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It scares me to death that some mistake that I make could stop people that God wants me to find from hearing about the gospel.... But thats ok.... It doesn't mean the church isn't true. It doesn't mean that God doesn't speak to man. And it doesn't mean we can stop trying.
Last Tuesday was temple day/p-day, so we did that. Then we hit up our favorite American buffet, Ashleys, ate an ungodly amount of food, then went and sweat it out in a bathhouse for a couple hours. Talked a lot about the zombie apocalypse, especially what my roomates may remember as the Cruiseship dilemna. Led to some nice philosophical discussions about the nature of man and practicality vs ideology. In a bathhouse. Aren't we so Greek?
I found my favorite Korean food. It is some sort of honey tea thing. Changed my life.
We met H and...I don't want to talk about it. Things went decisively less than well. Makes me upset.
English class continues to grow, especially our beginners class. We even got some crazy guy from our class to come to church. Also met and picked up an older guy with no religious background who tried to come to church at 10am, but, bless his heart, got lost and went to some Presbyterian church somewhere instead.
Taught my ward mission leader's family and saw their family home evening. He's the best of the best.
Also found out that what we learned last week in the combined mission conference is less classified than I thought. Really interesting stuff. Every missionary in Seoul is going to have a "mini ipad" within the year. In addition to mapping, and dictionaries, there will be an integrated area book that the missionaries and the ward leaders share access to. There will be a continuous language learning program that will continue to push missionaries throughout their missions instead of just for the first couple months like they have now. Part of that includes an online pre-mtc language program where they will form digital districts, complete with district leaders and MTC teachers, to start language learning for a few months before anyone gets to the MTC. The ipads will be kept after missions for poorer missionaries as part of the church education program to help them improve the quality of their lives. All records will be kept on the device. It is going to make things go a lot smoother and the language program will really help us, I think. Granted, this won't really affect me until I can already speak Korean pretty well, but it is exciting for Tyler. There's more, but that's what I think I can say.
Life generally goes on much as it always does. I still hate shaving. I've lost my motivation to work out in the mornings, so I go at night instead. I figured out how to hard boil eggs (judge not) so I have those for almost every breakfast.
Life in my house is really good. I'm living in one of the nicest houses in the mission with a total of 7 elders inside, so every meal time is a party.
길음1 is made up of Elders L, V, and A. Elders L and V are our zone leaders. Elder L looks like he belongs on a cover of the New Era, loves Batman, is one of the nicest happiest people I've ever met and has a sugar addiction that could cross borders. Which is saying something around here. Don't tell him I said it was an addiction though, in his self control efforts I was not the friend that helped him quit eating, but the friend who helped him quit trying. The way the best bros do. Elder V was the other guy that quit sweets with him. He has been out for a little more than a year and only had a testimony for about a year before that. He's got an interesting story. He is a philosophy major at BYU, so he has filled the role of counterpoint that I so love and need. He, like me, is up front about how he thinks, and doesn't back down easily, so we have a right merry old time. Elder A is from Arizona and he's a running machine. His dreams include things like learning the martial arts forms from each bending style in Avatar and competing in the Olympics. He lovingly refers to me as "Uncle Baydo" which means Uncle Apostasy. Don't ask why, I swear I'm obedient and stuff. Good thing, too, cause if I wasn't the other greenie (besides Elder A) might kill me.
His name is Elder R. He and Elder J make up 길음2. Elder R is from Washington DC, used to work at some sort of dysfunctional scout camp, and has excellent calves. He is more of the sunshiny happy kind of Mormon that would give out passalong cards at school and he can't talk about either politics or dating (not really girls, just the idea of dating) because they get him too excited. Elder J was a soldier before he came. He is our district leader and he is very serious about missionary work, but I can pull his quirky side out of him. We joke a lot about how I'm going to go to hell.
Me and my companion are 길음3. I already talked about him, and I'm basically the same as you knew me. Or maybe I'm not. I can't really measure the change in myself very well, besides Korean speaking ability so...maybe ya'll will be disappointed when I get back, I don't know.
Lately I've been reading from the Bible. Last week I studied Acts, and this week I hit up the surprisingly good book of Daniel. Interesting how nicely he predicted Alexander the Great. Anyway, I learned other more useful things, but a common thing of the two is that prophets can... drop the ball. They are human. They make mistakes. So, too, can missionaries. If you don't believe me, come watch me jundo for a day. When they (missionaries) teach, they don't always feel the spirit, and when they do they don't always understand. Honestly, it is sort of a terrifying realization. It scares me to death that some mistake that I make could stop people that God wants me to find from hearing about the gospel. Honestly, I haven't actually made much of a difference, at least not yet. In these first six months, no one that I've taught has been Baptized, or even met more than twice. But thats ok. It doesn't mean the church isn't true. It doesn't mean that God doesn't speak to man. And it doesn't mean we can stop trying.
Back into the storm,
Whitlock out.
