I'M STILL HERE

Sorry about the random two week hiatus. We almost got slayed by transfer week but we made it through with minimal casualties (don't worry, no one actually died we were just HECK busy).

UPDATE TIME:

-Elder Lee and I are staying together for another transfer! This starts my fourth transfer serving here in 온천 Oncheon. Actually, all the elders from last transfer stayed for another because we have to give all of our finance secretary/office secretary training to the senior couple that comes sometime this transfer. 

-We had a crazy day this Tuesday when we sent home all of our "dying missionaries" in the morning (We went back and forth from the HQ three times because they were all going at different times), had a meeting for this transfer's two new trainers without President Jeong or Sister Kim in the afternoon (they had another important meeting to get to), and then picking up the two new trainees by ourselves in the evening. But luckily President Jeong and Sister Kim were there the next day and the rest of the week for all the meetings (it feels weird having them gone)

-Also, it doesn't sound too big but we took care of all of the banking stuff for our mission this week while handling on those meetings with minimal mistakes so that was a HUGE miracle. We weren't sure we were going to have enough time to do it all haha

-ANOTHER MIRACLE: We didn't have any time this week to proselyte on the street or teach anyone but during a "service activity" that our ward members all signed up for (turns out it was just a tour of a Buddhist temple) but we made a new friend! He was a high school student named 준호 Junho who was trying to get some service hours and he's down to meet again some other time! 

-We had our ward Christmas party! We had no time to prepare for it but the youth of the ward went hard and took care of all of it almost completely by themselves. We helped them with a little song and dance and then we played some games altogether. And our Bishop's younger brother 김진우 Kim Jinoo came too! And then came the next day to sacrament meeting! This is the third week in a row he's come, and he says he's starting to consider baptism more and more lately. We're hoping to set a baptismal date with him sometime this week~

-We had the choir performance in Daegu this Sunday and it felt so good to be back. All the members keep asking me to transfer back to Daegu haha There were too many familiar faces to count and the performance was the best one we've had so far! A TON of people showed up and it looked like almost everyone brought some friends.

-Talked with my family today during P-Day! It was my last video call with my family; the next time I see their faces will be when they pick me up from the airport. That's a weird thought. 

-Also, I got a cold so it sounds like I've been smoking a pack a day for the last handful of years. But the miracle of it all was my voice disappeared AFTER all the meetings were done. Thanks Heavenly Father, you the best. I'm gonna need it back for next week's mission Christmas meetings though...

SPIRITUAL STUFF:

I didn't actually have a lot of time to do personal study this week but in the short time that I did, I read Mosiah 14. It's a chapter written by the prophet Isaiah, which usually implies that it's pretty hard to understand, but this one actually made a lot of sense to me this time around (it also helps that it's only 12 verses long haha). It's a chapter all about Jesus Christ and His sufferings for us. And what stood out to me this time was just how hard of a time the Savior had during his mortal ministry. It says that he was "despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief". Maybe a transfer or two ago, a sister missionary gave her last testimony said that she had too many hard times to count but she could say that she was "happy" every day of her mission. Her definition of happiness wasn't just the absence of sad or hard things, but rather something that was determined by her attitude towards those things and remembering how much she loved what she was doing. I imagine the Savior Himself was always happy deep inside too; not because there was always good things happening to Him but because He understood and accepted perfectly what He was there to do. We're going to have a lot of hard times too but it's comforting to know that He was there with us. "Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows... he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." If we can remember that much, I know we can be happy every day too. Don't forget the reason for the season this year during Christmas~

Have a Merry Christmas!

-Elder Metcalf

PICS:

1-2) Elder Lee in our natural habitat (the office). There are a TON of packages here right now. 3) Ice cream last P-Day (one of the missionaries was going home next day so he paid for most of it) 4) Family dinner

MORE PICS:

1) Elder Lee and I got our Christmas packages too 2) There were three different groups of missionaries we sent home but we only had time to take a picture for one of them, oops; these were sister missionaries that started their mission while I was still in the MTC (TIME IS FAST) 3-4) The trainee meeting and the trainees (there were so few that we just did it in President Jeong's office) 

                                                         1-4) Proselyting activity shenanigans 

1-4) Oncheon Ward Christmas Party

1) Daegu Choir Performance 2) My old friend Lorenzo from Suseong came to see me at the performance 3) Filling up our gas in the middle of nowhere 4) K.O. on the way to or from somewhere, I don't even remember 5) Making our way over to our "service activity"

The Coltons leave us and it's choop outside

HELLO EVERYBODY~

Sorry it's been a bit since I've written one of these. But to start this email off, I'd like to tell you the biggest miracle I've seen this week (maybe this entire transfer): I finished my college application! That thing has been weighing me down for two transfers now and it got submitted this morning. I'd like to thank my angel mother and my baller cross country coach and high school physics teacher who came in at the last second to finish up those recommendations for me. There is hope yet for me to gain an education. We'll find out the results in February~

ANYWHO, it's been an eventful two weeks! Or at least it feels like that. One sec, let me check my planner... Yup! A lot of stuff happened. Let me tell you about them:

- We met a deaf less active who fed us some darn tasty 김치찌개 (kimchi stew). My man Elder Lee is a Korean sign language wizard because both of his parents are deaf and we're trying to work with our less active friend here to start getting him to church and bringing some of his deaf friends who are interested. We'll see how that turns out later.

