November 28, 2011

Hi! So today we are going to do a service project at Gwanghwamun--we will go and make kimchi! Yeah! There will be tons of people there that aren't members of our church, even, along with all the missionaries. It'll be super fun, I'm way excited. This may be like a once-in-a-mission experience. Unfortunately it means I didn't have time to read any of the emails I got this week or to write an email of any considerable length this week. Sorry about that. However, our leaders want us to do it like this, so that is what I will do.

I'm still in Bong Cheon! I'm still a District Leader! And I'm training this transfer! My companion's name is Elder Greer. He is from Arizona, but he was actually born in Thailand. He was adopted into a Mormon family, and now here we are. :D We get along great, and we've seen some awesome miracles since he got here. I'm really excited to serve with him.

I'll give you more details next week, when I don't have the opportunity to do an awesome 5-hour service project. I love you all, have a good week!

Elder Matt Dean

November 21, 2011

Hey all,

So, there are transfer calls tonight, which means the next six weeks of my life could be radically different than the last six were...or maybe they'll be exactly the same. Nobody knows for sure till 9:30 p.m. Seoul time, which is the fun of getting transfer calls. You get your fun and excitement where you can get it on a mission. :D

This week was pretty good. The war museum was actually closed on Mondays, so we couldn't go inside, but there were some really cool airplanes and tanks outside that we got pictures of. I got this way cool one of me on a self-propelled Howitzer, it's a great picture. :D We'll have to go some other time to see the inside exhibits, I hear they're amazing. I'm at the place where you have to switch every 10 minutes again, so this will be short and I don't have time to put the pictures out today. Maybe next week.

Today for P-day almost everyone of my MTC group got together at the Olympic Park they used in the 80's and ate lunch at this way nice buffet. It was so fun! It was great to see my missionary friends again, I forgot how funny they all are. It was a party out there for sure. :D We got some good pictures together. I actually wrote letters, too, which doesn't happen often for me. P-days are just really busy.

Other stuff for this week...not much, actually. It was a pretty normal week for a missionary. Oh, it was super cold last night! I forgot how cold it gets here in the winter. I'm so glad I'm not a sister missionary, they must freeze, since they have to wear skirts. Suits are so nice, you can bundle up as much as you want under your suit and it still looks fine. :D

Thanksgiving is this week! The English branch here volunteered to have all the American missionaries over to a ward member's house for a meal on Thursday, which I think is really cool. Hopefully I don't get transferred out. I'm kind of torn; I kind of want to go, but I kind of want to stay, too. We'll see what happens, and as always I will follow the Lord and my mission president.

You know you're in Korea when...

• The Church members always give you food, every single time you visit their house.
• Every single person has dark brown or black hair. Think about that for a minute.
• A lot of cars have little foam things on the ends of their doors so they can push them against other cars. In a city with 25 million people, having to do that is pretty normal.
• Hot dogs come individually wrapped.
• Usually when you go out to eat, one person will pay the bill for the whole group, and then it's expected that next time someone else will do it.
• The post office workers close early on weekdays and aren't open on weekends...oh wait, it's like that in America too. Why don't they work more hours?!

Ok, I'm out of time. But I love missionary work, no matter how hard it is sometimes, and I know this work is the work of God. Thank you all for being such a good influence on me, and I hope you have a good week!

Elder Matt Dean

November 14, 2011

Dear everybody,

Wow, it's almost been a year now! I'm starting to be an old missionary, there are people I don't know that are younger than me in the mission now. It's a really odd feeling, actually, being this old. Here is a list of some of the things I have done in the past year:

- Im finally starting to get the language down. Korean is not easy, but it is worth it.

- I'm starting to learn to love other people, even when I can see their faults or when I think I have better ideas than them.

- I've been involved in the conversions of two people. They did all the work, though, I was just kind of there to direct them.

- I became a Senior Companion, a Trainer, and a District Leader, though not all at once. (that would be craaaaazy)

- I've gotten a lot of great packages from my wonderful family, and a lot of letters from my awesome friends. (Sorry the replies are so long in coming....)

- I've done half of a really hard thing, and managed to have fun while doing it.

- I've burned my mouth on a lot of spicy Korean food.

- I realized how much more I should appreciate my family. You never really appreciate something till you lose it.

- I've learned how to take care of myself while living away from home.

- I've learned how to deal with rejection and failure. There's always more of that on a mission than you'd like.

- I've learned to love the Lord and rely on Him. I'm still not perfect at that, but I'm trying.

- I've gained a much deeper understanding of the basics of this Church and how happy it can make people.

- I realized how lucky I am to be an American.

- I've ridden on approximately 600 buses, if you average it out to be two a day or so. That comes out to be....about 600 to 700 dollars, just from riding the bus. Whoa!

