April 30, 2012

Hey, everybody!

So guess what? I'm on a train. :D That's right, I'm emailing while traveling at 40 or 50 miles an hour! Cool huh? There's a train that goes from our city to Seoul in 6 hours and 20 minutes or something like that, and it goes through all the mountains and cities and things. I got some great pictures for sure. I also met a guy who was slightly drunk and made friends with him. :D He was going to Taebaek, the area widely regarded as the worst area in our mission because it only has 50,000 people and they have literally ALL talked to the missionaries before. Sure enough, the guy I talked to had talked to them twice before. He was coming back from a big hospital in Gangneung because of an accident at work that hurt his leg. His wife died a while ago, and he has two high school kids, a boy and girl. He showed me pictures and he was really proud of them. :D He actually drives a train too, and he was really proud of how Korea is one of only three countries in the world that does switchbacks on threir railroads. Our train stopped and started moving backwards, and he interrupted a conversation I was having with someone else and said, "Dean--we're supposed to be going that way [forward], right? Now we're going backward. Do you know why? Switchbacks." It was pretty funny. I didn't tell him that the three countries (Korea, Switzerland, and Japan) were the only ones with mountains that made them have to have switchbacks in the first place, though. :D I gave him a Book of Mormon, and he accepted it really well. He invited me to come stay with him so he could show me Taebaek, but I had to turn it down unfortunately.

Our baptism with Hwang Gi Seok got postponed because he smoked last week. We were really disappointed. However, he's confident he can stop smoking and willing to do it, so we're not worried.

One cool miracle that happened this week was that this way old guy came to church and introduced himself as a member that was baptized in the 90's in a place about 3 hours away, but he stopped coming to church when that ward got shut down. But he moved down to Gangneung, and now he's back at church. We were really excited about that. It doesn't happen every day here.

So my amazing grandma sent me a football in a package, and now me and Elder Larson play football every morning. I'm learning to run routes and also to throw them, and it's way fun. I don't think I have a career in the NFL, but it's way fun nonetheless. :D

One funny thing that happened was on Sunday. Me and Elder Larson were leaving the church after Ward Choir practice, and one of the little girls followed us outside. She's maybe 3, and she is definitely the cutest little girl I have ever met. Hands down. To sum up her personality, as one missionary that served here put it, "Her hobbies are being adorable and crying." We definitely proved that on Sunday, because as we were pulling out on our bikes she started to climb up on another one in the parking lot. If we had left her there she would have fallen and died or something, so we tried to get her to go inside, but as everyone knows, reasoning with a 3 year old will almost never work. So we just tipped the bikes over instead. :D She pulled the puppy dog eyes on my companion, and it almost worked, but I convinced him to walk away, and when she saw that she started crying at the top of her lungs. We were going to just leave her, but all the passerby were looking at us like we were child abusers, so we just picked her up and brought her inside. The ward members know her well, so they took her with a look of "here we go again..." It was way funny. :D

The food of the week is aloe. It comes in a drink here, which tastes similar to grape juice, only you have to chew it a little. I love it.

:D I hope you have a good week, You are all awesome!

Elder Matt Dean

April 22, 2012

We have a baptism coming up this week! Woo! Hwang Gi Seok is still doing great. He accepts everything we teach him without question, and he even said he will stop smoking to join. We were teaching him with  a member yesterday, and Hwang Gi Seok said that he's been thinking of joining a church for  a long time, even before his stroke. His younger brother is a pastor at a Catholic church down south, and he said that when he talked to his brother, his brother said to join a church. Normally in Korea a pastor would say to join their church, but Hwang Gi Seok's brother didn't--he said it didn't matter which church to join as long as he joined one. That and a few other events in Hwang Gi Seok's life have really prepared him to accept the gospel, and it was way cool. If he can keep from smoking this week, we'll baptize him on Sunday!

I love the kids here in Gangneung branch. There are three or four full families that make up the branch, and they have one or two kids each. They are hilarious! I'm pretty sure all Korean kids love rock, paper, scissors; we play that all the time with them. Yesterday the adults were in a meeting before a branch dinner at the church that they invited us to, and we got there a little early. So we played with the kids. They are from ages two to maybe age 12, and we had an awesome time having races. I rode one of their bikes around the church, and one of the boys pushed me because my legs were so long that I couldn't pedal. A couple of the girls chased us and ended up catching us because I had to dodge cars and low walls on a bike meant for someone 15 years younger than me. It was awesome! Korean kids are extremely energetic and loud, which is funny as long as you aren't responsible for them. :D

