A Lot to Chew (and Suck) On

I feel like sucess will come when we give more of ourselves, because God isn't going to step in unless we're doing our part...

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Hey everyone.

A lot of stuff has happened in the last couple of weeks. I'll have to be brief, but I wanted you to be updated.

Last week was 추석 (Chuseok), a three day long fiesta of a holiday that Koreans equate to Thanksgiving. As such, the country largely shut down, hindering greatly the amount of missionary work we could get done. To adapt to this we had a wierd week. We had two different P-days, one on Monday, like usual, and the other an emailless p-day on Friday. On Monday everyone else played football and I wrote a letter and talked to people and watched some really unexpectedly large Koreans play rugby. On Friday, we had a combined Missionary fiesta with my current zone and my new zone. We ate muffins, played signs, and watched the Best Two Years, which is even funnier after you have lived the missionary life. I wore grandma (harmony) pants like a fool and said terrible things, so I'm still me I guess.

The highlight of the week was not that though. It was cleaning day.

Not. We had one of those, but it wasn't much more than a college cleaning check. Minus vindictive Hall Advisors with vendettas against me and my room mate.

But forgiveness is a thing, right?

Highlight was Mission Conference. To lead into it, we had a mission fast. The idea was that it would give us a chance to refocus ourselves and call down the powers of heaven so that we weren't fighting such a losing battle here. Really good idea, except that I don't know how the whole refocusing thing went over. I feel like sucess will come when we give more of ourselves, because God isn't going to step in unless we're doing our part, and for a lot of people that isn't the case. Including me. The refocusing thing helped push me into a new phase of self improvement. I want to make myself the best missionary I can be, so I've been pushing harder. And I've got an opportunity coming up that will help me to push even harder. But anyway, the mission conference was super good, especially when I got to see my MTC buddies. Really good times.

The Seoul Korea Mission - September 2013 - Mission Conference
(Elder Whitlock's tiny head is in the middle of the doorway on the left side.)

Sunday brought a fail of epic proportions. This should tell you something about my Korean ability. We're in sacrament meeting, and the hour comes to a close and an old man stands up to the pulpit for closing prayer. I close my eyes and bow my head, accept that I'll have no clue what I'm praying for, reflect on the emptiness of my impending "amen", then ponder the mysteries of life for about ten minutes. I was, understandably confused, but this is a very different place, so I continued to try to figure out how to fix Africa or some such until I just couldn't take it any more. I open my eyes to discover that he's still going strong with his eyes open. As were my companions. And the rest of the congregation. Turns out that he was delivering a talk the whole time and my companion thought I was trying to take a nap or something. Yikes.

Minute to Win It - Korean Style

This week we had a game night thing which was fun. I went over to a different house and did a little reconnaisance for my ZL comp. Just trying to get the feel for how things went over there. Interesting trip, but I probably shouldn't talk much about it here.

I also punched the heck out of a picture frame. It was broken and I was trying to do precision punches through holes when I missed and punched through the wood instead, so I just kind of punched through every other piece of wood too.

Wished I could have punched someone else. We saw a lady on the street faceplant onto the pavement and her drunk husband reacted by hitting her while she was down. A lot. But we couldn't get involved. Made my blood boil for hours and still makes me sick.

The big news for this week is transfers. We were pretty confident that I was going to be staying here and killing  my companion (staying with him until the end of his mission, when he goes home), but that isn't the case. Not by a long shot. Transfer calls dropped a bomb on the mission. We've got another group of thirty coming in like mine, so they had to move every thing around to make sure that people from my group weren't training people from their group. Only 10% of my mission has been out for longer than a year. They did a really good job, but I ended up getting transfered out of 중낭  and into 길음 (Girum). I'm going to be working with the one Korean guy from my generation, 이종채. President was laughing about it. Neither of us have passed off yet, I'm still on lesson three, and we've both only been out for a transfer. He wasn't sure whether to call us co-senior or co-junior. Since I live with the Zone leaders, I'm aware that this is very much an exception to the norm. To my knowlege, we're the only people who won't get a trainer their second transfer, instead we have to train each other. I'm going to miss Elder C, Elder Ch (Shmazmbomber, Dr. Chaucer...), and everyone else in my zone, but I think this is going to be a really good growth opportunity for me.

