Pictures

1. Our baptismal recipient. Way cool.

2. Our branch. Somewhat. Actually most of these people aren't the actual members. I think some of them are from another area in my zone but their church collapsed from all the snow. So the members have to go to different wards for now. And some others are from Seoul but they're moving out to our zone for work. Or something like that. All I know is that we have a few extra people coming to church now.

Enjoy!

PS sorry they aren't the best. A little girl was taking these pictures. My companion had a little better ones but he forgot he had his camera when he went into the baptismal font. So it's kind of fried. But you get the idea. Loves loves.

Baptizing in Tae Baek!‏

Hey everyone,

Thanks for all of the emails. It's the best when I get on the computer and see a few emails. Sounds like the piano recital was good. Hopefully Allyson didn't say anything embarrassing about me. You should tell her I'm getting really good at the hymns now. She'd be proud. Why are you always sick, Kadin? Maybe you should eat more kim chi. The spiceyness will kill all the bad germs growing inside you haha. Let's see I think Dad asked a question regarding the food and being sick. I had a little cold a while back and there was another day I wasn't feeling too good, but other than that I've been quite healthy and the food hasn't bothered me. In response to your other questions, no we didn't feel anything from the earthquake but there have been a little concern with the radiation. It was rainy a while ago after the quake and we heard to not let it touch you because it was radiated. Or something like that. So that was exciting. But other than that, nothing much happened. The Korean is getting a little better. I suppose. My companion is getting really good at English and he said my Korean is coming along too. So that was nice. Happy anniversary/graduation Danielle! That's super exciting. I'm glad you'll have a little extra time to fix up my room at your house haha. And also find me a wife. That would be nice too haha. I'm also glad everyone is feeling better this week. I'm telling you. Eat kim chi. For one thing, it's delicious and also it keeps you healthy.

So this week has been great. Probably one of the best yet. First of all we got our boiler fixed. It needed some oil. So that was pretty easy. We even bought it while we were on exchanges so I didn't have the luxury of having a native to help. I went on exchanges with Elder Rayes, the rock star, again, but this time we were in my area. It was way fun. I also leveled up from movie star to super star. So we had to go back to Elder Rayes's area to end the exchange and because all of the areas in our zone are so far apart we usually have to spend the night when we travel. Anyway, when we pulled up to the train station coming back to Tae Baek, there were huge groups of girl students waiting at every stop. Now I've had some interesting experiences with girl students and they aren't my favorite thing in the world. They just weird me out. So I knew this was going to be very interesting. The doors opened up and some people got off in front of me and everything was normal. And then I stepped off. They went nuts. All of them started screaming and reaching out trying to just touch even the hem of my American-ness. It was crazy. There were even a couple guys with big, fancy cameras taking pictures. I don't know what they were doing there, but it added to the effect. So normally I'm not too fond of this kind of stuff, but this one was kind of cool. Haha. 

We picked up a new investigator this week. He was actually a former investigator that met the missionaries once. He served a mission in Australia for his church awhile back so he's really good at English. He's also pretty good at the Bible. He won't accept the Book of Mormon. Like he won't physically take it. He likes discussing gospel stuff but he's not quite willing to change. So hopefully we can find his real need and concern. I think he'd accept everything like that (snap) if he did. We'll see. Also we had a baptism yesterday! I don't know if I really told you how big this is. Tae Baek hasn't had a baptism in over two years. It's probably one of the smallest baptizing areas in the mission. So this is really exciting. He also brought two of his friends to his baptism that we've met a few times, so they're the next target. Hopefully we get a nice little snow ball effect going on here. That would be so good. So to say the least I'm doing really good. Thanks again for all the emails/love. I'll talk to you next week.

Love, Elder Dorius

Conference in Korea

Hey everyone,

Sounds like you've all had a busy week, as usual. How long does Kadin and Kylie's soccer season go for? It seems like every email you've sent me has a report of their games. They sound fun though. Some of the bigger wards in Seoul play soccer every week too and the missionaries go play with them. One of my buddies from the MTC bought some sweet cleats. I won't lie, I'm kind of jealous. I think it would be so fun to play soccer with your ward every week. But my ward here is good too. In response to your questions Dad there are quite a few christians in Korea. I'm not sure the percentage but I'd say your Korean girls are about right. The other main religion is probably Buddhist. We usually just start teaching the first lesson with everyone. We talk about the restoration and the Book of Mormon and sometimes talk about our purpose as missionaries and stuff like that. It's pretty good. There's a section in Preach My Gospel that basically teaches you how to begin teaching. Preach My Gospel is amazing. It has all the answers. My companion is still good. Communication is still hard but it works out for the most part. It's definately a patience builder though. And I still don't feel very confident with my Korean. English is becoming a crutch that I don't want to give up. But I think this is just one of those "line upon line" type of things and "a watched pot never boils." It takes a lot of time and practice and it's hard to see my own gradual improvement. So maybe by this time next year I'll be dreaming in Korean.