This week i learned that goals are really awesome. I read something in a language book about language study plans, and I realized that mine could be helping me out a lot more. Before, my plan was "Spend 10 minutes practicing to myself for the days' lessons, 30 on getting random vocabulary and grammar, and 15 reading the book of Mormon in Korean." That's good if you want to learn a whole bunch of Korean that you probably won't use. But now my plan has goals aimed at helping me teach better specifically in upcoming situations, and also at shoring up my weaknesses in the language. I'm excited to try it out. You know you've been on a  mission for a long time when you get excited by things like new language plans. :D

The food of the week is omerice, which is the korean phonetic combination of the English "omelet" and "rice." It's basically just an omelet filled with rice. We had it yesterday at the church dinner. The rice is more like the "chinese" fried rice that you get in "chinese" restaraunts in America. Korean has a lot of words borrowed from English that are now accepted as Korean words,  kind of like how we don't really think about the word "spaghetti" being an Italian word rather than English. In Korean you have "wa-ee-shyeo-che" (y-shirt: Western-style dress shirt, so called because of the Y-shaped neck), "beo-se" (bus), and other things that are really annoying to Romanize so I'm going to stop now. :D Anyway, I hope you all have a good week, and I'll keep you posted on the baptism. Annyeonghikeseyo!

Elder Matt Dean

April 15, 2012

Hey all,

The weeks seem to be flying past, but when I get to the end of another week and look back, the past Monday seems so far away! There's a lot of truth to the missionary saying that the days seem like weeks and the weeks seem like days. I remember experiencing that in the MTC, except in the last stretch the days felt like weeks and the weeks felt like months. :D Korea is so much better than the MTC.

So, here's a cool miracle for everybody. Last Sunday night, we met a guy smoking outside of his tattoo parlor. He was fairly cordial but obviously not interested; however, when we asked if we could meet again later and talk more, he said we could come by his tattoo parlor the next day. So we said ok. Then last Monday after Pday, we were walking over there to go see him in the dusk of evening. My companion Elder Larson said, "Are we really going to do this?" I felt a little sketched out, but I was like, "Yeah, whatever, it'll be ok." So we walked a little longer. There were no people on the street. We got to the corner where the tattoo parlor was, and I started feeling really weird. So was he. We kind of just loitered in front of this tattoo parlor with blacked out windows and sketchy pictures of skulls with snake bodies coming out of them, and we didn't really know what to do. I definitely was sketched out.They should take a picture of this place and put it right next to the definition of sketchy in the dictionary. So we were standing there torn between going in and just leaving, and then the cell phone rang. It was our next appointment, a college kid whom we were going to meet in a cafe. He said to hurry because he was waiting. So I looked at my companion and we both said, "Yeah, let's go to that instead," in relief. And literally right then, an empty taxi pulled around the corner! This was in a place where it's normally really hard to get a taxi, and one pulled up the instant we decided to skip out on the creepy tattoo place. Later me and Elder Larson were both like, "Yeah, God really didn't want us to go in there." :D It was a cool testimony that God really looks out for us and protects us as missionaries. We saw the guy again later, but we didn't talk to him again, needless to say. :D And don't worry, Mom, that was by far the sketchiest thing I've ever done on my mission, and it wasn't even that bad.

Our investigator with a baptismal date, Hwang Gi Seok, came to church wearing some sweet shoes that he bought just for church! He had also dyed his hair and was wearing a nice shirt. For someone who lives in a social welfare center because living in the hospital for a year straight because of a stroke, we figured this is a really big thing for him. It shows that he really is committed to church life. We were wondering if he was just meeting us for English, but this eased whatever concerns we had. He is doing well, and he accepts everything we teach him without question. This week we learned that his dreams are to translate in English and Chinese at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in Korea and also to be able to speak English to his neice's spouse if she ends up marrying an Australian (she lives in Australia right now). It's so good to be able to teach prepared people.

The food of the week is budaejjigae. This one doesn't involve fermentation really unless you count the kimchi. :D You get this packet of spicy soup stock from the store and dump it in  some water, and then add ramen noodles, sliced hot dogs, little rice cakes, kimchi, onions, and beans, and boil it for a few minutes. Done. It's so good! A little history behind it: budae means "army base," referencing the American army bases back in the Korean War. Poor people that lived around the bases didn't have enough money for food, so they'd go begging at the kitchens and get scraps to eat, which they would boil up in a stew. Hot dogs, beans, and ramen noodles are not Korean foods, but they are really delicious, so Koreans still eat budaejjigae today even though you don't have to beg for it anymore. Cool, huh?

That's about all for this week, Love you all, have a good week!

