At Least Someone Cares

Hey everyone,

 

Umm did you guys have such a boring week that you had no need to email me? That's unheard of. Surely something happened. Even if it was just work and school you can still email me. Oh I got a email! Well I'll just give you the update of my week while I wait for you guys.

 

Oh I just emailed you guys a few days ago. Haha. We've had a pretty good few days since then though. Our new investigator brought a couple friends with him when he met us and we ended up picking them up as investigators too. They all go to the same school, which is right next to our church, and are pretty good buds. We've just been meeting them after school and playing ping pong. We tried to talk about the Book of Mormon with them but because they're all 14 year old boys and have been playing ping pong, it's a little challenging for them to concentrate. So I don't know how much is really sinking in, but we gave them all a Book of Mormon and told them to read the introduction page. We'll see what happens. We might have to get a bit creative.

 

On Saturday, our district leader's ward had a little musical program thing and they invited us to perform/watch. I performed. My companion watched. It was way fun. There were a few little kids playing their little tunes on the piano and a couple other members played the guitar and then my district leader played a couple songs and his companion rapped. It was sweet. I played Dumb Song and they loved it. I don't think Koreans play much "jazz" piano so they're usually pretty excited when I play stuff like that. It's times like this that make me really grateful you guys made me stick with piano.

 

Well thanks for replying. That's about it from me. Tell Kylie to beat up Kadin for not caring and that I'll beat him up too when I get home. Glad you guys are having a good time with the Japanese kids. I can't remember any Japanese either. Hopefully you can keep up with them. Talk to you later.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

Email from London

From London:

Eat more KimChi!

Happy Chu Suk!‏

Hey everyone,

 

You guys have Japanese kids again? That sounds fun. And you're still boating. Ugh. That sounds fun (sarcasm). I understand how busy you guys are and how hard it is to send off a package. I still need to send one to you guys. I've been moving some pictures from my memory card onto my translator before I send it home so that's partly why it's taking so long as well. Maybe I'll try to get that off to you sometime this week so you can get my ipod and then if I'm not done with the rest of my pictures, I'll just send that later. That's cool you guys took the Japanese kids to the temple. It sounds like they had a pretty good experience. And that's cool one of your Korean girls is coming over for Christmas. It'd be sweet if I could say hi to her when I call home. Maybe even practice a little Korean. And Danielle, that's fun that you have your Korean teacher again and that she's having a baby. Korean babies are the cutest thing in the world. I've been emailing Jordan a bit. He's almost out of the MTC and he said he can already understand about 80% of what his teachers say. Man. What I would give for that. I'm coming up on my year mark and I still barely know what's going on. Oh well.

 

So as you know, this week was Korea's biggest national holiday, Chu Suk. It's similar to Thanksgiving. Pretty much everyone goes back to their hometowns and spends a few days with their families. Monday was a full P-day so Sunday night, we went over to our zone leader's/district leader's house and spent the night with them. It was way fun. Monday we just hung out. There wasn't really much to do because everything was closed. But it was nice to just relax and hang out for once. Tuesday we had a special zone conference. They had a few musical numbers. My district leader, who is also a rock star, asked me to play the piano for him for a musical number. He had a cool arrangement of "How Great Thou Art" on a cd so we spent a little time during our marathon P-day to figure it out and play it. It was pretty fun and it turned out pretty good. So that's my new claim to fame.

 

Last week we picked up a couple of those kids we met on the street as investigators. We've just met them a couple times so we don't know too much about them, but they're nice, innocent kids. We're meeting at least one of them tonight so hopefully it goes well. We also got a referall from some other missionaries. It's a familiy with two little boys. We haven't met them yet because of the holiday but we talked to the dad on the phone and he seems really nice. Apparently they're a really good family and really like the missionaries. So we're starting to see a few things pop up here and there. Now that the holiday is over we'll be able to meet more regularly and see more success. Oh I just remembered some other news from last week. I had dog soup. It's called bo shin tang. It actually was pretty good. A member took us out to dinner one night. So London better watch out when I get back or else I might eat her. Haha. Just kidding. They breed certain dogs for the meat. Anyway. I thought you might like to hear that. I haven't had too many new cultural experiences lately.

 

Well that's about it for now. I'll try to get this package off to you guys as soon as I can. Tell your Japanese boys hi for me. If you can. Haha. Good luck with that. Talk to you guys later.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

Tae Kwon Do kids‏

Hey everyone,

 

Well it sounds like Mom and Danielle had a good weekend. And Grandpa and Grandma. They even pulled through with the family updates. I don't know what happened with Dad and the kids. Hopefully they're still around somewhere. So Ty and Logan didn't take their eye exam very seriously? Now they get big six inch coke bottle glasses. That's what you get when you don't study. That's crazy Amanda is in college now. I feel old. But that's good that everyone is busy and doing good things with their lives. Those pillows and such you guys made are pretty legit. Oh before I forget, with that music, would it be possible to put it on a mp3 player or something? That way I can just have that little gadget and not a bunch of cds. I was planning on sending my ipod home if you want to wait for that and put some stuff on it. I'll try to get that package sent off to you guys soon. There's just not much time to do things like that as a missionary. As far as other stuff I need/want I think I'm good. Maybe some more recent family pictures would be fun.

