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.
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