Elder Matt Dean

April 8, 2012

Subject line: Week 2: Different, but good

Hey everybody,

So this was my first full week here in Kang Neung. I'l take a little more time to describe the city. I don't think it's as rural as I made it out to be a week ago (though that might just have been culture shock between here and Seoul, the sprawling metropolis). It's about the size of Salt Lake City, I think, and it looks a lot like it too.

We have mountains in the distance that are comparable to Utah's mountains. The branch of our church here has about 30 members, counting children. We live in a sweet apartment building on the 13th floor. There's a river about 2 feet deep that the city is built around. It's really, really windy right now, but today it finally started getting warmer. There are buses and cars and things all over the place. That's about all. :D Oh, we don't ride bikes here--at least, we won't until we get permission from our mission president because a good number of our members live outside of the city in the true sticks of Korea. We'll see about how the permission thing goes.

I expected this week to be hard for some reason, some sort of premonition, and some things about it were hard, but there were a lot of good things too. We didn't teach as many lessons this week or talk to as many people, but I feel like the quality of my work is slowly improving. There has been some drama with some of the missionaries in an area in our zone that have a hard area but aren't really working that hard to compensate, so they are unhappy, but it's starting to smooth over. One big thing was the General Conference of the Church!

It's always so cool knowing that we are watching a broadcast that all the members of the church worldwide are watching too. The speakers were really good, though I didn't really understand Julie B. Beck's talk about the Relief Society. It seemed like she just said a bunch of things about how great of a women's organization it is and its roles, but she was using really hard English. :D I couldn't keep up with her sentences, they were so long. But it was a good talk all the same. I think the most powerfully delivered messages were President Uchtdorf's talk about not being jealous, holding grudges, or envying; Elder Holland's about not being envious when the blessings of the Lord fall on someone else; and Elder Ballard's about the real duties and attitudes we should have as holders of the Priesthood. As far as the ones that applied most to my work and therefore my life right now, the second speaker of the Saturday session (I forgot her name) gave one about children and how to help them understand and be motivated to live gospel principles. It really applied to some investigators we have right now that are ages 11 to 14 or so, that just don't have much interest in church. They are pretty much meeting us only for English, but I think I can come up with a creative way to teach them. If anybody has any ideas, let me know. :D

Yesterday morning there were some jets practicing for an air show in the sky above our apartment. Me and Elder Larson got some awesome pictures! I'll try to remember to send them to my parents next week so Mom can put them on my blog. Also this week, Elder Larson taught me all about baseball and how the post season works, which was really cool. I think I like baseball more than football, but we'll see. I have to go back and watch them both before I choose.

Oh, and the best piece of news this week--one of our investigators agreed to a baptismal date! His name in English is Hwang Gi Seok. He has had some really hard times in his life. His wife divorced him a few years ago, and his family all left him. Then he had a stroke, which caused him to be in two different hospitals for a year total, which drained all his money. Now he lives in a government social center for the poor. He said his life goals are to serve people and get his body in good shape to donate to science after he passes away.

He's in his 60s I think. He's one of the most humble people I've ever had the privelege of teaching, and he accepts readily everything we teach. I'll keep you posted on his progress.

So life is good like always. The food of the week is good too:

doenjang jjigae. Doenjang is fermented soybean paste that turns out tasting really good; when stirred in water it makes a stock, and then you add whatever vegetables you want to make a stew, usually potatoes, squash, mushrooms, and onions. You can add clams too but we don't usually buy clams. I made it for my first time yesterday, and it turned out really good! It's definitely something I can make in America if I can track down the ingredients.

Thanks for all that you all have done for me in the past, and someday I hope to be able to do a lot for you. Hope you have a good week!

Elder Matt Dean

April 1, 2012

Hey everybody,

Welcome to the Sticks! So, I ended up getting transferred, unfortunately. I'm kind of torn with that. I really miss Bong Cheon, a lot, but the missionary work in my new area is pretty awesome! I went from one of the most densely-packed areas of Seoul to a city on the east ocean called Kang Neung. It's in the infamous Kang Won Do, the province to the east of Seoul. Everyone told me that it's such a hard zone because there are no people, and because it's basically countryside. I didn't let any of that bother me, though, and when I got here I was really glad that I hadn't. The people here are SO awesome! In Seoul, the people on the street pretty much won't talk to you ever. But here, almost everyone will at least shake our hands and talk with us for a second before they politely tell us they aren't interested. I don't know if I can adequately describe the difference because not many of you will have experienced it, but it's almost like night and day. The people here are so nice, and my new companion, Elder Larson, said that the frequency of lessons we've had in the 5 days I've been here is way more than he had for two transfers before that. So, I love my new area. :D

My companion Elder Larson came from Mesa, Arizona. He's been out maybe four months longer than I have, and we are serving as zone leaders together. That means we are responsible for filling out reports and conducting meetings for four other companionships, This zone is smaller than other ones I've been in; usually zone leaders are over maybe twelve or 14 other missionaries. It's still a lot of responsibility, though, and it's a little stressful at times. But I figure that through doing this hard thing, I will have to turn to the Lord more than I was before, and rely on His help more than I ever had before. And that will be valuable experience for the future.

The area, Kang Neung, is probably the biggest city in Kang Won Do. It's about the size of Salt Lake City. I can see the ocean in the distance from our apartment building (our apartment is sweet, by the way!). The pace of life is so much slower here. In Seoul everybody is running, the air is thick with exhaust, and the people aren't that great; here people just walk, they actually talk to you, and the air is clean and smells like the ocean sometimes. We did have rain through the yellow dust a couple evenings ago, though, so it basically rained mud lightly all night that night. The cars were completely covered, it was kind of funny. :D We are a three-hour bus ride out from Seoul. The branch of the Church here is about 30 people, and it's doing ok. There's a lady from Oklahoma that converted to the church about five years ago, who came to Korea to teach English. She's way funny, and she uses really big English words. I have a hard time following her sometimes, actually, because I'm used to English that sounds like "How are you?" and "Where are you going?" Hopefully college won't destroy me when I get back. :D

Elder Larson is maybe 6'3'', and about my level of skinniness. He likes basketball and he did a year at ASU studying civil engineering. His family is ridiculously big; immediate family is seven, but when you go back two generations and then forward a couple, it includes like 150 people. He is a really good missionary, and I think he was glad to have me come because he didn't really get along with his last companion. We are having a really good time, and we get along well.

So in short, I really like it here. I miss my last companion and my last area, and the ward members there, but I really think life will be really great here. It looks like I'll be here for a long time, maybe till the end of my mission, but I think it'll be good. I'll organize my thoughts for next week, I'm still a little scatterbrained from the big change that I went through. I'm finally starting to get settled in though, and things are good. God really helped me to gain peace and comfort in this move with new, big responsibilities; I was stressing a little my last morning in Bong Cheon, and I felt impressed to read an article in our church magazine, the Liahona. In it I found counsel from our church leaders about handling this kind of responsibility, and though it didn't come out and say everything would be ok, it gave me peace of heart and an assurance that I can succeed as a leader. I take that as an answer from the Lord that He's behind me. I promise that He is behind all of us, even when we don't really see it. I'll make some interesting news to tell all of you next week; in the meantime, I hope all goes well for you!

Elder Matt Dean

March 25, 2012

Hey everybody,

So transfer calls are tonight, we'll see how everything pans out. I'm hoping for one more here in Bong Cheon, but the probability is that I have to leave. However, you never know until that call comes at 9:30!

I love transfer calls, it's way exciting. My heart gets pounding every time. I'll let all 'yall know where I am next week.

So sad news, Seong Su Hyeon texted us and said that he doesn't want to be religious anymore. We were pretty devastated, because he seemed so sure and so ready to change when we met him last. I think the problem was, we didn't keep enough contact with him, so when he went back into the world the next couple days, he saw a lot of differences between religious life and his own life, and it made him have second thoughts.

But we didn't really call him or anything, so he didn't get any spiritual strength from us, so he went back to the way he was before.

We were really, really sad. Obviously it wasn't our fault that he made the decision, but I feel like we could have done more. I guess I'll just have to learn from it and move on.

On Saturday night we watched the old Joseph Smith movie as an activity with the ward, and it was way good. I forgot how inspiring it is. It definitely made me see how much of an obligation we missionaries have to  carry the torch that has been passed to us; generations before us have endured a ridulous amount of trials, persecution, misunderstanding, and hate to get the Church to the point where it is today. And we have to do our part to work to build a better future for those who will come after us too. It's a grand work that we're a part of as missionaries, and I'm glad to be here doing what I can to help it along!

The weather is warming up, finally, and there's a lot more activity going on around the places we go. There are teams of city workers that trim trees in a cherry picker with chainsaws, sweep up the branches, bind them with plastic strips, and stack them neatly in the backs of trucks, all very efficiently. If anyone tells you that Koreans are lazy, they are misinformed! Also there are a lot of renovations and movings of the little restaraunts or printing businesses that line the main streets. I feel like small Korean restaraunts move around/go out of business a lot more frequently than in America. The streets of Korea are lined with these little one-room restaraunts that are usually really good, and all the buildings have bright signs all over.

