Weekly letter 6/15/2014

Pics of the Sky Garden...

We visited the artificial island Songdo with Elder P, since it was his last P-Day here. We ran into a less-active at the subway station, and she took us to the UN building called the "G-Tower!" She got us in, and we got to look out over the island from the "Sky Garden," which was gorgeous. That was a really fun experience that couldn't have happened unless we were in exactly the right place at the right time. Kudos to the Lord for that miracle!

The other day we went to visit some inactives -- the ones where we found a service opportunity, even though they weren't home -- and we had another experience even though they weren't home! We decided to also visit the man who gave us water, and he wasn't home. As we were leaving the apartment building, we heard an announcement over their intercom -- there was food and games! We asked a grandpa about it, and he walked us over to where it was! It looked like a neighborhood block party -- Korean style. We weren't sure if we were supposed to be there, but this grandpa walks over to the people putting the event on, and gets us OK'd. They start giving us all this free food, and people are snapping pictures, and we finally find out the person in charge is the woman we talked to about the service opportunity there! It was as if a celebrity showed up to the neighborhood barbecue.

The other day all of the district leaders had a special meeting, so I went on exchanges to Mansu area. That day, they had a service project, so I got to do that with them. Their ward takes care of a farm, so we got to go farming! Except, the farming they were doing was literally pulling weeds for two hours. It was okay, though not what anybody was envisioning. After that, we helped one of the members move. Boy, did that bring back memories. That took around four hours. I'm still sore in the legs! But, we got the coolest reward. Nobody knew this, but the brother has an insole business, like you put in shoes. He brought all four missionaries down to his office, and made us all free, custom insoles! We each received one pair for our church shoes, and one for our regular shoes. He sells them for a little over 40$, so I got over 80$ of custom insoles from a member in a different area! What a score!

We had a lesson with B, our investigator from the Philippines. It was incredible. It was like watching an episode of "The District!" The Spirit was so powerful as we taught him the first lesson. He accepted all of the teachings so well, and contributed on his own! The member we had there -- B. B.  -- was absolutely rock solid too. I'll talk more about him later. One of the neat things about the lesson was when he compared the priesthood to being knighted! That showed us he really understood the concept of the authority. I'd never made that comparison before, haha. Another point that was good was when we explained prophets, and he understood that there needed to be another prophet for the church to be restored! One of my favorite things was how he talked about having special feelings about Christ's name, and hearing prayers from when he was young. He talked about how when he thinks about Jesus Christ, it calms him down even though he's short-tempered. I'm so grateful I was prompted to ask about that part of his background, because then we were able to teach about the Holy Ghost, and how that's what those feelings were, and he totally understood! He pointed at his arm, and he had goosebumps! We had totally just shared a spiritual experience together! It was a little worrisome when we taught the Book of Mormon, because we'd neglected to explain exactly what it was, so he thought it was a different translation of the bible, and he started talking about how he believes you can't change the bible
or add to it, so he honestly couldn't believe in the Book of Mormon and First Vision. If I hadn't asked him if he believed those things were possible, we would've never found out about that concern, and we would've lost Billy. Instead, we were able to explain that the Book of Mormon is a record from a people in a different part of the world, also testifying of Christ, together with the bible. When he understood what it was, he asked us for a copy! We were so pleased with that. We love Billy so much. He's been so prepared for the message of the Restoration, it's incredible. We're really excited to meet with him again. We're probably going to watch this video with him, because he really likes videos: http://www.mormonchannel.org/video/mormon-messages?im=true

It's gonna blow him away. The Spirit is always so powerful during this video.

So, things are going great with Billy. Hopefully his testimony of Christ will help him stand firm in the midst of the adversary's whirlwinds, because they're certainly coming for him. Satan will never allow us to do something good, unimpeded.

So, the B family! There foreigners from America. Brother B is here working for Samsung Biologic. They're awesome. He's got a solid testimony. He was converted at age 18, after investigating the church for two years. It was funny, there were a couple of parallels with our family's history, like how his wife was always a member, and how his dad passed away, leaving just his mom. It's interesting that we're all so different, but we can all empathize with so many different experiences.

We were walking past an exercise park the other day, and a grandma motions us over, so we can try out her giant metal hoola hoop! That was really cool, actually.

That's all for this week! I love all of you so much, and I love hearing from home! God bless.

Love,

Elder Austin Lynn