Week #6

Hello Family and Friends!

It's been another short week here at the MTC, time flies when you're having fun!  I have less than three weeks till I leave for Korea which is exciting, but also painful cuz I just wanna leave right now.  

The Korean is coming well.  I've stopped teaching false doctrine, which is a plus in my lessons. I find it's easier to have the spirit when you're telling people that I'm thankful for God instead of I'm thankful that God doesn't exist, which did happen... I gave my first lesson that I actually felt comfortable speaking, the words flowed nicely compared to previous lessons.  Our investigators as so awesome! They are so accepting of what we teach them, even tho we tell them that they must completely change.  We had one investigator that stopped drinking tea, and one that stopped drinking coffee, even tho it made him tired in the lesson.  But they said they can both feel the blessing.  

Spiritual thought this week is about repentance and Christ's atonement.  His grace is sufficient for all men.  ALL MEN, it doesn't matter what you have done, his grace is sufficient and if we just turn to him we can be forgiven of anything and everything.  I use his atonement every day.  You may ask, what does a missionary need to repent of? There's always room to repent, even if you aren't doing bad things, you can always turn closer to God and become better, and that's what repentance is all about.  Turning to Christ and becoming better.  So I encourage you every day to think of one thing you can improve on, whether it's not saying any bad words, or studying for a few extra minutes, find something.

Anyways, have a good week! I love all of you and I love serving the Lord! I know that we can repent and become like him even tho we make mistakes, and that is the beauty of the atonement! It works! I know it!

Love,

Elder Colton Geddes

Korea Busan Mission

Week #5

Hello everyone! I hope all is well at home, in the field, or wherever you are!  I don't really know what to talk about cuz this week was the same as the last few weeks.  I guess I'll just share a story or two.  

We taught The Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity lessons for our first time this week.  Those are way fun to teach cuz you're teaching them basically that if they do this they will get a crazy amount of blessings and it will change their lives.  But anyways in the Law of Chastity lesson I was suppose to talk about how the Law of Chastity prohibits certain stuff, but I accidentally told the investigator that the law of chastity abstains from that stuff, like it's the one doing the abstaining, not the people following it.  Hopefully he understood it and hopefully my poor explanation of the story makes sense to you all.  But the spirit was there and he committed to live it and read the pamphlet we gave him about it. So that's good! 

I saw Elder Hawkins, which was awesome! He's the only white missionary in his district so that was kinda funny, but he seems to be doing well.  I bore my testimony to him in Korean and then we talked a bit with him and his district.  They are all awesome, missionaries are just awesome ya know?  

My companions are doing well!  We get along pretty good most of the time.  Elder Meyer still won't eat anything, he usually eats noodles with no sauce or just bread, Elder Hubble probably eats 3 times as much as me, and I've been gaining weight so I don't know how he does it.  

We found out that there were peppers growing at the MTC so we all decided to try them.  It was a bad idea... They were absolutely disgusting and also really burned my mouth, and later on they caused some troubles with my belly, which stunk, but it was fun! 

Anyways, thinks are getting a bit repetitive, so sorry that this letter is boring and lame, but have a good week!  I love you all!!

-- 

Elder 게디스

PS that's the name that'll be on my cool name tag when it gets here :)

The Three Rings of Korean Knowledge....

Week #4

안녕하세요!

This week has been awesome!  I have been learning and growing so much the last few weeks.  One thing this week that I learned is to not get discouraged, the people in my district are brilliant.  I'm a smart guy but these Elders and Sisters make me look bad.  My companion, Elder Meyer, knows pretty much every word in the english and 한국말 (Korean) dictionary, and my other companion Elder Hubble, I swear understands everything that people say.  But I realized this week that it doesn't matter who's better at Korean right now, because everyone progresses at their own pace and I have still learned A TON the past couple weeks.

