First Miracle

November 22, 2015

Dear Family,

Things are going really well, my companion and area are super awesome. I'll try to send you a picture of my companion, his name is Yoon Su-yeol, and he's from Seoul. He's amazing, I'm pretty sure I got the best deal on the trainee :) I've never seen someone so happy as he is, he's just always smiling and always has a good attitude about everything. He is a year younger than me, so he just graduated last year, and then he studied English in Provo for the past 9 months, so he's really good at English. You'll get to meet him in about a month or so :)

I don't remember what I told you last week about the area, but I'm in a city right outside of Busan called Gimhae. It's a lot less people than Busan has, so that is really nice. But there are about 100 members who come every week, which is kind of a shock, I'm not used to that. It's so weird to be in a fully functioning ward that doesn't depend on the missionaries to run. The members are super awesome, too. They're really friendly, and really eager to help with missionary work. 

We had a ward party on Saturday, for which we had a bunch of 5-minute plays we made that are based on Book of Mormon stories (Ammon defending the King's sheep, the last Jaredite battle, Nephi building the ship, etc), and divided up the members into teams, gave them 30 minutes to prepare, and then each team performed a different skit. It was right after English class, so we were able to bring a few of the students, and the members didn't even have to be asked to sit with the non-members and be friends with them. It was amazing, I'm still in awe of it. Then what we did was get a bunch of copies of the Book of Mormon, marked the stories in it that we acted out, and gave a copy to each non-member who came. So it was a really good method to introduce the Book of Mormon and do member missionary work in an indirect, non-offensive way. Whoever came up with the idea was a genius.  

It's supposed to get down to 16? That sounds terrible, over here it's been like 50s or during the day, and not too much colder at night. You should move south. Actually I think I'm getting wimpier when it comes to the cold. Being in Busan where it doesn't get very cold is making me more intolerant to the cold.

There are a ton of homeless people in Korea, I'm not sure if it's more than the US, but it's more obvious than they are homeless here. In the US, even homeless people have decent clothing, but here they literally wear rags, it's like what you would see in a movie or something. It's really sad, but there's nothing we as missionaries can do about it. I've tried a couple times to share a pamphlet or BOM with them, but they're never interested if there's not money or food involved.

The only advice I have for your class is to do (or keep doing) the basic, fundamental principles of the gospel, like praying, reading the scriptures, paying tithing, going to church, etc. As far as preparing for a mission, I think that doing those things consistently and developing a habit of it is the best/most effective way to prepare. Church teachers and leaders don't repeat it all the time for no reason (yeah, I finally figured that one out). As a missionary, the most important thing is your testimony, and there is no better way to build your testimony than by living the gospel and doing those small and seemingly insignificant things. It's just like what Jesus taught, if we want to know if His gospel is true, we have to live it.

As a trainer, I have to teach my companion everything about how missionary work goes, which includes doing the "First 12 Weeks" program each day. And I basically have to lead everything that we do since he doesn't know, but Elder Yoon is actually doing really well and picks up on things super fast. Other than that, there's not too much, other than just trying really hard to be a good example, since he's always looking to me. As far as district leader, it's super weird being the only one and not having my companion to help me. And my work load doubled because of that too, but it hasn't been too bad so far.  Last district meeting went really well, fortunately :)

This past week, the hand of the Lord has been everywhere in everything I do, but I can think of two specific things I'll share with you. First of all, He has helped me tremendously to make up for my inadequacies as a DL, trainer, and white-washing.  There's no way I could do all of that myself without dying from stress. And the other one had to do with the ward party. There were these two college students who came to English class, and we invited them to the activity. They originally said yes, but then for some reason decided that it was going to take too much time and just left.  But then 5 minutes before the activity started, they came back and said that they had changed their minds and wanted to come to it. It probably doesn't seem like anything huge, but it's those small things that prepare people to receive the gospel.  If they hadn't come, they wouldn't have been exposed to the Book of Mormon and received a copy like that, and they also wouldn't have been able to establish relationships with the members.  I'll be honest, I didn't really think anything of it, but after they came it, Elder Yoon whispered to me that he just saw his first miracle on his mission.  Elder Yoon is so awesome :)

Have a fun Thanksgiving, I love you so much!

Elder Hines

PS Here's a picture of me and Elder Yoon when we first became companions.  He said that his mom and grandma were both baptized by Elder Ringwood of the Seventy when he was here on his mission.  Pretty cool, isn't it?

Elders Hines & Payne . . . together again.

