Monday, May 30, 2016

Birthday Fun


May 29, 2016

Dear Family,

My birthday was great!  And yes, I got calls from lots of friends around the mission, so it was really fun! :) Elder Suttner made a chocolate cake that turned out pretty decent, and Sister Rix gave me a ‘DIY birthday banner’ and some American food her parents sent her from the military base they live on.

It's been interesting having two companions, but we were able to get a lot done. We went on multiple splits with members, so it was like we could do twice as much with one companionship.  

Last Monday evening, we were proselyting on the street, and we met an old guy in his 70s.  He's a retired soldier from the military, and he was really kind.  He liked us a lot, and took us to a cafe to get drinks.  We were able to teach him the Word of Wisdom, turns out he already doesn't smoke, drink alcohol or coffee, or anything like that. He seems so prepared, and he is so nice, hopefully we'll be able to meet with him a lot. 

I don't know what's going on with HHW, but we weren't able meet him at all, and he never answered any phone calls or texts. For some reason this kind of thing seems to happen a lot in this mission. I think it's because Koreans sometimes pretend like they have interest to avoid being rude, but eventually they get sick of us and so they just drop off the face of the Earth.

On Saturday, we played soccer in the morning with the YM and young adults. Elder Kim got a little too excited I guess and ran into the horizontal top bar of the goal, giving himself a concussion. Yep. So we spent all of yesterday after church inside while he rested in bed. Elder Suttner and I just studied and talked for like 6 hours . . . it was really boring.

Anyway, that's about it for this week. Have a wonderful day and week!

Love,
Elder Hines



Elder Suttner, Elder Hines & Elder Kim


Monday, May 16, 2016

Back to Back Baptisms


May 15, 2016

Dear Family,

Well, I feel like it was a really good week, but I honestly don't remember much of what happened. Just all kind of a blur I guess :)  Yesterday was really good though, so I'll tell you about that:

We actually had two baptisms in our ward yesterday. One of them was the sisters' investigator who they've been teaching for only a month or two. Since I'm the district leader, I had the opportunity give her the baptismal interview (which is actually the first time I've done it since being district leader). It was a really cool experience, and I could definitely feel the Spirit guiding me during the interview to know what to say/ask and how to say it. She is very prepared and has a very strong testimony of this church. The person who baptized her is actually a recent covert--the sisters decided it would be better to have a member baptize her than one of the missionaries. Which is a really good idea, because the missionaries are only here for a little bit and then leave, but the members stay.

The other baptism was Sister Rix's little sister. Her mom is Korean, and her dad is in the military (he also served a mission in Seoul), right now they're living in Korea. They wanted Sister Rix to be there for the baptism, so they got permission to do it here in Jinhae. So we got to meet all of her family, and have two baptisms back to back (I didn't know such a think even existed in Korea).

We've done a little more tracting, but not much success. The most acceptance from last week was people saying that they already have a religion so they aren't interested.
We have two investigators who we are teaching currently. The most consistent is HHW, he's a 16-year-old kid who is super awesome.  We taught him the Restoration, and although he got a little bored from us talking so much, he liked the Book of Mormon we gave him (we wrote our testimonies inside the front cover) and seems pretty interested in the church. I think he's attended Sacrament meeting twice so far. He's just really hard to meet because he's busy during the week with school, but other than that, it's going really well. Our other investigator is ODH who is 40 I think, and has problems with depression and suicidal thoughts and stuff. I've only met him once, but we gave him a tour of the church, and he liked it a lot. He was really hesitant to go inside. I think he thought of it more of how we treat our temples. When we brought him in, he really didn't want to go into the chapel, saying that Jesus was there and he wasn't worthy. He was busy last week so we couldn't meet him, but he wants to meet this week.

Jinhae is a ward, and there are about 90 to 100 people who attend church normally.

Well that's about it for this week.  I hope you have a wonderful day!

Love,
Elder Hines



LDS Church building

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Tracting Success!


May 8, 2016

Dear Family,

So Jinhae is pretty sweet, I'm really excited to serve here.  I don't know if I told you, but like a year and a half ago, when I was serving in Tongyeong, I was in the same zone, and since my companion was the DL, we did an exchange, and the way it ended up was I came to Jinhae with one of the zone leaders.  So I'd been to the house and church before, so it was weird coming back a year and a half later and actually living here.  It's a really sick area though, there's a lot going on.  The sisters had a baptism last transfer, and have two more scheduled for this transfer.  Then there are two elder teams, and the other team has a few baptismal dates too.  We have a couple investigators who are really cool and will probably get baptized fairly soon, and a ton of potential investigators.  It's weird, almost like people ignore us less here in Jinhae than in any of my other areas.

Actually there's a pretty cool story from last week.  Elder Aurich and I for some reason have had an unusually strong desire to go tracting (I think that's what they call it in English--when you go knocking on people's doors and try to get into their house.  It's generally the most-hated form of proselyting in this mission because Koreans are never open to listening to people at their door and just yell at you). So we go out, eventually find an apartment, and take the elevator to the top to work our way down.  I kid you not, we had only gone down three stories (so only knocked about five doors) when a guy answered and immediately invited us in.  It turns out he is friends with a member and knows a lot about the church, and a few weeks ago Elder Aurich and his last companion were invited by his member friend to give him a blessing for some medical problems he has.  The thing is, Elder Aurich had no idea that that was where he lived, but we just ended up at his door after only maybe three minutes of knocking doors.  We went in and talked for a little bit, found out that he knows a ton about the church.  He then took us to meet his mom who was outside talking to some of her friends.  It was just the perfect opportunity to introduce the church and talk to people who were actually open to being talked to.

Have a great week and a great Mother's Day!

Love,
Elder Hines