People always talk about having the faith to move mountains. They talk about it as if through pure belief, if you are faithful enough, mountains will magically pick up into the sky, travel, and reset themselves. I'm sure that, if it is needful and God tells you to do it, that is a thing. But I would suggest...that it takes just as much faith, and maybe more, to have faith to move the mountain yourself. True faith is moving the mountain one rock at a time.
...Why does God ask that we exercise our faith that way? Well, can you imagine how strong you will be after moving an entire mountain of rocks? Can you imagine how much you will grow? That's what it is all about people. And if the mountain seems too high, your task too daunting, then just remember that you can pull with the Savior. He's put worlds together... . A mountain is a cake walk.
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Hello everybody! This is my first email sent on my first p-day on the first day of the first week of being a real missionary! My 12 week training program period wrapped up yesterday. The joy. I feel so...valid. Legit. Genuine.
(In real life, nothing has changed about my outlook but officially, this is a mediocre deal.)
That goes for both me and my companion. As far as I'm concerned, we have made the jump from co-junior to co-senior, even though technically neither of us are certified to be so yet. That's ok though. This week, if all goes well and God smiles in my general direction, I should be wrapping up pass off. ...I've had to do three different sessions as opposed to the usual one [pass off of the fourth lesson], teaching commandments with the first lesson, alone, and with my companion. ... No hiccups thus far, but I've still got "with companion" to do and that should be done tomorrow. After that, I have a ZL final on Wednesday and on Friday, happy birthday to me, I'll try to finish off AP final, becoming an even more real missionary.
Yippiekayay.
This week we jundoed in a cool little forest/park thing. Apparently it is some kind of "hopefully North Korea will like us again" thing. I don't know. But it was super pretty.
We also helped a member to move out of their house with all the other elders in our house. Pretty fun. Physical labor was a nice change of pace and was really relaxing for all of us. It went pretty smoothly for the most part, but there were a couple of times where I had to ninja balance (not my strong suit) on a wall and pass a refrigerator from a stairway above me to the moving truck below. Possibly the sketchiest moments of my life, but that's ok. At least there aren't attack dogs here. Isn't that right, Uncle Mike?
In reward for moving him, the member treated us to Pizza Hut, which is very different over here. In America, Pizza Hut was great, but it was like a normal pizza. Sort of. Here it is luxury pizza. Not like in a comparison sort of way, they just make the pizza very different. And it costs a lot more. What ended up happening is that every bite turned into a party and we all ate way too much and it was glorious.
But that was only the start of our magnificent food week. This week we focused on attracting people to our English Class, predominently college students from Korea University. We went down a couple of times to English flyer or jundo and both times we hit up a Mexican restaurant on campus. So bomb.
I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but college students are my favorite. Unlike high school students, they usually have time to meet, they are nice, are a little more persuadable, and are generally easier and better in every way to every other type of potential investigator. 항상 학생을 사랑해요!
I also got my Korean name this week. My companion has dubbed me 이광오 (Ee-Gwang-Oh) which means light hair. With a real name like Whitlock (White-locks), it seemed to fit.
Spiritual thought this week comes from last week's zone meeting.
People always talk about having the faith to move mountains. They talk about it as if through pure belief, if you are faithful enough, mountains will magically pick up into the sky, travel, and reset themselves. I'm sure that, if it is needful and God tells you to do it, that is a thing. But I would suggest, as my zone leaders did, that it takes just as much faith and maybe more to have faith to move the mountain yourself. True faith is moving the mountain one rock at a time.
My throw-in to their message is why. Why does God ask that we exercise our faith that way? Well, can you imagine how strong you will be after moving an entire mountain of rocks? Can you imagine how much you will grow? That's what it is all about people. And if the mountain seems too high, your task too daunting, then just remember that you can pull with the Savior. He's put worlds together, people. A mountain is a cake walk.
Whitlock out.
