Card Games

Hey everyone,

Sounds like you guys have had a lovely week with the doctors. I can honestly say I'm not jealous of that. Haha. Hopefully things get better and you guys can figure out what's going on with Kylie's knee. That's strange. So is Eva coming just to see you guys or is there some event going on? If she's going all the way to America just to see you guys, she must really like you. That flight is not fun. You'll have to tell her hi for me. Maybe she can teach you a few new words too. To answer your questions Dad: 1. being is a foursome is really fun. We bought a deck of cards and have been playing games every night when we're done with planning and everything. It's a lot different than just you and your companion. But it's good. 2. Training is really fun too. I've been lucky to have the greenie I have. We get along great and he's teachable. It's helped be stay on my toes and try to be a good example. 3. The language is coming along but it's still hard. The characters are easy, no problem there. Just understanding is tough. I'm picking up a few Chinese characters here and there though becuase Korean is based off of Chinese. So that's nice. In a way. It's definatley not Latin though. 4. I actually haven't used the music you sent yet. I haven't had much time to practice. Hopefully sooner than later. 5. I haven't even thought about Christmas yet. I guess that's next month huh? Shoot. What do you guys want? I don't need too much. I might get some new garments the next time we go to the temple. There's a distribution center there. That's kind of the only thing I can think of at the moment. 6. That family is doing good. We love meeting with them. We have been trying to get them out to church but they're a little apprehensive. They've given us some kind of weak excuses but seem open to going when they're ready. We're planning a time to have dinner with them and a couple other families in our ward so they can meet some people. I think that will help them come out to church. We did find one problem last night though. They like to drink coffee. The husband said his wife needs coffee more than she needs him. It was pretty funny. But also not. So either this could be a really cool coffee-quiting miracle story or just another empty cup. We'll see. Our ward has a goal to baptize two people by the end of the year and I would really love to seem them fulfill that goal.

Wow. Hopefully that answered your questions. Haha. That's been most of the week. Saturday night we had a "couples party" at the bishop's house. They must count companions as couples. But it was really fun. I like this ward. There's some awesome people. We did a little door knocking this week and put some flyers up for our English class. One lady came out so that was good. I think we're actually going to do that again tonight. When we were about to leave today, though, we got door knocked by this crazy church in Korea. From that experience I learned that when we knock on doors we shouldn't tell people that God doesn't love them or know them because they aren't a member of the church and that they're going to a bad place. People don't like that. And they probably won't come to English class. So that was good.

Well that was pretty much our week. Nothing too exciting I guess. Except I shot the moon in Hearts and won the game. That was exciting. We're going to play more games today and make sheet cake. Yum. You should send that for Christmas. That would be amazing. Well I'll talk to you guys next week. Get better soon!

Love, Elder Dorius

Questions...

OK….mom wants answers to her questions.   And Kylie wants you to know that she loves you!  (in case she dies!)

Oh yeah. We mostly contact on the street but we knock on doors too. They're both ok activities. Knocking on doors isn't my favorite thing and sometimes we get kicked out of appartments or can't even get in in the first place. Most of the newer appartments have passwords to get inside so sometimes we have to sneak in. That part and running away from security makes it interesting. Haha.

Oh and we only have a washing machine. No dryers. So we have to hang everything up to dry. It's not too bad. Except during the summer when it's hot and humid, it's hard to dry things, and in the winter it's freezing cold. Any other questions?

Mom says she just uses a dryer and that works really well for her.  And she lives in St. George.  Helpful for you….I know.  Maybe a fan?  Hair dryer?  We’ll ponder.   Well thanks for the answers and nice visiting with you.  Kylie kind of hopes you love her too.   Have a great day!   Dad

Haha oh yeah I love Kylie too. Hopefully she doesn't die. We use a fan. It's really not that bad. But I do miss having a dryer sometimes. Those are handy machines.

Happy Halloween

Hey everyone,

 

Happy Halloween! I'm glad someone is celebrating it because no one in Korea knows what Halloween is. The only Halloween stuff is on American stores, like Baskin Robbins. So it's not too big here. I'm wearing my brown and orange tie and fake glasses as my costume. Woot. Sounds like a few of you had a busy week. Magnifying Danielle and Jesse's calling is right up there with pulling teeth. That must have been divine inspiration to give them that calling haha. I liked the pictures. It made me miss giving blood. And since I got half a dozen shots for Korea and who knows what surging through my blood now, I probably can't donate for a while. Dang. Oh well. What do you do?

 

This week was pretty good. We've been trying to visit quite a few members and less actives this week. We got a list of people to work on from our bishop so we've been busy with that. We met with our family yesterday. They're so cool. Last time we talked about the Plan of Salvation and gave them 2 Nephi 2 as a reading assignment, and last night the mom pulled out her Book of Mormon and seemed really excited to tell us that she had read but couldn't understand it very well. She had to read through it three times before she could understand a little bit. So we went through that and tried explaining it a little more. That chapter is a little hard to explain, especially in Korean. Then we taught lesson three, which is pretty much just the gospel: faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end. It's probably one of my favorite lessons to teach. All four of us were there so we each took a principle and explained it. We invited them to church next Sunday, but they said they go visit the husband's brother at that time because he's sick. They said they don't have friends here becuase they just moved here so we want to introduce them to some members and have them making new friends. So hopefuly that works out. We've talked to our ward mission leader and have a plan going.

