갑자기 missionaries

~~~HELLO~~~

The week has been interesting, I'm just going to hop right into it...

STUFF HAPPENED:

- We tried getting all of the elders in Busan together to play a game of soccer but none of the public fields around us were open, so half of our elders went home and the remaining half found a random basketball court at a nearby college and we played ball for like three hours. We're going to try and organize another Busan elders soccer day though!

- SAD NEWS: An elder in another area has to go home early because he broke his foot while... playing soccer. So I don't think we'll be planning that soccer day in Busan anymore... We'll be preparing him to go home tomorrow but in the meantime we've been preparing his travel plans and paperwork and whatnot. Sad to see a missionary leave earlier than expected.

- GOOD NEWS: We got a random missionary sent to our missionary! She was serving in California Irvine Mission for like a year and then got reassigned to Busan Korea Mission. Why? We're not sure. But she's a Korean sister who's really good at English now. We picked her up last week Tuesday and she's been assigned to our area here in Oncheon.

- MORE GOOD NEWS: A handful of other missionaries got assignment changes concerning our mission too! A few are coming more early than expected, one of them had visa problems but finally entered the MTC, and another one got reassigned from Hong Kong to our mission. Our mission has shrunk a lot lately so it's nice to see people coming in.

- EVEN MORE GOOD NEWS: The new Office Couple, the Durrants, came into Korea out of nowhere yesterday! They had a ton of flight problems so we weren't sure when they'd show up to our mission but they got a bunch of random flights and they showed up at the airport in Busan after church yesterday. None of their bags got taken on their flight so all of there stuff was still in Los Angeles when they called us from baggage claim. Also neither of their phones were working. And they spent a total of two days traveling. But they made it! They seem like awesome people and were exciting to give them financial training starting tomorrow. It's a huge blessing that Durrants came now because the office elders and the assistants might finally have some time on their hands starting next transfer~

- SOME AWESOME NEWS! Someone got baptized in Oncheon! It's been more than a year but someone in our area was finally ready to receive baptism! The sisters have been teaching a mother and kids English for a long time but recently they've been more involved in the spiritual messages and accepting the invitations that they offer. Eventually they started teaching in their home, and then eventually they met this mother's older son that they've never taught before. And eventually this son wanted to learn English and take the lessons too and then he was down to get baptized. And he did! The mother and the daughter are planning on getting baptized too but first they need to move to their new home in a different city. It's sad that such an awesome family is leaving but the good news about that is that they've already gotten in contact with the missionaries in that city! And they're looking for a house that's close to the church over there. Happy to have met an amazing and super prepared family. 

OTHER STUFF:

- We cleaned our office and house's carpets (the same building; we live right above the office). This is also the first time anyone's heard of our carpets being cleaned so it was DIRTY. We had lots of fun playing with the carpet dryers afterwards.

- Elder Lee and I met Eric, a South-African English teacher who live sin our area. The elders that were here before I came to the office had been teaching him for awhile and I even got to meet him one time last year when I came on exchange with one of the assistants. I was excited to meet him again when I first got transferred here but after I tried contacting him, he didn't feel like meeting with us too much since he was such good friends with the last assistants. So that was a bummer. A few months roll by and our mission starts doing morning proselyting. Which just happens to be the time that Eric walks to work. So we got to stop and talk with him a handful of times and after he heard that I might be leaving soon he asked us if we wanted to meet up sometime. And so we finally met him! He's giving himself some tie to find out about all the world's religions before really looking deep into our church but he's already promised the last elders that he would give the Book of Mormon an honest read 2 years from now. So there won't be any immediate progress BUT he plans on introducing the book, and the church, and the missionaries to his best friend in South Africa when he goes back home 2 months from now. We're going to help him find out where the church is in his hometown maybe sometime this week~

- We met with a guy in our ward who is going on his mission in like 2 weeks! His name is 조의진 Bro. Cho Euijin and he's super cool. He wants to prepare really well for a mission and he has a lot of curiosities that he wanted to ask us. So when we met with him and it turned into naturally turned into a planning session on how he could share the gospel with one of his friends before he left for his mission in Seoul. And he met with one of them yesterday! We're not sure how many of these friends will turn out to have potential but we were really impressed that he followed through with what we talked about with him.