Conference was awesome. As usual. I actually got to watch a couple sessions in English. On Saturday it was just me and my companion and this super old guy in our branch. His name is Chang Lee in English. He's hilarious. Anyway, he speaks fairly good English and my companion didn't mind watching some in English so we watched the afternoon and Priesthood session. It was weird to hear talks about families and marriage. President Monson's talk isn't really the type of talk missionaries want to hear though haha. He basically told all the young men to go get married. So that was cool. It's kind of nice when the Priesthood session talks don't apply to you and you don't feel like a vile sinner. Ha. I guess that means I better get on the ball when I go home. Mom and Danielle, go ahead and just find me a nice wife and get all the plans arranged. That will save me a lot time. Haha. Anyway. Sunday we actually had our ward members come and watch and we had a meal between sessions. It was great. We've been wanting to have meals after church with our branch to try to get our members closer together. If we can't play soccer, we might as well eat. Our baptismal date investigator came to the Sunday afternoon session too, so that was good. We're still planning on baptizing him next week. Except we were just at the church and our water heater isn't working. It says the water is low. But I don't know what to do. Can Russ come over and fix it? So hopefully we'll have some warm water for him. 

Well other than that, things are still the same. Still good. Still working hard. Mom, get well soon. Talk to you all next week.

Love, Elder Dorius

Such success can only come from heaven‏

Hey everyone,

Sounds like you've had quite the week with the triathalon and all. I bet that was way fun. Haha I love the picture of Jeff getting his medal. That's hilarious. So how was conference? I don't watch it until next week. They translate it and then send it as a DVD a week later and then we just watch it at our church at the normal times (10-12, 2-4, etc.). I'm pretty excited. Unless of course I have to watch it all in Korean ha. What the heck Danielle? You're graduating in two weeks! That's so cool! No wonder you're so busy. I thought I was busy during my graduation, but this is like my graduation on steriods. Study hard! 

Well this week has been pretty good. Except I was out of my area for about half of it. We had our temple trip and interviews with the mission president on Tuesday and then we had zone conference on Wednesday and then I went on exchanges with my zone leader on Thursday in 강릉 (kang nung). So I've kinda been all over the place. It's fun though. I like traveling and being in different parts of the country. The weather is so nice today! I'm not wearing my big coat and I have a short sleeve shirt on. After conference we can take of our suit coats. I'm way excited for summer but everyone keeps telling me how horribly hot it is. Oh man I heard some stories of these nasty huge bugs that fly around and make loud noises. I'm not too excited for that. I don't know if I'll see more bugs and critters since I'm in the wilderness or not. I guess we'll see.

So I guess Elder Holland, Elder Cook, Elder Rasband, and the Area Presidency have been traveling around the Asia North area visiting the missions. Except us. And a couple others. But anyway, they're last stop was in Japan and Elder Holland gave a blessing on all the missionaries in this area and we got a copy of it at zone conference so I thought I'd share part of it with you guys.

"...I do bless every one of you that you will feel the urgency of the work and the love our Father in Heaven has for you in laboring in His vineyard. I bless you  that the Spirit of the Lord will be with you in your duties, guiding you in your study, leading you in your prostelyting efforts, comforting you regarding any concerns you have here in the mission or with your families at home. God will bless you and all for whom you pray.... Angels are dispatched to attend you and those about whom you care so much.

"I bless the nations of Korea and Japan, and the other island locations of our missionaries in this area. Father, bless the people that they will be responsive to the Spirit, that they will feel a hunger in their heart to find the truth, and that they will recognize these missionaries as being agents from Thee when they present Thy truth to them. To aid in that, I bless political leaders, the economy of the nations and any other forces that sometimes disrupt the work. May stability and tranquility come in those social and cultural forces. I bless members, priesthood leaders and investigators - including the less active - that a major thrust will go forward from this apostolic visit to this land. I turn the key again, as keys have been turned before, to bring a new chapter, a higher achievement and greater success in this most important work in the world. Such success can only come from heaven..."

