Another Amazing Week

June 21, 2015

So the Filipino guy turned out to be a member, but he was really excited to have found a church he can go to. Apparently he was taking his clothes to get washed, and Z was there at the same time and saw his garments and asked if he was a Mormon. When he said yes, Z gave him our phone number. So it was pretty cool that he was in the right place at the right time, since he was having trouble finding a church. 

Not much happened with the doctor this week, because Elder Mitchell got sick and started throwing up in the middle of the appointment. But he took us to his hospital and was able to help Elder Mitchell out. He thinks it was food poisoning or something, but he wasn't sure. Haven't heard much from the other Pakistani since we weren't able to meet with him.

But something super cool happened this week. We went to meet T last night, and when he showed up, he had a Korean man with him. I recognized this Korean, and he recognized me, but we weren't sure where it was from. We finally figured out that we saw each other in Gumi (the city right next to Gimcheon). It was when Elder Payne and I were with the Gumi elders and were walking to a restaurant to eat, and he stopped us and talked to us. So the Gumi elders met with him a few times and taught him a little about the church, but then he moved to Daegu this spring. Anyway, so we had only met each other once before. Then yesterday he was looking for an English textbook because he is starting his own business of teaching English (he just goes by J) and he was hungry, so he stopped at McDonald's for dinner, and T happened to be there at the same time getting something to eat before he met us. J, for some reason, felt like he should talk to T, so he did, and when T told him he was on his way to meet with some Mormon missionaries, he asked J if he wanted to come with. So J came, and he told us that he thinks that it was God telling him to talk to T, because he wanted to meet the missionaries again but didn't know where they were. He is interested in studying the Book of Mormon, and so he wants to keep meeting with us. It was pretty amazing.

After telling you that, the rest of the week seems really boring, so I'll just leave it at that. The computers still are having problems, but I'll try sending pictures :) Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines

Spaghetti - Korean style

Service project: ripping the heads and guts off dried anchovies. Sister Park is next to Elder Hines; Elder Mitchell is on the right.

 'E World' Amusement Park - P Day visit

Amazing Week

June 15, 2015

So we're having computer problems again, so I can't email for very long today, sorry.

This week was really amazing, we saw so many miracles here in Jungni. One of the members in our ward is a secretary at a hospital, and her boss is really interested in our church. So we met with him last Wednesday, and he seems like a super golden investigator. The only problem is that apparently his wife doesn't like our church very much, but we'll see how that goes. He is interested in studying the Bible, and also seems to think that the Book of Mormon is really interesting. He was happy to read part of it, and we're going to meet him every week on Wednesdays. It's super exciting, I haven't seen an investigator this prepared since LYH.

The other thing that was pretty exciting that happened was our investigator from Pakistan (did I tell you about him?) is apparently telling all of his friends about us, and just in the past week, we've gotten two referrals from him. One is Filipino and is interested in seeing our church building. The other is from Pakistan and wants to learn English. It's really cool because Z has literally no interest in our church, he just wants to learn English, but through him, lots more people are finding out about our church.

So for the picture with the kids, we always take off our shoes when we go into a house since this is Korea, but the floor in there is kind of gross, so they have slippers for us to wear. The stake English class thing was last Saturday and we sang "You Raise Me Up" together, Sister Park played piano, and I played violin. Yeah, I'm pretty sure there are missionaries assigned to every ward/branch in Korea, in some wards it's more than one team. Apparently in Seoul there are some wards that have like ten or more missionaries.

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines

Bacon is a Gift

June 7, 2015

We haven't been able to meet with KJ again, he's been too busy. And actually we didn't meet with T either, he couldn't meet this week. Not too much happened this week. In English class, we are getting a song ready to perform with the students next week at a stake English class party thing. We are going to sing "You Raise Me Up," so it should be pretty fun.

Actually now that I think about it, the best thing that happened this week was inspiration we received in order to make this meal we had a couple days ago. We were going to make spaghetti, but we decided to make more than just normal spaghetti. We remembered that we had a little bit of bacon left in the freezer, so we added that to the sauce, as well as some fresh bell peppers that we fried with the bacon. And then our inner Korean came out and we decided to throw an egg on it for good luck (Koreans like to add eggs to everything for some reason). I'll have to send you a picture next week, it was probably one of the best things that has happened to me recently. If you ask why, bacon is one of God's greatest gifts to mankind, and is literally fairy dust, so it turns anything into a gourmet meal.

It's kind of weird, I heard about Elder Perry from one of the YSA members, but other than that I haven't heard anything at all. That quote is super interesting though, thanks for sharing!

Wow, Indian food sounds really good, but then when you said you had chicken it just reminded me how good Korean chicken is, so I'm not jealous anymore :)

Sorry I don't have much to talk about this week, things are kind of slow as far as missionary work.  I hope you have a wonderful week!

