Big news: the old, less active ward mission leader got released and the 1st counselor in the bishopric is our new WML!!! there just aren’t enough members here in sanbon, so they have to double up assignments!! haha 7months into my mission and i had my first WML meeting!
So trav asked a question last week i thought i should write about a bit....I said our new grandma friends were die-hard catholics and trav thought that was surprising. Korea is the only Asian country that is actually majority Christian..... I would guess that maybe 70-80% of everyone we talk to is christian....the rest are buddhist. And it seems like that would be really great for missionary work, but as i’ve seen it, it can be kinda a hindrance. Christian missionaries first came to Korea the end of the 1800s and for the past century have been working really hard here. I think historically some of them were really forceful, really annoying and I think at one point the country kind of got flooded with christian missionaries and churches—so a lot of people have a really bad opinion of any missionaries, a bad taste in their mouth from all the ones that have been here before us..... Mormons didn’t get here till the Korean war in the 50’s.... Its good to have that shared faith in christ with so many people, but its also hard to find people to receive us, because most everyone we talks to just tells us...’i already go to church’. they think we’re just trying to recruit them like all the other christian churches.
And most of them shut us down because ‘they already believe in christ...’ I’ve lost track of how many well-intentioned christians we’ve talked to on the street that have told us “don’t waste your time with me....go talk to people that DON”T believe in christ.” They mean well, they think we’re all on the same team trying to convert the buddhists and ‘nonbelievers’ but they’re really closed to our message of RESTORED truth.
It makes things frustrating sometimes, but thats what president is really focusing on in our new mission....improving peoples opinion of the church and its missionaries, so that if people know nothing else about us after we talk to them, they’ll remember that we were kind, upstanding young people...
k well, nothing big happened this week, we’re just gearing up for conference. We get to watch it this weekend. one week late. but the whole stake comes and watches together it should be fun1!!! i’m super excited!!!!
FAMILY:
sorry i don’t have time to respond to everyone well! i got all your mail....
- chy...thanks so much for the pics!! they are awesome....everything looked beautiful and i’m glad that the cakes looked good!
- i want to hear from tan about taiwan?!
- dad and mom...thats so good about rose’s family...man, member missionary work is so exciting, thats so good that you’re helping out in this great work. when you help bring ppl and teach them, you do something that the missionaries simply can’t do on their own...keep it up!!!
- tev-haha. :) but really, i didn’t mean to whine about the language, i was just trying to clear up some of the misconceptions...i AM NOT fluent in Korean...nor will i probably ever be, but its coming slowly and i love it when new missionaries come because it makes me feel better about my progress :)
- PS—Can someone PLEASE send me a picture of ROSIE?? i still haven’t seen her!!!!
2. The catholic church down the street from ours...
3. this is what our pdays look like. this is cheese batpingsu....
4. moving day in korea. they have to hire a company to bring their big truck and ramp..then they stretch it up to the outside window and load the furniture and stuff through the window because it won’t fit on the elevator..... its crazy.
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