A Korean Week!

Hello all,

 

Well this was quite the week. And yes, we were surprisingly busy, which is always good. We continue to meet with our regular people, such as Ashley, Lin, and will be meeting with Subeer again. They are doing good. Ashley continues to slowly progress, but many of her concerns stem from her past and only the healing power of the Atonement will be able to heal her wounds. We are continually in contact with her. Lin is working towards baptism, but because he is going to China for a month, it isn't likely that he will while I am still on my mission.

I have started learning some Korean. The obscure hieroglyphs of yesteryear are slowly beginning to be comprehended and understood, although I still don't know what the sounds actually mean. But I do know a few simple phrases, which are beginning to get me along. Because of the decrease in missionaries, President Larkin has had to combine some areas. But I don't think that this "Zebra companionship/area" will be around for many more transfers. It would be really hard being called as a Korean-speaking missionary, especially here in the northern half of the mission. It takes 45 minutes to have investigators drive to Church and on top of that, Korean people are only scattered about the area and often not interested.

On Wednesday night we helped run the missionary English class. In a recently revamped class, we have invited all people that want to learn English to the same class. So it kind of forces the students to learn and converse in English instead of all speaking the same language together. It seems to be effective to find new people to teach because it brings people to us.

But it really has been an interesting experience thus far working with Korean people. We had a Korean dinner on Wednesday night and I met the branch on Saturday at a barbecue in Federal Way. And yesterday was Church, which I couldn't understand half of, but there are translation services for sacrament meeting, which is nice. Many of the individual members know English so its pretty easy to talk to them. It seems like the Korean branch is more of a cultural and social thing more than a language barrier issue, as is the Church in any other ward or branch. But it has shown me that I didn't need to leave America on a mission for a cultural experience. It is really neat.

Time continues to tick away, but things for now are going well. We're keeping busy and working hard to build up the Lord's kingdom in His true Church!

~Elder Fetzer