You may have noticed that I'm getting a little lazy with the topic lines. From now on, I'm probably just going to insert the names of Creed cover bands that I used to play bass for. We've produced so many recently, that we decided to have a tournament based on such qualifications as most true to Creed, who would president prefer you to listen to, if the two threw down who would win, and other similarly arbitrary categories last P-day. Salem came out on top, but my personal favorite was Cast and Crew.
If you were wondering how we measure President's approval, we do actually have a fairly good idea about it. Between months of missionaries trying to figure out what was and was not cool (if you remember, I actually outlawed everything that wasn't MoTab in Chuncheon to avoid this discussion) and the fact that we know his favorites are the Piano Guys...who actually came and played last week…
Abandoning the previous boring thought and casting off to the realm of vaguely interesting, we did in fact go to a Piano Guys fireside yesterday. Turns out that two of them (producer guy and cello guy) served their missions in Korea. There was even a woman in the crowd who had served in producer guys district in the crowd. The focus was definitely spiritual/churchy talks over music, though we got a bit of that as well. Producer Guy and Cello Guy were my favorite speakers, and not just because I was impressed at how much Korean they remembered.
Just before we went over there, I also went to a baptismal service. I went back up to D___ and baptized M__'s friend L__. I got the call to do so on Friday, otherwise I may have given you some notice. If you don't remember L__, he first came to church when he was invited by M__ the first Sunday of this year. He was impressed with the testimonies and thought to himself "If this church isn't true, then how come there are so many people here saying it is?" and decided after his first visit that he believed in it. We helped him know how to confirm his belief through prayer and the Book of Mormon, which he feels like he has done. The biggest obstacle between him and baptism was his girlfriend. [She] had just sort of invited herself into living with him and he couldn't get her to leave. I'll explain more about [her] in person. It's kind of a sad story. But L__ eventually decided that if she wouldn't go, then he would, so he made a run for it to avoid her following him and she called the police to report him as an illegal. Now things have smoothed over a bit. She has a new boyfriend and L___ has some room to breathe again. He's planning on moving back to Nigeria next month and is looking forward to getting in contact with the branch down there.
What else has happened this last week?
Elder H__ and I went on exchange last Tuesday. Took the whole bloody day, but we put together a new system to better facilitate LA work throughout the area. Went through a bunch of records, divided each person in them by the area they live in, split them up into twelve areas, and made a folder for each one that has the names, contact info, and a map of the areas involved, as well as a sheet that allows for the missionaries to keep track of the work they do. I about lost my mind staring at the computer all day, but, theoretically, this will help us do a much better job at reaching all the lost sheep we can.
The next day was also a very organizational day. I convinced the N___ districts to do another street boarding activity with me. We did one the week before last and it was a smashing success for my team. Inside an hour I got 5 street lessons. Later when calling collected numbers we set one more and there's another guy who wanted us to call today because he was on a trip in Japan. And heck, one of them met! So. We picked up a Satan worshiper.
Not going to go into much detail on that one. He's basically a troubled kid that never got over it and is 29 now. Has some psychological problems, but I really want to help him. I don't think he's so far over the line that he can't come back, though I doubt that it is going to be a quick turn around. I've always joked about how I wanted to perform and exorcism on my mission, and this may count. But it will be slow.
But back to street boarding. The exciting thing is that I convinced the district to try flavoring the activity with a nice healthy dose of controversy. The idea is that if you go out there showing pictures of recent tragedies (crashed planes and what not) and ask people why God didn't stop it, they are more likely to have some form of care than they are if you simply philosophically hypothesize with them. I didn't think they'd go for it, but...should be fun.
[By the way,]I only contend with people who really deserve it. Like the guy yesterday who started pointing us out to all of the other people on the train and talking loudly about how we were a bunch of frauds who knew no truth and were intent on deceiving true believers of God. Said that we didn't believe in God or Christ and that our religion had nothing to do with the Bible. I tried being civil for five minutes before I put the man in his place and left the car. Ignorance is a titanic irritant.
Anyway...hoping to hear from ya'll soon. Let me know if you name the boat. See you in a few!
Elder Whitlock
