Recovery Week and the Everything Desk

HELLOOOO~

This week wasn't quite as big of a bummer as last week but we came back from the wreckage a little bit. The saddest part was that referral that our WML gave to us last week with that kid and his family wanted to be baptized got put over to A-team responsibility because Elder Staker is the only one guaranteed to stay for next transfer. So we don't get to meet with them unfortunately BUT from what A-team told us, he's pretty dang solid. He's actually got a baptismal date for the end of this transfer already, and he and his mom showed up for church yesterday so that's some pretty good news! And outside of that, we had a whole handful of other stuff happen to us this week, outside of the street proselyting, let me hit you with it:

- We met our referral from Seoul, 오준석 Oh Junseok, and he had ALL the questions about the Plan of Salvation. We informed him of it, but he told us it was too "abstract" and wanted more details like when everything is going to happen, the exact location of where everything is going to happen, exactly what the afterlife is going to be like... Long story short, the man wanted DETAILS, and we couldn't really give it to him. So we testified that this isn't something you can just learn all in one sitting and the most important thing is the time we have to prepare now so we can live with God and our families for eternity later. And he seemed to be moved by that and definitely still has some interest in meeting with us. Set up an appointment for next week~

- On one of the days we had a lot of time to proselyte we took some time to go grab lunch with one of the recent high school graduates in our ward who's now working at a Daiso thinking about going on a mission. So we met up, ate some pig stew together (my favorite; no jokes), and talked about missionary work. This man is a babe. Not in the physically attractive way, but in the good-person way. He was super nice to us. Talked in English. Asked a lot of good questions. Seems to have some real sincere desires to prepare and go out on a mission. And the best part, he payed for our lunch with his mom's money. A nice break from proselyting and a good feeling knowing that we were able to help a guy out with some questions/concerns about the mission. His name is 박진영 Park Jinyoung.

- WE FINALLY MET WITH SAM AGAIN. Sam is an investigator I met near the end of my first transfer here in Suseong, and it started out as just meeting up and talking at a park bench about who were were as missionaries while getting to know him, but then it turned into teaching lessons when Elder Sayer came in last transfer. It's been a month since we last met him, so we heading to the college campus that he works on (he's an agricultural laboratory researcher) and met at our regular park bench. He's been busy lately with a bunch of conferences that he had to go to different countries for but we finally caught him! We didn't go in with much of a lesson plan, because it had been so long, but we went in with the idea to talk about the Plan of Salvation. And as we were catching up he was talking about a girl he starting dating (around the same time we started meeting him) and turns out she's a Christian. So he was talking about he originally planned on staying at the university for work but now he has thoughts of moving somewhere else to be with her and maybe even marry her (WOOO). And he says that if he can make it happen, he'd like to maybe try attending our church down in his hometown with her sometime (because he goes down every weekend in that area to see her). And we were able to share a message about how God has plans for us, he's leading our lives, and what can we expect for after our lives among all the commotion. He was super interested. So altogether it was a slam dunk. A nice pick-me-up after the hours of proselyting.

- A quick funny story for the record... We met a potential investigator this week in the middle of downtown, in a small quite park just for a little chat. But the thing is, he's not really a potential investigator: he's an eternigator (he's been around for a LONG time). We met him on the street earlier last transfer and he was down to still meet the missionaries, so we grabbed an appointment with him earlier this week. We sat down in the park and he starts looking around.. "This is such a good opportunity! Look at all these couples and families! They all want to learn English, and about missionaries! we need to take advantage of this. Come on. I will introduce you and you will talk to them, and we will recruit them for your English and lessons. Let's go." I had to confirm whether or not he was serious first, and he was. And then I had to confirm whether or not he meant right now, and he did. I looked at Sayer. He looked at me. And we began proselyting to the peaceful couples of this park in the middle of Daegu with our 50 year old friend pitching the missionaries. It was SUPER funny. He went through like two couples and both of them were visibly disturbed by the two white dudes and their older Korean friend coming out of nowhere to talk to them in English. He changed his strategy halfway through to just focusing on teenage girls because he thought two American fellas like Sayer and I would have some sort of advantage in that situation. Nope, they were actually more flustered. He tried like three more times after that and then we were motioned back to our original bench to "take five", and he said something about how difficulty proselyting is. Me too, bud. Me too. 

I don't have any more time really but there was a lot more that happened this week. One of them included getting onto an American Military Base and my social security number, but I guess we'll never know. Got a lot of random free food from various resources as well. That's always welcomed. But anyway, I gotta go! Thanks for reading and writing! Bye~~~

-Elder Metcalf

 

More pictures will upload when we get our computer back.

