July 19, 2013

July 19, 2013

Anyoung haseyo,

I got the Bank thing notarized already.  I just walked into the Travel Center and my good friends there took care of it for me.  They still know me by name.  

I got the skeeter defeater already.  It should be perfect.  I guess you usually have to keep a fan on your face so you don't hear the mosquitoes buzzing in your ear.  Ha, not me.  Chris rocks.  

I was actually hosting the new missionaries this Wednesday when the Skabelunds pulled up in my area.  We'll have to get pictures before I leave.  Elder Suerresig left before we could get together for a picture.  Too bad.

I'm getting really excited for Korea.  We got our travel plans this morning.  We will leave on the 29th.  We will be flying to San Francisco, to Tokyo and then to Busan.  I'm a little disappointed that we're going to the Busan airport.  We thought we'd go to Seoul and take a train down.  We should get to use the train for twice a year temple trips though.  We'll have a 2 hour layover in the Narita airport just in time for dinner.  My comp has promised us some really nice Japanese food from the food courts there.  I guess they're really good.  I feel bad for the Seoul people.  They fly down to Texas and then fly straight to Seoul.  There are going to be enough people leaving that day that we might actually get to sleep that night.  Generally departing missionaries leave for the airport at 2 in the morning.  We should get to leave at 7 though.  We got a letter from our mission president.  It said that they would be there to pick us up from the airport and we'll have a 2 day orientation before being sent out. 

We have been having problems with one of our investigators.  He isn't keeping commitments and doesn't seem to be feeling the Spirit.  When we ask him he says that this is a "chohun gyo-hwea", a good church, but doesn't think there is anything special about us.  We decided we were going to prepare a lesson to make sure he understood how all the doctrines we had taught him fit together.  We planned to bear testimony and make it the most spiritual lesson ever.  We worked really hard on it and felt sure it would work.  When we got in to teach him it was probably the best lesson we had ever done.  But he just sat there.  We learned a lot about what he understood from the questions we asked him but his responses were still the same.  Good church, good people, interesting doctrine but just another church.  It was so disappointing.  Especially after hearing from the Sisters that they had had an amazing lesson in which he cried and got committed to baptism.  My companion cried but our investigator's eyes were completely dry.  We have one more lesson with him to try to get him to feel the Spirit.  The Sisters read the Book of Mormon with him so I think that's probably what we'll be doing.  It was something we had been planning anyway.  He's read a few verses of 3 Nephi 11 so we'll go over it with him.

Pictures.  I have one of a few Elders practicing the kimchee squat.  The Koreans supposedly wait for the bus like this and find it perfectly comfortable.  My legs start burning after a minute.  I also took a picture of our travel plan.  The times shown are local.

Love you, 

Stapley chang-no