- THE KOREA BUSAN MISSION CHOIR is not something I am apart of (because there are too many people already and my singing skills are lacking). BUT, I have become the helper for the performances, which really just consists of me sitting in the pews, flipping the lights when needed, turning on some videos, and making awkward eye contact with the missionaries who aren't smiling so they can light their faces up (Sister Kim, our mission mom, has told us that the smile is absolutely the most important part of the performance). I catch myself smiling a lot too trying to "smile-coach" and my face kinda hurts by the end of it all haha We spent a day practicing and then we had a performance in Busan Stake two weeks ago, and a performance in Changwon Stake yesterday. I'm excited for the Daegu Stake performance two weeks from now because I'll be seeing SO MANY members that I miss from my old areas. The music is beautiful and the members are loving it. 

- ZONE CONFERENCES, they're all behind us now. This transfer's focus was the Gift of the Holy Ghost and we learned a lot about how to prepare ourselves to receive that gift. We also heard a lot of good testimonies from the nine missionaries who are leaving this transfer, the majority of them being the sister missionaries I met in the MTC. I realized I'm a really old missionary now and slowly all of the missionaries I know I sliding back home... We won't think about the fact that I don't have much time left either but instead we'll focus on the awesome spirit we felt hearing some testomies from missionaries who have served faithfully for a year and a half or two years~

- We moved a house this week for our area's sisters. Their new building wouldn't let us use the elevator so we had to use a little more muscle than expected but it all got done and no one was hurt.

- Elder Lee has a driver's license but he has little to no experience, so when we need to go somewhere relatively easily we ask him to drive. Why am I mentioning this? Because I now know what my mom felt like when I was first learning how to drive and I'm reconsidering letting my future children drive later in life... But don't worry, he's doing great and he's going to be a natural here soon.

- We got our last week of financial training and information from Elder Colton this week. They be leaving tomorrow to go back to America. We're going to miss them a ton and we're thankful for all the things they taught us, both through their words and actions. I hope I can be as spiritually ripped as the Coltons are by the time I'm their age. And we're also said to see them leave because now Elder Lee and I are really on our own for mission finances haha It's intimidating but we'll survive. 

Elder Colton is an amazing financial secretary trainer for a number of reasons but one of them is the way he connects God's plan to us handling the finances. Many times he's told us that we were put here in the office at this specific time to handle the changes in the office. He's told us that it's a sign of trust from our mission president to ask us to do such a thing, but that trust first came from God himself, and we have nothing to worry about. This is just our situation but I know that everyone is in the place that God is expecting them to be and that he is continuing to lead our individual paths day by day. We have work that only we are meant to do and when trials or hard times come along, it is a sig of His pure love and trust for us. We got this and so do you (with whatever you're doing).

That's all I got! Love ya, bye~~~

PICS

1) It's choop outside now (춥다 = "choopda"; to be cold) and President's coat is toasty; he let us all try it on (it's SUPER long) 2) Elder Reiley is not too excited about the choop. 3-4) We ate some exotic seafood leftovers at Pres. Jeog's house after some fancy meeting with all the stake presidents in our mission (it looks like a brain) 

MORE

1) Lunch at the house we just moved (the housing supervisor for our mission bought it for us) 2-3) We went to the bathhouse last P-day with Pres. and another team of Elders in our district happened to be there too; we had breakfast altogether after bathing ourselves in bathhouse Disneyland (it's an A+ public bathhouse)

Sorry, it's been wild

HELLO FAMILY AND FRIENDS,

Sorry I haven't written for a while, the past two weeks were more busy than usual. (actually it's still a little busy so I'll have to keep this email more on the shorter side of things)

THE REFILL:

Transfers happened. I'm here with my man Elder 이해성 "Jack" Lee. We had a ton of meetings the first week as we always do and none of them went according to plan but that's alright because the Spirit was there for all of it. Dropped off the "dead' missionaries (including my beloved follow-up trainer Elder Seely; I miss him deeply) and picked up the new missionaries. I'm sure other first-week office shenanigans (not actually 'shenanigans' but after being here for three transfers it feels like it) took place but my mind only holds one week's worth of information so that history has mentally expired (sorry again). The week after that consisted of Elder Lee and I learning finances from our mission finance secretary Elder Colton, who will be returning back home to America sometime in the middle of December. We were trained on a lot. It was all in English (which is difficult for both me and my companion at this point), and saw a lot of numbers and bills and other financey things. We don't know how to completely do it ourselves yet which is why this week is dedicated to practicing it all on our own while he watches it, and the next week with us doing it completely all on our own. Neither of us really expected this to happen during our time in the HQ, let alone during our mission but with something as exact as numbers, we figure that if we make any mistakes it will be pretty dang hard to miss. We're going to conquer the financial beast for the next transfer and a half~ Also we went to Jeju Island for the Jeju Zone Conference this week! And for the first time in HQ history, the office assistants came with us! They had to come this time around for some choir practice and a service activity we did while we were on the island. FUN FACT: Jeju is famous for it's tangerines, and we were able to help a member who happens to be a tangerine farmer with his farm while we were there. It was fun because if you made a mistake while harvesting the tangerines, you had to eat the ones you messed up on. I messed up a lot, but my failures were delicious. 

