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.

*************

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...

*******************

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...

********

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.

Slowish Week the First. May There Never Be a Second.

Don't set terms with God. As we work and as we trust him, he can and wants to give us more than we can imagine. When we bargain with him, setting terms, we waste the Lord's time, express distrust of his intentions, and subject our selves to our own limitations. Instead of setting terms, go to work, do your duty, and soldier on like your life depended on it, because someone else's might.

**************

So at this point we don't really have any actual investigators. In follow up to last week's email, our dying potential investigator is still just a potential because he is still in the hospital. We're going to try to get out to see him this week.

In further, though unrelated followup, that axe murderer guy is officially an axe murderer. That cop is very dead. Sort of a tricky situation, especially once the ward leaders found out. They told us to keep him away and cut him off, but President, correctly, gave us the go ahead to keep working with him. I just can't see Jesus telling someone to not go to church. But yeah, its a very tricky situation.

I did sub in for a couple of appointments this week. While the Zone Leaders were gone, me and the other ZL's greenie teamed up a couple of times. The first time, we were partnered with a couple of Elders from the east coast. Aka, the middle of nowhere. I got to work with Elder Black. He's a super hard worker, really focused, and genuinely caring about the people. While I was with him, the four of us went to a meeting with a guy named Simon. He's Korean, but he speaks a good load of English, so I sort of ended up taking point. He claims to have read the whole BoM before, and he very well could have, but he clearly didn't understand it all. He believes that Joseph Smith was a true prophet and that the BoM is the word of God, but he also believes in Catholicism and doesn't understand or see the discrepancy. So he goes to Catholic church, and doesn't see the need to be baptised into our church because he was baptized Catholic. My explanations went over his head, but at least we get where he's coming from. I don't think that I'm going to be working with him in the future cause he's not my investigator, but he was an interesting guy to be sure.

The one other sort of meeting I had this week was just introductory stuff with a guy who just finished off his military service. In Korea, all Korean men have to serve in the military for 2-3 years. So this guy had met the missionaries two years ago and took the Book of Mormon to the military with him. Got through first Nephi. Liked it, but found it hard to believe. I was sort of on point there too, until Elder Chisholm (the other ZL) got back and took over. He was super nice and genuinely interested, but again, I probably won't work with him again. The fun part of that encounter, besides getting a chance to teach a little, was realizing that, as long as I'm creative, I can say a lot of the stuff that I want to in Korean. Really simply, but enough to teach people. So that's good news.

My typical week was a lot of jundo. I got 43 by myself this week along with 6 phone numbers. So hopefully one of them turns into an investigator!

Other than that, I got passed off for the first lesson. I don't know if they do this everywhere, but here there is a languange program where you practice teaching in Korean and whatnot. You have to memorize a bunch of vocab and some scripture references, and then teach a lesson. So I did the first lesson this last week. Hopefully, this next week that is right now (I'm not sure how to describe time anymore) I can get through number two.

I also played horse's patoot for FHE this week, and met a crazy South African lady. We were in McDonalds when we were ambushed by this lady who was spewing all kinds of fun stuff about talking rocks, and animals being more favorite than people, and something about racist all over us. For about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, in the background, her pirate-husband just grins knowingly and gives us a nod on our way out. So that was fun.

Spiritual thought for the week comes from Matthew 20. You know the parable about the dudes that work shorter hours getting payed more and whatnot? If not, go read it really quick.

Now that you've read, I wanted to emphasize something that stuck out to me while I was studying it. The initial workers, the ones who were later upset, set their wage with the master at the start of the day. Before they started working, they set terms. The later workers did no such thing. They were hired and they started working, trusting the Master to deal with them fairly. With the later workers, the lord was able to be generous with them, giving liberally to each man a sum that was probably larger than they expected. The early workers had chosen justice for themselves. Don't set terms with God. As we work and as we trust him, he can and wants to give us more than we can imagine. When we bargain with him, setting terms, we waste the Lord's time, express distrust of his intentions, and subject our selves to our own limitations. Instead of setting terms, go to work, do your duty, and soldier on like your life depended on it, because someone else's might.

  

Whitlock out.

Elder Whitlock (very back, middle, head above the others) and his zone, headed to a service project.

 View of Seoul from the top of the mountain where they performed service by cleaning and beautifying the environment.

Elder Whitlock (far back, second from the right) with his Zone.

So I'm Teaching An Axe Murderer?

I'm almost out of time again! That means that ya'll have done good work! Thanks so much for all the letters.

It has been an interesting week.

To address the alarming title, I'm only teaching the guy in English class, he works with some other Elders for churchy things, but I am in fact teaching an axe murderer. Or at least, so it would appear. He's a super nice guy, very humble, submissive and receptive. Also quite strong and he just got out of prison. He spent eight years there and just was released onto parole with a tracker anklet on an insanity plea. His crime? Attacking a police officer's head with a hatchet. We aren't sure if the guy died or not, but spending eight years even with an insanity plea makes us wonder. But like I said, super nice. Brought us some apples. Calls me teacher. I like him. And for now, he likes me so that's good.