 

So we had transfers this week. My companion left and I stayed here in Mansu. My new companion's name is Elder Rossi and he's from Salt Lake. This is his fourth area in this zone so he knows Incheon pretty well and he already knew a lot about the area before he even came. It's been good so far. It's always a little weird at first getting used to each other but I think it will be good. My district leader is the same and his new companion is one of my best friends in the mission so that's cool. We've already done a few finding activities together. It's a good group. We possibly will have a new investigator by the end of the day. On Friday we were just out contacting and talked to these three kids going to their tae kwon do class who thought we were pretty cool then they called us later that night and wanted to meet. One has been texting us everyday and seems to really like us. He almost came to church yesterday. So we're pretty excited about that. This kid kind of reminds me of my recent convert over in Tae Baek. Just a young innocent student who really likes the missionaries. We're just going to meet them and play ping pong and have fun and build a good relationship. That's what we did in Tae Baek. So I'm pretty excited about that. It will be the first new investigator in over two transfers in this area. We're overdue. I'm thinking this could be the little spark we need to get things up and running again. Other than that, everything is same old. The weather is really nice right now. It can probably be classified as "perfect." Everything is starting to cool off and the leaves are starting to fall off the trees. Supposedly it will be like this for about a month and then it will start getting chilly again. That's depressing. I better wash the mold off my coat before I really need it. Next week is a huge national holiday in Korea. It's called Chu Suk. Apparently everything just shuts down. It's like Thanksgiving. Everyone goes and visits their family for a few days. It's so big, the mission president told the missionaries last year to not visit people because this is basically the only time they have to be with their family and they do not want to be disturbed. So we get like a week long P-day next week. Yay! I'll let you know how it goes. Well that's about it here. Still loving it and working hard. Tell Kylie Moore's mom hi haha. Talk to you later.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

Miracle Park‏

Hey everyone,

 

Wow. You guys had a pretty boring week. It didn't take me too long to read through them. Haha. That's weird. To answer Dad's questions: 1. Yes I did get that package you sent me. 2. I've been really healthy. All those sprays/creams/pills are still stashed away in my bags. I think I've just taken a couple pills since I've been here. It's been great. 3. The bugs actually aren't as bad as I imaged. We mostly just see these creepy spiders that are all over the place but they aren't poisionous. 4. I'm pretty good on money. I used my credit card last week to buy a Korean vocab book. Pretty much everything I buy is paid for with my mission money. And plus I haven't really had much time to go out shopping. However I have been collecting a few things for you guys so I'll send that stuff home soon. 5. I can't think of anything that I need. I like that new music Mom sent. I'm not sure if I can print it off here so I might just wait for it in the mail. I'll let you know if I need anything. How was Kadin and Kylie's first week of school? What classes are they taking? Who's their teachers?

 

This week was pretty good. Remember that story I told you about with that guy in the park? Well to finish that story he punked us and we haven't heard from him since. Lame. However. We had another cool thing happen in that park. It was a similar situation: we were just heading back home and needed one more contact for our daily goal. We saw one guy just standing in this park smoking so we thought he wouldn't be too interested but we went for it anyway. As we approached him he said in English "hey remember me?" I had never met him but my companion had just met him once and recongnized him. He was one of Elder Stanley's old investigators! It was so cool. He goes to school somewhere else now and was just in our area for that one day. He said it was destiny that we met him. Or something like that. We now call that "miracle park." Maybe something will come out of it in the future. Also this lady who was referred to us came to our English class. She's really nice and seems to have some good morales? Is that the right word? Standards? Something like that. And the next day, we were going into the mission office and in the subway we saw her again and talked with her some. So that was pretty cool too. We haven't picked her up as an investigator but hopefully something will come out of it. 

 

For some reason, it feels like I have a better relationship with the ward here than I've had with my other areas. I don't know if it's just because it's a little smaller ward or if it's because I can actually communicate with them better or what. But it's been pretty fun. Our ward mission leader set up this calendar with some of the members for us to come over once a week and teach the lessons. We met two families this week and had a good time. And they fed us. Boo ya. We were also invited to an Elder's quorum meeting thing which was held at a resturant and pretty much just consisted of eating. It was the best. Our members are sweet. It's way cool to just get to know them and kind of be a part of their lives. It also helps when the members really like the missionaries and want them to come over and stuff. 

 

So yeah that was pretty much our week. Nothing else too exciting. Oh yeah I just remembered one thing. My companion and I started running in the mornings. There's a way cool bike trail right by our house we go on. Anyway. There's a couple bridges we run under and there's usually lots of spiders hanging out. Well one morning my companion almost ran right into this huge, ugly spider. It was one of the biggest spiders I've seen. It was freaky. I just remembered that when you guys asked about the bugs. Anyway. Have a good day at school tomorrow! Haha. Tell all my friends the same thing. Talk to you later.

 

Love, Elder Dorius 

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