We missed the ark

{Sept. 18, 2012}

Hey everyone,

 

Thanks for the pictures. Those were way fun to see. Who the heck are those kids that look like Kadin and Kylie?! And is that Dallin Moody? He's looking big. He must be pumping some iron. Were those my cross country shorts that Kadin was rocking in one of those pictures? How much of my stuff is he wearing now? I feel like my whole life just got taken by my dong saeng. That's little brother. Or sister. And Kerry had her baby?! I was actually thinking about that the other day. I remember when you guys told me she was expecting another one but then I never heard about it again. Well cool. Good job Kerry for getting her here on an even day and for missing the 13th. I can't wait to meet her.

 

Well this week was pretty good. It was transfer week but we stayed the same here. That wasn't a huge surprise. Elder Stanley got a good shake this round. He got transfered and is training. I talked to him yesterday and he seems to be doing pretty good. We did a lot of less active visiting this week. There were a couple up by a pretty nice beach out here that we tried to visit but one wasn't home and we couldn't find the other. The beach was way cool though. We did have a pretty good miracle with another less active though. It was the last one on our list for that area we were working in and the night was wrapping up, but we hurried and visited him. We knocked on the door and nothing happened, but we could kind of hear something moving inside. So we knocked again and then waited. The door finally opened and there was our less active member! He thought we were something bad outside so that's why he was a little hesitant to open the door. Haha. But he's way sweet. Luckily he had a really good relationship with the missionaries that taught him so he was open and friendly with us. He's even texted us some pictures of Jesus he drew back in the day. So that was cool. We were going to visit him again last night, but there was a typhoon. Which is why I didn't email yesterday. It was pouring buckets yesterday. I have never seen it rain like that in my whole life. It was unreal. And it was super windy. We were right in the middle of the typhoon this time so it was a lot worse than the one before.  Our president even called us the night before to warn us. He said it was expected to rain about a foot in 24 hours and we heard there were 90 mph winds. We managed enough courage to go out and grab some groceries, and by the time we accomplished our mere 10 minute walk to the store, our shoes and pants were soaked. So to avoid the danger of being blown away or drowning, we got permission to email this morning.

 

We are heading in to Seoul today again. We have our temple session tonight and then tomorrow we have a special conference with the area president, President Ringwood. It's going to be good. The last one was amazing. So we're pretty excited for that. There was a missionary in our branch who just returned home from Busan and we had dinner with him and our branch president's family. The members were just ranting and raving about how great he had become. It was kind of funny, but pretty cool. We were pretty excited because we thought we just got a solid member to teach with whenever, but he left to go to school yesterday. Lame. But it was kind of fun to hear about how they do things down in Busan and got some good ideas for our missionary work.

 

That's about all the excitement I can think of. It doesn't quite sound as eventful as having Japanese kids for 10 days, but it was still pretty good. Hopefully you can have a little more time for relaxation this week. Talk to you next week!

 

Love, Elder Dorius

Pictures!

1. Here's the beach I was talking about

 2. This was me and my companion last night. We had to send in some pictures for a slideshow

3. Here's an Asian picture I took. Haha. Slightly rediculous.

God bless America.... and every other country

Hey everyone,

 

I can't believe you guys are still hitting the lake. It must be a little warmer in St. George than it is here. I'm not sure what the temperature is exactly but I think I saw somewhere that it's 26 degrees. It's about perfect. And the occasional ocean breeze is nice too. But I don't think I'd want to be out on the water right now. That time seemed to pass here. Congratulations on the new job Danielle! That's way sweet. But that's too bad you guys are killing everything in your house haha. I agree with Mom. I might have to think more about visiting you guys. Maybe you should just come hang out with us in Utah. It might be good for your health. So are there international sisters at the St. George temple? I didn't think they'd have Japanese missionaries there, but that's way cool! How long do you have your Japanese kids? What else are you going to do?