If you've been holding out on prayers lately, send a few my way, cause I'm going to need them.

Whitlock out.

Going Dark

Hey, things are going really well over here, but something has come up which requires the vast majority of my email time. I'm going to entirely forgoe the blog and try to blitz through the emails I recieved with the rest of my time. This might become something of a norm for a while, and for that I'm sorry.  I'll try to get back to the swing of things again soon. Until then, know that I'm happy and well! Love you all so much!

Elder Whitlock, happy and well in Korea.  Actually made this shot...

Elder Whitlock's companion, Elder Coats.

Yeah, I'm cool.  

And Another Week Bites the Dust

"Illuminated by the light of faith, adversity becomes a vehicle for growth and death becomes a doorway from one phase of our eternal existence to another" (Elder M. Russell Ballard).

Life can be hard sometimes. When you encounter a challenge, don't back down, and don't feel sorry. Let that challenge become a part of who you are. Let it help you to be a better person. Let it bring you closer to Christ.

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Sorry for the shortness of this letter, but I had something important that I had to take care of this week.

Big things that happened this week:

1. We went to Dongdaemun for P-day. Dongdaemun is a massive market/flea market sort of area with a ton of really cheap stuff. I got a bunch of surprisingly nice 3$ ties and some 10$ cuff links. Because why not. My companion bought a lot of grandma pants (or harmony baji) and a suit, which cost him a little over a hundred dollars. So it was a pretty sweet day. This day, I also made one of the worst decisions of my life by deciding to diet super hard. For the next couple of days, I existed just a bit over starvation. I could handle the discomfort, but not happily. So my missionary work went straight down the tubes, especially while trying to jundo to people.

2.Meting with President was on this last Wednesday. I think. The date is irrelevant, I suppose. It was super fun because I got to see my MTC district buddies again. I love those guys. Also, a lot of the talk was about not wasting a single minute and being happy, so I took that as permission to cast my diet down to the abyss from whence it came and regained my happiness. Later that day, I was able to set up my first appointment! (Said appointment has now fallen through, but that is to be expected out here...)

3. My diabetic investigator, 신선배, has dropped off the face of the map. He probably decided to drop us, but I'm not ruling out vengeance from a wrathful ajuma. This brings our investigator count down to zero.

4. We did get a meeting in yesterday with a guy named 헌 (Hun). We got down to business, to go meet...that hun, but things didn't go great. We were all fairly sure he had robbed me for the whole meeting, he shouted the f-word at God, and has an extraordinarily skewed view on what a good father is and on the the potential moral correctness of school shooters. I actually led out in the conversation (English), but it was a rough ride. I poured out my soul to that guy, tying everything back into something that he'd said, and he didn't give a crap. Though he did eventually give me back my thirty dollars.

5. I also learned how to do calls. This is the process of going through old records and trying to reconnect with people. No luck thus far, but it is kind of fun. I like calls.

Spiritual thought for the week comes from Elder Ballard. In his book, Our Search for Happiness, he says, "Illuminated by the light of faith, adversity becomes a vehicle for growth and death becomes a doorway from one phase of our eternal existence to another."

Life can be hard sometimes. When you encounter a challenge, don't back down, and don't feel sorry. Let that challenge become a part of who you are. Let it help you to be a better person. Let it bring you closer to Christ.

Whitlock out.

Relativity of Death

I've renewed my focus on personal betterment. I can't control this mission. I can't control the members. But with focus on and a submission to what God wants me to become, casting aside all doubts, I know that I'll be able to fulfill what he sent me here to do. I will grow. I will adapt. I will succeed. I just have to learn to put everything that I am in God's hands...

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Mazeltov everybody.

Not a ton of time, but this week will be a bit more biographical in view of last week's impassioned plea.