We learned how to bear our testimonies in Korean last week so our homework was to go and share our testimonies to random people.  It's nice that for now pretty much everyone says yes when I try to teach them, hopefully it'll be that way in Korea.  I made it a goal to share 35 testimonies this week, or 5 a day. It doesn't seem like much but when you are in a classroom for 9 hours a day and the rest of your time is spent preparing lessons or eating you sometimes forget about it.  It's fun to go and share the gospel with people walking around, and even more fun to see some of their faces when I start spouting things off in Korean.  A cool story that happened this week was that Elder Meyer got sick, so we had to go out of the MTC boundaries to go pick up his medicine at the BYU health place.  It was weird to be out walking down the street and seeing normal people but it was fun. While we were there though the super nice sister that helped us out at the front desk let me bear my testimony to her, and it just so happened that that sister was one of my best friends, Maddie Smith! It's a small world I guess, especially for me because I've been so sheltered for weeks... but it was fun to see someone I knew.  Another funny thing is the bathroom stalls, they are probably the best place to bear your testimony, the people you are talking to aren't gunna be going anywhere so I have them cornered! They can't do anything about it, if they were to say no I don't want to hear your testimony then too bad! cuz you just have to sit here and listen to it anyways! Most people are either ok with it or don't ever respond so it works out.

We had the amazing opportunity this last week to hear from 3 apostles in a row! I already talked about Elder Christofferson last week but this week got to hear from Elder M. Russell Ballard and Elder Quentin L. Cook!  I don't know how we got so lucky to hear from 3 in a row but it's basically been the best week ever!  Especially because Elder Ballard told us in his talk to get up with a smile on our face because we get to serve the Lord and that is an awesome opportunity!  So every day we all wake up and we go around the residence asking everyone "You know what today is? It's a great day to serve the Lord!" and even though it may seem like a stupid, funny thing to do, since I've started doing it the days really have seemed better, I feel more positive, and I've had a lot more fun doing the work!

That's pretty much it though, I love it hear! I love my companions, I love my district and zone! And most of all I love being a servant of the Lord! 

Week #3

Hello friends! I hope everyone is doing well! The MTC is still awesome! I love all the new friends I make everyday and all the new people I meet.  The food is iffy sometimes but I've had worse... My favorite part of the MTC is TRC, which is basically you teach a lesson to a member in your mission language! It's especially cool now cuz I can sort of pick up what's going on.  The members are so nice though, I love all the Korean people I've gotten to talk to and teach, they're so awesome!

Me and Elders Dave Abbott and JP Lefgren have the same gym time so we get to ball together every morning which is super fun! Elder Nate Bell walked by while I was typing and told me to say Hi from him.  It's so cool to see all my friends from school here serving the Lord, I am so blessed to have great friends.

My companions are really funny, Elder Hubble doesn't like to take his key with him to the shower so when he comes and knocks on our door Elder Meyer grabs his keys and slides them under the door instead of just opening it, then they get in a small (but joking) argument about keys, it's pretty funny.  Also Elder Meyer and I like to talk in a funny accent to each other a lot, it's usually an Italian mob boss kind of thing, we picked that up from some of the senior district Korean speakers that left this week.

This week we had two really amazing devotionals! We first got to hear from Chad Lewis the former NFL player!  He talked about his mission and gave a lot of cool stories from it.  It was pretty much the greatest pre-mission pump up speech of all time!  And then this Tuesday we got a surprise visit from Elder Christofferson!! It was crazy when he walked into the room, we were singing Hope of Israel and I just randomly got this crazy feeling, it was like an electric shock up my back followed by this crazy warm feeling all over. I looked up and he had just walked in! He gave an amazing talk in which he spoke about being the kind of missionary that God, the mission president, and the members can trust.  I hope that we can all strive to be the kind of person that God can trust, whether that's as a missionary, or just in our normal everyday lives.  I also hope that someday the spirit inside me is so strong that people get that same feeling when I walk in.  I know that he is called as a special witness of Christ and his church, just as I know I have been as well.  I hope that I can fulfill my calling as well as he is fulfilling his.

I love all of you and hope the best for you all in the upcoming week!

--

Elder Geddes

Korea Busan Mission