Monday, May 25, 2015

Harry Potter Ward Party

May 24, 2015

Dear Family,
My birthday was pretty good, I got to play baseball a little bit with the bishop (he really likes baseball), and the ward bought me chicken and pizza. Just kidding, it was just the same day as the Harry Potter party, and that is what they bought for after the party. But still, it was pretty nice :) I haven't gotten your card yet, maybe next week at transfer meeting.

The Harry Potter party was really fun for the most part.​ To start, we had the Sorting Hat sort the people into teams, Elder Koo put the hat on their heads, and I was behind the curtains with a microphone. Then we played "quidditch" with plastic bottles instead of brooms, and make two goals per team with a hoop made from styrofoam. And then we played basically modified handball. It probably sounds lame, but the members seemed to like it a lot. Next we played a game where we had a projector showing a picture of our district all doing a different pose, and a team got to see the picture for a few seconds, and then had to match it as best they could. After that, we did a potion game. We had 9 different types of juice, and each team had to make a "potion" with five of those, give it a name and an effect, and then the other teams had to taste it and guess which five kinds of juice they used. And then the last game was supposed to be a spell game, we had each person tie a balloon to their ankle, and inside the balloon was a piece of a quote. Then, each team sent one person at a time to the middle of the room, and they had to try to pop each other’s balloons. If they popped a balloon, they got to keep the contents, and the first team to make a full "spell" won. That game didn't turn out too well, since the balloons were harder to pop than we expected. Anyway, that was the party. We spent so much time planning and preparing for it, it's ridiculous. And no one besides the missionaries has any idea how much work went into it. Most people just came and went without really a second thought, but I guess that's just how these kinds of things work. Kinda frustrating.

If I remember, I'll expound about Zone conference in my next letter, I don't have my notes with me right now.

We met with T yesterday, and he said that the more he reads the Book of Mormon, the more interested he is getting. But then he said that if we were to meet 20 hours a week, it would take him at least 3 more months before he felt ready to come to Sacrament Meeting. So to put it simply, progress is really slow. The way he described how he understands the Book of Mormon is like an electromagnet with a bunch of metal shavings on it. The metal shavings are doctrines from the Bible, and in the Bible, it's like the electromagnet is turned on, and the shavings are all lined up nicely. But with the B of M, he said it feels like the magnet is off, and so all the shavings are there, but they're scattered all over the place. I'm really at a loss as to what to tell him, especially because the Bible is way harder to understand than the Book of Mormon, so it would make more sense for the Bible to be the one that isn't organized. And he's under the impression that Mormons barely read the Bible at all, and every week when Elder Koo and I tell him that we study the Bible pretty frequently, he gets super surprised and says that he is really impressed. But this happens every week, and he never seems to remember last week. I think he drinks too much. Pretty 어이없다. (I'm not sure what the translation for that is in English, sorry.)

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines


PS I just remembered that I got the opportunity to play the violin in Sacrament meeting again yesterday. The bishop's daughter plays violin, so he let me borrow her violin. I played For the Beauty of the Earth, and our "pre-missionary" accompanied me. It was super fun, I'm so glad that I get chances to play music still, because I'm starting to crave it. I want to play trumpet super badly :)

Zone conference hike (Busan in the background)

Jungni church building

Tacos!

Missionary kitchen

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Zone Conference

May 17, 2015

We had Zone Conference this week, and we went to Busan this time because President Barrow wanted to do a hike with everyone. The theme of the conference was the Sacrament, and as we hiked up the "mountain" behind the mission home, we stopped every so often and had pre-assigned people talk about the sacrament. After the hike, we came back inside, listened to some more talks, and then President Barrow took us up to his office and showed us on the white board there where he had written out the sacrament prayers, and then analyzed them. It was really interesting to take a closer look at what they are saying, and to really ponder the meaning of them. I have come to realize how the Sacrament is just as important of an ordinance as any other, and if you have the right mindset, it can be just as powerful and spiritual as any temple ordinance.