The week opened up with a bathhouse excursion to finish out my p-day. They had saunas and pools and nude, elderly Korean men of all shapes and sizes. It was pretty relaxing stuff. It was a comfortable change from every day missionary work in that I was relaxed, tagless, and had a lesson. Met the most ancient of men and talked to him about the Restoration and Plan of Salvation. We built a bond that can't really be built any other way than having two guys that can't talk to each other talk naked about  modern prophets in a hot tub. Unfortunately, we had to refer him away, so not a new investigator.

We might have picked one up though. One of the guys that attends our English class talked with us for a half hour or so about religious things after class this week. His name is Jake and he's one of the smartest people I've ever met. He thinks deeply, like me, skeptically, like me, and wears a hat in such a way that we can never see his face, less like me. He told us that he actually had been coming (since long before I got here) primarily out of interest in our church. He's more into worldly fixes to problems (politics, economics, and what not), but he's interested in and curious about God, who he believes in. Pretty open minded. So we talked with him about some questions he's been having and he said that he would think deeply about our answers and consider strongly meeting with us in a more missionary setting. So score one for the Republic.

Our diabetic investigator has taken an interesting turn. We met with him again and had a pretty unfocused (his bad --- we generally don't introduce the topic of American superiority as part of the first lesson) discussion about the first lesson. We didn't make it through, but things seemed fine until the next day. We were halfway through language study when Elder Coats (my companion) received a call from an angry old lady of questionable relationship who lives with him. Said call escalated from a personal request to stay away, to a claim that we had incited him to do things that aren't conducive to health with his condition (something about bread?), to her screaming for about twenty minutes straight and threatening us with the cops if we ever contacted him again. After we hung up on her, we got a call from his less crazy 23 year old daughter who delivered a similar threat. We've never talked to either of them before, and neither of them had talked to our investigator before hand. In fact, we're pretty sure he doesn't have a clue about what happened.

So that whole situation is a bit weird right now. I'll let you know how it goes next week.

Spiritual thought for today is an invitation to study the symbolic application of the Jaredites getting ready to leave (Ether Chapter 2) and crossing the ocean (Ether Chapter 6) story. I learned a ton from it, even before my mission. I usually focus a lot on the stones incident (Ether Chapter 3) and what those mean, but studying through it this time, I found that their preparation, travel method, and course had a lot of application in understanding life and the plan of salvation. One thing I'll point out, briefly, is that the way that they traveled was based on a total surrender of control. The barges didn't have any way to control where they were going, so they had to rely on the Lord to bring them safely to their destination. And he did. Though it wasn't an easy trip (they were stuck in those things for almost a year), God never ceased to push them towards where he wanted them to be.

I've renewed my focus on personal betterment. I can't control this mission. I can't control the members. But with focus on and a submission to what God wants me to become, casting aside all doubts, I know that I'll be able to fulfill what he sent me here to do. I will grow. I will adapt. I will succeed. I just have to learn to put everything that I am in God's hands.

Wish me luck.

Whitlock out.

The Month Mark Report

Missionary work has many different faces. Serving in God's Army (which I've never seen so don't take that as a reference) involves a lot of different duties. It also involves fighting on many different fronts. There are areas where the amount of progress is epic, where people are being baptized and genuinely converted by the thousands. I like to compare that to the western front of WWII. ... the struggle ... came with a certain amount of accomplishment. I can't think of a single large battle where the Germans defeated the Americans. It was a big, successful push to glorious victory. That's not where I am.

Korea is like the Eastern front. The Eastern front was a place where two men would share a rifle and each carry a clip. They would be sacrificed by thousands, fighting for every inch in bloody, costly warfare. That is a bit like where I am...

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Now that I'm a month into the field, I feel like I've sort of got an idea of the flavor of my mission. I want to talk about it so that people know a little more about what's happening with me.

Kind of a blunt intro, but here we go.

Korea is an interesting place to be a missionary. The people are super nice, love Americans, and speak a lot of English. But they are not interested in the gospel.

Missionary work has many different faces. Serving in God's Army (which I've never seen so don't take that as a reference) involves a lot of different duties. It also involves fighting on many different fronts. There are areas where the amount of progress is epic, where people are being baptized and genuinely converted by the thousands. I like to compare that to the western front of WWII. Not to diminish the struggle, people were fighting hard there too, but it came with a certain amount of accomplishment. I can't think of a single large battle where the Germans defeated the Americans. It was a big, successful push to glorious victory. That's not where I am.

