KOREA, KIMCHI AND CONVERSION: 세해 복 받으세요!

Happy New Years everyone! This Week was 설날 in Korea, it's a big new year celebration! They all go to different cities and spend time with their families and eat 떡국 (rice cake soup). So because of this there were a bunch of families out, and also a lot of people not from Miryang. So it was a little different trying to jundo than it usually is. We did lots of stickerboard jundo with the sisters to try to have good conversations about the Plan of Salvation with families, but it seemed like all the people who accepted us and seemed interested were from out of town.... But it was still a fun experience and we were able to teach people that they can live with their families forever!

This week we had the special missionary worldwide broadcast! So we all gathered at the church in Masan. And watched it. They talked a lot about our purpose as missionaries and how to fulfill our purpose. I really liked the emphasis on repentance, I can do better at teaching repentance and "declaring nothing save repentance unto this people." Also along with the broadcast came a change to our missionary schedule! It's designed to give more agency to missionaries so that we can learn how to more righteously use our agency.

That being said the Korea Busan Mission Schedule looks like this:

6-6:30 Wake up, Pray

6:30-7:30 Exercise, Eat, Prepare for day.

7:30-9 Proselyte

9-9:30 Plan for the day

9:30-10:30 Personal Study

10:30-6 Proselyte, 30min companion study(60min if you have a lesson that day), 1hour Language study, 30min lunch, 60 min dinner.

6-9 Proselyte

9 return home

9-10:30 Call people, write in journal, prep for bed, go to bed at the same time as your comp.

It's super exciting! We get to choose at what time we do our companion and language study, and get the extra 1.5 hour in the morning to talk to people before they go to work or school! I'm excited to see the blessings that can come as we follow the schedule and use our agency.

The man we were so hopeful about the we met in Soosan on Wednesday actually ended up dropping us right there... So we had a lot of extra proselyting time in Soosan! Around 3 hours! We ended up meeting this student who said we can meet again and talk, so tomorrow we are heading back there to meet him! We're pumped!

Last night we had a really neat experience. We had dinner with our Branch President and his family. They are super awesome. He's so funny. He kept showing me how to eat the food, like I didn't know how to eat Korean style already, haha but it was soooo good! Then after that we had 3 hours to jundo since we don't have a lot of people to teach right now. So we jundo'd for about 2.5 hours and then decided to head home and talk to everyone we see. But in Miryang there's no people after 8 so we didn't see anyone. We ended up getting to our neighborhood 20 minutes early. So we decided to burn time by walking down this street that there's never any people on. And on that street there was one man, and we said hi and talked but he didn't seem interested. So we gave him our card and said call us later, and he looked at the card and said, I use to go to this church 20 years ago! Let me give you my number and I'll come to church! It was a miracle that we saw this guy! We walked down a street that really is a dumb street to walk down. And God placed this man in our path that seems prepared to learn the gospel! After all the hard work we have been doing trying to invite people to come unto Christ and not having much success it's a real blessing that we finally were able to see a miracle like this! I know that God loves us, and he knows who is prepared to recieve the gospel. He will lead us to them if we are being obedient and working our hardest.

Well that was a long one. Thanks for getting to this point in my letter. I love you all! Have a happy New Year and remember the Lord loves you and will bless you if you ask! "his arm is extended still" -Isaiah, and Nephi