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)