Spring is in the air

{April 2, 2012}

Hey everyone,

Thanks for that referral. I'll see what I can do about meeting her. It
might be kind of hard but I'll talk to the APs or something and see
what they say. And I'll keep my eyes open for those fan holders. I'll
have to take a trip to a market or something. I haven't seen things
like that for awhile. Either of those shorts will be fine. Maybe just
send both if you can. That way I can mix and match. Ha. I'm way
excited for conference. It sounds really good. As always. And Kadin,
they do it a week later because of the translation. They translate it,
put it on a DVD and send it to all the wards so we watch it a week
later. It should be good.

Transfers went well. I stayed and my companion went to my first area,
Tae Baek. He wasn't too excited. He's going to be out there for awhile
because he'll be the branch president after his companion transfers. I
found out my recent convert out there hasn't been coming out to church
lately so I told my companion to look him up and tell him to come to
church again. Hopefully he does. My new companion is American. He's
from California. He's one transfer younger than me so he has quite a
lot of experience and drive. It's awesome. We've also been trying out
The Secret and positive thinking. So far it's been pretty successful.
We got some cereal on sale and we bought a dozen 1.5 litter bottles of
juice for 12 bucks from using it. Boo ya. Actually the juice was just
a miracle and tender mercy of the Lord, but the cereal was from The
Secret. Now we just need to use it to find new investigators. But
we're working on that. And for some reason, every day of this transfer
so far we've seen something super random or funny. It's kind of
reminded me that I'm still a normal human being and so are the people
we meet, so it's ok to have moments like that and to just laugh. I
think it's going to be a really good transfer.

Our investigators are doing well. We're still good for those two to
get baptized on the 22nd. We still haven't been able to meet the
part-member family yet but our ward mission leader is going to get us
set up and start teaching them. But everything should still be set.
There's a baptism in our district this weekend, so I get to do another
baptismal interview on Saturday. Those are always exciting. And it's
way cool to meet other investigators and see how excited they are to
be baptized and how happy they are from accepting the gospel. It's the
best.

It's finally beginning to feel like spring. The nights are a little
chilly but the days are usually pretty nice. I haven't worn my big
coat for a couple weeks now and I love it. I also think my area is
going to be super pretty in the spring. There's lots of trees around
the city and there's lots of farms and rice fields around the
outskirts. It's going to be sweet.

Well that's about all I have. I'll keep my eyes out for those good
conference talks. Which probably means I won't be sleeping through it.
Hopefully you guys have a good week. Talk to you later.

Love, Elder Dorius


P.S. My claim to fame 
I just looked at the conference summaries on the church website.
The new presiding bishop came to our mission last transfer. I shook
his hand. Twice. And the new relief society president is the wife of
the old Seoul West Mission president. Just thought I'd let you know

Sorry I'm late

{March 26, 2012}

Hey everyone,

Sorry this letter is a little late. Our library was having a system error and it was taking forever at our post office so now I'm finally able to email. But our P-day ends pretty soon so I don't have much time to write. Sorry. But I have a couple things I need first. By chance could you look through my stuff and try to find my long basket ball shorts? I kind of want those. Hopefully you haven't sent my card yet. You can send them with that. Also can you check my debit card account? I have a little scratch on my card and for some reason can't check the account at an ATM but I can still use it. So just make sure I still have money in there and such and I'll try to check it sometime. Then I also wanted to remind you of General Conference this weekend. We watch it a week later so keep an eye out for the good ones and give me a heads up so I know which ones to not sleep through. Ha.