- I've seen how narrow-minded I can be, and I'm striving to widen it up a little.

- I've learned to love kimchi. Who said fermented cabbage can't be delicious?

- I've gained a lot of self-control as I've worked for a cause that's bigger than I am, something that doesn't give monetary or reputational rewards.

- I've started to learn how not to be so much of a stick-in-the-mud. I don't know how much progress I'll make there, but we'll see. :D

- I've gloried in the fact that I don't have to worry about homework, a job, or a girlfriend here. (Only one more year of that left, darn it... :D)

- I've gained a testimony and a conviction that this gospel we teach is Christ's true gospel, and that by following it anybody can improve their life and gain peace and happiness.

- I've had so much fun! There are great times on a mission. It's not the funnest or the most exciting time of my life, but it has its moments.

That's about all for now. Things are really great out here, and I really love my mission. It's made such a big difference in who I am, in what I think, in what I plan to do. The most important changes I've gone through are things you can't really put in a list like that; they are changes that have strengthened my character, that have just made me a better person than the Elder Dean that left Utah a year ago. Add that to all the good I'm doing here, all the lives I'm changing, and you really see the wisdom of the Lord in sending us out on missions. We get to take part in helping other people improve their lives and change and come unto Christ, and we join them on their journey. It's not a thing where we missionaries say, "Ok, go down that path" while we sit complacently on the roadside; we learn, we change, we grow, and we walk with the people we teach. That is the glory of a mission: we do good things while we're here, and then we come back and do good the rest of our lives too. A mission is hard, but the changes I'm making from being here are more than worth it to me and to all the people I will come in contact with for the next 50 years or however long I'm alive. I love my mission!

We're going to the Korean War Memorial today. It's going to be so awesome! I'll take lots of pictures and maybe send them back eventually if I feel like it. :D We went to a lantern festival on Saturday night with an investigator and a recent convert; it was so awesome! There's a small river than runs through a part of Seoul, not the Han river, that had huge lit-up lanterns in the shape of people and stuff, that illustrated Korean traditional stories and nursery rhymes. I took lots of pictures of that too, I'll try to send them home next time maybe.

You know you're in Korea when...

- Every single home has hardwood floors, no carpet.

- You DO NOT wear shoes inside the house, or else!

- You don't eat a meal at the table, you sit on the floor cross-legged and eat off a low table that's maybe a foot tall or so.

- The fruit is absolutely delicious!

- Most bathrooms are all tile, and they don't have a bathtub, just a showerhead coming out of the wall. No shower curtain, either.

- You can buy fish-shaped pancakes filled with bean paste off the street. So good!

Well, on Thursday (my time) I will have officially been out for a year. It's been a long journey, but those ones always make the best stories. If Frodo had gotten the Ring to Mordor in three days, would that have been interesting enough to make three epic movies out of? No. Same with a mission, only I'm doing stuff that's way cooler than dropping some dumb ring in a volcano. :D Thanks for supporting me through this journey I've been on; anybody who's reading this has contributed to my life, and I'm so thankful to all of you. Have a good week!

Love, Elder Matt Dean

November 7, 2011

Hey all,

So I just realized that my halfway mark is in a little over a week. What a weird feeling...

This week was pretty good. I saw a lot of little miracles, things that helped me out a lot. I haven't really seen any big miracles lately, but then, most of the things we recieve from God aren't super big. The small things that come steadily over time are worth more to me anyway, since I have a few big ones tucked into the back of my memories. I talked to some really good people this week; I interacted with some not-so-nice people too. For example, last night we were handing out English advertisements to people on the street, and a guy came up, took one, rolled it up into a ball, and threw it at me without even slowing down. He just kept walking. Sometimes we have to take one for the team; in that instance my sacrifice was not chasing after the guy and offering him another flyer just to annoy him. :D I hope he feels a little bigger now that he's persecuted a missionary. But the week was good on the whole.

I'm at the place where you have to get off the computer and let someone else use it every ten minutes, so this won't be super long. Just know that you are all so great, and I have learned a lot about the worth of souls out here. I was kind of in my own little world back before I came out here; I didn't attach as much importance to family as I do now. Thank you for being such a great family to me, and I wish I could be there with all of you now. But I'm in the place I need to be at this time in my life, out here helping people to see the light. I'll keep doing my best out here, and I hope things go great back there. I love you all!

Elder Matt Dean

October 31, 2011

Hello everybody,

As you all already know, this last Tuesday was my 20th birthday! It was actually a really good birthday, because our day as missionaries to go to the temple was that day. We go there once a transfer/ every six weeks, and it's always a really spiritual experience. To add to that, when it is our temple day, it's also our preparation day--aka our day off! It was way fun. Me and some other missionaries went to a place called Namdaemun Sijang, which means South Gate Market, and we bought a bunch of souvenirs and stuff which are way cool. I'm definitely going there right before I go home so I can load up on cool stuff. I learned how to haggle for pricing there from another missionary--he told me to play the "poor foreign missionary with no money" card, and i got a couple dollars knocked off. :D Then we taught one of our investigators about the Book of Mormon, and he gave himself an assignment to read the entire book of 1st Nephi this week, which equates to 60 pages or so. All in all, it was a great birthday.

Then the next day, I gave a training at our district meeting. A district is composed of 3 or 4 missionary companionships, and we usually meet once a week. Since I'm the district leader, I have to conduct the meeting and train the missionaries on how to do missionary work for about an hour and a half. I was really stressed about it, but it ended right on time, and the missionaries in my district really liked it. I trained them on teaching to people's needs--we're not just out here to baptize people and add to our number of church members, we're out here to help people find the truth, and we should teach them accordingly. Then after the training, I did something called exchanges, where I traded areas with one missionary so I could do stuff with his companion in his area. I went to a place called Gangnam, which means "south of the river," which is the richest place in Seoul. We had a good time, and it was way fun to stay with some other missionaries overnight and quote funny movies and have fun. Trainings, exchanges, and reporting stats--that encompasses almost all the duties of a district leader, and it's not as hard as I thought it would be. The Lord qualifies those whom He calls.

Today for Preparation Day (abbreviated P-day) the sister missionaries that share a Church unit with us invited a lot of people to come play soccer at a nice field by our church. I'm really, really bad at soccer, so I'll probably write letters the whole time, since I have like 7 to send today. It'll be really fun to see the other missionaries and hang out with them.

We met a really interesting old guy this week. The sister missionaries in our area got his phone number, so we set an appointment with him and went to his house. The air was cloudy with cigarette smoke, there were probably 500 music CDs on shelves on the wall, and some sort of cathedral music was playing. He talked for an hour, straight, no breaks, about how we need a condensed version of the Book of Mormon, smaller pamphlets, and better Korean skills, and then he ended by saying that he needed 2 or 3 years to read the Book of Mormon without our help, and then he would decide between it and the Bible. Not the ideal teaching situation. :D He was nice, there's just no way to teach him because our age difference is too wide. In Korean culture the children do not teach their elders, and he's from a time before their culture started to Westernize. I hope he really does read it over the next two years...

We had a couple miracles this week. Actually, I'm sure we had more, but I'm not good at seeing them yet so these were the only ones I recognized: on the subway I was talking to a high school kid, and I found out he had been baptized in the very ward that I'm serving in a few years ago, and he just hasn't been to church.It was way cool. We got his number, and I hiope we can hang out with him and help him to come back. While we were talking to him, a guy randomly came up and said he had interest in our church, and asked for a name card. I hope he calls back. Lately the missionary work is a little hard, but you can't get discouraged in the hard times, because that only makes you less happy and effective, which leads to greater discouragement. In life you have to always maintain a positive attitude even when nothing seems to be going your way, and then eventually things will get brighter.

You know you're in Korea when...

• There are little shacks on the street where guys that fix people's shoes work. One of them fixed my shoe and then jokingly said I had to pay him 3000 dollars. He did a good job, too.
• There are almost no public bathrooms, drinking fountains, or trash cans.
• People carry around tiny dogs in their jackets, bags, purses, or even baby carriages.
• Sometimes old people kiss your hand on the street. That's only happened once, luckily.
• When members of the church see you working on the street and buy food for you right on the spot.

Well, that's about all with me. Thank you, everybody, for the good influence you've had in my life, and for everything you've done for me. 안녕히계세요!

Elder Matt Dean

October 23, 2011

안녕하세요 여러분!

This week was a pretty good week, when all is said and done. It wasn't without bumps and hard times, just like everything else in life, but really, everything depends on where you put your focus. I heard a quote at a training this week that went like this: "My mission wasn't the funnest time of my life. It wasn't the most exciting or interesting time of my life. But it was the best time of my life to build my testimony, to really find out who Christ is and what He did for us, to learn how to work, to gain skills to succeed in college and marriage and my career, to learn how to love people. So was my mission the best two years OF my life? Maybe, maybe not. Was it the best two years FOR my life? Absolutely." That was from one of the Assistants to the Mission President, who are generally missionaries who have been out for a long time and are skilled in all aspects of missionary work. And everything he said was true. I'm gaining so much more out here than I ever would have if I hadn't come, despite all the hard things, despite leaving everything behind to come out here and talk to people who mostly don't want to listen. Those things are hard, but when I think of all the good that's happening to me, and the good effects that will come from my service, it makes it really easy to bear those hard things. It reminds me of another thing a missionary said: "I had some really hard times on my mission. But when I look back, I can only really remember the good times." That's been true for me as well (at least, for what I CAN remember; you all know how bad my memory is :D). I love being out here, I love being this close to God and not having to worry about college or a job or a girlfriend. It's such a great work that I'm a part of, and I'm surrounded by other great people. And most of all I know God is here and he's helping me along, even though I can't really see how right now. In short, life is really good for me. Thanks to everyone for making me who I am today, I couldn't have done it without you.