Way cool! The only thing that could make it better is if he said it in Korea. But it still works. Because one of our investigators has a baptismal date. April 17th. His name is 문정곤 (moon jung gon) and he's 17 years old. He's pretty golden. He loves meeting with us and accepts everything really well. So we're pretty excited about that. Our newest investigator is really good too. They met him while we were on exchanges so I haven't met him yet, but we have an appointment with him tonight. So things are warming up for little Tae Baek. I'll keep you posted on how things go. Thanks for all the love and prayers. Talk to you next week.

Love, Elder Dorius

JUST A SMALL TOWN MISSIONARY

Hey everyone,

Sorry this email is a couple hours later than normal. We tried going to the library today to check out their computers but when we got there we found out the computer lab is closed on Mondays. Of course. But it Scott and Cori are in town I'm guessing you're still up and playing games. 

Thanks for the questions. We do a little door knocking but not tons. We do most of our contacting on the street. We can bring up the gospel right during the first contact. That's usually the goal. We just introduce ourselves as missionaries sharing a message about the restored gospel and give them a flyer and try to get their number or something. It's not too bad. In Seoul there are tons of people to talk to, but they're always "busy." Even too busy to take a flyer. In Tae Baek there are fewer people but they are generally nicer. They at least stop and talk and are nice enough to take a flyer. My companion says I have foreigner power. Haha. For some reason people are intrigued by my small head, skinny face, and horrible Korean. Our apartment is pretty close to our church. Maybe like a 5 to 10 minute walk. So that's nice. Our English class is a pretty good lead. Everyone wants to learn English in Korea and classes are never free. So people usually call about it. Because our branch is so tiny we try to work with a lot of less actives. I'm sure the other areas do too. I study three hours every morning: 1 hour personal gospel, 1 hour companionship gospel, and 1 hour language study. It sounds like a lot but it really isn't. I feel like I need a few extra hours to study. I don't feel like my Korean is progressing much. But I just need to be patient and work harder. Everyone tells me it will come. So there you go. Nice questions.

It's funny you asked those questions because I wanted to talk about them in my letter. We had a little miracle during our street contacting the other day. So all week I've been praying to find a new investigator and nothing was happening through out the week. The first half of the week we had really bad numbers and our appointments were falling through. So I was getting a little discouraged. But on Saturday we were out contacting people before one of our English classes and this guy actually came up to us and asked us if we taught English. We told him we did and invited him to our class that was in about 30 minutes. He ended up coming. He's way good at English so I talked to him for a bit. He just moved here about a week ago and is a soccer coach and because of that he can't come to our classes. He was really interested in English and he also wanted to hear about the gospel. So another thing we do is called 30/30 where we meet and do English for 30 minutes and then gospel for 30 minutes. So we're meeting on Thursday. Boom. Miracle. Have I mentioned how much I love my English class? They're the best. Last week I taught the AP students. We were talking about how the weather can affect your emotions and one of them pulled out ceratonin. I don't even know how to spell it. It was sweet. Do you remember Mr. Cole and Rachel? They're pretty faithful English class members but not investigators. Anyway I love them. They want to take us out to lunch again and our markers were getting bad so Rachel brought some from her school. They're so nice. Ah I wish they would take the lessons. Anyways. We have another investigator that's pretty solid. He's 17 and loves being with us and accepts everything we've taught really well. So we're hoping for a baptismal date this week. We'll see. Well I need to go. I'm burning precious P-day time. I mean you guys are great and all but grocery shopping is calling my name. Woot. Talk to you next week.

Love, Elder Dorius 

Changing of the Guards‏

Hey everyone,

 

Yes!! I totally knew it was going to be Chile! That's so awesome. I'm way excited for him. You should tell him to pull out all his old notes from when we were in Spanish class together. haha. I also enjoyed hearing about the other mission calls. Way to keep stalking my friends and keeping me updated. Let's see...for Garrett I'm going to say Boston. I had to think about that one a little longer. Maybe I'll guess Brazil or France too. You'll have to let me know.