So this week was pretty good. We finally got a new ward mission leader. There hasn't been one since I've been here so it's been good to have the help. And boy he has helped. His little brother is good friends with the part member family we've been trying to meet so he went over and visited them. Well he talked to the nonmember wife about being baptized and such and she said she wanted to be baptized and then asked how. So he said "you just need to meet the missionaries and take the lessons. Do you want to be baptized on April 22?" Boom. Baptismal date. Before she even became a progressing investigator. I don't know why that didn't happen with us. But that's ok. It still worked out. Then on Sunday he met with us and our other progressing investigator and kind of gave her a pop quiz on everything we've talked about. Which is everything. We finished all the lessons a couple weeks ago. Anyway. It was kind of intense. But he talked about the other part member family who is getting baptized and he said "we would really like for you guys to be baptized together. Will you prepare to be baptized on April 22?" Boom. Another baptismal date. So if all goes well we'll have two baptisms on that day. I'm stoked. This would pretty much make my whole life. I've been praying for this for a long time. So regardless of everything else that happened this week, it was a good week.

We get our transfer calls tonight. We think my companion is leaving and I'll stay. That's the most likely but we'll see in a few hours. I'm a little nervous. I really hope I stay so I can finally be a part of a baptism of someone who I met and helped teach and such. But I'm pretty sure I'm safe. I'll have to let you know how it goes next week. Well that's pretty much all I have to report on. I'll try to hurry and send some pictures too. Have a good week.

Love, Elder Dorius

Pictures!

1. This was our p day a couple weeks ago. We went hiking. These are my zone leaders and my sisters.

2. Me.

3. Me again. Being king of the world. Or something.

4. Some of our zone.

 

It's a little different than Zions but still way sweet.

 

Happy White Day

{March 19, 2012}

Hey everyone,

 

Thanks for the emails. They were perfect lengths today. Haha. Yeah don't put me in classes that Malea is taking. Ever. Classes like basic math, basic English, and basic Korean are more up my alley. I'm done for when I have to go to school again. Mom, I think it's worth a shot of getting that girl's address. The temple is in my zone. It's the zone leaders area so it's kind of close. I wish she could be my investigator but I guess we can help out my zone leaders too. I don't think I need anything. Just my memory card back. Man I wish I could skype. That sounds way fun. But email/snail mail is fun too. Maybe someday.

 

Well this week was crazy. March 14 is White Day in Korea. On Valentine's Day the girls give gifts to guys and so to make things fair they have White Day, where the guys give gifts to girls. So my companion wanted to visit all the sisters in the ward and give them cookies. But then he decided that we'll just give cookies for the whole family of every family in our ward. That's a lot of cookies. And then he wanted them to be in heart shapes. Guess who got to make them all. Me. I have never been so frustrated with chocolate chip cookies in my life. It kind of turned into too big of a project for us to do how we wanted so we were both pretty frustrated. It was a good week to learn patience. So because we planned to pretty much focus all of our time and energy on our members, I didn't think this week was going to be a week of miracles and huge success. But it kind of was. We just started an English class a couple weeks ago and we haven't seen any progress from it. But this week we got a random call from someone looking for our church to come to English class. He was the only person so we were able to focus on just him. As we were getting to know each other, he grabbed the Book of Mormon sitting on the table and asked if it was the Bible. Then for the rest of the time we talked about the Book of Mormon and a little bit about the Restoration. It was one of the best English class lessons ever. So we invited him to church and lo and behold he came! He has a lot of really good potential. The only problem is he goes to the army on April 2. So that's kind of a problem, but we'll see how it works out. We're meeting him tomorrow. Our othe progressing investigator is doing pretty good. We finished up all the lessons and such and she doesn't have any problems with the commandments. She came with us to the baptismal service the other elders had in our district and she seemed to like it. We invited her to be baptized this Sunday, but she said that's too quick. So we tried pushing it back to next month and she said she'll think about it. So we almost kind of have a baptismal date. I think she'll get baptized eventually. She just needs time. So despite all the frustration and dang cookies, we were still blessed.

