This week's a blur. I'm stunned that I'm already two weeks in. Just 94 more, right? I loved getting to skype earlier; it was great seeing the family! The little ones are getting so big. It's ridiculous.
We had a miracle moment after we left the church to go do dry cleaning (which is dirt cheap here). As we were crossing the bridge by our house, a man walking past us stopped and asked us if we were Mormons. We obviously responded yes, and then he told us that he wants to become Christian, but he feels like all the churches in Korea are the same, so he wanted to learn more about ours. We're meeting with him tonight. It was so incredible. I'm really excited, and hope he remains as solid.
My embarrassing moment for this week is probably our visit with the Ward Mission Leader, when they mentioned that one of the Elders lost weight, they looked at me and said I'd probably lose 30 kilos. But you know what? Bring it on!
I found out my companion likes to write poetry, which was a little funny, since he's a football player. We're sharing little things like that now, and it's helped bond us. He's so hard working, I'm learning a lot.
It stuns me every time I receive revelation from 1 Nephi, but I was reading the passage about Zoram agreeing to go with Nephi and his brothers, and I started picking out all these parallels with Zoram being an investigator into the church. Coupled with my advancing Korean skills, I know that the Lord is blessing me greatly in every aspect of my life. The more I'm able to pick out little words and phrases, the more excited I get about being here, and learning Korean.
Grandma asked about food, so I thought I'd mention a few things here:
I can't even describe most of the food. Most of it is served with Kimchi, which can be tough sometimes. We like Omarisu, and Ijak Tosutu (Isaac Toast). Omarisu is rice with chopped up carrots, meat, and whatever else you want, with a big fried egg over it. It's easy to eat and delicious. Isaac Toast is an American company that makes various toasted sandwhiches, all of which are incredible, and make with a corporate secret sauce. It's awesome. Last night, at the Ward Mission Leader's house, we had "Kimchi Pancakes" which were actually easier for me to eat than actual Kimchi.
Charity asked what the biggest difference between America and Korea was, so I thought I'd share my initial thoughts. This is just what pops out at me when I think about it, because really, almost everything is different. My first few thoughts were:
To me, the biggest difference is that Korea's much cleaner, people don't just say hello to each other (it's considered odd that we say hello to everybody), and the way you speak -- literally, as in the forms you use and such -- are extremely important. Food is also vastly different.
It's funny how many Koreans want to learn English. Our free English classes are actually one of our most effective ways to find people interested in the church. Just the other day, we met with 3 Bangladeshlians who were interested in English. Two of them were Hindu, and the other was Muslim, but they were really down for meeting, and learning English for half an hour, then talking about our religious beliefs for another half hour. That's our preferred way to teach English, but we also have a general English class that we teach on Friday nights that isn't involved with the church in any way.
An Interesting Story for this week:
We talked to some foreigners outside of 7/11 the other day while looking for an inactive's house. We ended up talking to them for a good half hour, and got a return appointment! We're going to just talk about Christ with them, since they're both devout Catholics, but we love talking about Christ so it's cool. They both know Korean and teach English here, but one of them also teaches business, and he started telling us about the craziest thing!
Apparently, Harvard is allowing a Black Mass to be held in a couple months (it was actually called off). I guessed from the name, and he confirmed, that a Black Mass is a Satanist ritual. Satanism is obviously something awful, supporting all sorts of abominable beliefs, but Harvard's allowing it to be publicly held. From what our friend said, it's allll over the news apparently. That's pretty scary stuff. The Satanist belief set includes the abuse of children, anarchy of morals, and is basically the exact opposite of every one of Jesus Christ's teachings.
Crazy stuff back home. Crazyyyyy stuff. It's things like that that make me ponder the state of society, and how long the Lord will suffer the wickedness of the people here. He's said in the Book of Mormon, again and again, so long as we are righteous, the land will be blessed, but if we're wicked, then we'll be cursed. Of course, we also read about how the wicked are spared for the sake of the righteous, so I assume that's part of it. Regardless, there's one thing I'm certain of, and that's been reinforced again and again as I practice teaching the first lesson: God will always love us, and He does everything He can to help us make the right choices.
Gospel Analogy: I've been working on coming up with analogies for teaching to help investigators understand the gospel and its principles. One of my favorites right now is the one I used for the apostasy the other day:
Imagine that your children live far away from you, and you're trying to help them find their way back home. You keep sending them emails, texts, and letters with directions in them, but your children ignore them. You send friends, but they ignore them. How would you feel? That's how Heavenly Father feels during times of apostasy. He stops sending directions when His children respond that way, and waits until they'll listen again. But, because He loves us, He'll always continue trying to get us home, with Him again.
Love is, always has been, and always will be the most basic principle of God and the gospel. Of that, I am certain. Our Heavenly Father will always love us.
I hope you are all doing well. I can't wait for next week, and all the miracles in between!
Love,
Elder Austin Lynn
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