had it all planned out and should've been pretty easy. Well basically all of our plans fell through and we ended up completely changing our plans for the evening. We went to find some less actives and ended up only finding one who didn't remember anything about the church and even said she hated church and there wasn't too many people in the areas we were in to talk to. It was looking pretty rough. It was about 8:00 so we decided to just head home and contact in this intersection by our home. We weren't having too much success and it was almost time to go home so we counted up our contacts and found out we only needed three more to get our contact goal. So we're walking around but there still weren't any people. Then we decided to go to this park where there was one guy sitting by himself. Why not? He was contact number 149 and we ended up getting a return appointment. It was sweet. Then as we were walking back to our house we passed a couple and talked to them which put us at 151 contacts and 9 lessons. It was pretty solid. They say you have to be a 4th floor, last door missionary. Not in Korea. You have to be a 20th floor, last door missionary. There's some tall buildings. So that was cool. I like it when things like that happen. It just goes to show that the Lord is watching our for us and will help us if we do our best. 

 

Well that's about it for me. Hopefully Kadin and Kylie had a good first day of school. Haha. You better put down the ping pong paddle and start doing your homework. I'm expecting a really boring email next week. Haha. Talk to you guys later.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

 

1. This was a little crab we found by that lake by our member's house.

 

2. Here's the lake. It was getting dark and raining so it's not the best picture. Sorry. You can get an idea though.

3. This is the other side of the lake. And a little lighter.

4. This is me and my companion at that forest conference a couple weeks ago.

 

5. I was so jealous of you guys boating all the time I decided to get sunburned. With my fat watch on

6. And just incase you've forgotten this guy, here's a picture.

Sorry for the delay‏

Hey everyone,

 

So I'm not going to lie. I am slightly angry at you guys for going boating every other day. That's so not fair. Did we go that often when I was still home? However. Since you bought Bro Musso's ping pong table, I forgive you. That's probably the greatest thing I've ever heard. When I first read you guys got a table I was mad, but then I was super excited because it was from Bro. Musso. He's way cool. Yeah, he was one of Elder Stanley's teachers and he subbed my class a couple times because both of my teachers were gone for Christmas. So anyway that's way cool. Haha Kadin and Kylie are pretty good huh? We'll see about that. I haven't played tons here but I think I've gotten better compared to before my mission. I switched to Korean style too. I'll have to buy a nice paddle here before I go home. I appriciated your story about your walk, Mom. Sheesh. I can be on the other side of the world and yet you still manage to embarrass me. Thanks. I also appreciated your advice. That was really good.

 

Sorry my email is a little late this week. We had our temple trip today so yesterday wasn't our P-day. The temple was really nice. We're way lucky to have a temple in our mission. On our way there, my companion and I actually kind of ran into a member who was also going to the temple. She just got back from her mission in Taejeon a few weeks ago and she was telling us how jealous all the other missionaries are of the Seoul missionaries becuase we can go to the temple. It's a good time to just sit and enjoy the Spirit. After the temple, we went to this meat buffet. Yes that's right. Meat buffet. Oh man. It was so good. Korean food is seriously the best.

 

Last week we had a special zone conference. It's called forest conference. We went to a "forest" (more like a park) and did a few different activities. It was way fun. And best of all we got to wear P-day clothes. That was nice. We had it on Friday and it was perfect weather. Some other zones had it on Thursday and I guess it rained on them. But it was really nice and sunny for us. I even got a little sunburned. I saw Elder Stanley there. Just FYI. He's doing good. He went senior and is companions with a missionary who was in my MTC district. It was fun to see him again and catch up. I'll send some pictures from it next week. I don't have my cord with my right now. For one of the activities, the zone leaders asked for a volunteer and then we walked to the next place where we had to go. We got to a set of stairs and the zone leaders stopped us and told us to give all of our bags to the missionary who volunteered early. He had to carry all of our stuff up these stairs by himself. It was a lot of stuff. I thought he wasn't going to make it. But he did. Then we related that to the Atonement. He didn't know what he was getting himself into when he volunteered but he still did the task willingly. I had seen analogies like this before so it wasn't very new to me, but one thing that stood out was afterwards the zone leaders asked us who thanked him for carrying our bags. Not too many people did, if any. So that made me realize I need to work on my gratitude. Towards the end of the conference we wrote letters to ourselves and put them in a time capsule and will get them when we go home. Just a side note about that. I can either come home next October or December. I'm not sure on the dates but I'm kind of planning on the December one. I'll only have a few weeks before school starts up again so you guys will have to get that all set up for me. Just so you know. It's still a ways away and we can talk about it later. Anyway. That was cool. We used a kind of cool activity from Preach My Gospel for this letter where you think about your last day in the field and write down things you want to have become and what changes others can see in you. It was good. That was probably the highlight of my week. We still have no investigators but we're meeting a potential tonight so hopefully that goes well. Our zone decided to set some zone goals for number of lessons and contacts and our zone leaders feel that if every companionship can reach this, we'll get baptisms. It was a little intense when we first talked about it, but my companion and I are game for it. We made some pretty good plans so I feel pretty good about it. We're definately going to be way busy, but that's the way it is. So far we're pretty close to on track, so hopefully we can keep it up. I'll let you know.