 

 

 

BEHOLD, THE EVERYTHING DESK

A lady in our ward gave us a wooden crate and called it a "desk" but told us that it has a million uses that we had to discover. She's not all there in the head, but neither are we at this point, so we tried to discover some of the ways to utilize it. Here are some of the fruits of our labor. Thanks Sister 김라희~~~

 

 

 

They have no time, so we have a lot of time

Hey gang~

This week was more on the tough side. We're currently working with about 8 investigators and 2 or 3 potential investiagtors and we were only able to meet 2 of them this week. BUMMER. We went hard on planning last week of when we could fit everyone in but by the time we had tried to contact and coordinate with everyone, it got wrecked. All of their time, in Korean-speak, "did not become", so it left Elder Sayer and I with a whole bunch of time. And the majority of that time was used proselyting on the streets. The other bummer was that out of all that proselyting time, we weren't able to find anyone who was willing or interested to listen... BUT, although that hot-summer-Daegu-street-heat wasn't the best, we made sure to keep ourselves sane and have some fun during it. For example, Elder Sayer and I have come up with the idea to made a proselyting bingo board for when we hit the streets because there is so much that can happen when you go out to 전도. Still a work in progress, I'll have to update later on that. Anywho, I'll hit you with the big stuff that happened this week!

- Monday we got all the Daegu Elders together and balled up together. But it was way too hot so we spent the majority of the time inside the church just talking and being our regular dumb Elder selves. Way more fun than basketball and soccer in my opinion.

- A TON OF 전도 TIME. Also F U N F A C T~~ We 전도'd so far we made it to the zoo here in Daegu. The animals looked considerably more bummed than we were to be in the Daegu summer heat (no pics, sorry). We didn't think they were ready accept our message either so we didn't stick around too long.

- We met our "Sugar Daddy" investigator (he's crazy rich, super kind, and insists to buy us lunch every time we meet him). We taught him about the difference between the Bible and the Book of Mormon, as well as how they are comparable. He's seems to be down for the Book of Mormon! The next step is how to get the Restoration in there and help him realize why there's a need for one true church (he currently attends a pretty big and popular Catholic church here in Daegu). Also fed us some sweet traditional market rice meal stuff. His name is 장재형 Jang Jaehyung.

- We finally met that referral guy (the one who said he wants to be baptized)! He agreed to meet us at his office on a holiday and we tsrated the first lesson with the first principle that God is our loving Heavenly Father... And then he went off at us for like 40 minutes about how he thinks God is the opposite of that. Yup. Not quite as golden as we thought. We tried sharing scriptures and bearing testimony but it didn't look like anything was going to change his mind anytime soon. So I managed to find a window to mention that he had a lot of good questions and points but that our purpose wasn't to debate with him but to share these lessons and invite. Also told him that if he wanted to meet again we would address his concerns about God first, and that we'd do it with a member who atcually would undestand his arguments. So that was discouraging. It was also on the day we had like 6 hours to proselyte outside. Ouch. But it's cool because we ordered chicken to heal emotionally and celebrate Elder Sayer's year mark. Love ya bud~

- We had Zone Conference this week! It was focused on the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And it was actually super helpful because Elder Sayer and I were wondering how the heck we could preoselyte better (since we hadn't seen much success on the street this week); so we learned to focus on the Restoration. Some people will see us on the street, look at our tags, and walk away because they think that we're just another Christian denomination trying to pressure people to come their church. But the thing is, we're not "just another Christian church", and we have something that no other church in the world can even come close to: THE RESTORATION. It's entirely unique and it can benefit everyone on the street that we meet, so it was nice to get that necessary little refocus and guidance.

- We did exchanges with the 경산 Gyeongsan Elders this week right after Zone Conference and it was a blast. I stayed in Suseong for the first time on exchanges and I had Elder Vongsayo with me for the day. I have been with Elder Vongsayo and Elder Seol for three transfers now so whenever I do an exhange with them, they just feel like my second companion at this point. Elder Vongsayo is going home soon so it was nice to pick his brain and hear what he had to say about the mission. He's a great example of enduring to the end as a missionary and it was fun to learn from him.

- We had an Elders Quorum activity where we went out to the middle of nowhere, playing some 촉구 Jokku/Chokku? (Korean foot volleyball), and eating some duck. These Elders know how to throw a party.

- M I R A C L E : We got a family referral! Yes, you read that right. A member up in Seoul has a non-member sister down here in Daegu and their family has been exposed to the church a number of times and they're talking about trying to attend church. They have two kids who are kind of depressed and don't really leave the house so our WML wants us to go over, have some fun with them, and start getting them fellowshipped into the church. So we might have found the baptism that we've been praying for! we're super pumped to go visit them this week.