 

Every transfer, the missionaries going home give their "farewell" talk at the major meeting of the transfer. Well my good buddy, Elder Reyes, is going home this transfer and for his farewell talk, President gave him permission to play his guitar. It was really cool. He talked about how he's been writing songs for 10 years and this was the first time he wrote a song with "Jesus Christ" in it. So he talked about using our talents during our mission and using them to help the work move forward. It was sweet. He also wrote a song about going home, which was kind of ironic because it was right after we recieved "anti-trunky" training. Haha. But it was still really good. I want to try to get a copy of it from him. Anyway. That was fun. 

 

The weather is getting better. Spring is definately coming, but it's still a little chilly. I haven't had to wear my big coat for a couple days which is nice. I'm sure in a couple more weeks it's going to be awesome. I'm pretty excited. Well that's pretty much it. I'm glad you enjoyed the pictures. Sorry there's a million from our badmitton adventure and all those videos. You might have to do some editing and revising. Anyways. Talk to you later. Have a good week.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

Dang it....

{March 11, 2012}

Hey everyone,

I really do love all the emails. They're really fun to read, but it
just takes a long time and it seems like every time I'm short on time
is when Dad "threatens" Kadin and Kylie to write me so it takes even
longer. Haha. We're going to Bukhan San today for a zone P-day
activity. It's a famous mountain in Korea and it's right in our zone.
How lucky. I'm excited. We actually went just on Saturday with our
young men and it was really fun. I forgot that hiking was one of my
hobbies. I'm super jealous of you guys with your spring break. Dang
it. That's the best. And it sounds like the weather is warming up and
getting perfect. It's freezing here. Again. Yesterday was SO cold and
windy. We at least didn't have tornadoes like Grandpa and Grandma, but
it was close. I heard yesterday was -5 C and today is suposed to be
-12 C. What a great day to go hiking.

Well this week was pretty tough. I have all the sympathy in the world
for Grandpa and Grandma and they're couple "dissed" appointments. We
say "punked" here, but same thing. We had several potential
appointments lined up on almost every day of last week so we were
pretty excited and thought we were going to pick up some new
investigators, but not one met. It was rough. Especially since we felt
like we were working just as hard, if not harder, than the week
before, but still didn't see much success. It was pretty frustrating.
But one kid ended up calling us and saying he had to cancel because
his grandma was really sick and in the hospital so he couldn't meet. I
guess that's a pretty good reason. So that was a little hopeful. Then
we met our most progressing investigator on Sunday at church and she
accepted a soft baptismal committment. We haven't given her a date
yet, but we're hoping for the 25th. That's our goal. Then our
part-member couple sneeked into sacrament meeting just as the opening
hymn was finishing so it was good to have them in church and see them
again. So even though we had a rough week, I kind of learned that
everything on your mission can totally change for the better in just
one day.

Sorry I don't have much more to report on from last week. This week
should be better. And hopefully I'll have a bit more time to email.
I'm doing a baptismal interview on Friday. With a Mongolian. Woot!
Let's go gift of tongues! It should be good. Enjoy your spring break.
Talk to you next week.

Love, Elder Dorius

Please Meet!

{March 5, 2012}

Hey everyone,

 

Haha oh man, Danielle's pictures are funny. Mostly Jesse. Haha. Your new house looks nice. It's weird to see carpet though. I'm just used to the traditional hardwood floors here. I want to come visit sometime and party in Texas. You should have it all scoped out by the time I'm home. Congratulations to Kadin and Kylie on SUPAF. Did they give out money when I did it or was I just not good enough? I'm jealous. That's more money than I've made in my whole musical career. It must not be the path for me. So are you guys able to just call up Grandpa and Grandma whenever? It sounds like they're having fun on their mission. I want to serve a couple's mission now. It sounds like the life. I also got a good laugh at Dad's story about McKay and his friend. That's hilarious. McKay's so funny. I feel the same sometimes. Actually most of the time. It's tough to keep up with things like that.

 

Well this week has been good. We had our temple day on Tuesday, which is always nice. Then I went on exchanges with the other elders in our district and we had dinner with their recent convert. He's way funny and such a cool kid. Then on Thursday we went on exchanges with our zone leaders. It was intense but really good. The elder I was with stayed in my area and we just went to town. We talked to tons of people and saw a lot of good things happen. I'm pretty sure miracles just follow zone leaders, especially when you go on exchanges. We need to go on exchanges with them everyday or something. We found a lot of potential investigators and were slammed with appointments this weekend. Unfortunately, like most potentials, they punked. So that was a little disappointing, but we at least have a good pool of potentials. We did pick up two new investigators though. One was a kid we met on the street and he brought his friend with him. He doesn't believe in God or the Bible. He read it front to back because he thought it was a fun story. When we met him, he wanted us to prove resurrection scientifically and with examples. Yeah. That was hard. So maybe not the most potential right now, but we'll see. He said he'll read the Book of Mormon and he's willing to meet with us more. Our district is doing well. The elders have a baptismal date and one of the sisters' investigator accepted a soft committment. So things are doing pretty good. We have a few more potentials coming up this week so hopefully we can pick up some of them and keep our teaching pool going.

 

So this week I bought some new jeans. They're Korean style which means they're pretty slim. Way slim. They're basically skinny jeans. I was a little worried about that because I couldn't try them on, but they were a good deal so I went with it. Well I tried them on and my companion just starts laughing at me. Which is understandable. They emphasize the longness and skinniness of my legs. But as we were going out my companion was just going off on how he needs to excercise more and stuff. I think it was good motivation for him. Haha. It was pretty funny though. He said I can pull off the Korean style. Hopefully it still works in America. Haha.

 

Anyway. That was pretty much my week. I sent off a package today for you guys so let me know when you get it. I sent it by air mail so it should get there in a couple weeks. I think you'll like it. I threw in my memory card too so if you could go through that and send it back that would be good. Have a good week and I'll talk to you next week.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

Bop Mugu

{Feb. 26, 2012}

So the moving has begun huh? That's pretty exciting. Even Grandma
Skalla is moving. That's way intense. Sounds like everyone is having
quite a few changes in their lives. I didn't know Mike and Kerry were
planning on having another baby. Is this their 5th? They must be too
cool for the traditional Dorius 4. It sounds like SUPAF went well. I
bet that was fun. I always liked SUPAF. That's funny that your Korean
girls taught you that phrase. Except it's pan mal, which is the lowest
form of speaking so only say it to your friends or little kids. Since
you speak Korean to them so much. Haha. I'm bummed my letter didn't
come in time. But whatever. They probably would've just laughed at my
attempt to write in Korean. So that's ok. I'm sure you guys will be
more impressed. Haha.

Well this week has been pretty good. Last week our P-day activity was
pretty cool. We learned how to find our aura and stuff like that.
There were a couple times where I was trying so hard not to bust out
laughing because everyone is doing these random arm motions and trying
to find their aura and they're way into it, but it just looked way
funny. It was a fun activity. I'll send a couple pictures. We kind of
picked up a new investigator. She's kind of an older woman and was a
former investigator so we gave her a call and she said she wanted to
meet, then when we met she said she doesn't have time until July but
we can stop by her work and say hi and maybe give a quick message. So
yeah. She's probably not the most prepared, but that's ok. Maybe in
July. Speaking of July. We'll be getting a new mission president then.
President Lee is about done. We found out who the new one is going to
be. His name in Brent Christensen. I guess he's a surgeon in Salt
Lake. Something like that. I don't know anything else about him. So
that was kind of big news. It will be interesting having a new
president, especially an American, and see what kind of things will
change. I'm kind of excited.

Oh I have a random question for Dad. We were at a member's house for
dinner and we were talking and they were asking about my family and
they asked what my dad's calling was. It was kind of random and I
couldn't remember so I thought I'd ask. I told them you play the organ
sometimes for sacrament meeting and they thought that was awesome.
Then they said to me, "oh you must be good at the piano then." And I
just kind of laughed and was surprised that they would think of that
connection. Then they said, "you should play for us," and you know me
and how I just love playing for people at their homes, so I wasn't too
stoked and kind of wanted to get out of it, but then they said, "we
have a grand piano!" Yep. That changed my mind. Their daughter in law
is a piano major. So to say the least, their piano was pretty legit.