New Assignment

November 16, 2015

Dear Family,

Yes, transfers were today, and I am transferring to a place called Gimhae. It's just right outside the city of Busan, but it's so close that it's in the same zone as the rest of Busan. I got the call to train a new missionary there, as well as being district leader there on top of that. So that will be really fun, I'm super excited for it! The new missionaries don't come until tomorrow night, but it won't be until Thursday that we get assigned to our new companions. During the time between transfers and Thursday, by temporary companion is Elder Porcaro. In Gimhae it's a four man house, and Elder Aurich from my last district got transferred to the same house as me, so that will be really fun as well.

The weather in Busan has been super nice lately. It's raining right now, but last week it was maybe 50-60 degrees, and this week is supposed to be in the 60s. Enjoy the snow! :)

Not too much is going on here though, just getting things ready for the new trainees in mine and Elder Porcaro's areas. Today I'm in his area and tomorrow we'll go to Gimhae.

I hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines

PS I have pictures, but I don't have my camera with me, so I'll send them next week :)

60 Years in Korea

November 8, 2015

Dear Family,

 

We finally performed that choir piece we've been working on. This last Saturday there was a commemoration for the 60th anniversary of the church in Korea, and they had some speakers and a bunch of musical numbers. It was really weird because it was in a church chapel, but everyone still applauded after the speakers and the musical numbers. I don't understand why they thought it was any different from any other church meeting and it's okay to do that in the chapel. It almost feels like because Koreans are kind of isolated from the main population of members on the other side of the world, it's like they're developing differently or something. They have weird ideas about things in the church, and are really casual about things sometimes.

So yesterday we had some Americans come to our sacrament meeting, it was really surprising at first. But it turns out that it was someone who just finished his mission in Seoul a couple weeks ago, and his parents came to pick him up, and so now they are just sightseeing around Korea before they go home. His dad served in the Busan mission 30 years ago, so he wanted to visit some of the areas he was in. He actually didn't serve in Daeshin, so I'm not sure why they came, but it was still nice to have them. Daeshin Grandma loved the visitors, she had a huge smile on her face the whole time, and kept telling me how exciting it was. And before they left she told them to come to her house and she would feed them. It was adorable.

Well that's about it for now, I hope you have a good week!

Love,

Elder Hines

Indicators of Success

November 1, 2015

Dear Family,

Yes, we were pretty busy again this week. Most of our free time was spent preparing those two ward activities that I told you about. The one in Sujeong went really well, considering that the missionaries did basically everything. And from what I heard, the one in Goejeong also went well. Goejeong is about a 20 minute bus ride from Daeshin, and to get to Sujeong it takes about 15 or 20 minutes, bus or subway. I guess to Goejeong you can also take a subway, but we usually ride the bus. I don't know if you've looked at it on a map or anything, but basically each of the areas are just separate valleys that are all connected to each other, and they're all pretty close together.

I wasn't able to meet with the lady from the Bible-basher's church last week, but we took a Joseph Smith pamphlet to her husband's shop, and I also called her and invited her to English class, since she wants to keep practicing English. Hopefully everything works out well. My companion is just a little hesitant about meeting with her since she might turn out like her friend and just want to convert us and not have any real interest.

That song sounds really cool, the arrangement of the two hymns that you are doing. I'll take your word for it :) I think I've come to appreciate a wider variety of hymns on my mission, especially Sacrament hymns. I'm not sure why, but before my mission I thought they were pretty boring, but now I like them a lot. Maybe it has to do with the deprivation of entertainment that causes me to be entertained easily.

That was your last MC marching band season? Does that mean next fall Colton will start going to the new school? So will he not have marching band practice next summer since they don't have a band organized yet, or how does that work?

One last thing, we had interviews with President Barrow last week, and he told me something that was really cool. I told him about how it's kind of frustrating serving in Daeshin, since we have to spend so much time running the branch and managing the building, and we don't have a lot of time to do actual missionary work. He told me that I shouldn't worry about stats/key indicators. They are important, but they themselves aren't success. They are only an indicator of success. He said it is just like in real life--temple marriage, children being active in the church/serving missions, etc--those things are just indicators of success, but in and of themselves are not success. Knowing that you are successful isn't something that you can see visibly or something that is marked by a big event like a baptism. In other words, even though in Daeshin we don't have much of a chance to find and teach investigators, we can still be successful missionaries because of the things we do to help the members that otherwise wouldn't happen if we weren't here. It was really helpful to hear that from President, and I thought it was really cool so I wanted to share it with you :)

I hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines