Chuseok

September 28, 2015

When I first got here, everyone was hard for me to understand, and with old people I couldn't understand anything. But now I can understand most of what younger people say (depending on the topic, of course) and a decent amount of what older people say.  I can understand a lot of what Daeshin Grandma says, but there are still some older people who I can barely understand at all. A lot of it has to do with how Korean is a language that changes really quickly, and so because of that, the older someone is, the harder it is to understand them because they use older-style Korean. It's really interesting, Korean changes way faster than English. Most Koreans can't understand books written in Korean only 100 to 200 years ago.

So we met with that guy at his church, but we weren't able to show him the Restoration video. At his church they have a room with a big TV in it that they use for proselyting, and we were going to use that to show him the video.  But he ended up showing his proselyting video to us first, and it was like two hours long, so we weren't able to even finish that. It was just a guy giving a talk about what was basically the plan of salvation, but missing a lot of stuff, and a couple things were different that is expected in other Christian religions, like the nature of God. So I guess he is trying to convert us, so we'll see how it goes. There weren't really any arguments, we've been trying to avoid that :)  He just kept asking us throughout the video if there was anything we were uncomfortable with. Not quite sure how to answer that, because you can tell that he just wants to argue. We're definitely going to try and keep meeting him though, because each time we met him he has brought someone else with him to help, this time it was another member of his church, a man maybe mid-20s. So this is turning out to be a really good opportunity to introduce the gospel to lots of people, just indirectly.

We didn't do much for Chuseok, but today the branch president's daughter is taking us to a buffet for lunch, and she said it is for Chuseok. She is a super nice lady, like 29 I think, she served a mission in Daejeon, and then moved to the US after that. But she felt like she needed to come back for some reason, so she did, and now she is a huge help to this branch.

For fitness day we could either run a 5K or 10K, and so I did the 5K since I'm a missionary and really out of shape. It almost killed me too, I'm pretty sore today. So in one of the areas in my district there is Lord of the Rings Risk at the church, so we went and played that with the Yeongdo elders, which was probably the highlight of my mission. It was probably the biggest adrenaline rush I've had in over a year. I guess that's what happens when you're deprived of entertainment for so long. I'll mostly like come home and laugh at things like Leave it to Beaver. That'll be embarrassing...

I'm sure other things happened this week, but I can't really remember, and I'm running out of email time. I hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines

Mission Fitness Day

Spam gift packs for Chuseok

Cool Korean spider

Exchange with Elder Hofheins

Typhoon Exchange

September 20, 2015

I'm glad you enjoyed the story, because I enjoyed it too :)  I haven't heard anything back from the lady yet, but the other guy just called us a couple days ago to ask if we can come back to his church sometime. We will probably visit him this week, and we're planning on showing the Restoration video, since you can't really argue with a video :)

We got to go on exchange with the zone leaders last week, and that was pretty fun. Except I'm pretty sure a typhoon was coming in or something, because it was really windy and rainy all day. I was in Haeundae with Elder Jacobson for the day. You can probably find Haeundae on the internet, it's a pretty famous area, and it's like the richest area of Busan. Anyway, we walked around to a couple different appointments, and our umbrellas were completely destroyed from the wind. Eventually we just gave up and stopped using the umbrellas once the fabric part was mostly broken off. And the metal rod that connects the handle to the top on Elder Jacobson's umbrella bent in half. Maybe that gives you an idea of how strong this storm was. And the best part was that none of the appointments worked out, so we just walked around in that for nothing. 

Next week is Chuseok, which is the Korean version of Thanksgiving, and we are having a "Mission Fitness Day" where we will do a 5k or 10k and play sports. So I probably will email a day later. Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines

God is Our Loving Heavenly Father

September 13, 2015

Okay, I have a pretty good story for you this week. So my first day in this area three weeks ago, we met this 24 year old guy who seemed really interested in us. We talked to him for a little bit, exchanged phone numbers, and he said he really wants to meet with us again. We didn't hear too much from him again until last week, when he called and said he really wants to meet us, so we set up an appointment for last Friday night. For some reason he wanted us to come to his church to meet him, so we were kind of wary about that, but we decided to go at least once to see what it is like. We got there, and he took us in this little room, and brought in this lady for a translator. When the lady found out that I can speak Korean and my companion can speak English, she left, but came back in a couple minutes later saying that she just wanted to listen. So the guy started off talking about his church and stuff, and then asked us to give him an introduction to our church. We started teaching the Restoration, but couldn't get past the first principle, "God is our loving Heavenly Father," without him trying to argue with us about it. The point he was trying to make is based on a scripture at the end of Revelation that says that if anyone adds to this book they will be cursed, and since we have more than just the Bible, we can't be the true church. He even went so far as to say that we don't believe in the true God, somehow we believe in a different god than he does. I still don't understand that part. Anyway, at the beginning of the conversation/argument, the lady asked to look at some of the materials that we brought, which were a Restoration pamphlet and a pamphlet with Joseph Smith's testimony. While we were talking to the guy, she wasn't really paying attention and was just reading the pamphlets. A couple times she interrupted and asked us questions in English, which was nice because the guy doesn't speak English at all, so there wasn't much he could do. She saw Elder Seo's Book of Mormon, and asked if there was a book store she could buy one at. We just gave her a copy that we had with us, and she seemed really excited about it. She said she has heard about it, but never actually seen one in real life. We went back to talking with the guy, and the rest of the time she was reading the introduction, testimonies, and the beginning of 1 Nephi. She told us that it is really weird that we would show up, because just a couple days ago she was wondering about our religion, and was searching about it on the internet, but couldn't find very much about it. She had so much interest, and she seems like she is really prepared. It's funny because every time the guy talked, the Spirit immediately left the room, and every time the lady interrupted and asked us a question, the Spirit came back immediately. We weren't able to get her phone number or anything because of the situation with the other guy, but she has enough information now that if she wants to she can contact missionaries. It was an amazing experience. At the beginning, we thought we were wasting our time because that guy's only interest was in arguing with us, but by the end, we realized that we were led to this woman through him.

We had mission tour this week, which is just an all-day meeting at the mission home where a seventy came and spoke to us. It was Elder Yamashita and his wife. If you didn't guess, they're Japanese. They don't know any Korean, but were decent at English. It was really good, we talked a lot about applying principles taught by Book of Mormon missionaries like Ammon, Alma, Aaron, and Abish. I would tell you specifics, but that takes too long and I don't have my notes either :)

We also had stake conference this weekend. It was funny because President Barrow, Sister Barrow, and the Stake President were the last three speakers for both the Saturday evening session and the Sunday Morning session. I guess they couldn't find anyone else willing to speak.

That's about it for the week, not much else happened. I love you!

Elder Hines