I'm here! Our flight was alright, just a little long with a 5 hour layover in Dallas. Regardless, we made it! They had us start talking to people on the subway ride to the mission home, which was crazy. That brings me to another point -- we use public transportation allllll the time. We have what we call a "T-Money" card, and we use it for busses, subways, everything. They're really handy. We do tons of walking too. There's a big bridge next to our house, and I loathe it because it has soooo many stairs we have to walk up and down all day. That's a little rough. However, I'd rather do that than have a car. You wouldn't believe the traffic here. People will just drive, and park wherever they want. It's honestly a miracle that there aren't dead Koreans in the streets. Traffic is brutally nonsensical. It's so chaotic. Part of that is because if they don't see anybody walking across the street, they'll just go for it. I can't even explain how whacked out traffic is.
A typical day goes something like this
6:30 - Awake and arise.
6:40-7:10 - Exercise (we wlalk over to an exercise park -- basically a park but with exercise equipment all over. The parks here are really nice.)
7:10-8:05 - Shower, get dressed for the day.
8:05-11:00 - Studies (Personal, Companion, Language)
11:00-12:00 - Lunch (At the residence. We never really know what we're going to eat, haha)
12:00-1:00 - 12 Week (An extra companionship study; basically training)
1:00-9:00 - Missionary work! Appointments, street contacting, etc.
9:00-9:30 - Planning.
9:30-10:30 - Pre-Bed Stuff? Sort of personal time.
Right now, the basic plan is to visit members and inactives, and we just talk to everybody on the way over. We've met some really cool people, and there are all sorts of little miracles happening already. As long as we have a plan, the Lord places people in our path. We're really working on gettting people to teach, and getting people out to the free English class the missionaries teach every Friday.
My companion is Elder W, and he's really knowledgable about Korean. He speaks it really well, and is continuing to learn and study it. He's really outgoing and hard-working, so we always meet our conversation goals. Since we got to this area (Yeonsu) we've had 95 conversations that involved an exchange of numbers or a gospel principle! Amazing! My journal is absolutely crammed, and I can't even get everything down. I know you want to hear more, but there's just so much happening, I can't possibly get it all down -- like in the scriptures!
Sunday I gave my first talk. It was really short, but I talked about faith, and how we can perform miracles through faith. I asked the members to pray for us, and that I want to do miracles for the people of Korea. I said we'd all do our best together, and that I know we can perform miracles together. My companion said some of the Sisters behind him were talking about how well I speak Korean, and that a lot of people were impressed, but it couldn't have been that good. I know that I didn't understand anything all day in church.
A cool thing about Korean: A way to say you like something is that it "enters your heart." I really like that.
A specific miracle: Last night, about 9:00, we were standing outside of our apartment, one conversation away from our goal. We decided to be stilll, and lo and behold, and old lady started walking down the road. We started talking to her, and it turns out that she's always gone to churches, but just moved here, and now lives too far away to go to her regular church. She was thinking about going to the church up the street from our apartment, which is some random Christian church, but now she'll consider our church, and she might go to church next week! The people here are so prepared for the gospel!
The days are so long, but at the same time we never have enough time. It's crazy. My area's official name is Incheon Yeonsu. Since we just got here, we have no investigators, so we're contacting like crazy.
Mom and dad - There wasn't any music on the SD card! Major bummer. If you set up a dropbox, I'm allowed to get on that though. I'm out of time for now, so send questions and I'll try to get to them next week.
Love,
Elder Austin Lynn
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