Ok. Here's my faith promoting story for the week. On Sunday, my
companion and I both woke up and weren't feeling too well, but we
still went on with the day. But as church went on, I started feeling
worse. Our ward made lunch after church and I could only nibble at it
because my stomach wasn't too happy. I wasn't sure if I would be able
to do much that day, but we had plans and really needed to work, so I
said a little prayer asking for help to get through the day. Well
about 10 minutes later I threw up. I think Dana Moody would be proud
of me because I'm getting really good at throwing up. It was pretty
clean and easy and afterwards I felt great. So there you go. Heavenly
Father really does answer prayers. Just try to be a little more
specific than me.

Well I think that's about it. I can't think of anything else that's
too exciting. I'm still doing good. Still doing missionary work.
Hopefully you guys have a good week. Talk to you later.

Love, Elder Dorius

Ok here's some pictures. 

The first few are from last week at our p-day activity and then the
next one is outside of some palace type thing. I'm not exactly sure
what it is or what it's for, but it looks cool. Then the last one is
me this morning. It's my new transfer board picture. Just in case you
wanted to see it. There you go.

Happy President's Day?

{Feb. 19, 2012}

Hey everyone,

 

Happy Presidents Day! Whatever that is. My companion asked what it was and I didn't really know how to explain it. Haha. But anyways. Hopefully it's a good one. It sounds like Kadin is pretty sick. He coughed all over me via email. Now I'll probably get sick. Thanks a lot. I mailed off a letter to your Korean students. Hopefully they get it before they leave. It's not super long. I just worked on it during language study and then sent it off. Danielle and Jesse sound super busy with their moving project. I can't believe they're leaving already. That's weird. Good luck with your 20 hour drive. Haha that will be memorable. In some way. Haha. That's nice that people still remember me. As for musical performances go, I haven't done much. Did I tell you I suddenly got to play the piano for a sister at our mission tour? I helped her warm up that morning and then ended up performing it. That was exciting. Maybe I'll get asked to do something at another conference. We'll see.

 

Well this week has been good. We survived transfers. My companion and I stayed so nothing new really happened. Except our district got changed. One of the areas got moved into the other district in our zone and one of the elders there became the district leader. I don't know why it happened but we were kind of bent out of shape about that. My Costco is in that area and now I have to get permission to go to it. Lame!! So that was the biggest change. There's a greenie in our district now. He's pretty funny. It's fun to see that greenie fire again. We had Stake Conference yesterday and President Stevenson from the Area Presidency came so we got to hear him speak again. That was cool. We heard that our stake and another stake were going to be combined so I thought that was going down because there were quite a few important people there, but nothing happened. It was a little anti-climatic if you ask me. But it was still good. Pres. Stevenson talked about sharing your testimony more because that really invites the Spirit and then it can take over and just go to town. Well he didn't exactly say it like that but you get the idea.

 

Unfortunately I don't have anything new to report on about our investigators. It's been a little slow and because of Stake Conference, our two main focused investigators couldn't come to church. It was too far for them. We've been working on some message cards for our members so this week we will do lots of visiting and have a busier week. I have been going through old records of investigators and haven't been finding too much potential from those. We'll probably keep our main focus on the members and part-member/less active families. I think that's going to be our best bet for finding in this area.

 

Well I think that's about it. We're doing a zone activity for p-day today. Our zone leaders have an investigator who teaches martial arts and such and we're going to learn how to meditate from him. I'm actually really excited. My companion and I are even matching for it. We bought super comfy companionship pants this week and are testing them out today. Haha. It's funny. Well talk to you next week!

 

Love, Elder Dorius