Aaaaaaaand that's about it! Thanks for reading and writing! Buh-bye~

-Elder Metcalf

 

PS Note from Mom...again there are pictures but I will add them at another time. 

Blowing off the brakes for the first week of the transfer

HELLO~

I'm gonna cut to the chase, we were heck busy, saw a ton of cool things happen and started our transfer out beautifully. I'm going to share some stuff that happened:

- We got asked to help clean one of the churches here in Daegu by our Stake custodian with some other Elders here in our zone. The catch was that it's starting to get HOT out here in Daegu, and Elder Sayer and i were the ones who got stuck with the outside work. But it had a happy ending because our beloved Stake custodian fed us some really nice (and probably super expensive) Korean traditional food. Fun times,

- We got two new investigators this week, and almost a third! I'll tell you about them... The first is 오준석 Oh Junseok, who is a referral from some missionaries up in Seoul who found his contact information while digging through their phone. We met him earlier this week; he wants to learn English from us and also wants to learn about life after death. Luckily we can help with both of those things. Our other new investigator is actually a bit of an interesting story. His name is 송야광 Song Yaguang, or just Edward, and he's from china. We met him for the first time a number of weeks ago when Elder Sayer and I got our first member referral ever (the guy who said he wants to get baptized; he's cancelled on us 3 weeks in a row ㅠㅠ) and visited his office. When we visited, he introduced us to everyone else in the office too, and one of them was our Chinese friend who Elder Sayer chatted with about basketball and then got his contact, shortly afterwards. He messaged us earlier this week asking if he could meet us, and so we did. He too wants to learn English from us and he's also pretty interested in our church and how it's different. So we invited him to church this Sunday and he came! And he had all of church translated in Chinese because one of our members served a mission in Taiwan and PJ, Chinese convert from back in 경산 Gyeongsan, also attends the military branch here in Daegu. He loved it, and he's planning on coming back. We already ordered his Book of Mormon in Chinese from our HQ~ Our third guy, who didn't quite become an investigator is 나준성 Nah Junseong, or Lorenzo, who came to our baptismal service last week. While we were planning our day earlier this week, we had a big block of proselyting time and I don't know why but I wrote down Lorenzo's name on the side of that block of time and we prayed for our plan and continued the day. He's usually crazy busy but while we were heading back from an appointment, we saw him! We said hi, he said he was getting off soon, we asked if wanted to eat dinner, and he was down. So we met him and were able to ask him about the baptism, tell him about our real reasons that we came to Korea, and tell him about the lessons and what we do for people with them. He sat and thought for a little bit and then said "Good offer..." and then that was it haha Oh well, we'll get him next time.

- A mentioned PJ a bit earlier but I want to let you know just how miraculous of a convert he is. I was the first missionary he was able to meet, able to teach him, and since then I've been able to see him baptized, attend church faithfully, receive the Aaronic priesthood, pass the sacrament and so much more. Well, I got to see another part of his journey yesterday at church. He was able to go to the temple for this first time this weekend with the rest of the military branch members and then he got up and bore his testimony yesterday for fast Sunday. He talked about how much love he has gained and felt since starting this journey as a member of our church. He did super good expressing all of it in his limited English too. And then an hour later taught our investigator Edward the entire Restoration in his native tongue. HE IS SO AWESOME ㅠㅠ I love the tar out of that guy, way to go PJ

- Elder Sayer and I got actually wrecked on the street earlier this week when it rained trucks and semis out of the sky. We turned the corner of a street and a typhoon decided to visit our end of town. We walked five more minutes and then it started HAILING. We had umbrellas luckily but in five seconds my slacks went from sprinkled to soaked and we were getting shotgunned from the weather so we stepped into the nearest door and it turned out to be a bike shop with a quite Korean man who just saw two white dudes just invade his business in the middle of the weather warfare that was unfolding outside. We asked him to if it was okay to stay and he told us it was way too dangerous to go outside right now and that we could stay inside until it died down. Aside from that, he just ignored the two white elephants in the room and carried on with his day after we exited his shop 15 minutes later. And then the rain stopped altogether like 5 minutes later. Thanks for the swim Heavenly Father, it was a good memory~

- MY TRAINER IS DEAD ㅠㅠ Not actually dead, just missionary dead (he finished his mission = "dead"). All of last week I was able to see him with all of the last week of the transfer activities going on, so I had a long time to say good bye. But on Monday this week, Elder Fox finally died, and it was super sad to see my living memories of when I was first trained as a missionary go home. But the cool things was is that he had his family come pick him up in Korea so he could give them a tour of his mission. And in the midst of that tour, he took Elder Stewart (one of his former companions) and myself out to dinner with his family. So weird to see him without his nametag and out of church clothes after seeing him as Elder Fox for nearly a year. And now he's just Spencer. I recall a weird awakening when I saw him with his family earlier this week that the mission is soooo short. I'm not that far from being without a nametag and wearing normal clothing and just being called Gavin. That's scary. Anywho, I love my first companion and friend in this mission a TON, and it was bittersweet to see him go. Wish him luck.

