Christmas Day

December 27, 2015

​Dear Family,

Besides Christmas, not a lot happened last week. A member invited us over to his house for dinner on Christmas, and he also invited a non-member friend, so that was pretty cool.  I didn't know that happened in real life, I had only heard stories.  He wants to learn English from us, but also seems to have gospel interest.  We shared a message about Christmas, and when we asked him if he knew why Christ came to Earth, he gave a pretty det​ailed explanation of the Atonement.  That probably doesn't sound impressive to you, but in Korea, it's pretty rare to find someone who even knows what the Atonement is.  This guy is doing his military service right now so doesn't have a lot of time, but he wants to meet us when he can.

On Christmas Day, we did a pretty fun activity with all the district members.  We got together and had most of the people sing Christmas carols while one or two teams handed out Books of Mormon to people passing by as gifts.  It worked pretty well, we were able to give out maybe 40 or 50 copies of the Book of Mormon in only an hour.  Christmas is wonderful for missionaries, it gives us a reason to try to give people stuff :) Any other time of the year they think we're trying to sell them something.

I hope you had a good Christmas! And have a fun New Year's!!

Love,

Elder Hines

Christmas Parties

December 20, 2015

Dear Family,

About those two investigators . . . let's just say it didn't go exactly as planned.  We met with HJ and taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and it went really well.  We had planned on inviting him to be baptized next month, and it felt right that we should invite him after we finished the lesson. I even felt clearly impressed to say certain things to him about the gospel and baptism, but I guess he wasn't thinking along the same lines as we were. He says his parents wouldn't support him. So not sure what to do there, especially because he's been avoiding us since then, I think he feels bad that he doesn't want to do what we asked him to do or something. 

That same day that we invited him to be baptized, we had the baptismal interview for JH. Before the zone leaders got there, we went through the questions with him, and he was good with everything and really wanted to be baptized. But then he did the interview, and for some reason he decided that he isn't ready to commit to paying tithing and coming to church every week. It was really disappointing, but at least he's honest about it, right? So we'll try to work with him to prepare him to do that, but I don't see him getting baptized any time soon. So honestly, this week was kind of depressing because of those two experiences.

We had the mission party last week, and it was really fun. We listened to talks from the mission presidency, had a bunch of musical numbers, ate lunch, sang Christmas hymns, and then watched 17 Miracles. And yes, I got the second package, but I haven't opened it yet :)

The ward party was also really good. It was just kind of like a talent show, some people did musical numbers or dances, the missionaries did a skit acting out that Mormon Message about the meaning of Christmas (it's the one with the kids doing a play, have you seen that?). Our ward mission leader asked JH to dress up as Santa Claus and give presents to all the kids, and I think he enjoyed that a lot :) Only a few of the members ended up inviting friends, but it was still a really good opportunity for the few who came.

Well that's about it for the week, see you in a few days!! :)

Love,

Elder Hines

Increasing Expectations

December 13, 2015

Dear Family,​

Not to be boring, but we weren't able to meet HJ last week, so I don't have any news for you on that one...but this upcoming Sunday we have a baptism scheduled, did I already tell you about him?  His name is JH, he's like in his 60s, and he's been meeting with the missionaries for a long time, maybe up to 5 years.  He likes the church a lot, just has a few concerns. . .  Anyway, his baptismal date is December 20, and so hopefully it works out.  We called him the other night to ask him about doing the baptismal interview sometime this week, and he told us that he wants to push off the baptism until the spring since it's too cold outside right now.  Obviously it doesn't matter what the weather is like since we have a baptismal font in the church, so maybe there is something else going on that he won't tell us.  We'll meet him this week, maybe tomorrow, and see what's going on.  In the meantime, please pray for him :)

I would agree, President Barrow definitely receives a lot of inspiration for this mission.  Especially all the things I've heard from leadership meetings and from the zone leaders and APs, President Barrow has a really high vision for what this mission can accomplish.  The weekly baptism goal isn't the start of it though, I think President has had this vision for a long time, and is unfolding it bit by bit, as we're ready for it.  For example, last spring he set as the mission standard 13 total lessons per week per team, but at that time, that was a really lofty goal, and most people didn't think it was very realistic.  But I was talking to the zone leaders the other day, and apparently the mission average for lessons taught is sitting right at about 13 per week, and so President is planning on upping it to 20 in the near future.  So just things like that, he's been slowly trying to raise the expectations for the missionaries here, and it is working! :)

I can't think of anything significant that happened last week.  A member took us out to eat  Shabu Shabu, have you ever heard of that?  I think it might be Vietnamese or something, it's really good.  It was only the second time I've had it since it's kind of expensive.