 

Oh I got your package. Thanks. Those are some really nice pictures. However, I'm missing the last two pages of the piano music. By chance could you try sending those? Also while I was talking with Elder Stanley he said you guys should send some Jon Schmidt piano/cello stuff we could do for zone conference or something. So if you can look into that as well that would be really cool. Oh and here's another thing you guys will probably find a little amussing. I found some mold growing on one of my suits. Bargh! Mold is annoying. We took it to the dry cleaners and they said they could do it. It just might smell funny afterwards. Lovely. Well I think that's it. Talk to you next week. You better go boating a dozen more times before school starts. Haha.

 

Love, Elder Dorius 

I love science

Hey everyone,


If you're going to have an overflowing amount of anything it might as well be cookies. That doesn't sound too bad. It's right up there with an overflowing amount of kim chi. Haha. Sounds like you guys had another packed week. Are you getting it all in before school starts up again? That's coming up pretty soon now. It's already August. It seems like summer just barely started. The weather has actually been pretty nice. The monsoon season ended awhile ago but it's still been raining quite a bit. Apparently this year has been more rainy that other years. So it's still pretty wet but at least it keeps the temperature a little cooler. Just a little. Haha. And it's humid. But considering it's the middle of the summer it's been nice weather. However just recently the memi's have started making noise. I can't remember what they're called in English. Oh yeah. Locusts. They are so loud and so annoying. It sounds like there's construction going on in all the trees. And we heard a weird terradactle (hopefully you know what that says. The big dinosaur bird thing) noise by our appartment the other day. It sounds like we're living in the heart of the jungle sometimes.



This week was pretty good. Still no investigators. That's rough. And with all the rain it was a little harder to do contacting. So as far as numbers go it wasn't the best week. On Monday we watched the Best Two Years with our zone and my companion and I have been quoting it all week. That movie is way better when you're watching it on your mission. It's so funny. So that was cool. On Tuesday we visited a familiy in our ward. We shared a message and then the dad taught us. He compared our spirits and our bodies to a seed. Our spirit is like the roots and our body is like the plant. Sometimes we feel like we're growing physically, but don't really notice anything about our spiritual growth. And vica versa (is that how you spell it?) But the plant and the roots can't see each other so they don't know how the other one is doing. That's how we are. Both can be growing and progressing but they just can't see each other growing and progressing. He also used a water anology. Right before ice turns to water and water turns to vapor, it hits a platue. (Man my spelling is struggling.) During that time there's not a lot of outward changes going on, but the inside, or molecular side, is under a lot of changes. Hydrogen bonds are breaking and molecules are speeding up. When more heat is applied it breaks the platue and changes phases. Our spiritual growth and physical growth is similar. We sometimes hit a platue where we don't feel like anything is happening, but really there's a lot of small "molecular" changes taking place and with a little more heat we can see the big outward change. So cool! This guy is a really good teacher. And lucky he's way good at English so he could explain all this to us. Don't think I'm that good at Korean haha. Thursday we had district meeting, but they didn't have the mail so I haven't gotten your package yet. Probably this week though. We haven't gotten the mail for a few weeks now. I'm getting anxious. On Saturday we did some streetboarding with my district leader and his companion. That was fun. It was hot but we were able to talk to lots of people. Oh but this other church set up speakers right next to our boards and were telling people to repent. That was cool. We were hoping someone would go up to them and ask them about the Plan of Salvation but it never happened. Anyway. It was fun. That was pretty much the highlights of our week. We're working on trying to get referrals from our members and improving English class to get some new investigators. The youth just got back from EFY and apparently they stressed the importance of member missionary work there so we're going to look into that and see what we can do. I'll keep you posted. Well that's about all I can think of. Hopefully you guys have another good week. Make these last few count! Haha. Talk to you later.



Love, Elder Dorius

The joys of traveling‏

Hey everyone,

 

I'm glad to hear everyone is enjoying summer vacation and living it up to the fullest. Way fun. Tell Dana I'm sorry she broke her toe. That is really a bummer. I guess that's what you get when you go to the lake two days in a row. Haha. Danielle, I do know an Alexa up there. Her maiden name is Call. That's so weird she's married now. She was my senior ball date. Haha. But that's cool. It seemed like a lot of my friends got married in July, or else left on missions. It's your 5 year reunion? Haha holy smokes that's stinking old! Wow. Well I don't have a ton of time today. Our zone is getting together and watching The Best Two Years (woot!) so I'll just get to the point.