Korea is like the Eastern front. The Eastern front was a place where two men would share a rifle and each carry a clip. They would be sacrificed by thousands, fighting for every inch in bloody, costly warfare. That is a bit like where I am.

Korean is one of the hardest languages in the world for an English speaker to learn. So I came in here without a rifle, having to depend on my companion to do the work for both of us. But the real thing I wanted to write about is the lack of effectivity. We are here doing the work that needs to be done, fighting, but not effectively. We hit the streets for hours every day talking to people trying to find someone, anyone, who is willing to hear our message. We talk to literally hundreds of people every week. Hundreds. Why? Because we have time. In the last week, we taught a grand total of one actual lesson. One. And that was above average. 

Stats at the end of the week are different here too. Most places talk about "lessons taught with member help", "other lessons", "referrals received and contacted", and "new investigators". We talk about that because it's in our planners, but not in the same way. "Other lessons taught" for us includes anything where a commitment is made to do something later. So if we meet a guy on the street and he agrees to meet with us the next week and sets a time, regardless of if he shows up, regardless of whether or not he ever picks up the phone again, it counts as a lesson. And if we get 8 of those in a week, we're lucky. Then there's the other stat that we report on: jundos. We are expected to get a minimum of 140 jundos in a week. Those two stats are the only ones that we are usually capable of actually planning for, because here we don't get "referrals", we rarely have any lessons for members to come to, and "new investigators" is not dependant on what you have scheduled for the day because in 90% of set up appointments, the other people don't show up. The church is almost entirely built of people that were converted in my mission president's generation, or the children of those people. And that's only a remnant, cause we have an 80% inactivity rate.

I tell you not just to tell you, but also to explain what may have appeared to be a lack of focus from me. The reason I don't spend a lot of time talking about investigators and lessons is because they don't really happen. I could talk about jundo, but jundo is just a blur. Yesterday I talked to 24 people, got one phone number (which I can usually get more of, granted, but they don't turn into investigators), and zero appointments. I'm working hard, I'm focused on my purpose, but we are losing this battle. We need a miracle.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how to fix this, how to change it. So does President, of course. He's doing an amazing job of experimenting and adapting. But the fact of the matter is that we need member help, and bad. In the last week, my zone talked to 1500 people and found three new investigators. Last month our mission got five baptisms. However, out of the seven member referalls that my companion has recieved, five of them were baptized.

I don't know how we can do more, but I have to figure out how. I have to believe there is more I can give. I have to believe that even though it's been a long night on the eastern front, the dawn is coming. I refuse to give up hope or surrender to the faithless apathy that surrounds me. But I need your prayers. Korea needs your prayers.

And more than that, missionaries need your help. Now, my family lives in a very, very Mormon part of Utah. But everyone knows someone, someone at work or school or a family member that needs this gospel in their lives. We need you to be bold, but not overbearing. We need you to love people around you enough to push a little and to help them to find what you have found. Perfect love casteth out all fear, so be fearless. Meet your missionaries, try them, find out if you can trust them and then help them. We don't need your food, we need your friends and your loved ones, because they certainly need us. The gospel is true. I know it is. It was given to us to help us, and there isn't a person on earth who wouldn't be better off with it. Korea may not want the gospel, but it needs it. I see it all around me, and I feel it to the core of who I am. If you have felt that fire, if you can feel it now, then please don't let it die. Let it drive you. Let it guide you. Let it spread.

I know that as you do this, as you act on the Spirit and boldly share this message with the world, you will find the happiness that it brings you now magnified. As you do so out of pure, sincere love for those you share it with, you won't create a chasm between you. Either they reject it as an eccentric but well intentioned manifestation of your love for them or they accept it and become your brother or sister. Either life goes on or it goes up.

I bear witness of these things in the name of my Master, my Lord, my Redeemer, and my King, Jesus Christ, amen.