Monday, November 2, 2015

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


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