Monday, March 30, 2015

So Excited!!

March 29, 2015

Yeah, it was a really fun p day, I'm glad you enjoyed the pictures :) I can totally imagine Natilee laughing at that. I'm glad I made her day :)  There is actually a little Korean girl in this ward who reminds me of Natilee, it's pretty funny :)

Yeah, CJH kept the Book of Mormon, I think he is pretty interested in reading it too. It's too bad that he is busy with military service right now, he seems like a golden investigator.

Guess what?? Yesterday during church, LYH texted me and said that he is planning on getting baptized next Sunday!! I'm so excited, I didn't expect him to be baptized for quite a while, so it was really surprising. So next Sunday I will most likely go to TongYeong for the baptism, I can't wait!

I haven't had very many chances to go shopping, but I might today after lunch.

So this past week, we decided to make brownies for all of the members we visit. But when we went to the store, brownie mix was like five bucks for a little box of it. So instead, we used one of the cookie recipes that I brought with me. We didn't have like half the ingredients, so I had to improvise a lot. I feel like this could be some show on the Food Network, cooking in a foreign land with limited access to the correct ingredients. And the goal is to get the end result as close to the real thing as possible. We didn't have shortening, and only a little butter, so I had to fill in the rest with soybean oil. And the only sugar we had was brown sugar, and it was nothing like normal brown sugar. The texture was closer to white sugar. Anyway, they actually turned out pretty decent. My companion thinks they are delicious. They aren't as good as they are supposed to be, but not too bad :) It was a pretty fun adventure.

I got your package last week, that was super fast. Thank you so much! I really like the green tie, I even took a picture to show you :) The talks you sent are really good. And if I speak honestly, I felt really nerdy getting excited that you sent the Character of Christ talk. I got your letter last week too, so it was basically Christmas last week :)

I hope you have a wonderful week!

Love,

Elder Hines^^



Monday, March 23, 2015

P Day Fun

March 22, 2015

So there are four people in the Dogye area, and my companion is the only Korean, so we have three people to teach English class. So it works out fine. We split it into three classes, basic, intermediate, and advanced, and we each teach one of them. It's really fun, teaching English class is definitely one of my favorite parts of being a missionary.

I don't have a ton of time for email today, but I will tell you about one of the best experiences from this past week. We were doing an exchange with Elder Jackson, one of the zone leaders (do you remember him? I went on exchange with him in Tongyeong) and he just went with both my companion and me. So it was all three of us, and we went out to proselyte in the afternoon. It was raining really hard, so no one wanted to talk to us, and it was getting really discouraging. After a while, Elder Jackson turned to us and was like, "let's find a new investigator." So we said a prayer together, and then started again to try and find as many people as we could. We still weren't able to talk to very many people, and went for maybe an hour like that before something happened. We were walking, and a guy passed us, walking really fast. I was thinking, whatever, he is obviously super busy, but Elder Gim started jogging and came up behind him and asked him where he was going. Honestly, at that time I was thinking that Elder Gim was being super awkward and there was no way this guy was going to talk to us. If someone came up behind me and asked where I was going, I would be really weirded out. But this guy willingly accepted the Book of Mormon that was offered. Elder Gim asked him if there was a time we could meet later to talk about the book. He said that he is in the military right now, and today is his only break day for a while, but that we could meet in a couple hours. So we agreed to meet at a cafe a few hours later. When we met him, we talked a little bit, and taught the restoration. This guy was super interested, and was even taking notes of the things we were telling him, something I have never seen before from an investigator. He really liked everything we told him, it was amazing. But since he is in the military, he won't be able to meet with missionaries for the next year and a half. So we can only hope that missionaries are able to contact him when he gets back.

Anyway, other than that, not a lot else happened this week, but that experience was so amazing, it doesn't really matter :)

Oh yeah, today for p day, we went to Miryang, the other area in our district, and went on a hike, and after we finish emailing we are going to have a BBQ.  I'll send you some pictures of the hike :)

Love,

Elder Hines







Monday, March 16, 2015

Changwon

March 15, 2015

Dear Family,

Changwon is pretty awesome, it's a relatively new city, so the layout is nice and organized, which is really weird for Korean cities. It's also really well-kept compared to other Korean cities I've been in, so that is pretty nice too. Elder Gim was at the Provo MTC at the same time as me. He is from Seoul, but went to BYUI for a little while. He is 23, which isn't that weird since he's Korean. Korean missionaries are usually older since they have two years of mandatory military duty to do, and it's pretty common to do it before their missions. We probably speak about half Korean half English. He is pretty good at English, but not too comfortable speaking it. He's really funny, and he's a really good cook, so I scored there. He makes Korean food for us fairly often.

It was really weird having so many people at church. Sacrament attendance yesterday was 82. It was wonderful. We don't have any progressing investigators here, but we have some people with good potential. The members are really nice. Yesterday, by the end of church, we had like 4 or 5 meal appointments for this week. It's an interesting group of people though, there are a lot of youth, lots of really old people, some deaf people, a Japanese lady, and some people from the Philippines. So it's really diverse, especially as far as communication goes. They have someone doing sign language, and we have to take turns translating for the Filipino people since they don't speak Korean, which is really hard to do. I translated for someone in Priesthood meeting, and I think he might have just been more confused after the things I told him. This guy is super cool though. He was baptized in the Philippines when he was 14, but his mother died soon after, and since his dad is disabled, he had to provide for their family. So he went inactive, but later in his life, he realized how much peace and happiness the gospel brings, so he started coming back to church. Right now he is in Korea because there are more opportunities for work here. His wife and son live in the Philippines, and he only gets to visit them every year and a half. Sunday is his only free time that he has, and he rides a bike for 40 minutes to get to church so he doesn't have to pay for a bus. His love for his family and for the gospel is just so admirable. Before he was baptized, he was Catholic, but he never understood why they did any of the things they did when they went to church. He just did it because that's what everyone else did. He said one of the things he loves most about the gospel is how we are expected to know things for ourselves, and do things because we want to and because we know it's right, not because anyone else told us to. Anyway, he talked a lot, I think he gets really lonely living in a country where he doesn't speak the language at all, so it was good that I was able to talk to him.

English class here is really fun, we have a kids class in addition to our normal classes.  We taught the alphabet to these two little girls who were maybe 3 or 4.  It was super fun.

Our service project here is kind of weird. It's at this place where old people relax. It's just a bunch of electric massage beds and chairs for them to lay in, and all we have to do is push a button to turn it on for them. But it gives us lots of opportunities to talk to people, so it's not completely pointless.

Having four people in the same house is really fun. We do almost everything the same, the only difference is we pray all together before bed instead of companionship prayer. Did I tell you that Elder Quiroz is in my house? He was in my district in Tongyeong. So it's really fun since we already knew each other.

I'll try and send some more pictures, but I kind of forgot which ones I have already sent, so if you get some repeats, that's why.

Love you!

Elder Hines

Elders Gim & Hines
Changwon


Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Transferred!

March 9, 2015

Dear Family,

I got transferred.  Right now I'm in Dogye ward, which is in Changwon city.  It's really close to Tongyeong actually, so that's pretty cool.  My new companion is a Korean, Gim HyeonMo.  He is actually in the same group as me coming from the MTC to Busan, so both of us are only in our 5th transfer.  Our district is a bunch of super young missionaries.  My companion is the district leader, and we have two more missionaries living in the same house as us, Elder Quiroz (4th transfer) and Elder Powell (6th transfer).  Also in our district are the Mirang elders, Elder Porcaro (5th transfer), Elder Hoyne (6th transfer), and the sisters are Sister Kim GyuRi who is training, and her companion who is in her second transfer. 

You already got my letter?  That was really fast.  Yeah, I'm not learning very much Chinese, all I have actually memorized are the days of the week and a few others.  It's pretty cool though, huh?

We didn't answer the phone when that guy called, we can't use the phone after 10:20.  So that's part of the reason why it was so annoying, we just had to silence it and hope he didn't call again.  My "super cool alarm clock" has really annoying ring tones, and the phone is a lot easier anyway, so we just use that.

I got to do a musical number on Sunday.  I did A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief on the violin, and the lady on the front row in the white jacket accompanied me on piano.  She happened to have a violin at her house that she let me use.  It was pretty bad condition, but it worked.  We only had about an hour the previous day to prepare it. So considering the circumstances, it went really well.

My last week in Gimcheon was super amazing.  We had so many lessons.  For some reason people just kept calling us about meeting, which never happens.  I don't really have a lot of time to email today, so I can't go into too much detail about it.  On Sunday, since it was my last day in Gimcheon, the BP invited us over for dinner, and LH as well.  After dinner, the BP asked me to bear my testimony for everyone since it was the last time I would be there.  When I finished, LH motioned in a circle around the table, going toward him first, and promptly started bearing his testimony.  He is so amazing.  So because of that, we had a testimony meeting right there, and everyone took a turn.  The spirit was so strong, it was probably one of the best experiences I've had on my mission so far.  I miss Gimcheon so much right now.  But I've heard a lot of good things about Dogye so far.  There are apparently 70-90 members who come each week.  I'm sure that seems small to you, but that is huge to me, I'm interested to see what it's like this Sunday.

Sorry, this computer is weird so it's really hard to send pictures.  I'll try and send more later.

I love you!

Elder Hines


Gimcheon Branch
Gimcheon District

Jikjisa