SPIRITUAL STUFF:

Oops, sorry I've been slacking on the spiritual stuff lately. So lately I've been reading a book that my freind Elder Soffe lent me, called "Believing Christ". I was talking with him about how I believe the things I teach are true and I have faith but I don't feel like my faith was centered too much in Jesus Christ. And then he gave me this sick book that has totally helped me develop

my faith specifically in Jesus Christ. One of the big themes of this book talks about the "great dilemma" which is the fact that we've been asked to be perfect but it's actually impossible for us to be perfect. But then there's "good news" (a.k.a. the gospel) which is the fact that we can be perfect, as we rely on Jesus Christ and His atonement. I'll share a short metaphor that explains it. This is just from memory so forgive me for paraphrasing:

There was a young girl who wanted a bike REALLY bad. So she asked her dad. And the dad told her if she saved up all her pennies she would be able to buy one eventually. And she did, she was going hard on saving coins and doing chores and whatnot. Her father noticed this and he took her downtown to look at some bikes. The girl found the perfect bike for her. But then she looked at the price tag and she was wrecked. She only had 61 cents and the bike was 100 dollars. She said that she would never be able to buy it and she started to get really sad. So her dad made her a deal: give me all your pennies, a hug, and a kiss, and the bike is yours. And so she did so, immediately, and she happily rode her bike home alongside her father's slowly moving car.

We all want to "buy the perfect bike" (be perfect) but we're wrecked when we see the price tag (something we could never pay). So how is it possible? With His help. We give him our 61 cents, or whatever amount we have since all people will be different (our very best), and then we love Him as He has loved us and continue to rely on Him and he takes care of the rest. That's being saved by grace, after all that we can do. So keep trying your best and don't be discouraged! It's already been made possible, we just have to make the choice to utilize it.

HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT WEEK~

PICS

1-3) Tired boys during studies this week

1-4) Sister Kim gave us bacon for no reason. We didn't argue with her

1-3) Our office was full of carpet dryers that make everything fly everywhere in the office. It felt like a skydive trying to get to our house on the second floor. 4) A bonus picture of a lizard we found while cleaning our office

1) The perfect boiled egg 2-4) Cleaning the carpets and the baptismal font

1-2) we wear helping hands vest when we teach English class now (there were only two people that showed up that night so we let the sisters take care of it haha) 3) Driving to pick up our random missionary 4) We ordered a banner to take pictures with the returning missionaries when we drop them of at the airport 

김도영 Brother Kim Doyeong's baptismal service!

Really clever email title (I'm so sorry)

HELLO!

I'm going to try and make this quick since I goofed my time last week while trying to write this. 

OKAY. THINGS THAT HAPPENED LAST LAST WEEK:

- New Sun of 2019~

- I went on exchange with Elder Soffe for the second time during my mission. He's my "brother" (because we were trained by the same Elder Fox, our "father") and he's probably my best friend in the mission so we had a ton of fun. Things that happened on exchange: taught a guy who found the elders through a pass-along card (which is not common ladies and gentlemen), ate Outback in remembrance of Elder Fox, did some district sticker board proselyting, met a street puppy. 