 

So you heard about Japan huh? They got pretty shook up. We heard about it earlier this week and then we had dinner with a few members (which was the whole branch minus the branch president) and we saw some footage on the news. It was crazy. They said around 10,000 dead or injured. Something like that. That's good the missionaries are ok. I bet they'll have their hands full over the next couple weeks. As far as I know Korea is fine. I don't think it got to us, so we're good.

 

Transfer day is on Wednesday. We're actually on the train heading to Seoul right now. If it's your last P-day, you can take your companion to Lotte World which is an amusement park here in Korea. My companion sent out a text to everyone last week seeing if anyone wanted to go but no one really wanted to so we were just going to stay in Tae Baek and go to the coal museum. Oh side note, I went to the dinosaur museum in Tae Baek last week when I was on exchanges. It was sweet. I'll have to send some pictures next week. Anyway, one of the other missionaries going home texted my companion last night and said he was going to Lotte World so we decided to pack up and go. So I'm pretty excited. But it gets better. This aforementioned missionary is Elder Stanley's trainer. So me and Elder Stanley get to go to Lotte World together. Woot!

 

So as far as transfers go, I'm staying in my area and getting a new companion, obviously. The mission president told my present companion that my future companion is probably going to be a Korean. But we'll see. So basically I'm taking over the area. It's a little overwhelming and I'm a bit worried. But I figure it's like the changing of the guards. I don't know much about Buckingham Palace security, but my guess is that the guards aren't the main line of defence. They probably have cameras and other high tech equipment to keep things safe and running. They just need someone to stand there and it's my turn to stand there. Buckingham Palace is going to be safe regardless of who's guarding. The gospel is going to go forth regardless of who's serving. It's the Lord's work. I have to keep reminding myself that and go to work. I just hope I have an awesome companion that knows how to do missionary work and wants to go to town. 

 

Well like I said I'm on the train and I need to email my mission president before I run out of time. Tell everyone I say hi. Enjoy the remainder of your spring break!

 

Love, Elder Dorius  

Hey everyone,

Thanks for the pictures. It looks like you guys had a lot of fun with the Korean girls. It would be way fun to meet up with them again sometime. Preferably when I'm better at Korean so I can actually communicate with them in their native tongue. Kadin those are pretty nifty shoes. I'm pretty jealous. When you wear black dress shoes 24/7 you kinda forget how cool shoes can be. Except my shoes are still cool. Ha.

Is spring break really next week? What the heck? Wasn't Christmas like two weeks ago? I swear time stops when you're a missionary. Do you guys have plans for spring break? Are you going to do the usual Vegas trip or are you just going to relax? You have been busy with SUPAF and soccer and now the triathalon. 

Well this week has been pretty good. We've picked up a few new investigators through our English program. We're teaching a way fun family. They have a boy who is the twins's age and then a little girl, I'm not sure how old she is. We have a good time at their house. When they found out I play the piano, they basically dragged me to their piano and made me play something. Everyone loves it. Mom, you were right. I never knew I would play the piano so much on my mission. Thanks for making me stick with it. It's been a blessing. So yeah things are picking up a little bit. We enjoy having appointments. We haven't taught too many lessons yet just because all of our investigators are new and they're doing the English program. So hopefully they don't drop and we can start teaching the gospel more. Mom I have sympathy for you and your class. Teaching is so hard. It really is such a gift. Unfortunately I don't quite have that gift so I don't know what to tell you. Sorry. Maybe you should just speak English and look American. That's what I do and it works for the most part. Haha. 

We had to make a couple road trips this week. On Wednesday we went to 강릉 (kang nung) for combined district meeting and then this weekend we had District Conference. It was way good. Our mission president spoke. Luckily my trainer translated most of the meetings so I was able to get a little bit out of them. I'm still getting used to how small the church is here. There were maybe 50 people at the conference. More or less. We have to do a little extra work sometimes and build up some of the members's faith. It can be hard sometimes, but the members are great and they love the missionaries.

Well I can't think of much more to report on. As of now I'm on exchanges. They have a special training meeting for all the trainers, district leaders, and zone leaders in Seoul so I'm with my zone leader's companion. I'm taking over my area for the next couple days. It's good practice for next transfer because we're pretty sure I'm going to stay here and take over the area. I'm a little worried. I'm still not very familiar with the area. We might have a couple rough weeks coming up but if we just do our best and work hard everything will work out.

Thanks for the emails. Enjoy the warm weather. Send some over here! Talk to you next week.

Love, Elder Dorius