New Year in Korea

January 3, 2016

Dear Family,

That guy that the member invited is doing his military service at a local air force base right now, so he doesn't have very much time. So no, we haven't been able to meet him yet, but hopefully something will work out.

It's actually kind of funny because Elder Yoon's older sister just went to San Diego this past week. What a coincidence :)

For New Year's, the ward mission leader invited us to something called "Haemaji" with his family, which is climbing a mountain to see the first sunrise of the new year. It was super fun, I'll send you some pictures. After that, we went back to the church and played a game called "Jachigi."  It's kind of like baseball, but you use sticks, and it feels more 3rd-world than baseball does. Maybe you can find it on the internet. It was kind of weird--I felt like I was a kid in the middle ages playing with sticks to entertain myself--but it was really fun :) So New Year's was really good here in Korea. How was it for you?

The other elder team found this guy who seemed really prepared on the street the other day. He said that he had been looking for a church to go to for the past three months, and his life has felt really empty. He has been going to Bible study classes, but hasn't found a church that fits with the things he's learned. He originally when to some protestant church, but had a problem with how the preacher was doing things, so stopped going. Then he met Elder Aurich and Elder Later on the street and got a really good feeling from it, so he said he wants to come to church. Sounds like a golden investigator right? It was so exciting, I thought that finding really prepared investigators like that only happens in fairy tales. It just seemed too good to be true. And it was. He sat through fast and testimony meeting, didn't really say much, then went to gospel principles class with all the missionaries, didn't say much through that either, and then after the class was over, he asked us if he could talk to us for a little bit. He said that he doesn't think we know how to pray (apparently we can only pray about Jesus, praying for ourselves is selfish and shouldn't go into a prayer), we don't know how to testify (I can understand this one, a lot of the people who bore testimony in sacrament just told stories about their lives--looks like it's a worldwide problem), God doesn't really have a body, Adam and Eve weren't the first human beings, just the first to believe in God, the Book of Mormon is blasphemy because it's an addition to the Bible, and that this church is completely false and can't go to heaven, among many other things, I could go on forever. The best part was that he doesn't think we deserve to serve as missionaries and teach the gospel since we don't have a "perfect knowledge" of the Bible. He just left after that, telling us he would come back for English class so he can teach us how we are wrong. Anyway, it was a pretty fun experience, I always love getting an honest opinion of what other people think of us :)

That was the highlight of my week, not too much else happened.

Have a wonderful week! 

Love,

Elder Hines