Love,

Elder Hines

It's a Good Challenge

June 1, 2015

Dear Family,

Yeah, I can't believe how fast time goes, May went by like it was nothing. This transfer I will be in Jungni again, I'm so glad that I'm not transferring, I hate moving. Elder Koo left and went to Busan, and my new companion is Elder Mitchell. He is from Missouri, really likes UFC, and seems like a really good missionary. He is in his 4th transfer right now, so that means he went into the MTC last November. It's really scary not having a companion who knows Korean better than me, but kind of fun at the same time. It's a good challenge :)

Now that the Harry Potter party is over, it's been super nice to actually have time to think. And it was super lucky, because like three people called us and said that they have time to meet us last week. Normally people are just way too busy, so it was really cool that so many people in the same week could meet. We met with a recent convert who doesn't really like coming to church, and just ate chicken and hung out with him. We also met with an investigator at his house, his name is KJ, and he seems to have a lot of interest in the church, but he is really busy with his job. He works 24 hours at a time and then gets a 24 hour break. It's a really rough schedule, so it's really hard to meet with him. Hopefully we will be able to continue to meet in the future. For the Harry Potter party, no, it was just the Jungni missionaries that helped with it. 

Happy birthday tomorrow! You got my letter and didn't wait until your birthday to read it?  Wow, I expected you to be more patient :)  Anyway, I'm glad that it got to you on time, I send it kind of late.

Have a great week!  I'll try to send some pictures :)

Love,

Elder Hines

Elder Koo and the 'sorting hat'

District with Brother & Sister Kelly

Academy where the missionaries (try to) teach English

Harry Potter Ward Party

May 24, 2015

Dear Family,

​

My birthday was pretty good, I got to play baseball a little bit with the bishop (he really likes baseball), and the ward bought me chicken and pizza. Just kidding, it was just the same day as the Harry Potter party, and that is what they bought for after the party. But still, it was pretty nice :) I haven't gotten your card yet, maybe next week at transfer meeting.

The Harry Potter party was really fun for the most part.​ To start, we had the Sorting Hat sort the people into teams, Elder Koo put the hat on their heads, and I was behind the curtains with a microphone. Then we played "quidditch" with plastic bottles instead of brooms, and make two goals per team with a hoop made from styrofoam. And then we played basically modified handball. It probably sounds lame, but the members seemed to like it a lot. Next we played a game where we had a projector showing a picture of our district all doing a different pose, and a team got to see the picture for a few seconds, and then had to match it as best they could. After that, we did a potion game. We had 9 different types of juice, and each team had to make a "potion" with five of those, give it a name and an effect, and then the other teams had to taste it and guess which five kinds of juice they used. And then the last game was supposed to be a spell game, we had each person tie a balloon to their ankle, and inside the balloon was a piece of a quote. Then, each team sent one person at a time to the middle of the room, and they had to try to pop each other’s balloons. If they popped a balloon, they got to keep the contents, and the first team to make a full "spell" won. That game didn't turn out too well, since the balloons were harder to pop than we expected. Anyway, that was the party. We spent so much time planning and preparing for it, it's ridiculous. And no one besides the missionaries has any idea how much work went into it. Most people just came and went without really a second thought, but I guess that's just how these kinds of things work. Kinda frustrating.

If I remember, I'll expound about Zone conference in my next letter, I don't have my notes with me right now.

We met with T yesterday, and he said that the more he reads the Book of Mormon, the more interested he is getting. But then he said that if we were to meet 20 hours a week, it would take him at least 3 more months before he felt ready to come to Sacrament Meeting. So to put it simply, progress is really slow. The way he described how he understands the Book of Mormon is like an electromagnet with a bunch of metal shavings on it. The metal shavings are doctrines from the Bible, and in the Bible, it's like the electromagnet is turned on, and the shavings are all lined up nicely. But with the B of M, he said it feels like the magnet is off, and so all the shavings are there, but they're scattered all over the place. I'm really at a loss as to what to tell him, especially because the Bible is way harder to understand than the Book of Mormon, so it would make more sense for the Bible to be the one that isn't organized. And he's under the impression that Mormons barely read the Bible at all, and every week when Elder Koo and I tell him that we study the Bible pretty frequently, he gets super surprised and says that he is really impressed. But this happens every week, and he never seems to remember last week. I think he drinks too much. Pretty 어이없다. (I'm not sure what the translation for that is in English, sorry.)

