February 26, 2012

Hey all,

So this week was one of the saddest weeks of my mission so far. Yun Hi Guk, the college kid we've been meeting with, decided to stop investigating the church. He said he didn't feel like he was ready for religious life yet, and that the members of our ward didn't accept him because he doesn't believe in God all the way yet. That was because of a discussion that surfaced in Priesthood meeting two sundays ago about investigators in general, not just him, but he kind of took things the wrong way, maybe. I might not have fully understood everything he said for why he didn't want to come anymore, but he did say he thinks Joseph Smith could be a prophet. There's a sentence in Preach My Gospel, the missionary handbook, that reads, "Some may not accept what you teach even after they have recieved a spiritual witness of its truth." Or something like that. That was fulfilled in my life this week. It's just not his time right now, I suppose. We went to dinner with him one last time, and he bought us stir-fry chicken because he is awesome like that. He is still coming to English class, and one of our church members he was particularly close to is still going to try to talk to him and be friends. We are going to keep in touch too; he wants to come to Utah to do school in five years or so, so maybe I'll see him then.

It's during these times that I ask myself, "What went wrong? What more could we be doing?" And there are things we could do better. But I think we are doing pretty close to our best, and trying really hard.

As long as I get to the point where I can say I'm doing my best, everything else that happens is the will of the Lord. He knows what I can do,and He sent me here for a reason. I don't know what His reasons are, but I trust that they are there. All I can do is look at what I can improve, work on it, do my best, and be patient. President Uchtdorf, a leader in our church, gave an address on patience in May 2010, and there was a quote in there that I thought was really applicable to my circumstances: "Sometimes it is in the waiting rather than the recieving that we grow the most." From my missionary work these past weeks, I definitely believe that that's true. I have much more of a fire to do the work now that we have no more "golden"

investigators, because I know that if I do my best, the Lord will take care of the rest. And now that I'm trying to really do my best, I feel so much better than I did when I was just doing kind of my best. That confidence lasts as long as I work to my limits, and it's not dependant on whether or not somebody chooses to be baptized or not. So though I'm really sad that Yun Hi Guk didn't end up getting baptized, I feel like I've gained a true appreciation for doing my best. I feel like I can do my best for the rest of my mission, because I feel really good with it. So my emotions are mixed right now. But I try to focus on the positives like usual, and to just do my best!

So, now we only have about 6 investigators or so, which is not actually that bad. Some are better to meet than others, but in general life is ok. It's certainly not bad right now. I have 4 more weeks of freedom before I'm in danger of being Zone Leader; we'll see how that goes when the time comes. Until then I'm working on following my dad's counsel for this part of my mission: "Focus on doing your best today and let tomorrow take care of itself."

The food of the week is....Kimbap! How it works is, you take a sheet of seaweed, put rice on it, then put long slices...no, slices isn't a good word. Like segments of carrot, radish, and other vegetables that are about 6 inches long and a third of an inch wide, along with tuna or beef or whatever. Then you roll it up. It looks like sushi, but it has no fish. It's basically the classic Korean fast food, that you get when you don't have time to sit down and eat, because it's really portable. Mmmmm!

The end. :D You are all amazing, have a good week!

February 19, 2012

Subject line: Still in Bong Cheon! Woo!

Yep, so as you can tell from the subject line, I'll be in Bong Cheon for another six weeks. :D I'm really happy about that, because we've been teaching some people that are really going somewhere in the gospel. The ward is happy that I'm staying there too, that's always a good sign. I feel like I want to work really hard and make the ward as good as I can in these last few weeks I have here...wow, there's only five left already. Weird.

This week was kind of a rough week in general, at least till the weekend. Not many people listened to us on the street, and some of our investigators are just plain frustrating. But we pushed through it, and now we are seeing the fruits of that effort. It just goes to show that if you trust in the Lord and work through the hard times, He will give you miracles. I can testify of that now. I think the biggest miracle this week was teaching a man named Kim Ji Yuk, whom we have been teaching for about five weeks now. We teach his son English and then talk about the Church with him. Anyway, these past five or six weeks, he hadn't really gotten anywhere in the gospel. We invited him to pray several times, but he just didn't do it because he had a lot of doubts about whether God was there or not. We were afraid that he was just meeting us because we teach his kid English. But then we met him yesterday, and we got on the subject of baptism. He wondered why we baptize at age eight in our church, and the Baptist church baptizes in infancy; I explained that Joseph Smith had gotten that revelation from God, and since we believe that Joseph Smith was a true prophet, that's what we do. He started getting teary-eyed, to my surprise, and said, in effect, "I think I believe that God is there now. But there are so many forms of belief in Him. How can I choose?" So we explained about Joseph Smith, and how he too figured that there is one way to get to God because of Ephesians 5:4 in the Bible, but he didn't know either. So he prayed, and Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him and called him as a prophet to restore their church on the Earth.

We told Kim Ji Yuk that he could get an answer about what church was right too, just like Joseph Smith did, and that he could know that answer for sure if he prayed about it, and he agreed wholeheartedly. A man who, a couple weeks before, had had serious doubts and very little desire to meet, changed in the matter of one week to someone who believed in God and wanted to find the truth. That is a miracle. We read in the Bible of prophets parting the sea or healing the sick, but how much more of a miracle are those events than a person changing, a person responding to the influence of the Spirit and deciding that they want to find the truth? I feel priveleged to have seen that in somebody, and to have helped in some small way for it to come about.

So that was an awesome thing that happened this week for me. :D I also have tried and failed to make my dad's lemon chicken the way he did; it was edible, but not very delicious. Next time. :D I survived another transfer, making 5 in Bong Cheon now. I have an awesome companion who works hard and has fun. I am among probably the nicest people on earth, who will help you out with anything you ask for. I ride the bus and the subway with my T-money card all the time. I spend a significant portion of my life calling people or talking to them on the street, asking them if they want to learn about the Church. I teach with the Spirit, sometimes more so than other times. I learn deeply about the gospel of Christ and joy in the peace and happiness that comes from it. I am learning so much here in the service of God.

I wear suits basically 24/7. I am a missionary in Seoul, Korea. And it's awesome!

That's about all for this week. The food of the week is jaeyukdeopbap, which is pork and vegetables in a really spicy red sauce over rice.

It's so, so good, probably one of my favorite Korean foods. It's a little painful to eat and digest, though, not gonna lie. :D I hope you all have a good week, bye!

Elder Matt Dean

February 12, 2012

Annyeonghaseyo, everybody!

So, this may end up being my last real day here in Bong Cheon. It's been a pretty awesome 4 transfers/24 weeks. Hard to believe I've been here for half a year...

Transfer calls are tonight. That's when the Mission President or his assistants call everyone in the mission and tell them if they are going to stay or go to another area for the next six weeks. If you end up moving, you pack up all your stuff on Tuesday morning and send it through the postal service, and then you meet at a central subway station called Dongdaemun Yeoksa Munhwa Kongwon Yeok (Dongdaemun History and Culture Park Station), and you find your new companion in the crowd of missionaries, and then you go to your new area and unpack. The mail system here is awesome, it gets things across Seoul in one day usually. I'm hoping that all four of us missionaries here in Bong Cheon stay for another transfer period, though, because we all have a blast. It's me, Elder Greer, Sister Seipel, and Sister Choi Jin Ju. Me and Sister Seipel were in the same class in the MTC, and she came to Bong Cheon 3 transfers ago (I've been here 4). She is an amazing missionary, and it's been great to learn from her example. The sisters live in a house up by the church, which is nice for them, but me and Elder Greer live closer to the subway station. I will really, really miss Bong Cheon and the missionaries here if I have to transfer. It's never a 100% thing, but chances are leaning toward me having to leave. We get the  call tonight, so I'll let you know.

One sad thing happened. I called Lee Jun Jae to confirm something about the baptism last Tuesday, and he had left his phone at home, so his wife answered. She started talking to me, and it turns out that Lee Jun Jae's family has opposed him meeting with us from the start.

She didn't even know he was going to be baptized because he hadn't told her, which is not surprising because he is a stubborn old man of

60 years or so, so he had the attitude of "I'm going to get baptized no matter what anyone says." She said that there had been arguments in the family over him even studying the Church with us, and she basically told me to go away, stop contacting Lee Jun Jae, and to keep our noses out of their family.

Needless to say, me and Elder Greer were pretty devastated. Obviously we won't baptize anyone without their spouse's consent, so it's looking like it'll be a while before Lee Jun Jae can get baptized. He was so close. He knew the Book of Mormon was true, and he was changing his life in order to come to church, but it looks like things just won't be that easy. And now I probably have to leave.  We're going to try to meet him with our bishop and talk about how he can pray for his wife to have a change of heart, and he can talk about his feelings and why he wants to come here with her. But it's looking like this will be a long-term thing, over multiple sets of missionaries.

Obviously it doesn't matter if I am here when he is baptized. I've been with him since October, seeing him change and progress. He was ready to be baptized, and even if his wife keeps him from doing it in this life, he'll probably accept everything whole-heartedly in the next life. I've done all I can for him, and all I  can do now is pray that things will turn out for him sometime in the future. Success is not measured by number of baptisms as a missionary; they're nice, of course, but not vital to my happiness. That's one lesson I've learned recently. All I can do is my best, and the rest is up to the will of the Lord.

On a lighter note, Yun Hi Guk said that he was walking home from our appointment two Saturdays ago, and he felt the Holy Ghost. I might have already told you that, but I'm just still really excited about it. :D He said he still needs more time to find that surety of the heart that baptism is right for him, but I think he'll probably choose it eventually.

We were eating dinner at a member's house and me and Elder Greer downed like 40 raw clams or so. Korea has definitely helped remove any pickiness about food that I had. :D

Also, this week I learned a valuable new skill: I can now roll my tongue and whistle through it. For the unbelievers who think it's not possible, it took me five weeks of off-and-on effort, but I finally learned how to do it. Elder Greer has been doing it for 12 weeks now, and I decided to put my effort in and figure it out. Sister Seipel figured it out in like 2 days, I'm not sure how that worked out. :D Just another of the many valuable things you learn as a missionary. :D

Today for P-day we are playing soccer with half the mission. It'll be really fun. I play defense because my feet are not fancy enough, but I can do positioning decently. Last time we played, we had like 3 injuries, and one of the Koreans ended up deciding to get $400 worth of cosmetic surgery because his glasses got jammed into his face, leaving a very Harry Potter-ish scar. At the time I said that I would have kept the scar. :D I'll play safe today though, don't worry.

Well, that's about all for now. The food of the week is called 해장국 (haejangguk), which is a soup. Basically they take about 2 or 3 vertebrae from the back of a cow and boil it in a spicy soup. some of the meat comes off, but half the fun of haejangguk is having to pull the remainder of the meat off the bone. They serve it with wasabi, and it is both delicious and affordable. Good combination. :D One unique thing about korean cuisine is the 뚝배기 (ddukbaegi), which is a black stone bowl about 6 inches across that soup usually comes in in a restaurant. They heat it up super hot as they cook the soup and put in on a tray, so when it comes out it's boiling and about as hot as the surface of the sun for the next half hour. Koreans like their food intense. :D Also the only individual serving you usually get is a bowl of rice; everyone eats straight out of the serving dishes for everything else. To give you an idea of a Korean meal, you have your little bowl of rice in front of you, and then the table is covered with maybe 15 small 4-inch bowls or dishes with 반찬 (banchan, or "side dishes"), along with maybe a pot of soup or whatever the main course is. Actually I guess you also get soup individually too, usually. I like Korean style better than American, it takes less dishes. :D We were at another member's house last night and they served American style, and I felt really weird. Maybe I'll just live in Korea after my mission..... :D

Thank you all for all you have done and continue to do for me. Life is good right now, and I'll let you know if I transfer or not. Have a good week!

Elder Matt Dean

February 5, 2012

Hey all,

This week was arguably the most eventful week of my mission life so far. First, on Monday, me and Elder Greer went to a public bathhouse for P-day, which was really awesome. I love those places. Then on Tuesday, we visited a mother in our ward named Kang Yu almost on a whim, and she gave us some really good nut drink, the name of which i can't remember right now, and jjinbbang, which is a doughy circular pastry with sweet red bean paste in it. We chatted for a while about her past with the church and things, and her family and such. Then  me and Elder Greer shared a scripture about prayer, and how if we pray in faith we will recieve answers from our Heavenly Father. She got a little teary-eyed, and explained that she had been depressed for about a month for a lot of reasons, but because she read that scripture she realized that she hadn't been praying very much. She thought that was the reason it hadn't been getting better. We promised her that things would get better somehow if she prayed for it, and asked if there was anything we could do for her. She said, "You have already done enough for me, because you helped me find the answer I needed." That was a really powerful moment for me. She is one of the best people I know, and she always seemed so happy; I had no idea that she had felt depressed when I decided that we would visit her. Only the Lord knew that, and it was amazing to realize that we had acted as tools in His hands.

That afternoon, it started snowing, and it snowed for like six hours. It was the heaviest snow I've seen in Korea so far; we probably got about three inches in one night. Me and Elder Greer were loving it. :D Our church is on a hill that's fairly steep, so we finished our things at the churhc and then ran and slid and ran and slid all the way down the sidewalk on the hill to the subway station where we were meeting one of our investigators named Seo Jin Man. We would slide for probably 10 or 15 feet at a time, since the decline was so steep. It was awesome. :D Seo Jin Man left on a two-year world travel trip yesterday, but we were seeing him for the last time last Tuesday night. We had dinner with him and then headed to Starbucks to grab some hot chocolate. He had dyed his hair super bright yellow/orange (If any of you know what Dragonball Z is, that's about how he looked^^). We talked for a while about where he would go and such, and then Elder Greer and I were able to give him a Book of Mormon, which he gladly took. I hope he reads it. He's about 28 or so, and he introduced us to a lot of Korean food in restaraunts. I will really miss him.

On wednesday, a miracle happened. We were meeting Yun Hi Guk for about the 4th time; he had come to church on Sunday, so we were expecting great things. But he told us that he came to give the Book of Mormon back to us because he didn't want to learn about the church anymore. After telling him that we respect his decisions and beliefs, we asked why he felt that way. He said it was because he didn't believe that God could really appear to Joseph Smith, and he didn't think that God answers prayers. So I did all I could do and testified that I had gotten an answer about the church, and Joseph Smith, and that if he learned about it it would make him happier and give him more peace from knowing the purpose of life and where we will go after death. Then I felt prompted to tell him that if he prayed one more time, sincerely, about Joseph Smith, he would get an answer. after thinking about it in silence for a long time, I said that maybe if he thought about it tonight and texted us later, that would be good. He agreed to that. We all prayed very hard that night. The next night he texted us and said that he didn't want to end our friendship, and that he still wanted to learn about the Church. Me and Elder Greer were really happy. :D English class on Wednesday nightwas really fun too; I learned about Korean tonguetwisters, which are actually easier for me than English tonguetwisters. It was a blast. :D

On Thursday we met a new investigator, Lee Jin Hyeop, and it was really awesome. he is 30, recently married, used to be Catholic; he seemed pretty open to learning about the Church, but at the end of the meeting when we asked him to pray about it, he declined and said, "I want to find out about Joseph Smith and all, but I don't want to spend a lot of time on it until you tell me why only believing in Jesus Christ, and not Joseph Smith, is not good enough. Until we get that resolved, then I think I won't have much motivation." Or something to that extent. I realized that I'd never really deeply thought about that viewpoint before; I figured it was a fair enough statement. Now I'm studying to find that out. It's interesting to have new paradigms and viewpoints to look through as a missionary.