- A SURPRISE TRIP TO ANDONG. Immediately after ending my exchange with Elder Soffe, I unpacked my things only to hear that President had plans on visiting the Andong Branch that Sunday and he wanted us to accompany him. So I repacked my things and we left. BUT WAIT, there are some other interesting things that occurred on this spontaneous trip... First of all, I drove all the way there on Saturday evening and all the way back on Sunday afternoon/evening. Driving doesn't sound that bad but there were two things that gave me a little pressure, 1) I was driving my president's car (and it's a nice car folks #reallyintensebackseatdriving) and 2) It's the farthest area from the mission home in the mission so it takes like 4 hours to drive there. So that was a fun experience. Elder Lee kept me awake by practicing his English which was both fun and cute (but don't worry he's improving). Slept at the Elders house over there after meeting with a friend of Elder Lee's (Andong is his training area, and he stayed there for 5 transfers), which is infamous for being really, really tiny (it was). Had church the next day, met all the angel members, and on the way back down to Busan we stopped in another city to get their interviews with President out of the way (cause they live so far away and President didn't want to unnecessarily have to drive all the way back up here again). Finished the interviews, did a house inspection all together while we were there, and drove back down to Busan right in time to make to a member appointment. It was a long two days, but fun looking back at it now~

LAST WEEK STUFF THAT HAPPENED:

- Bought some discount suits on P-Day (they don't look too bad), and then immediately dropped them off at the tailor's so they would actually fit us (now they really won't look too bad)

- We made some message card for all of our members this week. We had a lot of time in the office so while one person was doing office stuff, the other was working on these cards. We gave them out on Sunday and a few of the members promised us a dinner appointment sometime so that was a success~

- TRYING TO START UP ENGLISH CLASS, ROUND 2 (or 3?). We're going for it again. And the first step is to find people to come so we picked a day a week that worked for everyone and then all six of us Oncheon Ward missionaries went out with our sticker board ready to find some new English homies. But the weather had a different idea because it was COLD and REALLY DARN WINDY. There was a moment I was talking to someone and I got uppercutted by an advertisement poster. Anywho, we ignored the weather and we. went. hard. Got a bunch of contacts and we're going to see if we can't make a miracle happen this week when we try starting it up again. 

- We went on exchanges with the Ulsan Zone Leaders, and I stayed here in Oncheon with Elder 박진현 Park Jinhyun. He's really funny. We had no appointments for the day so we did some street proselyting and tried visiting some members but he was cracking jokes the whole time. And while we were trying to visit members we knocked on the door and the sisters had just finished eating dinner and they were ready to chow on some dessert and share their spiritual message but the member had us some on in and eat some of the dessert while we listened to the sisters' message. A little awkward to crash another mission team's appointment but a nice memory. Also we don't regret it because that dessert was TASTY (it was a Korean dessert snack thing called 호떡 "hoddeok" with Baskin Robbins ice cream on top). Also Elder Park cooked us steak for dinner (his mom sent him a steak in the mail; we also don't know why, it's okay) so it was an exchange to be remembered.

AND THAT'S ALL WE GOT. LOVE YA BYE

+QUICK WITH THE PICTURES~

1-4) exchanges with Elder Soffe

1-2) Elder Lee and I proselyting to kill time in a far off city while President did interviews (they had a long sky bridge) 3) We have a lot of food trash in our freezer because we had to throw away a freezer downstairs that had a bunch of this stuff just sitting in there (yummy) 4) Elder Lee gets really hot when he eats spicy foods so he eats with a towel and he looks like a character from Dragon Ball Z

1-2) President getting a massage from Elder Reiley and me wearing president's sweater while he was immobilized 3) Exchange with Elder Park and his delicious diced steak 4-5) P-day basketball (feat. Elder Sayer)

Receive lots of new sun blessings

I have no time but HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

I promise I'll fill you in some more next week but the past few days have gone by SUPER FAST. 2019 isn't going to get any kinder with the time I guess. I hope you all made goals for what you want to achieve this year and make some specific plans to get there! 

In Korea around New Year's they greet each other by saying "새해복 많이 받으세요" which literally translated means: "Receive lots of new sun blessings". 

It doesn't make a ton of sense and I'm running out of time but I hope you get lots of new sun blessings. God loves you and so do I~

-Elder Metcalf

NEW SUN OF 2019

It was Christmas and now it's almost 2019

Well, Christmas just came all of the sudden and New Year's is literally hours from now. These holidays are like time blowdarts. One second you're just doing missionary work and then you feel a quick pinch on your neck and it turns out it was another major holiday. It'll be no time before Easter comes out of nowhere... 

ANYWAY, it was another busy week!

- We had our mission Christmas meetings (doubling as this transfer's zone conference). One in Busan for the Busan and Ulsan zones and one up in Daegu for the Daegu, Changwon, and Jeju zones. We had a spiritual meeting followed by each of the companionships in the mission giving a prepared Christmas performance. It was pretty fun to watch, these missionaries had some creativity. We also got fed some super tasty meals provided by the Busan and Daegu Relief Society presidencies. Those sisters are the BOMB and they're even awesomer because they gave us some of the left-overs while we were cleaning up.