 

On Saturday our ward had a meat party. I know that sounds like we're fat, disgusting people, but it was really good. Don't judge. Plus it sounds better in Korean. Anyway. We tried doing a couple "Halloween" activities. We did that donught on a string thing where you have to bite it off and not use your hands. It was pretty entertaining. Then we were going to do an apple bob but the members ended up eating our apples. Lame. That would've been hilarious. So we're thinking about having our own little party with the youth and doing that. We'll see. It was still fun though.

 

That was pretty much our week. My last companion got surgery on an ingrown toe nail. That was exciting. Our house is still having fun. Which reminds me. Do you guys still have Scrabble Slam? We have it at our house for some reason but we don't have the instructions and I can't remember how to play. If you could email me those I'd really like that. Well may your Halloween be merry and bright. Or something like that. Talk to you next week.

 

Love, Elder Dorius 

Pictures

Due to Danielle's request, here's some pictures of our house:

 

1. This is the front room. We also sleep in there now that there's four of us.

 

2. This is the other main part of the house and the kitchen.

3. This is my study room and there's another one just like it. And then we have another room that has all our clothes and stuff. And then the bathroom. So pretty good.

4. This was my last district at transfers. Way fun. I love them.

 

If you thought three was a crowd...‏

Hey everyone,

 

Holy cow I've never gotten so many emails in my life. It took a while to read all of them. Thanks. Except why do Kadin and Kylie have ipods? That is not fair. There are poor, starving children in Africa who would love those. At least they email me now though. I guess that's good. By the way Kadin, I will destroy you at wakeboarding when I get home. And at ping pong. So buckle up. I'm still slightly jealous of St. George weather and I'm starting to miss it. The weather here is getting a little chilly. It's about perfect with suits on, but pretty soon it's going to get cold and time for the big winter coat. All the leaves are changing, though, so I'm enjoying that.

 

Well this week was pretty exciting. As you know, we were in a threesome this transfer, which put us on the top of the list for an emergency transfer. We got a call from our mission president during the week and one of my companions answered the phone so I didn't really know what was going on. I figured it was some sort of emergency transfer and when our president asked to speak with me I thought I was getting transfered somewhere. However, he told me we were turning into a four man area because a new missionary came in late for military stuff and then he told me I was going to be his trainer. So I'm training now. My greenie's name is Elder Lee. He was born in Korea and then his family moved to America when he was about two. So he's American but speaks Korean. Those are the best. He's way cool and we get along really well. Our whole house is fun. I like being in a four man area. Our ward is super excited too. Our bishop spoke in sacrament meeting yesterday and pretty much told the ward to give us referals so we can stay busy and baptize lots of people. It should be good. Hopefully. I think we're going to be able to get a lot more done, especially with visiting less actives. There's a new program with trainers and greenies where they are together for two transfers and follow this study program. We also have an extra hour of companionship study. I wasn't too excited about all that but it's really good. I think this will really help new missionaries be more ready and prepared for the rest of their mission. So I'm excited. It's fun to have a new little missionary.

 

Our investigators are doing pretty good. The little kids we were meeting are pretty much dropped. We weren't getting to far with them. But our family is doing good. We met them the other night and taught them the Plan of Salvation and kind of focused on how baptism and other ordinances are the only way to get to the Celestial Kingdom. I think the next time we meet them we can invite them to be baptized. We invited them to a ward activity this weekend so hopefully they come and meet some of the members. I hope things work out. They're an awesome family. That was pretty much the only progress we made with investigators. We have another potential investigator we're trying to pick up. It was a member referal and she has a friend who lives in our area but goes to church in a different ward. We played Rummykub with them on Sunday after church. It was fun. Except my companion and I had the worst luck and could never lay down. So annoying. Anyway. Games are fun. Oh I got your package. It was SO good! Thank you very much. I love the mangoes. I forgot how good those are. And the music is sweet. I haven't had a chance to play though. Maybe sometime this week.

 

Well other than that, there's not much else to report on. It was a pretty eventful week though. Tell the rest of the family hi for me. I'm not really missing the hunting this year, to be honest. Maybe we'll try it again when I get back. Talk to you guys later. Have a good week.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

Three's a crowd‏

Hey everyone,

 

Oh my gosh. You went boating again?! Ahh!! Why does St. George have such nice weather? It's starting to get pretty cold here. We were out contacting last night and it was windy and cold and not too much fun. I think it kind of put everyone we were trying to talk to in a bad mood. It wasn't a trip out on the lake, that's for sure. Mom I couldn't open Grandma's letter or those pictures. I think the computers we use don't have the software or something. It was all in Korean so I'm not really sure what the problem is.  Maybe try again? or I'll try again. You might need to just mail grandma's letter. It's a bit too late to catch my birthday at this point. Maybe next year.  And how did Garrett get out of speaking? I thought that was a mandatory thing. Lucky duck. He should've taken the chance to speak in English while he still had it because giving talks in Spanish won't be much easier.

 

So here's a story about transfers: It was the night of transfer calls and my companion and I are just waiting around for the call. I always get super anxious for transfer calls so I'm trying to sit there and watch patiently when the phone started ringing and it was from our mission president. Which, by the way, the picture ID for him on our phone is a picture of Elder Stanley holding a cello. Pretty funny. So I try to answer it in my best Korean and on the other end I just hear my zone leader say "Hey what's up?" and start laughing. Sometime that night my companion changed the name of our zone leader's number to our mission president and had them call us. It was pretty funny. After a few minutes. So then we're waiting again and still no call. We start to hear from the rest of our zone what was happening with them but we hadn't heard anything. So we finally texted the AP's to see what was going on and they told us we were both staying but were turning into a threesome. So I'm in a threesome now. The new elder that came in replaced me in Tae Baek so we've been talking a lot about that and what's going on there. My recent convert is still going to church and blessing the sacrament so that was good to hear. The members here seem pretty excited for three missionaries. I just hope this doesn't hurt our chances of being invited over for dinner. But other than that it's been fun.

 

We weren't able to meet with a couple of our investigators this last week. We got a hold of one and found out he's out of town for the next couple weeks. Which reminds me I needed to call him a couple days ago. Shoot. Oh well. Then our family couldn't meet either. So that was kind of a bummer. Our little kids that we've been meeting aren't becoming so fun. I don't think they have too much interest in the gospel. One might a little but if they're all together, there's not much hope. We changed up our English class a bit. Our ward mission leader has been helping out a lot with that and is really supportive. He's awesome. Our new companion, Elder Arvaseth, is a really good missionary so hopefully we'll see some improvement. We kind of have a less active project we started/working on, so hopefully we can get some people back out to church. That's just as good as a baptism in my eyes. Korea is full of less actives and I think sometimes we as missionaries get caught up in baptizing and look over the retaining. Either way, we have a lot of work ahead of us.

 

Well that was about it for my week. Pretty good. We have a sister in our district who cut hair before her mission so we're meeting up with them today and getting American haircuts for free. I'm pretty excited. Send some nice St. George sun over. That would be greatly appreciated. I don't think I need much more. You did send that package right? I'll let you know if I need/want anything else when I get it. Have a good week.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

Best conference ever‏

Hey everyone,

 

Thanks for all the reminiscing  (however it's spelled) and birthday wishes. Again. Yup. I'm 20 years old. It's kind of weird. I don't really feel that old, but I guess I am. It was good to hear from my friends on facebook via Danielle's email. That was nice. And thanks for the emails Aunt Linda and Amanda. I really enjoy hearing from everyone.

 

Conference was awesome! Our whole stake met together and watched it. All the members were in the cultural hall and watched it in Korean and all the missionaries were in a room and watched it in English. So I could actually understand everything this time. My favorite talk was probably Elder Waddell's in Priesthood. He talked about how the Lord has prepared a missionary experience for every missionary and how He knows our president, companions, and investigators and through those associations, we can become the type of Priesthood holder, husband, and father He wants us to become. It was really good. What's up with Elder Hales? He didn't look like himself at all. Has he been sick or something? Overall, I loved conference and the whole experience. It was fun to be with our whole zone for the weekend and just sit back and watch conference. And it was fun to see all the members. Big gatherings like this make me feel like I'm in Utah again, even though the size of the church here is almost nothing compared to there. Nevertheless, it's still true.

 

We couldn't meet with any of our investigators this week. It was a pretty rough week as far as numbers go. Two of our investigators kind of dropped off the radar and our family usually meets on Saturday so we couldn't meet because of conference. But we got a hold of one of our investigators last night and talked to him. He's been out of town and got drunk with his friends and broke his phone. Typical. So I cried repentance and told him to stop drinking and told him good things would happen. Just call me Ammon. Ha. Ok maybe not. So no new news for the investigators, and in this case no news isn't quite good news. Hopefully this week is better.

 

Tonight is transfer calls. I swear this transfer just started. I can't believe it's almost over. Time is seriously going by too fast. One of my good buddies in my district made an interesting comment. He said to me "you're 20 years old and your mission is almost halfway over." That's just what I want to hear. Happy Birthday to the ground. Ha. So it's pretty exciting but strange at the same time. I'll let you know how that goes next week. I have know idea what's going to happen. Speaking of letting you know of things, Elder Stanley says hi. He texted me happy birthday last night and we talked a bit. He's doing good. 

 

Well that's about all the excitingness of this week. It's hard to beat conference and a birthday all on the same day. Except one of the couple missionaries called me last night and sang happy birthday to me. That made my day. So a tip to grandpa and grandma when they're on their missoin: sing happy birthday to the missionaries. It's awesome. Today our district is going bowling. It's kind of our last "hurrah" for the transfer just in case we get seperated. I'm pretty excited. Anyways I'll talk to you next week and give you the updates from transfers. Have a big piece of chocolate cake for me!

 

Love, Elder Dorius