Yesterday we met with T again, but this time we asked Elder Kelly to come with. Elder Kelly is a senior missionary serving in Suseong (other side of Daegu) as military relations. It was really helpful, because T has so many questions, and I'm not sure how to answer a lot of them. But Elder Kelly is a fountain of knowledge about the gospel, and cleared up a lot of confusion that T has. I think it had a big impact on T, because his demeanor changed about half way through. Instead of asking questions to try and contradict, his seemed to be asking more for understanding. And at the end, completely of his own free will, he told us that he thinks he should read the Book of Mormon more, and promised that whenever he reads the Bible, he will read the Book of Mormon for the same amount of time. Elder Kelly was such a big help, having him serving so close is such a blessing.

Basically all of our free time is spent preparing for the Harry Potter party this Saturday, so we haven't really done a lot of other stuff. As far as eating, I can't remember if I told you this already, but I made tacos, and my companion didn't want to help pay for the ingredients, so it's all to myself. So I made a bunch, and for meals I just pull it out of the fridge and make a taco real quick, it's so nice. There aren't a lot of Korean foods that make good leftovers, so it's nice to have leftovers again.

Why were you reading the white bible? Just for fun? You sound like a missionary, that's what we do for fun. And yes, that actually is mildly entertaining to me, believe it or not. Just because there's nothing else for entertainment that is actually fun. I think when I go home and play video games or other things like that, I might die from my heart rate getting too high.

Anyway, during language study, my companion just studies English. If you look in PMG, you are supposed to learn English in addition to the mission language.

The member going to Washington on his mission wants to eat chicken with me on my birthday. I think it took me maybe 0.07 seconds to agree...I timed it.

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines

Monday, May 4, 2015

Testifying is Powerful

May 3, 2015

Dear Family,

I really like reading the New Testament, too. This upcoming Zone Conference in a couple weeks is actually going to be focused on the Sacrament, so that is a cool coincidence.

So there are two foreign investigators that we are teaching, I think I mentioned them last week, but we got to finally meet both of them yesterday. The first one is from Pakistan, and he mostly just wants to learn English, so we teach him English and then gospel. He has really strong faith in the Islamic religion, and I don't think he really takes to heart what we teach him. Which I can understand, if someone was teaching me about Islam, I would just take it more as something education, not really spiritual. He is really nice, but has a hard time understanding a lot of what we teach. I really wish that I knew more about what Muslims believe, I think it would be really helpful. If you know anything, I would appreciate it a lot :)

The other foreigner is from Canada, and he is Calvinist or something like that. He has really strong faith in Jesus Christ, stronger than a lot of members of our church actually. It's really impressive. He is really into theology, and seems pretty open to new ideas as well. He said that his parents were actually first generation pioneers of his religion to come from the Netherlands and start a community in Canada. Anyway, he is pretty fun to talk to, he really likes discussing religion. We normally give him something from the Book of Mormon to read, and he gives us something from the Bible to read, and then we teach each other about it. He had really good insights, yesterday he shared Mark 5 about the man who was possessed by a bunch of devils. We shared 2 Nephi 31, and talked about baptism. After he read the chapter, he said that he liked how it was packed full of doctrine, but he didn't think that it was very organized. He said that the writer doesn't seem to know what he's saying, since there isn't a clear direction, or something like that. And then he said that it isn't very consistent with the teachings of the Bible. Let me tell you, it was super hard not to argue. . .  Anyway, after he said that, I realized that all I could really do was testify, so I did, and the result was amazing. He totally backed off, and actually seemed like he started to agree with me. It's kind of hard to describe what happened, but I definitely learned how powerful bearing testimony can be.

I don't really know how much Koreans like Harry Potter. The theme was decided before I got here. My companion said that only the younger generation knows anything about it, and that it was popular maybe 5 years ago or so, but not too much anymore.

I hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines