September 2, 2012

Note from Elder Dean's mom: Matthew put subject lines in Korean on both this letter and the personal letter he sent to just our family. On our letter, he wrote: 이걸 읽을수 있으면 천원 줄게요, which means "If you can read this, I'll give you a thousand won ($1)." On the letter below, he wrote: 아버지 빼고 아무도 이것을 읽을 수 없어요, which means "Besides Dad, nobody's going to be able to read this."

Hi everyone, 

So I survived the typhoon! It was actually pretty disappointing. We got all ready for the storm and moved stuff everywhere and had the missionaries on the west coast sleep in Seoul and got all ready--and then it was nothing worse than a particularly windy rainstorm. I've seen normal storms here that were worse than the typhoon, at least for people in Seoul. But I heard the people on the southern coast got pounded pretty hard. Actually a lot of the fruit crops got destroyed, so I guess the price of Asian pears and mandarin oranges will go up quite a bit, unfortunately. Actually, something interesting about this typhoon--there was a smaller one called Typhoon Tembin that was heading in over Taiwan and into China, but the one that hit us was so strong that it sucked Tembin back out into the Yellow Sea where it promptly dumped a bunch of rain onto us. Tembin was actually worse than the first one, I think. Anyway, it's all over now and I can finally see the sun again!

I attached some pictures of the office where I basically live now. The Korean in one of the pictures is the one who went home, but he made a really funny face so I wanted to show it to you. :D My desk is the one on the left. I like the office, it's pretty good. The missionary work here is decent too when we can get outside. I'm working on getting out and proselyting more. 

We found a really cool investigator yesterday! His name is Shin Min Ho, and he's 26 in American age. He was doing some small business stuff for a while, but he pretty much gave it to his friends and he's now working at a hospital while he studies some more. And he has a lot of religious interest along with English interest, which is what we picked him up for. He REALLY wants to know what the Plan of Salvation is and how it answers the questions of the soul that everyone has about before and after this life. He's pretty golden, and we're excited to be teaching him! Frank, our high school student investigator, will hopefully be baptized this Saturday,  so we're really excited for that too.

We're getting ramped up for Zone Leader Council, the monthly meeting with the Zone Leaders at President's house, and transfers, which happens next week. It's hard to believe transfers are already here; the time is going really fast. I think it's really fun, though. I'm learning a lot about administration and coordination with my companion. Life here is good, and it's not a bad place to finish your mission. 

Hope everybody has a good week! 

Elder Matt Dean

Elder Dean making faces

The office where Elder Dean works as an AP.