 

I got transfered. My companion stayed in Gireum and I moved to Monsoo. It's in Incheon which is on the western part of the country. Between my three areas now I've been all across Korea. So that's pretty sweet. My companion is from Utah. He's my first American companion since my trainer so it's kind of nice to have that again. And since he's from Utah we celebrated Pioneer Day yesterday. Yay! This is actually one of Elder Stanley's old areas and my companion served with him for two transfers so it's pretty fun to have that connection too. I can't remember exactly where he is now but I know which zone he's in. It's kinda far from us. So that's cool. You guys are going to find this really funny. Korea has a really good postal company thing where you can pretty much send anything anywhere. So every transfer the missionaries usually just send their luggage to their new area. I sent my luggage Tuesday afternoon and I still haven't gotten it yet. Freak. Well I got one bag. All my winter clothes. Apparently my other one is coming today. I'm getting bored with my same shirt and pants. I at least have 3 different ties to wear. Anyway. I thought you guys would appreciate that. I know I did. Ha.

 

My new area is pretty nice. I'm in a 4 man house but with just the two of us. Compared to my last mold infested shoebox this place is a mansion. The work is hard. We currently have no investigators but we have a couple potentials we're working on. One of them we're meeting tonight. So that was kind of a change afer having several investigators and having appointments regularly. But it's ok. We do lots of contacting and it's good practice. I actually am starting to feel a bit better with the language. It's nice having an American companion in the fact that he doesn't blow my mind with Korean and when he talks I can actually understand what's going on. But on the other hand it's a little inconvienent when things come up that are important and you could really use a Korean. Like when you lose your luggage and have to call the company and listen to a recorded message that lists all the options you can do by pushing any number from 1 through 9. But you know, that's cool too. If I had my journal, it would make a really good entry. Ha. Another cool thing is that I have my same district leader again from when I was out in Tae Baek. So that's fun. The ward is really good. There's about 60 active members that come out regularly. So this area has lots of potential and requires a lot of work and perserverance. Everything is good though. I can't think of much more to say. Oh I haven't gotten that package yet, but we have district meeting on Wednesday so I might get it then. I'll let you know. Keep having fun. School will be back in session before too long. Haha. Talk to you later.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

There's a fungus among us‏

Hey everyone,

 

Sounds like Can Cun was fun. Shocker. Even though you suffered some bug bites and sunburn. That makes me feel a little better. I wouldn't want you guys to have a totally fun-filled, pain-free trip. Haha. But now that I know the Moody's went to Hawaii I'm slightly jealous again. And the fact that you guys are going to party again next week doesn't help. But whatever. That's cool. I guess. So is Kylie going to girl's camp instead of the track meet?

 

This week has been pretty good. It was a little different than most weeks. Remember a couple weeks ago I told you about our house leaking? Well we also had some mold growing. At first it wasn't too bad, but during the past couple days it just took off. It was growing really fast and it was showing up in more places. A biologist would have a hay day in there. Or else freak out because it's so bad. We called our mission president and talked to him about it and he said to move as soon as possible. Luckily the other missionaries in our district are really close to us so we moved in with them. Their house is pretty big but there were three missionaries there already so now there's five. It's a little crowded and crazy. Right now we're just living out of our suitcases and waiting until transfers to get more settled in. We're getting tranfer calls tonight so we'll see where we're at and go from there. So that was fun.

 

The transfer is basically over. Holy smokes. This was the fastest transfer ever. My companion thinks I'm moving but I think we're staying together. I don't think President would make us move again. But we'll see. We both hope we stay together. The other big news is that the rainy season is over. Yay! But now it's way hot and getting hotter. We heard it's supposed to get up in the 30's. Hopefully St. George heat has prepared me well. It is nice to see some blue sky and sunshine again though. How's the weather in St. George?

 

Our investigators are doing good. No baptismal dates yet but we're working on that. We have a whole family that we're teaching that we really like. We teach their daughters English. Last time we met we gave them the Family Proclamation pamphlet and talked about families. This is my first "family" investigator so it's pretty fun and I don't want to mess up. Haha.

 

Well that's about it. Everything is still the same. Except my house. It's now a giant petrie dish. Well not really. It's a small petrie dish. This week might change things up again with transfers. I'll keep you updated. Talk to you next week.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

 

1. This is me saying goodbye to the mold.

 

2. I just love it so much.

 

 

Singing in the Rain

Hey everyone,

You guys are jerks! I have no sympathy for you and the rain. It's been raining here since yesterday evening. I had totally forgotten you guys are in Can Cun until you told me. The pictures were nice but I couldn't look at them too long. Except that iguana was pretty cool. I'm sure you guys had way too much fun with him. Oh Danielle tell Mary that she wrote me awhile ago and I sent her a letter like a week or so ago. So I think the ball is in her court. Haha do you talk to her much? Oh and congrats on passing your test! That's way cool. You're finally a nurse now. Yay! Is the weather supposed to turn out better in Can Cun? You didn't plan another trip during a hurricane did you? Haha.

