안녕하세요!
This week was sweet! I hope it was good for all of you.
Last P-day we had a super cool experience. We got to go to a place in our area called 하회 마을 (Hahoe Village). It's this super cool old village in the 안동 countryside. It has some of the oldest houses in Korea. Some of them are over 600 years old. The village was the home of the 류 (Ryu) family. There were two brothers that lived there. One was a Confuscian scholar and the other was the prime minister during an invasion of Japan at the time. But that's what the pictures are of. They also have a mask dance festival there every year so I had to get a mask cuz that's one of the things 안동 is famous for!
So our investigator Hamed that is getting baptized on Christmas, is from Egypt, and because of the political and religious situation there he came to Korea to work. But the stake president was worried about him and his family's safety with him getting baptized, so we had a talk with Hamed and the stake president and found out that we can baptize him and it'll be alright if no pictures or videos get put online. Because someone will find out and bad things will happen. So me and Elder Jang are pretty much doing spy missionary work. Super cool! But ya, you won't ever see any pictures, just know that I'm not lying when I tell you that I baptized someone.
Spiritual thought this week is to always have joy. I was reading my patriarchal blessing this week and just some of the stuff that came to my mind was that I need to always have joy and rejoice for the blessings that God has given us. As we do that we will be blessed even more and will come to know God and feel his love in our lives. So I challenge each of you this week to take just a few minutes out of your day to think how God has blessed you that day and to give thanks to him. I know that if you always have a grateful heart that you will be happier, and feel God's love more in your life.
Have a good week! I love you all!
--
Elder Geddes
December 5 Letter
ENGLISH CLASS AND THE SPIRIT
Hello everyone! Hope all is well! This week was super great!
On Monday we went shopping and I bought all that I need to survive the winter in Andong! We also got to pass by some cool Buddhist temple stuff while on the way the shops downtown. There were also some stuff talking about Buddhism there so we stopped and read it. Super weird. But they have kind of the same standards and rules as us which is kinda cool. But ya I'm glad that I can be in this true church which doesn't believe super crazy weird stuff. ;)
On Tuesday we taught English and then went to teach Hamed. He is so amazing. Super prepared to hear the gospel. We went in planning to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ and about the Word of Wisdom because we know he has problems with that. We had invited him to read the pamphlet on Gospel of Christ in Arabic before our visit so that he could understand better what we were teaching and he did. And then we started teaching and it was basically just we would ask his thoughts and he would explain it perfectly (in broken English) but he can really understand the gospel and he feels the spirit. It is crazy how strong the spirit is in our meetings with him. Even though the language barrier is hard and he likes to get off topic it is so powerful. We were worried that when we brought up the Word of Wisdom it might scare him off because it's part of his culture and who he is. But like it says in preach my gospel no one will be offended if you invite them with love and a desire for them to come unto Christ. It says something like that at least. So that's what we did, invited him with love to change. And he said that he had already been trying to quit smoking, and he already knew about the WoW! And then we taught him how to pray from the heart and he prayed at the end of the lesson and after he said that he felt warmth in his heart and knew it was the spirit.
That is why the spirit is so important in this work. We could never teach a man that speaks a bit of English and no Korean the gospel without it, and we would never be able to convert anyone.
On a more funny note, this saturday was English class. We teach them basic pronunciation, vocab, and conversation. I do the basic with Sister Jung and Elder Jang does advanced with Sister Lee. This week the pronunciation practice was the difference between R and L. Which are the same thing in Korean so it was impossible. I would say a work like read and they would repeat then I would say lead and they would say the same thing as before. So they couldn't differentiate between my pronunciation. It was super funny!
And that was my week in nutshell! I love you all! I love the Lord and all that he does for me. I'm so grateful for this short opportunity to serve him in Korea!
The cool Buddhist tower in Andong
The box of 60 bags of seaweed (which Koreans eat like chips, super good) from Elder Jangs parents.
And teach practice/attempting to embrace the culture
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