The unexpected..

Hello

Again, a lot has happened this week. I'm going to try my best to make this coherent without making it too long...

So we have an anvestigator named PJ (I don't think I've mentioned him before), he's 21 and he's a Chinese exchange student who's attending our neraby college. This guy loves Jesus. He's super pure. So pure that he was afraid to deviate from his own church and the Bible that he was about to dump us but we asked if he's be willing to watch a video with us one week and we showed him the Restoration. Flash forward to now and he is legitimately confused on what church is true after witnessing Joseph Smith's experience. And the breakthrough that I want to share is that he's finally giving the Book of Mormon a chance! He even prayed in English with us this last time and he is truly and earnestly praying and seeking for the answer of which church is true, and now the reading of the Book of Mormon is going to be able to speed that process up. We gpt him committed to some to church next Sunday too, so that's some awesome progress.

Alright, here's the shocker: my investigator died. In the literal sense. He has passed into the spirit world. I'll explain more... This man's name is 장제영 or just Jay for short. The Elders before Elder Seely was here met him and said he was experiencing a change of life and wanted to learn about our religion. Elder Seely and I hit him up and met him twice. He was sincerely interested and undertood everything and asked questions; this man was going to get baptized. But before district meeting one day I got a text that said something about "사망" on 11월28일 and with my limited knowledge meant that it new something about "death" on November 28th, showed it to a Korean missionary in my district and turns out that Jay had died of a cerebral hemmorage that day at the age of 40. I waited until after district meeting to show Elder Seely (he's got emotions), and then we went over to his funeral. We met his friend, older sister, and older brother. We got to see his tradtional Korean shrine-thing, offered prayer, chatted, left our information, and headed back to our area. It's awesome to have the knowledge of the gospel and know that he's doing great up there right now, and definitely getting some great lessons from some missionaries better than us. A nice testimony builder of the Plan of Salvation. R.I.P Jay~

We taught 박상민 this week for the first time since he's reappeared. We went to his new pad, ordered some chicken together, met his friends, got a little trunky when I got a peak at the Star Wars trailer on TV (I'm so jealous, words can't describe), friends left, and we got down to business teaching a monster lesson: the Law of Chastity. The Spirit was present, and we taught the lesson to the best of our abilities, addressed his concerns as they came up, but he's not ready to keep it. He just doesn't want to lie to us and he doesn't completely grasp the 'why's'. So we're hoping for a blast from the Spirit in one of these next lessons. He came to church this Sunday too. Love that man.

And the last big thing we did this week was pretty fun actually. We got a message from the Elders in our neighbor area about a less active far-off in our area that needed our help to paint his house. It turns out, in an area called 영천 (Yeongcheon) there used to be a branch a long time ago and this guy had served a mission and was crazy active but the branch got eliminated and so did his activity I guess. So we, our Sisters, and the other Elders went an hour into our area (our area is WAY bigger than I first thought I guess) to go paint his house. He is so kind and cool, his name is 이명식 (Lee Myeongshik) and he paid for a taxi for the other two teams and drove us over top his house. We stained all the wood on his house over the span of three hours, he fed us all inside (super nice house by the way), paid taxis for us back, and said he's invite us over again soon. A nice way to serve as a missionary that's was different from regular 전도. So that was fun!

That's all I got! Next week is transfers; I have no idea where I'll be. Not even any guesses.. Thanks for reading and writing!

-Elder Metcalf

1) Our chicken party/lesson with 박상민 2) Painting the house