This Saturday we have a ward Christmas party, and whenever we have ward activities like this, the ward mission leader has the missionaries do a ton of stuff, so we've been really busy.  We have all of the members split up between the three teams, and we have to call each person we are assigned to and ask if they have anyone they can invite to the activity.  If they don't (which is 99% of the time) we have to tell them that we will call them back in a few days, ask them to pray to find someone they can invite, and then we have to follow up with this until they find someone or the activity happens, whichever is first. Elder Yoon and I only have 30ish people, but we have to do that whole process with each of them periodically.  I think it's a really good idea though, it helps the members to be more involved in missionary work, just a ridiculous amount of work for the missionaries.

I can't really think of anything else that happened, hopefully that entertains you until next week :)

Love,

Elder Hines

Faith Project

December 7, 2015

Dear Family,

We met with HJ last week, and were able to teach him the gospel. It was actually a kind of unexpected lesson, so we weren't able to plan very well, but we ended up talking about faith and read Alma 32 together. He said that since he has been meeting with us, he's already felt like his faith has grown, and he really likes the things we teach him. The ward played soccer on Saturday with the neighboring branch, and he came with us to play, so that was really good, the members love him. We extended a baptismal invitation last time we met him, and he agreed to be baptized if he comes to know that the church is true. Please pray for him to have that spiritual confirmation!!! :)

We have 10 missionaries in our district: two elder teams and one sister team in Gimhae, and one sister team and the zone leaders in Gupo, the neighboring area that we played soccer with. Today for P day we went to a Buddhist temple in Haeundae called "Yong-gung-sa." Most of the missionaries who are in Busan city right now went, so it was really fun, I'll send you some pictures :)

This past week we had zone conference, and President Barrow told us of a vision he has for this mission, which is each team in the mission baptizing one person every week. He said it's completely possible, when he served his mission, he was in an area where there were over 50 baptisms in just a few months. He talked about how when he was talking with the APs and zone leaders about how we could accomplish it, the thing that they came up with was that we need to increase our faith, so that is the focus for this transfer. We are doing something called the "Faith Project," where they handed out a card to each person that has a mustard seed on it, along with a list of scriptures about faith. We're supposed to carry it with us and look at it every once in a while. So that's what we're doing this transfer, it been really good so far!

Elder Yoon is super awesome, he's really funny, and a really hard worker. For food, we just kind of switch off who makes the food and who does dishes, at least on the days that we eat together. Sometimes because our schedules are different we just eat separately. It's maybe half together half separate.

We got a call last week from missionaries in a different area, asking us to contact a person who lives in our area.  They didn't even know if he was a member or investigator or what, they just had a phone number for him, and knew he was deaf, but besides that, they didn't know anything about him. So we texted him, he gave us his address, and invited us over. On Saturday we went out to find his house to visit him, but the address he gave us wasn't specific enough. We texted him again asking for a more specific location, but he never replied. While we were sitting there in the middle of town in a state of confusion and slight irritation waiting for him to text us back, an old lady with a walker came by and asked us to call her house for her since she was lost and couldn't find it. I think she had Alzheimer's or something, but we were able to help her get back. The guy never responded, so we just went home, but we must have been led out there to be in the right place at the right time to help her.

Have a wonderful week!

Love,

Elder Hines

P Day visit to Buddist Temple - Yong-gung-sa

Christians Give More Snacks

November 29, 2015

Dear Family,

Four inches of snow? That's crazy, I think I've forgotten what snow looks like. Even last winter, even though I was in Daegu, it didn't really snow much, and when it did it just got blown away. I highly doubt it will snow here in Gimhae, being so close to the ocean and so far south.

There's not too much that the missionaries have to do in this ward, besides normal missionary work. It's a fully functioning ward, weird, huh? I spoke in Sacrament on the first week, but that's just something you always do when you transfer to a new area.

Not too much happened this week. We started teaching a new investigator, a college student who comes to English class. We started teaching him English one on one, and teaching about the gospel as well. He is super cool, his parents are Buddhist, but he said he is really interested in learning about other religions. He said when he was in the military, he went to the Christian worship service instead of the Buddhist because they gave more snacks. And then he said that because his family name is "Ha" he has been curious about God since he was young (God in Korean is "Ha-na-nim"). So he has been completely open to what we've been teaching, and he seems to like it a lot. We taught him the Restoration last week, and he really liked it. It's so cool to have an investigator who is actually interested in what we're saying, it doesn't happen too often :)

As far as what we talk about in district meeting, it's always different. The topic and assignments are up to the DL's discretion, but normally we have someone teach a Korean lesson, give a talk, and then give some kind of training, and at the end we have a short testimony meeting. This last meeting, the topic was using time effectively, focusing on planning and setting goals. My responsibility is just planning the meeting, giving assignments, and then conducting the meeting.

For p day in Gimhae, there's not a ton of things we can do. We only have one computer, and six people need to email on it, each for an hour and a half. So that's basically all of p day. Today it's just all six of us hanging out at the church taking turns emailing while everyone else is playing board games and stuff.

That's about it for the week, as far as I can think of. Have a good day and week!

Love,

Elder Hines