- Not a lot of time but I gotta share one last thing that happened this week. So flash back to when I first got transferred to Suseong B-Team. There was nothing left for my team to work with, save it be two ancient men who were they're only investigators. One was just old and crazy, it wasn't much long until we had to drop him. But one of them was 장성태 Jang Seongtae, who has a CRAZY story. A long time ago in Daegu, after the Korean War had ended and Korea was still in poverty, there was a guy who pulled together a gang to support and help lift each other out of the poverty and it took off. This gang gained a lot of power and subsequently spread to other cities in the Southern/East part of South Korea like 포항 Pohang and 울산 Ulsan and then eventually evn down to 부산 Busan. It was so big and famous that in recent years they made a movie here in Korea about the founder and leader of this gang and it was called 친구 "Chingu" which translates to "friend". That guy who started the gang is my old investigator 장성태. WHOA. So here's where the missionary work gets tied in... His sister joins the church, helps convert the rest of her family, except for 장성태 and gets the heck of of Daegu to avoid the gang stuff. They move away, time goes by and we fast forward to a year ago when 장성태's mother passes away. On her death bed she tells her friend to send missionaries to her son to "save his soul". So that where the missionaries come in. Elder Seol and Elder Nations met him twice before I came to Suseong and then I was able to teach him more than half of the lessons. But the thing is, he didn't accept anything. Maybe ten years ago? the gang stuff was getting all riled up again and 장성태 was still at the head of it, but he wanted out. So in the middle of this scuffle with the gangs in Daegu, Pohang, and Ulsan they found 장성태 and they whacked him. With a hammer. In the head. And they named him dead on the news. But actually he lived! And he went into hiding and recovered from his gnarly head whack. So his head and health isn't the same that it used to be but during the time of recovery he had a spiritual awakening and got really into the Bible. So everyday he'd go to his office in this Podunk part of town in daegu to study the Bible and that's where we would meet him to share the lessons. Long story short, we got a bunch of contact from his younger sister in Canada who was trying to help us baptize the man, we tried to teach him, he didn't really listen, we brought our WML and an Area Seventy to help us come teach him, he still wouldn't listen, and so we dropped him and stopped visiting him. A month later his little sister calls us again and tells us he has cancer now, and that it might be a good idea to try contacting him again. And so earlier this week I call him to ask how he's doing. He says he's in the hospital and his body is not in good condition. I ask if we can come visit him or if there is anything we can do to help him and tells us that he's okay. I tell him that we'll pray for him and that if there's anything that we can do to contact us. The end. Or so I thought. We get a call yesterday during planning and it's a member up in Seoul who needs some Elders to go help him give a blessing to his uncle. Turns out that it's 장성태's younger sister's son, his nephew. We do an emergency split at church so Elder Sayer can take care of our investigator at church while Elder Stewart comes with me to help give a blessing. His nephew is SUPER cool. He's actually born and raised in America but recently moved to Seoul for his business with his family. While the rest of his mother and her sisters went to Canada to escape the gang stuff. So he tells us all the extra stuff about just how bad his uncle was a gangster back in the day (I originally knew that he was a gangster back in the day but not a movie inspiring gangster...). Tells us all about his family and how miraculous it is that his uncle asked his sister if he could get one of those priesthood blessings that she used to talk about. We get there and his angel wife and daughter are there (there weren't involved in his life until more recently), and we give him a priesthood blessing after explaining what it is and how it's based off of his faith in Jesus Christ. His nephew gave the blessing, and invited him to repent and be baptized so that he can rest easy in the next life. He also taught him the entire plan of salvation right after we were done giving the blessing with his wife and daughter present. 장성태 looked alot brighter than I remembered him being, he was thankful that we came, and then we drove his daughter back to the train station with his nephew. His nephew has plans to meet her later up in Seoul and talk to her more about this church stuff (because this was the first time she's ever seen missionaries). And then his nephew drove us back to our church, attended our fast and testimony meeting and bore a sick testimony about the stuff that just happened. And Korean isn't even his first language. He. Is. Awesome. Shout out to Brother 박유산 Park Yoosan. He's moving to Jeju soon. SORRY THAT WAS A MOUTHFUL. But it was super cool and I thought it'd be better to share it than to not. Maybe more on 장성태 later??? Who knows...

That's all I've got! Bye bye~

-Elder Metcalf

PS note from Mom...there are pictures but I will add them at another time.