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines

PS I just remembered that I got the opportunity to play the violin in Sacrament meeting again yesterday. The bishop's daughter plays violin, so he let me borrow her violin. I played For the Beauty of the Earth, and our "pre-missionary" accompanied me. It was super fun, I'm so glad that I get chances to play music still, because I'm starting to crave it. I want to play trumpet super badly :)

Zone conference hike (Busan in the background)

Jungni church building

Tacos!

Missionary kitchen

Zone Conference

May 17, 2015

We had Zone Conference this week, and we went to Busan this time because President Barrow wanted to do a hike with everyone. The theme of the conference was the Sacrament, and as we hiked up the "mountain" behind the mission home, we stopped every so often and had pre-assigned people talk about the sacrament. After the hike, we came back inside, listened to some more talks, and then President Barrow took us up to his office and showed us on the white board there where he had written out the sacrament prayers, and then analyzed them. It was really interesting to take a closer look at what they are saying, and to really ponder the meaning of them. I have come to realize how the Sacrament is just as important of an ordinance as any other, and if you have the right mindset, it can be just as powerful and spiritual as any temple ordinance.

Yesterday we met with T again, but this time we asked Elder Kelly to come with. Elder Kelly is a senior missionary serving in Suseong (other side of Daegu) as military relations. It was really helpful, because T has so many questions, and I'm not sure how to answer a lot of them. But Elder Kelly is a fountain of knowledge about the gospel, and cleared up a lot of confusion that T has. I think it had a big impact on T, because his demeanor changed about half way through. Instead of asking questions to try and contradict, his seemed to be asking more for understanding. And at the end, completely of his own free will, he told us that he thinks he should read the Book of Mormon more, and promised that whenever he reads the Bible, he will read the Book of Mormon for the same amount of time. Elder Kelly was such a big help, having him serving so close is such a blessing.

Basically all of our free time is spent preparing for the Harry Potter party this Saturday, so we haven't really done a lot of other stuff. As far as eating, I can't remember if I told you this already, but I made tacos, and my companion didn't want to help pay for the ingredients, so it's all to myself. So I made a bunch, and for meals I just pull it out of the fridge and make a taco real quick, it's so nice. There aren't a lot of Korean foods that make good leftovers, so it's nice to have leftovers again.

Why were you reading the white bible? Just for fun? You sound like a missionary, that's what we do for fun. And yes, that actually is mildly entertaining to me, believe it or not. Just because there's nothing else for entertainment that is actually fun. I think when I go home and play video games or other things like that, I might die from my heart rate getting too high.

Anyway, during language study, my companion just studies English. If you look in PMG, you are supposed to learn English in addition to the mission language.

The member going to Washington on his mission wants to eat chicken with me on my birthday. I think it took me maybe 0.07 seconds to agree...I timed it.

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines

Testifying is Powerful

May 3, 2015

Dear Family,

I really like reading the New Testament, too. This upcoming Zone Conference in a couple weeks is actually going to be focused on the Sacrament, so that is a cool coincidence.

So there are two foreign investigators that we are teaching, I think I mentioned them last week, but we got to finally meet both of them yesterday. The first one is from Pakistan, and he mostly just wants to learn English, so we teach him English and then gospel. He has really strong faith in the Islamic religion, and I don't think he really takes to heart what we teach him. Which I can understand, if someone was teaching me about Islam, I would just take it more as something education, not really spiritual. He is really nice, but has a hard time understanding a lot of what we teach. I really wish that I knew more about what Muslims believe, I think it would be really helpful. If you know anything, I would appreciate it a lot :)

The other foreigner is from Canada, and he is Calvinist or something like that. He has really strong faith in Jesus Christ, stronger than a lot of members of our church actually. It's really impressive. He is really into theology, and seems pretty open to new ideas as well. He said that his parents were actually first generation pioneers of his religion to come from the Netherlands and start a community in Canada. Anyway, he is pretty fun to talk to, he really likes discussing religion. We normally give him something from the Book of Mormon to read, and he gives us something from the Bible to read, and then we teach each other about it. He had really good insights, yesterday he shared Mark 5 about the man who was possessed by a bunch of devils. We shared 2 Nephi 31, and talked about baptism. After he read the chapter, he said that he liked how it was packed full of doctrine, but he didn't think that it was very organized. He said that the writer doesn't seem to know what he's saying, since there isn't a clear direction, or something like that. And then he said that it isn't very consistent with the teachings of the Bible. Let me tell you, it was super hard not to argue. . .  Anyway, after he said that, I realized that all I could really do was testify, so I did, and the result was amazing. He totally backed off, and actually seemed like he started to agree with me. It's kind of hard to describe what happened, but I definitely learned how powerful bearing testimony can be.

I don't really know how much Koreans like Harry Potter. The theme was decided before I got here. My companion said that only the younger generation knows anything about it, and that it was popular maybe 5 years ago or so, but not too much anymore.

I hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Hines