 

Well this week has been a little different than most weeks. We went on exchanges with one of the district leaders in our zone and his companion. I was with the district leader and while we were eating dinner, we got a random call from our mission president. It turned out that this missionary I was with was being transfered into the office the next day and that his companion would be working with us for a week. So we got him back the next morning to pack and then we sent him off with the office elders and we've been working in a threesome since then. It's been pretty fun. The missionary who's with us is from Germany. So now when we talk to people we always say "he's from Germany, he's from Australia, and I'm from America." I think people get a good kick out of it. It even helped us out with this one contact. We were knocking on doors and were getting nothing, and then finally at the last door of 15 floors, a lady was willing to talk with us. She was asking a little bit about the history of the church and how big it is and stuff and then we explained how we were from all over the world and she seemed pretty impressed with it.

 

I'm trying to think of what else happened this week. We had zone leader council. That was fun. Oh we found out that mormon.org is in Korean now, as well as in tons of other languages, and so we're going to do something with that for part of this 50 year anniversary of missionary work in Korea, we're going to try to have all the missionaries have a little profile on there. I think it's going to be pretty cool. It's still kind of in the planning process, but I think our president wants to do something with that. He's pretty smart. 

 

Hmm...this week seems pretty uneventful now that I'm looking back on it. But at the same time it kind of has. It's just missionary work. Nothing wrong with that, but it can get a little repetative sometimes. Shoot I don't think I spelled that right. Anyways. Maybe I'll just wrap it up and let you get on with your lives. Haha my companion is freaking out right now because his dad just gave him a countdown for his mission. Don't get trunky! Just remember Pres. Uchtdorf's talk about always being in the middle.

 

Talk to you later!

Love, Elder Dorius

Survived the Typhoon

{Sept 3, 2012}

Hey everyone,

 

Well we survived the typhoon. It didn't turn out to be as big as everyone made it sound like it was going to be. One day was super windy and then it rained pretty hard for a little bit. Then it was just rainy another day. But I think our little nook of woods didn't get hit too bad. We were mailing some letters off and saw a little news and down in Taejeon there was some flooding and more damage. Seoul didn't get hit too badly either. Is Brad's companion Brady Berryessa?! That's so crazy! Danielle said something about him having a companion from St. George but I didn't hear anything else about it. I can't believe that. I didn't even know Brady was on a mission. I feel a little out of the loop. But that's super crazy. So you guys are hosting the Japanese kids again? Are you going to host some Koreans again? You should if you can. Don't they come in January-ish? I'd be able to actually meet them this time. Oh yeah I forgot about Labor Day. Sheesh. All I know are the Korean holidays now. Chu Seok is coming up soon. Gotta get ready for that. It's a big one.

 

This past week has been pretty good. Even though the typhoon wasn't sandbag worthy, it did put a little kink in our missionary work. We had a way sweet miracle the other day. We got a random text from a guy asking about one of the old missionaries that served here. He was saved in our phone in the member group so we thought he was some old less active or something. Then he just asked if we could meet and of course, being the safety precautious and "stranger danger" oriented missionaries that we are, we agreed. We planned to meet him after church so we asked our branch president if he knew who he was and he didn't know, so then we thought it was an investigator. So we finally meet him and as we were talking, we realized exactly who it was. There was an investigator last year who met the missionaries, got baptized, and then suddenly moved to Seoul before getting confirmed, and now he just got back to Gangneung and met us. It's kind of an interesting situation. Our mission president said to just get him confirmed and get him active in the church again. So we pretty much just walked into a confirmation. Which is way better than Free Parking. That might help you game players understand just how cool it is. ;)

 

Speaking of games. I introduced Pass the Pigs to the youth in our branch. They thought the pigs were...mindblowing. That's a good translation. But one of the young women must have been paying her tithing because the windows of Heaven opened up for her and she destroyed us all in just one turn. So then nobody thought it was fun anymore and we just played Uno. Haha. It was fun though.

 

We took a ride on the Reading Railroad and went to the other district's district meeting in my old greenie area. That was fun. We recieved a good training on prayer. And now that the month is over, our focus on the Book of Mormon is changing to the Sacrament. The mission is focusing on recieving revelation through church attendance for ourselves and for our investigators. It should be good. And since it's a new month, we're heading into Seoul today to take a walk on the Boardwalk and have our monthly zone leader council. 

 

Well that's about all the important stuff I can think of. I don't need to bore you with anything else. Have fun playing your games! Talk to you later.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

Grab the Sandbags!

{Aug 27, 2012}

Hey everyone,

 

Thanks for the emails. I especially liked the blog insert from Danielle. (See blog post here) I have seen that movie so I knew exactly what was going on. That's so funny. You guys are STILL going to the lake?! What's the weather been like there lately? We had a couple days where the temperature dropped a bit and it actually got a little chilly. We even wore long sleeves for a couple days. We also found out from the mission office that there's a typhoon coming in tomorrow and if we need sandbags we can go pick them up at local community centers. That should be exciting. Luckily we live on the 13th floor so I'm not super worried, but I'm not quite sure how our day is going to turn out. We might have to park the bike. Congrats Kadin on passing the Eagle board! Especially since you get to go on the Eagle trip. Those are fun. Are you going to the same place I went to? Oh and I just used my credit card this last week. I bought a sweet vocabulary book while we were in Seoul. So it should be good.

 

Well this week has been pretty good. The girl that got baptized last week was confirmed yesterday so now it's official. We just have to fax in the baptismal record. She's already read through first Nephi and is still asking way good questions about some of the scriptures. I'm not really looking forward to the Isaiah chapters, but I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get there. We had zone conference this week. We went into Seoul on Tuesday, had our temple session in the evening, spent the night, and then headed over to the conference in the morning. It was a way good meeting. Our mission president's wife gave an awesome talk about grace that pretty much changed my whole understanding of it. She referenced a book by Brad Wilcox that sounds way good. I can't quite remember what it is. "His Grace is Sufficient" or something like that. You should check it out sometime. Then our president talked a little bit about the history of the church and missionary work in Korea. This year marks 50 years since missionaries came to Korea so our mission is trying to think of something cool to do to celebrate it. But he talked about looking back on history and remembering the sacrifices of others and see how far we've come now. Holy cow. The first missonaries in Korea were so solid. Their stories kind of made me feel like scum, but it was also some good motivation. So it was a pretty good zone conference.

 

We also had kind of an interesting experience this week. One that I've never had on my mission. I don't know if I've told you about our member that was in the hospital or not, but for at least the past month we've been visiting a super old and the epitone of frail and fragile member in the hospital, and we found out that he passed away this week. It was kind of sad but he's definately a lot better now. His health was getting worse and worse so it was time for him to go. But he didn't really have any family and was just an old guy who lived by himself, so instead of a funeral our branch just had a special worship service thing for him. It just made me grateful for the plan of salvation and the gospel.

 

We had a cool miracle last night. We made some brownies and were going to take them to our branch president, but instead of riding our bikes, my companion felt like we should walk. So thanks to my blueness I didn't put up a big fight and just agreed, and along the way we talked to a guy who had met with missionaries before and even had a Book of Mormon and had read a little bit of it. He wasn't quite ready to make an appointment or give us his phone number, but we gave him another Book of Mormon and he said he'd read it and if he had a change of heart he'd call us. It was pretty cool. It could've been a little better had he made an appointment but reading the Book of Mormon is good too. I just took that little flake of gold and put it in my bag.

 

Well hopefully you guys don't have too rough of a week. You'll have to keep an eye out for the weather here. God might be cleansing this part of the world with a flood again. Wish us luck. I'm not planning on getting washed away so I'll talk to you next week. Have a good one!

 

Love, Elder Dorius

Baptism!

Hey everyone,

 

Thanks for the emails as always. I especially liked the one from Jesse. It gave me a good laugh. Especially the part about the peasants and the chicken taking his mouth on a trip to the Terrestrial Kingdom. Jesse should email me more often. What the Bourne Legacy? I heard that Matt Damon (sp?) wasn't in this one. I don't even know how I heard that, but I did somehow. Was it good? You might have to throw it on that list for me. So how is Clark? Did you tell him hi for me? That stinks you missed the homecoming. But the after party is where it's at anyways. At least that's where the food is at. And that's what's important.

 

Well this week was good. I wrote in my journal last night and realized I missed the entire week of writing. I hate it when that happens. But it usually means we were busy and that's what we want. I went on exchanges with one of the district leaders in our zone. Nothing too exciting there. But it's kind of funny becuase when this missionary first started his mission, I was his district leader, and then we got transfered to the same district again and now he's my district leader. So we just talked about district leader stuff and things like that. It was kind of hard though because he's Korean so I got a good dose of listening and speaking practice. Which reminds me, I have been studying Chinese characters the past few weeks because like 70 percent of Korean is based off of Chinese. It's the best! I learned something cool. The Chinese character for America also means beautiful. Hmm...what a coincidence. So I just wanted to share that with you. You guys might appreciate it more than my Australian companion. Haha.

 

We had a cool experience on the street this week. We started contacting a guy which led into kind of a long discussion and so he invited us into his work and we got to sit down and introduce the Book of Mormon to him. He seems like he has a lot of interest. He could be pretty golden. We were supposed to meet him again last Saturday, but something came up and he had to reschedule. So hopefully that works out well.

 

The biggest highlight this week was our baptism yesterday! It was really good. Our investigator is so solid! We met with her on Saturday night and just went over her reading in the Book of Mormon. She read up to 1 Nephi 11 and while we were talking about it, she had some really good questions. One of her questions was in chapter 8 about the tree of life and why some people made it all the way to the tree and ate the fruit but then turned away. It caught us a little off guard. I didn't even think about that until like my senior year so I wasn't expecting a question like that. She also asked why Nephi was commanded to kill Laban. It was kind of hard to explain, but with some help from our member we made it through. She's pretty smart. The baptism went really well. We had good support from our branch. I'll send a picture. One of the members bore her testimony at the baptismal service and she talked about how she was baptized at the same age and around the same time as our investigator. It was cool to see how good of a member she had become since she was baptized and it made me think our investigator can become like her. I certainly hope so.

 

Those were probably the main things this week. At least the main things I can remember. Hopefully this will compensate a bit for my lack of journal writing. We have our temple trip tomorrow. The missionaries usually go to a morning session, but because we're way out in the boonies, we're going in to Seoul tommorrow and having our P-day there and then go to an evening session. And then we get to stay the night there again. I like having the temple be our little summer cottage. If you're going to have any "summer cottage" it might as well be the temple. Then we have zone conference the next day. This will be the first one with our new president so I'm pretty excited. I'll try to give you a report of that next week. Have fun at school! Kadin's going to need all the blessings Heaven can afford in order to not get beat up at school. Haha. Talk to you later!

 

Love, Elder Dorius

Gold Flakes

Hey everyone,

 

Wow I can't believe all those people still remember me. That made me feel pretty special. And then I read about all of you guys forgetting to write me and being super distracted while you were writing me. Thanks a lot. I also can't believe that Elder Anderson is coming home this week. That's so crazy. Thanks for his emails occasionally. Those are fun to read. Especially because they're so "Clarky." Hopefully you can catch the homecoming and fill me in. You'll have to tell him hi for me too. Are Kadin and Kylie already in middle school? What the heck? Whenever I see middle school students on the street I think, "Kadin and Kylie aren't that big, are they?" I guess there's probably been a few changes since I've been gone.

 

This week has been pretty good. I think I've said that about every week. We had zone leader council on Tuesday, so we rode in to Seoul Monday night and stayed at our President's house. It was way cool. It felt like a hotel, but I'm sure if you guys were there you'd probaly think it was like the barracks. Since we had the place to ourselves, we got to spend some good time with our President and his wife and just talk. It was really fun. That's one thing I've really appreciated with our American president. With President Lee, it was kind of hard to have that personal relationship because of the languag barrier. So it was nice to just talk and get to know them better. Then all of Tuesday was spent at our meeting and talking to President more about our zone and stuff and then riding back home. Wednesday we met with one our family investigators. We kind of had a shaky lesson, but in the end they committed to a soft baptismal commitment. We're still going to have to work some things out but we at least have that focus now. So that was really good. Our other investigator with the baptismal date is still solid. She was out of town Saturday night and got back really early Sunday morning, but she still came to sacrament meeting and then we finished up all the lessons after church and got things ready for her baptism next week. We just have the interview this week and we need to make sure her parents are ok with it, but that hopefully won't be a problem. So we're pretty excited about that.

 

Now usually in my emails, I try to leave out all the boring, and not so fun parts of missionary work. But I think this time I might go into a little more detail because I learned a fairly good lesson from it. So the past few days have not been super fun. Even though we were seeing some success on the street and working hard, I just wasn't really enjoying the work. It was hard. And honestly I don't even know why. Probaly Satan. Don't listen to Satan. But we were listening to some conference talks and one came on from Elder Ballard's talk last April I think it was. He shared a story about a guy who moved to California during the 1849 gold rush to find big gold nuggets, but while he was there, he wasn't finding his greatly desired gold nuggets. Then another guy helped him out by finding some small gold flakes, but that wasn't good enough for the other guy. He was set on finding nuggets. He noticed his helper's bag was full of gold and told him how he was looking for nuggets like the ones in his bag. Well lo and behold, the bag was full of thousands of tiny gold flakes. That's when I realized that I needed to keep finding and treasuring gold flakes. We were getting quite a few, and some of them were pretty good sized, but I think I was just not appreciating it and just wanted nuggets. The funny thing is that this was one of the principles I learned the most on my mission, but I must have forgotten. That kind of happens a lot though. Just read the Book of Mormon. So that's kind of my word of wisdom this week. Celebrate the small victories.

 

Well that's pretty much been my week. With the start of the new month and new transfer, our zone has been trying to focus more on the Book of Mormon. My companion and I have been studying it a lot so far and trying to use it more in our missionary work. It's been fun. And it's been a good thing to focus on. You definately can't go wrong with that. Have a good last week of summer. Kadin, don't break anything before school starts. Haha. Talk to you later.

 

Love, Elder Dorius

Just a few changes

Hey everyone,

 

Well it sounds like you guys had a good trip. I'm glad you made it back safely. I definately want to go back there sometime. That would be way fun. It might be awhile before that happens though. Oh my gosh. The Olympics are everywhere. Seriously every tv has it playing. When we went into Seoul last week for transfers, it was on our bus and there was tons of traffic so our usual 3 hour bus ride ended up taking 45 extra minutes. It was super long so we sneaked a few peeks at the Olympics. Korea is actually doing pretty good. They're in 3rd place overall in medals, behind China and America. But you probably know all this. People are pretty proud of their country here.

 

Transfers were good. My new companion is from Australia/New Zealand. Round two for me and companions from down under. He's been in Korea for about a year and a couple months now. His name is Elder Coward. So far it's been good. Our whole zone got changed quite a bit. Our two district leaders are both Korean and this is both of their first times being district leader, and this is my companion's first time being a zone leader and he wasn't even a district leader. So I'm the only leader in our zone right now that has some past experience in another leadership position. No pressure. Ha. It's pretty fun though and there hasn't been any major issues to deal with yet. Elder Stanley is still doing well. He's also a zone leader. He's pretty far away from me though so our chances of serving together are pretty much gone. Our chances of even serving near each other are pretty much gone. But we see each other at least once a month at our zone leader meeting.

 

Our investigators are doing well. Our girl with the baptismal date, Hyeimin, is doing really well. She's been keeping all of her reading assignments in the Book of Mormon so we just committed her to start from the beginning and read some everyday. She also came to church again yesterday, so she's still on track to be baptized on the 19th this month. We're pretty excited. We've gotten tons of calls from people who want to learn English. Mostly older ladies. Unfortunately pretty much all of them don't have any gospel interest, so it's not worth too much. We picked up two girls whose mom wanted them to learn English who had really good potential. We met them for the second time and had a really good lesson and gave them Book of Mormons and then we got a text from the mom telling us to not visit again. It was a pretty solid drop. So that was lame. We've been meeting with a less active kid recently and we gave him the For Strength of Youth pamphlet and had him choose one thing to discuss when we came back. He chose dating. Typical teenage boy. But it was pretty fun.

 

That's pretty much been our week. I've felt a little scatterbrained with the start of the transfer and taking over my area/zone, but it's been good. The days go by fast and the weeks go by faster. It's still stinking hot. But tonight we're sleeping over at our President's house and they said they have air conditioning there. Boo ya! We're super stoked about that. Well have a good week. We'll talk to you later.

 

Love, Elder Dorius