I love the energy and vibrancy of Korea; it's made so much progress in the last few decades. Korea is definitely the most awesome place in the world. :D

The food of the week is bibimbap. I might have already done this one, sorry if I have.  Basically, it's just rice mixed with an egg, vegetables and gochujang, which is red pepper powder mixed with fermented soybean paste that's in almost everything. Bibimbap is definitely one of my favorites; you can order it in a dolsot, which is a large stone bowl that they heat scorching-hot over flame. The rice fries a little along with the vegetables and egg. It's super-good. :D

Hope everyone has an awesome week!

Elder Matt Dean

March 18, 2012

Hey all,

So we are meeting a guy named Seong Su Hyeon, who is 26 and college, and he wants to be baptized in April! Woo! The operative word there is wants. I feel like for two months or so, I've been teaching people who don't really want to change or accept anything we're talking about; most of the people we teach are only in it for the English. But the second time we met this guy, he said he didn't know if he could quit alcohol because he really likes going to the bars to see all the regulars there when no one is home at his dorm. He said when he drinks he is happy and it's way fun, but afterwards he feels empty and cold, so he wants to stop. He told us all that voluntarily. So we taught him the reason behind us not drinking alcohol, namely that it's a commandment from God that we got through Joseph Smith, and he really liked what he read in the scriptures about it. He said he would try to quit. Then he was like, "I want to know more of what I can't do." :D That was in English because he is fluent, so it would have been more of a natural thing to say in Korean. So instead of teaching him about what we can't do, we taught him about what we can do: baptism. And he loved it. He said he wants to be filled, and enlightened, and he wants the Holy Ghost in his life. He committed himself to read the Book of Mormon and pray for the spiritual witness from God that we emphasize so much, because it's worth so much more than our words.  it was just a formality when we committed him to baptism on April 28,  because you could tell he wanted it. It won't be easy for him, but we promised him it'd be worth it totally. Relying on God is something that doesn't leave you empy and cold; it provides a love that stays with you through any trial, any hard time. That's something I've really gained a surety of here on  my mission.

That was definitely  the highlight of the week. :D Unfortunately, transfer calls are next Monday, which means that in a week and a half I might have to move to another area of the mission permanently. I'd say it's likely, actually, because our Mission President hardly ever leaves anyone in one area for more than 5 transfers, which is how long I've been here. I've been really blessed to only have two areas on my mission: I pulled 5 transfers in Il San, my first area, and 5 transfers here. I'm planning on enjoying as long as I can the fact that I can say that I only have two areas even though I've been in Korea over a year. :D

I'm really going to miss the ward a lot. They are so generous and kind, and I love being around them. When you've been in one place for 5 transfers, it almost feels like a family. You rejoice when they are happy and grieve when they are sad. In this way we can fulfill the promises we make when we are baptized: to mourn with those that mourn, and to comfort those that stand in need of comfort, If we do our best to love people and show them that we care, we can do those things for them, and for me that has come as I've been in my areas for a long time.

For example, one of the families I'm closest to here is the Kang family. Kang Jong Tae's wife is the one who told me the Boulder Face story that I wrote here a while ago; she's in her 50's right now. But her mom is really sick. She called us this morning to tell us that her mom had undergone another surgery down where she lives in Busan, which is three hours away. Her mom is in the intensive care unit. From what she's told us, her mom is the most amazing example in her life of a faithful church member and follower of Christ. She was born in December of 1927, so long before Korea was what it is now. She lived through the war and had a family, and she converted to the Church when it first came to Korea. Now she said that nobody knows what's going to happen to her. Because I was here a long time, they trust me enough to tell us that kind of thing, and I'm worried about her. Obviously what is happening is not happy, but I draw a tiny amount of satisfaction from knowing that the members trust me. I think some of the best times on my mission have been with the members. If you could remember this great woman and her family in your prayers, it would really be good. Her name is Kang Kwui Nyeo. I'll keep you posted on what happens.

Life is good for me in general, however. Today we are going hiking on Gwanaksan, the foothills of which we live on. I've been here for seven months and I've still never set foot on it... until today. :D I'll take a lot of pictures.

The food of the week shall be...naengmyeon! I love naengmyeon. It's a noodle soup, thin and clear, that has ice in it. In Korean, naeng is a root that means cold, and myeon is noodle. It's tangy and often spicy, and it's way good with wasabi. It always comes with an egg on top because it helps you digest better. Way good summer food.

That's about all. I hope you all have a good week, love you all!

Elder Matt Dean