- Since it's the end of the year, there's a lot of special finance stuff you need to finish up before the next year's "budget" starts. So we had a bunch of random office work to do with that. The mission still hasn't burned down yet so we must be doing something right. I'm excited to meet the actual financial secretary that will be coming in sometime in January. Mostly excited to see his reaction when he realizes that we were doing all this stuff with a few weeks training and no background experience. I'm going to be relieved to hand this torch over to him as soon as he comes haha

- President Jeong, Sister Kim, my companion, both the office elders, and a select few other missionaries went to Jeju early morning on Sunday for one last choir performance, leaving me alone at the HQ with one of the elder's trainees for all of Sunday and Monday. I guess turning the lights on and off isn't a big enough role to justify getting a ticket to Jeju. But it was still fun back here on the mainland. Last transfer we didn't do a single exchange (because we were so darn busy) so my exchange with Elder Hunzeker felt like the first one in a long time. He's a really nice guy from Arizona that came out on his mission soon after graduating high school. We attended church on Sunday over in his area in Southern Busan yesterday. The members there were super kind and it felt nice to be in a different area for a day. I translated the whole 3 hours (shout out to the last 3 hour church of my life) for a Philipino lady and I realized just how bad I am at translating. It's one thing to understand but it's another thing to relay that information to someone else as you hear it simultaneously. I remember being physically tired... We also did some proselyting in between and at the end of the night and we found a guy that was down to come to our church next Sunday; he was PUMPED to meet missionaries. And another man, who we didn't get his contact from, was super touched that we shared a Book of Mormon with him and promised he would read it as soon as we get home I don't know if he'll actually read it or not but it's nice to meet a happy old man who loves Jesus on the street every now and then. 

And that's about all! And a quick spiritual nugget for the week is from Mosiah 23... Alma repents and teaches a ton of other people about the gospel, a ton of people get baptized, but they're driven away by King Noah and his people. And while they're in the wilderness they wrecked by one of King Noah's priests and their put into bondage. There are more details in the scriptures of how hard it was for them but to say the least, they were having a tough time. But instead of wallowing in their trials, Alma taught his people to keep going and trust God. "Nevertheless the Lord seeth fit to chasten his people; yea, he trieth their patience and their faith. Nevertheless-- whosoever putteth his trust in him the same shall be lifted up at the last day. Yea, and thus it was with this people." Whenever we're being chastened or driven into the wilderness, even if we're not doing anything wrong, it is God just testing our faith and patience. And to those who hold out and continue to trust in Him, they'll be delivered from those hard times and "lifted up at the last day", just like Alma's people. It's a sign of love and trust to know that our Heavenly Father is willing to give us opportunities to learn and grow. 

Thanks for reading and writing and HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

-Elder Metcalf

PICS:

1) The office elders crashing in the van on the way back from one of the Christmas meetings (they usually drive more than us so this is an uncommon rest for them) 2-3) American style home-made burgers to celebrate Christmas; not the best quality but it's the best four elders in our apartment kitchen in Korea 

PICS:

1-5) IT'S DARN COLD OUTSIDE. Our mission does morning proselyting first thing in the morning and it's freezing. We couldn't feel our faces and we were so cold that we were dizzy when we walked back into our house so we took a hot minute to lay on the ground and regain our senses. And we were healed by hot chocolate (thanks mom)

TWO DAY EXCHANGES WITH ELDER HUNZEKER:

1) The man in action, proselyting on the subway (we can't proselyte to women so this wasn't the most ideal situation for him) 2) We had some random finance stuff to take care of so he took the time to study the Korean language (he is an inspiration ladies and gentleman, look at the diligence)  3-4)  I showed Elder Hunzeker the gem of the Oncheon area this morning on P-day (we also happened to bump into our neighboring area's missionaries while we were inside because this place is just that popular) 5-6) We went to one of the bigger shopping centers in Busan for P-day today to hang out with some of the other elders (nothing special, but bought some street waffles)