Monday, July 14, 2014

Two letters today....  Only one more to go and then he will back on American soil.  Cant wait.

Not-Pday-because-this-week-we-got-to-the-temple!--email
3 messages

Scott Clawson <clawson.scott@myldsmail.net>Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 10:18 PM
To: Nancy Clawson <neclawson@gmail.com>
Hello Everybody!!!

This week has been good.  I really am starting to have to make sure I enjoy every moment of my mission, not because it's hard to, but because the time is just so short.  I hate it how every day seems to just get shorter and shorter.  I understand that everybody simply has to go home at some point, but it's a lot harder to accept than I thought.
REGARDLESS!!!!  good week.
Last week we met this investigator that we had met before and the guy is super golden, but he seems to have the same problem that most of the golden investigators have.  They live elsewhere.  They always live elsewhere.  He lives in a neighboring area and we taught him there in an attempt to try and refer him to the missionaries there, but he didn't seem to interested in being taught by anyone else and said that he wants to go to church in our area anyways.  Normally would be fine, no big deal but he wanted to meet this morning too which also isn't a problem usually but he wanted to meet at 10 in that other area, so we agreed to meet, but we also were going to refer him to the elders in that area at the meeting too.  We did try to and we had to go so the other elders taught the lesson anyways, but we didn't really tell the investigator beforehand very well.  As a result he was a little bummed.  He still wants to meet with us.  Not too sure what to do with that now...
So wednesday we wanted to pull a bunch of weeds at the church.  It didn't seem like a big deal but it most certainly was.  The first big thing was that when we were intending to start, it was raining sooooooooo hard.  I haven't seen rain like that in a long time.  BUT as most big rain does here, it calmed down pretty quickly.  We started and we got up a bunch of it and realized just how big of a task it was.  I'll take pictures and send them of the parts that we finished, but it's not as much as I would like to have finished certainly.  We don't really have time to finish it if we want to proselyte as well...
Thursday we went on exchanges with some elders and I was with a guy, Elder Meeks.  He's pretty cool.  He graduated early from high school to come on his mission as soon as he could.  He's a pretty solid guy too.  We only had one appointment but it went alright.  It's the super buddhist guy that wants to learn english mostly, but respects our gospel time.  We read 2 Nephi 2 and it was good.  He really was actually curious about some of the things we think about the Plan of Salvation.  He also spoke Korean to me for the first time!  That made me feel kind of good.  It's frustrating sometimes when people won't speak korean to me when their english isn't very good.  Also Elder Kim's knee was killing him.  He could barely walk, but we still went on exchanges regardless.  I love Elder Kim.  He's the best.
Friday we finished up the exchange and did some more weeding which was as fun as that could be.  Actually it was interesting because it wasn't like it was bad in itself.  I was just kind of bummed because I wanted to be out talking to people about the gospel, but since we started the job we needed to try and finish up before we had other people coming to church in the coming days.
Saturday we had more weeding to finish up and we pretty much finished, but I came to the realization that pretty much the whole area where we were working is an ant farm...  ridiculous, but that's okay.  That night we also had english class which was fun for me and my companion but the sisters were supposed to teach the "advanced" class, but now there's this big confusion and advanced class became intermediate and intermediate became advanced.  I feel bad for some of the people because it's just us not being organized.  Also part of the problem is that everybody knows that I'm going home and for some reason want to talk with me even thought I don't teach the free talking...  I just feel bad for some of the people involved.  We're gonna fix that up this week though.
That night we had a ping pong activity which was good.  Being that I am american and haven't played ping pong since I was a child, I am far from the best, but that's okay!  I was definitely the best american there... also I was the only American there, but that's not the point!~  I felt like it wasn't the best use of time, but it was good for some people I think.
Sunday was interesting.  We didn't have any investigators at church, BUT!  I cam to this awesome realization as a result of it.  For the past 10 weeks or so, last week excluded, we have had at least 1 investigator at church and up to 3.  Everyone of those weeks, I have called the Bishop and other ward leaders telling them that there will be investigators at church and who it is, what they need, that sort of thing, like it says to in PMG, and they always showed up.  This past Saturday night, I forgot to, or maybe was just too lazy, I'm not sure, but I didn't.  As a result nobody came.  There was people who could have made it but they decided not to in light of wanting to sleep more or things like that.  If there is ever a mission everywhere that thinks there is a key indicator that they cannot control as a missionary, they are wrong.  Simply put.  Yes, you can't make someone be baptized, you can't drag somebody to church, but if you are doing what you're supposed to, the Lord will help out.  That's with everything.
Why can't I figure these things out earlier!?!?  Maybe I was too prideful before or too dumb to realize it before.  Regardless, I know now, and I can apply it for at least a little longer, and can share what I know with other missionaries.
Well, this is my second to last time emailing from Korea, potentially my last depending on how I feel next week.  I'll probably email next week, but you never know.
I hope you all have a great week!

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McDonalds + Filibuster = not lesson.
7 messages

Scott Clawson <clawson.scott@myldsmail.net>Sun, Jul 6, 2014 at 9:16 PM
To: Nancy Clawson <neclawson@gmail.com>
Hello Everybody!

