Another day, another... investigator!

Hi!

It's another week here in Wonchu Korea. Feels like it's been a month. Things have been going great. I'll give a quick update on some of our wondrous investigators we have here:

정진택 형재님: He's the wonderful man that had the problem with the word of wisdom - but is now seeking to overcome it. He is still continuing to drink less - only two small shot glasses when he is invited to drink the bottle for himself. He's having struggles with it - he says it isn't as much fun as it normally would be - so last time we met with him we taught him prayer, and how if we pray, we can receive strength to overcome our obstacles. Our help us with English, or whatever else he may need that God has planned for him. We committed him to pray before... everything. We meet him again on... Saturday I think. Or Monday. I forget, but either way I hope he did it!

김숨남 잠애님: This was the strange bible basher lady that invited us back for dinner. She actually ended up canceling (too bad, too, because she was going to feed us sam gyup sarl [bacon kind of stuff]) because she was sick. We haven't had the chance to call her back or to stop by yet, but we've been meaning to bring her some tea and/or cookies.

Tank: New investigator! He was a former that... for some reason just stopped meeting with the missionaries. I'm thinking that after the missionaries left, his record got lost in transit. We meet him tonight for food - AWESOME! He's the coolest guy - he plays the drums, tai-kwan-do, swordplays, numchuks, snowboards. And above all, he knows English! He teaches a class somewhere in Wonchu. He's such a great guy - when we went to go visit him, he wasn't home. But his family, after learning that we were the missionaries, immediately invited us in, sat us down, talked to us, called up Tank and told him to come over here, and then made us food. It was crazy fast - way good food too. So anyway, we get to talk to him tonight and see how he is doing, why he stopped meeting, etc... I'm really excited.

Helena (yes, a lot of people have English names here, if they know English): She was interested in the English class that we teach, and she called about that. We told her that we have this program called the 30/30 program. We teach English for 30 minutes, and then share a message for 30 minutes. She was keen on it, so we meet her tonight, too. Also very excited! She sounds great, and her English is wonderful.

Another less-active that I forgot the name of: We meet her today, too. We have to find out why she stopped coming to church and what is putting her off. Her brother doesn't like that she was going to our church, so we think that might be the problem. But! We'll find out today.

As you can see, we've been doing a lot of less-active work. Also, this past Sunday, we had another increase in church attendance - about fifty or so people with a LOT of kids. We're getting a pretty strong youth group here.

We've also been meeting with a family, and teaching them English. The mother is burlkyo (Buddhist. Funny side-note: burlgogi is that delicious meat that we ate at Sam Hawk. Burlkyo is Buddhist. burl means meat. So... the Buddhists here are the Meat Church. Ahahah!), and the kids don't seem to know very much about anything. So we teach them English, play games with them, and just have fun mostly. They're really a wonderful family, and the mother is a very nice lady. She always gives us food when we come over. But anyway, we talked to her that we're going to continue doing this - sharing a message after each lesson, but we'd have to stop if they didn't seem interested or if they didn't care at all. So we told the mother that if she was interested, she could come over and sit with us during the message. She told us that she wasn't (after much Korean beating around the bush), but that her kids were. There is one little girl in particular - she has such a wonderful mind. She's incredibly smart - she has been asking questions like "How did you come to believe in God?" and "How do you know that God is there?".

.... o_o

That's the kind of stuff that a golden investigator asks, let alone this little girl! So, needless to say, I'm excited to go meet with them.

Other than that, things have been about the normal here. We're still talking to as many people as we can, someone laughed at my Korean the other day (>.<), and we're still doing wonderful work here in wonchu.

The weather has actually been about the same as Utah - it snowed once on Sunday but hasn't since. It was a very heavy downfall, but then melted within a couple of hours. It really hasn't been that bad (heated floors help).

Uhm... I think that's about it. It sounds like things are still going well at home - I can't really think of anything else to report on. My companion has been sick so he's going a little bit crazy, but we've still been doing really great here.

Oh! Actually yeah, one more thing. I've discovered that there is a problem with my bank card. I tried to go withdraw money the other day, just to pick up a few things that I wanted, but with no luck. I'm not sure if I was typing in the wrong PIN, or... what. So, Linda, if you could please try to figure that out for me? We tried to call the mission president to see if I could get onto the website from here, but, there wasn't any answer. It isn't anything I need, so don't worry. Just nice to know I can have access to it when I need it.

Anyway, things are still good here! Thanks to everyone that e-mailed me back. It's really great to hear from you all! :D

행복하십시오!

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