On a lighter note, this week I had to go through something of a hazing that happens to most of the missionaries in this area of the mission. There's a restaurant that sells pork cutlets covered in ridiculously hot sauce; they call it 디진닥 돈까스, which is a slang form that translates roughly to "You gonna die, fool." :D Apparently they import peppers from all around the world to make this sauce, and just the sample was definitely the hottest thing I've ever eaten! I chewed it up and it wan't bad; when I started, another missionary started counting, and when I got to 10, I thought, "Whoa, this is really hot." Things went downhill from there. I thought the spiciness level would plateu at some point, but it never really did. I just had this desire to run somewhere, and my throat and lips were literally painful. Luckily there was an ice cream store nearby. :D They have this challenge at the restaurant where you have to eat two humongous cutlets with this sauce on it in 20 minutes or less; they make you take medicine first, and if you start hiccuping they take it away from you because your body is starting to reject it. If you eat it in 5 minutes you get six months of normal food there for free, but if you don't make it in 20 you have to pay $15. Needless to say I didn't try the challenge. :D It was a fun experience, though.

You know you're in Korea when...

Pigeons are the only wildlife.

The buildings are all covered in bright signs, literally covered.

When the members give you food all the time.

When there are fruit trucks everywhere that drive around selling apples or asian pears or clementines or ginger or whatever else you can think of.

When nobody eats on buses or subways, period.

When these little old ladies with matching outfits push fancy carts around selling yogurt.

The missionary work is going well, and I see the blessings from it every day if I look. The trick is remembering to look. :D But when I do I'm happy, which is most of the time. I hope things are going well for everyone back there, have a good week!

Love, Elder Matt Dean

October 16, 2011

Hey all,

So, we got the transfer calls and I'll be in Bong Cheon for another six weeks! I'm really happy, I like this area a lot and we have three really good investigators right now. My companion, Elder Mallory, stayed too, and we will continue to have a great time out here.

Soccer last week was really fun; we played on a big dirt field out by the Han river, which was a great view. I made a spectacular goal on my own team on accident; I was going to kick it out, but I didn't realize that I was directly in front of our goal until the ball was flying at high speed right over our goalie. Oops. :-)  I'll probably be hearing about that one for a while.

I got a call this Thurdsday from our Zone Leaders , which said that this transfer I will be a District Leader! I was pretty nervous about it at first, but it's basically just calling the missionaries in the district and checking up on them, collecting stats to report to the ZLs, and preparing weekly training. The training will be the hardest part, but I'm not that worried about anything. The Lord will help me out.

Today for P-day we're going to hang out with the Zone Leaders, but they wouldn't tell us what we would be doing, they just said to come. I'll tell you next week about the awesome party I'm sure we'll have. :D

My studies have taken me to the preachings of Aaron, Ammon, Alma, and the others in the Book of Mormon. Something interesting that i found is that in almost every conversion story, people saw power that was shown forth from the missionaries, and that made them interested in the gospel, so the missionaries could teach them. That really made it stand out to me how important it is to teach by the Spirit and show forth our spiritual power to the investigators we teach. I'm also working on using questions more when I teach; I really feel a lot better about the teaching environment when I ask good questions, even something as simple as "Do you want to know if the Book of Mormon is true? Why?" It really helps the investigator become involved in the discussion more.

My recent convert, Choi Hyeon Chang, is doing really well. He comes to church every week, and he seems to like being a member. Now we just have to get him connected to the ward, and everything will be perfect!

Life is pretty good for me right now. Some missionaries find it hard to leave the media or girls behind, but it's usually not a problem for me. There's really nowhere else I'd rather be than with the people here in South Korea. :D Thanks to everyone; you have all had a really big impact on me, and I wouldn't be who I am today without you . I hope you all have a good week!

You Know You're in Korea when...

• The suits that guys wear are made of a really cool shiny material.
• You buy bunches of grapes wrapped in paper.
• If two or more people stop to look at something, soon there's a huge crowd. This happpens from events like house fires to people talking to us when we streetboard.
• You have to do battle with mosquitos even in your sleep. There's no better feeling than finally smacking one after it's been bugging you all night!
• Most cell phones have dangly things hanging off of them, from styluses to random keychain-type items.
• When you can do the cha-cha with a 70-year old lady at a ward activity and not have it be weird. No pictures of that one, sorry. :D

Love you all!

Elder Matt Dean