I hope you all had a good week.  I did.  It's getting really hot though.  It's bearable, but the humidity and such makes it so that a lot of people get stressed and headaches so they don't want to talk as much so our best proselyting time is definitely in the evenings.  Also by the same accord, because it is so hot out in the afternoons when you offer people the shelter of an air-conditioned church it seems a little bit more inviting!  So all in all it's a win weather pattern I'd say.  Monsoon season still hasn't started for some reason so were doing good for the time being!
Monday we played soccer for Pday and I got to hang out with murphy for a little bit!  It was super fun but because I hadn't worn my cleats in months and the field we played on was turf and really hot, I got this blister that was massive and nasty.  It's all good now, but it was kind of funny for the time being.  I wish I got a picture, but you know blisters are all more or less the same...
Murphy was wearing a shirt with james dean on it and that's kind of funny because I guess the new cool thing in Korea is to tell elder clawson that he looks like james dean.  That being said it was kind of as if murphy was wearing a shirt of me.  If you want to see the picture murphy should have possibly maybe perhaps posted it on facebook by now.
Other exciting thing of that day.  I was with a couple of other missionaries and there was this newer missionary who I was talking to and he asked how "old I was in the mission" and when I told him I go home soon, his response was "don't get trunky".  For those of you who don't know trunky means that you let your desire to go home get in the way of missionary work.  Not okay.  BUT the cool part was that my companion said resoundingly that "Elder Clawson is NOT trunky".  Success.  Still gotta keep going though.  It's not over yet!!!
Tuesday was kind of a long day because we had Mission Leadership Council which is where all the zone leaders and more or less sister equivalents of zone leaders get together and talk about the state of the mission.  It was pretty cool.  We worked on what will be the motto of the mission for the future.  I posed the idea YOSO! or You Only Serve Once, but the problem with that is that with a lot of people it's not true.  That would be condemning to anyone who wished to serve a mission as a senior couple or eventually got called to be a mission president at some point.  That got shut down, but it's okay.  I had fun while it lasted.  THe motto that we came up with was "we are the message" which is pretty true.  While it was no YOSO, it's a pretty solid motto.
Wednesday was kind of sad.  We had intended to meet with this family that we had met with a couple times, but last week the wife was sick so couldn't meet.  This week we also couldn't meet because the wife ended up having a miscarriage.  They said that they wouldn't be able to meet for a while but that they would let us know when it's okay.  I wish we could meet right NOW to share about the plan of salvation, but we can't force it on people.  If only.
We also met with this painter guy who has been meeting with us but not an investigator for a little while.  This week we were finally able to get a real lesson with him and he may not be super interested but because he likes us so much, he's trying to be interested.  Super nice guy.  We read the intro to the Book of Mormon, and he seemed to like it.
We also met a previous investigator that had been in the hospital that day too.  It was okay but that's the filibuster guy and he wanted to meet at mcdonalds so it wasn't the best meeting, but we figured out where he's at a little more.  He said he just wants to go to our church until I go home.  Sad face.  We'll try and get some more desire there though.
Thursday we had zone training which was my last one.  Yikes.  Not cool.  It was good though.  I really was worried but it went well.  Right after we finished I was worried that we didn't do a very good job, but a lot of people said it was really good.  Obviously no one is going to say it was bad, well that's not true, but I felt good in the end.
That night another missionary from the Busan mission came up to take this evaluation for the Korean military.  I also knew that guy from my first ward here.  Super weird.  Guy was really cool to see again though.  He's a new missionary and already seems to want to work hard so good thing!
Friday we didn't have too much going on unfortunately, but that's okay.
Saturday was really interesting.  We were on an exchange from the day before at first but nothing too weird happened with that.  English class was pretty much the same as always but something really interesting happened afterwards.  There's this one english class member who is kind of a pot stirrer.  People get frustrated with him, including us because he's kind of an investigator and always just tries to teach us.  I was trasnferring some of the contacts from our phone to the sister missionaries phone after class and he came back with some snacks for us.  He had done that a bunch of times before and I was frustrated at first because I thought it was just getting in the way of us proselyting which is all I really wanted to do.
After a little bit of talking we looked over and the sun was setting and it looked super cool!  We decided to take some pictures of it and he wanted to take a picture together and then all the sudden I felt like I could see this guy as God sees him.  I really felt like I was looking at everybody that I saw through Heavenly Father's eyes.  I don't really know how to explain it but even though this guy likes coming to church and english class, but doesn't really want to learn from us, I could still see heavenly Father's love for him.  That feeling stuck around for a while even into the next day.
The next day at church I felt like I needed to bear my testimony about it because it was fast sunday and it was really cool.  It was a really good experience.  Also was my last chance to share my testimony in church on a fast sunday in Korea.  Good last one.
That afternoon we met these guys from Bangladesh which was really cool.  They don't really have a christian background but we were able to share about Christ and it was really cool.
It's been a really good week.  Looking forward to the coming week too!

Hope you all have a good week!

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