On Friday, me and Elder Greer visited Sister Han Lee Im (Lee Im is her given name), who is a mother of about 50 or 60, along with her husband, Kang Jong Tae. We talked a lot about things; she is really fun to talk to. Really energetic. Then at one point, Elder Greer asked about her mother, whom we knew had had surgery on her hip recently. her mother is probably about 86. She started crying a little and said her mother is not doing well. She talked about how wonderful of an example her mother is, how devotedly she served other people all her life. After she regained her composure a little, she told us a story called the Boulder Face. This is actually an American story that she read in a book in school, but me and Elder Greer didn't know it, which she got a kick out of. :D Here is how it goes:

"Once upon a time in a mountain village, there was a huge boulder in the likeness of a face. The villagers all thought it looked like a great, powerful, majestic leader; and they all hoped that someday a leader bearing that face would come to lead their village in wisdom and strength. One boy among them wanted this more than anyone else, and he could often be seen staring up at the Boulder Face; you could see in his eyes that he was thinking, "Please, great leader, come and lead our village to glory."

"The years passed, and a man came to their village. He showed forth wisdom in the councils of the elders, and had a fair likeness of the Boulder Face. Everyone thought he was their leader. But then in an attack from a neighboring village, he was killed because he lacked the strength to fight. Everyone sorrowed, and waited anew for the leader with the Boulder Face to come. The boy prayed and hoped and looked at the Boulder Face, but the leader didn't come.

"A while later another man came to the village, just in time to save a man whose quarry cart had fallen and nearly crushed him. It was easily seen that he had great strength and valor. But it was just as easily seen that he did not have the brains to back up his brawn, and the people still waited for the leader with the Boulder Face to come. But the boy didn't give up hope.

"The boy grew in strength and maturity, until one day the villagers were damming a river to make a reservoir. The dam started to burst, and some people were in danger of drowning, but the boy devised a plan to save them and the dam, and he was instrumental in carrying it out. He led with power and authority, and as he was straining to hold a log to be propped against the dam, another villager looked up and saw the young man's face profiled against the Face on the mountainside. 'It's him! It's the Great Leader!' he cried. After the dam was patched, the young man was carried on their shoulders to the village, where he reigned in wisdom and power all his days."

I added a lot of content there to make it interesting. :D but the moral of the story she told us was, as we watch the great examples in our lives and try to emulate them, someday, gradually, we become like them. She said her mother was a great example in her life, and we promised to pray for them all.

Then, Saturday was proabably a classic missionary day in Seoul Korea. Me and Elder Greer got up at 6:30, exercised till 7, started study ant 8, had lunch at 12, and left the house at 1 just like every other day. We walked/slid in the snow up to the church to get the signs required to go "streetboarding," which is a classic proselyting activity where we go to a place with stoplights and crosswalks and talk to people and introduce the Church to them using signs that we have on eisels(sp?). We did that for about an hour and a half and froze our hands off and talked to a bunch of people, and ended up getting the number of one interested person. We grabbed some hot chocolate at the nearby GS25 mart, and then headed back up to the church for our appointment, where we found a new investigator, Bryan, who has English interest but also interest in the Church. That appointment went late, so we ran to dinner, where we found another guy that spoke English and had interest in the Church a little. Then we booked it back to the church building to meet Lee Jun Jae, who is getting baptized this Saturday! It was a good meeting. Then we booked it to a government building where we had said we would meet another new investigator, but he didn't show. he lied ( in missionary jargon that's "being punked"). So we ran back to the churhc for our final appt that night with Yun Hi Guk, and we helped him realize that it was the Spirit that had changed his thoughts, and I knew that I had acted under the Spirit to promise him that. Then we ran home because we were late. Such a classic, packed, crazy, amazing day. :D

Then yesterday we had a dinner at our Bishop's house where we played a dice game called Bluff, which also goes by Pirates' Dice (as seen in the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie), and we had to run back to the church to meet Bryan again, and it went really well. So that was my amazing week. My studies were all good, and I learned a lot about the gospel.This took a long time to type, so I hope you enjoy it. Maybe I'll add more details to the Boulder Face story sometime later. :D

The food of the week is rice. Everyone likes it. The End. (I'm out of time^^) I love you all, I hope you have a good week!