Our newest investigator is an older guy who doesn't seem to be all there. He's got a lot of self esteem issues, feels really alone and whatnot and he's also dying of diabetes. He also seemed really receptive, but before we could get past an initial meeting, he was hospitalized, so we are waiting for him to be released. These are the kind of people that I most want to help. The people who are humble enough that they recognize their reliance on Jesus Christ.

Other tidbits in rapid fire:

Me and my companion have started waking up early to do some Insanity 90x. My body is displeased.

Every time I ride the subway I see an advertisement about the Festival of Colors back home in Utah. Makes me happy, especially to see the mountains again.

We did a service project where we hiked a mountain and picked up trash. There wasn't much trash but the view was great (alas, I had not a camera) and the top of the mountain was a little grove most memorable for spiders that were FISHING for us. Like, from the trees, we would see these little spider threads descend with live wriggling grubs. It was terrifying. Did I mention that I don't like bugs?

My jundo (street contacting) skills have continued to grow. I say hard things in Korean, but I know enough to not be super awkward with the language on the street. 

Tips for future missionaries: More important that knowing how to say something is knowing what to say and being confident with how you say it. If you show weakness, you are written off. If you are bold and confident (which is a quiet attribute) people listen.

Be good socially. I don't care how much football you played in high school but you need to know how to be comfortable talking to people. If you aren't, don't stress it, just work on it until is it fun and easy for you.

Learn to push without pushing them down, or as Paul puts it, "Be bold, but not overbearing." Balance is key.

Learn to care without caring. A bit harder to describe. My advice is to learn to honestly not give a care what people think of you, but to care about them anyway. Two attributes necessary to that are humility and love. You need to be able to naturally and truly care about people while not giving a care if they don't like you.

Soapbox over.

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out all fear."

Til next week,

Whitlock out.

Address Change...

Please send letters and packages to the following addresses:

LETTERS:

Elder Joshua Paul Whitlock
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Korea Seoul Mission
PO Box 210
Jongno-gu
Seoul-si
South Korea    110-602



PACKAGES:

Elder Joshua Paul Whitlock
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Korea Seoul Mission 
Samcheong-no 9 gil 45
Jongno-gu
Seoul-si
South Korea     110-230


Korea Seoul Mission Office
011-82-02-734-3653   - phone
2016818@ldschurch.org  - e-mail

This Week in Sparknotes

Alright, so this week I actually had a pretty good amount of emails to respond to and I did that first for a change. Consequently, I'm about out of time. I actually had a lot to write about this week, but "there is too much. Let me sum up."

This week I:

Moved into an apartment over a daycare center, which used to be part of said daycare center. My walls are papered with rockets, astronauts, and ufo's. Some of which glow in the dark. I'm in heaven.

Stole some art. From a trash pile, granted, but it actually looks pretty sweet. They are very Asian style landscape paintings so we have them displayed in our apartment next to the rocketships.

Had a morning where we proselyted in someone else's area to help them out ('cause of my ZL companion). They hadn't had any success for weeks. We got in there and, by the grace of God, got 6 phone numbers and 5 appointments in 6 people talked too. None of which are from our area, so we won't teach them, but it was fun. We returned to our area and struck out that night. So that's what missionary work is like, I guess.

Remembered to mention, for Grandpa's sake, that I live right next to Costco. So my diet is similar to college, but in larger doses. Be excited.

Worked on a doctrinal epistle... explaining why a belief in the Bible necessitates a belief in an open canon of scripture. Jeffery R Holland had some interesting things to say about it a few years ago, and I watched said talk (“My Words … Never Cease”) in the Gym at the MTC.

Fatally dropped a Book of Mormon on a bug that was making a run for my yo (bed). Headshot.

Started reading Jesus the Christ.

Got halfway through Jesus the Christ. I like that book.

Set a personal jundo (proselyting) record of 12, with 7 of those being alone.

Set an all-time record for most shallow jundo of all time when I literally just handed a guy a card and walked away.

Attended the choir from hell. All Korean, singing in Korean, when I can't read fast enough to keep up in Korean. Then I was moved, rubbed chocolate powder onto the ward mission leader's shirt, found gum on my suit because someone had placed their gum on my scripture case, and all of this while my voice was gone so that I couldn't hit anything more than like four notes. In Korean. Does anyone have a worse epic fail they would like to share?

Came home from the choir from hell and listened to the Prince of Egypt soundtrack to make me happy again. Success. That was a dang good soundtrack.

Met with a guy who wants us to teach him English. I get to name him. Win.

Rediscovered the depth of my reculturization when I accidentally coined the phrase, "Et tu, Judas?" (For those of you who felt like I dropped Korean there, that is a famous "quote" from Julius Ceasar, who actually said "Et tu, Brute?" or Even you, Brutus?)

And I'm out of time. Love you all. Probably.

Whitlock out.