Well this week has been good. We had combined district meeting and the zone leaders asked my district to do a special musical number. And boy did we ever. I played the piano, my district leader played the guitar and our companions sang. Well rapped actually. It was sweet. I have it on my camera so when I get that other memory card I'll send mine and you can see it. But I think my district leader is going to email his recording to us because it's a good recording. So one way or another you'll get to see/hear it. We picked up three new investigators this week. One was a former investigator who we invited to our English class and said he wanted to meet again and talk about the Book of Mormon and stuff. Another was a referral. He's pretty golden. He actually lived in Australia for a while and met the missionaries there. It turns out one of my district leaders in the MTC was one of the missionaries he met with. It was a cool connection. He's received most of the lessons and he feels like he knows them really well so he wants to study the Gospel Principles book. I have a really good feeling about him. The only problem is that he's going back to Australia in a month or two so if we want to baptize him we'll have to do it quick. The last one is a guy who randomly came to church yesterday. He said the church he goes to is too far from his house so he decided to come to ours. Boo ya. He really liked the hymns so one of our members who was next to him invited him to come to church early next week to sing the hymns. It was really cool. As far as our other investigators go, not much has changed. Unfortunately. We meet them all just once a week and we teach them all English so the gospel isn't making as big of impact as I would like. We're at least staying busy though. My companion and I wrote a song to sing to our members. My companion has a little guitar so we packed that around and performed our song for the first time this week. It's about eternal families. It's cool. That's about all that happened this week. We had interviews with the mission president. He said he can tell that I'm happy and because of that, he's happy. My mission president is great. So yeah. It wasn't exactly a trip to Can Cun but it was still a good week. Have fun with your iguana friend. Hopefully he doesn't eat you. Talk to you next week.

Love, Elder Dorius

It's the 4th of July?‏

Hey everyone,

Thanks for all the emails. Those are so fun to read. I totally forgot it was the 4th of July today until I read your guy's emails. It made me miss Soda Springs too. That place is great. You guys are going to Can Cun without me?! Not fair! I'm way jealous right now. Be sure to pack a swimming suit and a change of clothes in your carry on. It was a good thing I learned that lesson because my luggage got lost when I came to Korea too. Travel just isn't good to me I suppose. But really for Can Cun all you need is a swimming suit and shorts (preferably your own) and you're good to go. Lucky ducks. So is Kadin and Kylie both on student council? You kind of mentioned that but didn't really tell me. That will be fun. Thanks for the music mom. Except you only sent the first page of Road Trip. I think there's 8 other pages. So if you could find those and send them too that would be great. And I did think of something else you can send to me. If you can. By chance do you have any old calendars with pictures of Christ? We had a couple nice pictures from a calendar and bought a cheap frame and gave it to a member. It turned out to be a really nice gift. So if you have old calendars laying around we would like some. I think that's all I need for now.

So this week we have been pretty busy. Because of the rain, we've been making lots of phone calls. We had tons of former investigator records that we called and ended up making quite a few appointments and even picked up two new investigators. We looked through all of our stats from this transfer so far and we've picked up two new investigators every week. We have a lot on our plate right now. It's really good. I think this is the busiest I've been on my mission. Except the only problem is they aren't progressing much. Nearly all of them have English interest so we're trying to build a lot of trust and work our way in with the gospel. It payed off with one family we picked up this week. They were former investigators who actually dropped the missionaries because they asked them to pray, or something like that. So we just did English and got to know them and now they want to take us hiking and said we can teach them scriptures in English. So it's a start but I wish more of them had more gospel interest. We do some walking but we mostly ride the bus or the subway. The rain doesn't really slow down Koreans. They're machines. They just grab their umbrella and go. We still play soccer with my ward if the weather is good. But since it's been raining we play jok-ku which is like volleyball but with your feet and with a lower net. It's sweet.

Well not much more exciting stuff happened. Today we're meeting up with a bunch of other missionaries and playing ping pong and games. Did I tell you they have Catan in Korea? I've actually played it quite a bit. Doesn't get much better than that. Except my zone leaders kill me every time. Grr...Anyway I need to email my mission president and whoop someone in ping pong so I'll wrap this up. Have a good 4th of July and have fun eating your BBQ. And DON'T have fun in Can Cun. Talk to you later.

Love, Elder Dorius