SPIRITUAL TIME:

While secluded in the depths of a random tangerine orchard on Jeju Island with my companion plucking tangerines from a tree, I had a lot of time to think to myself. I learned two thinkings during my time plucking: 1) I appreciate tangerines a lot more than I used to 2) one black tangerine ruins the whole batch. 

Why do I appreciate tangerines a lot more? Because I didn't know that for each tangerine I used to eat, that some guy had to plant, grow, wait for the perfect time, pick the orange off the tree carefully with some clippers, and then carefully store it with a bunch of other tangerines before it's shipped off for ungrateful people like me to carelessly devour them. It's a lot of work. And with 12 people in 4 and a half hours, we were only able to finish 6 trees in an orchard of over 100. We have a lot of stuff in our life that can seem just a meticulous as picking oranges, but if we're going to finish an entire orchard, it needs to start with one tangerine at a time. I think I learned a little more about the worth of my small, daily efforts as a missionary and grew a little more in patience this week.

And why does one bad tangerine ruin the whole batch? When plucking the tangerines, I mentioned that we use little clippers. The clippers are sharp and the tangerines stem connected to the tree is very short so you have to be careful when plucking from the tree. When you're not as careful you can scratch the tangerine, or cut too far into the stem and the tangerine comes out wounded. Before we even started picking these tangerines the farmer told us, that if the tangerine suffers even a tiny scratch, you need to toss it to the side, because it cannot be mixed with the rest of the healthy tangerines. It doesn't look that bad but later while it's being shipped, that scratch turns into rot and the surrounding tangerines all rot in turn. I made a lot of little scratches on tangerines that day and a lot of times it looked very innocent and easy to justify keeping it with the rest of the bunch. But NOPE, you gotta either eat your scratched tangerines or throw them away to keep them separate from the rest. Like President Uchctdorf has taught about the direction of a plane, even a degree off at the beginning will send you to a completely different and undesired location if it's left uncorrected. We can get a lot of "scratched tangerines" as we live life but we need to make sure we're into the habit of getting rid of them in the moment so they don't grow into rot later. I'm a missionary but I still make a ton of mistakes, but I'm glad I'm able to realize those mistakes and change through the gift of repentance my Savior has given to me. 

The Atonement is amazing and so are these tangerines. AMEN.

That's all the time I got! I'm gonna go try and finish up college application stuff now~ BYE BYE!

-Elder Metcalf

PICS

1) Elder Lee and I 2) Elder Lee sniping some pictures during the new trainees during the proselyting activity 3) Beautiful Elder Reiley, doing his best transfer week face 

MORE FIRST WEEK STUFF

1-3) Dropping of dead missionaries at airport 

1-2) Airport parking lot poses 3) More dead missionaries (this time at a train station)

1-4) Pics at Gupo Train Station

1-4) The crew for this transfer;  Elder Oh, Elder Lee, Elder Reiley, and myself

1) New missionaries! 2-3) Spying on the trainees during their proselyting activity (someone threw away one of our passalong cards on the streets right in front of us ㅠㅠ)

1-3) The Coltons prepared and fed a full-on Thanksgiving dinner for us this week and it was AMAZING. I forgot how delicious American stuff is

1-2) The day after Thanksgiving we were fed a bunch of meat from President's house; I showed off my famous food child 2-3) The way over to Jeju Island

1) We fit six people in a small apartment room in Jeju the night after Jeju ZC 2) On our way to the tangerine service activity (if you look close there's a rainbow *whoa*) 3) This is apparently a delicacy in Korea but it's a cold ball of shredded beef topped with a raw egg, it wasn't too bad but the texture was weird

TANGERINE PICKING

1-2) We only had four hours to pick because a storm was coming in (look at the dark sky in the background) and we stored all of our picked tangerines in that ancient looking cement shelter 3-5) They fed us 김밥 gimbap while we waited for the farmer guy to show up, and the weather was perfect (until it started pouring later) 

1-3) Elder Lee and I (if you look close enough in the air , you can see flying tangerine slices that are being flung at us while Elder Lee tries to catch them with his mouth) 4-5) The "fruits of our labors" (SO PUNNY)

We ate meat in that ancient shack after we were done, served by our member farmer friend and then packed up ourselves into the van and headed back home (also I was reunited with Elder 설진영 Seol Jinyeong for a bit, also my old companion Elder Kim)

Heading back home to Busan~

A final bonus picture of Elder Reiley's foot