Hey President,
Hope all is going well at the
mission office! This week in study, I started to read Our Search for
Happiness, and I really enjoy it! I think I'll probably be done with it
soon, and I look forward to gaining more insight from it. I also have
continued to read the Book of Mormon and try and apply it to the
investigators. I think because of my lack of understanding of what
exactly the investigators are saying, I don't really understand their
needs that well, and that's something I hope to improve upon in the
future.
Our investigators are doing pretty well from
what I can gather. We had 4 investigators that either went to the
celebration last night or stake conference yesterday. One of the
investigators is a members younger brother and I feel like he's someone
that really shows a great deal of promise as an investigator. He's a
really nice kid and it seems like he really likes his brother and wants
to follow his example and be baptized.
Training is still
going really well. I think I'm doing pretty well with the language, or
at least as much so as I could be being that I've been around the
language for just a little over 3 months. I think I'm getting a great
deal better at using the spirit in my teaching, and have really been
working on teaching people. This is something that I think Elder Hunter
really excels at and is doing a great job at passing on to me.
Have a great week!
-Elder Clawson
Hello everybody!!!!
hows
life going for everyne? Great? awesome, that sounds really good. I
honestly don't know if there's too much I'll be able to respond about
from previous emails right now, I usually end up just talking about
Korea all over the place in these emails, so if I do that too much and
you want me to talk more about things you've emailed me about, by all
means let me know. Otherwise, I will continue in my narcissism with
Korea and the awesomeness therein.
First of all, this
week has been stinking crazy awesome. So when I first got here, we had
like half an investigator, because he was going to get baptized
regardless of how good or bad of missionaries we were, he was a referral
and had been active in attending church since april. Now, we have like
9 investigators, and I think that 4 of them have a really good chance
at being baptized. Tuesday, we had 7 appointments for lessons. Granted
only 5 of them actually happened, but even still, it is getting crazy
busy over here. People say that Korea isn't a very high baptizing area
of the church, and I believe it, but hey, we could be getting there.
President is awesome and has a great vision for this mission. Under his
direction I think the baptisms here really can shoot up. Remember that
one time my roommate from school said that he thought Japan was just
about to shoot up in baptisms like Brazil did a while back? Well he was
right, but thats not the point, I think that Korea is getting on its
way for that too!
Church here is a business and a lot of
what people think of your church is very contingent upon the money your
church has, the size of your building, and how many members it has.
That being said, once we get this country going, I legitimately think
that we may have to on some level, start slowing down people's interest
as a result of the people who join a church for its business. That's a
trial for a later date and the mission will worry about it then. For
now though, I think we're really on the right track and can get up our
baptism count. Even the goal isn't numbers, it definitely helps to
measure some things, and helps with self esteem a whole lot, but lets be
real, thats never been a problem for me, hence calling these emails
narcissistic.
We have a baptism on Sunday!!!!!!!!!! I'm
so excited, even though again, we didn't really do anything for it, but
we still get to count it as a number! I guess my first non member
baptism is a pretty good milestone. That's something my companion from
the MTC was big on was milestones, so I've kind of picked up on it a
little bit hahahaha.
Also big thing to Koreans! I would
really appreciate it if you could send me some pictures of like our
family and stuff, just things that help me seem more personable to the
people of Korea, and instead of just having a tag to a name, they can
put some personality to it too! So if you could do me a huge favor and
send some pictures of growing up-ness and the family, that would be
super sweet! You can send them through the email and I'll just put them
on my camera and can go print them and put them in a photo album I can
show investigators and members! I promise I'm making an effort to be
better about pictures, but we know I suck at pictures so bad. I've
never been much of a photographer.
I'm going to do Korean time now for lack of mind to think of anything else at the moment.
역시 (yuk-shee)
This
one is fun, it more or less translates into "typical." It can be used
in a lot of circumstances where if I were to ask where someone learned
English, and they responded in high school, you could say, oh typical.
It gets really fun to use when you're kind of making fun of people
though. For example, my companion, and one of his roommates from the
MTC, use it all the time. Say one of them misses a shot in basketball
or soccer by a super big margin, the other will say 역시. I think you can
gather the general meaning of it, if you need more clarification, let
me know!
Oh, other way fun thing from this week, we went
to whats called a 김장! we made Kimche! It was really fun, and I'm
actually starting to like Kimche, I don't know what that means with my
progress as a missionary, but I still can't eat enough to keep up with
other missionaries, let alone Koreans.
The
work continues to be tough here, but that's just missionary work, its
not easy. Salvation is not easy because salvation is not a cheap thing,
and boy is that ever true. David A. Bednar sure had it right, provided
thats David A Bednar. If I'm wrong so be it, but the point remains,
people are slow to accept the gospel here, and it can be irritating. We
have two, rather had two, younger investigators, about 17 and 18. Both
of them expressed a whole lot of interest in the church and meeting
with the missionaries. Both of their parents have forbidden them from
meeting with us. It's so sad to see things that way, but I guess its
just the way it is. One of them said that it doesn't matter the cost,
if he gets kicked out of his house, the day he no longer needs a
permission slip, he will get baptized. I wish I had that kind of faith
in anything. I want to thank everyone back home for being the awesome
people that they are and not forbidding their kids from going to the
mormon church. It's sad to see, but it's culture here. I hope as the
church becomes more reputable and people become more generally familiar
with the way the church ACTUALLY is, this sort of thing will happen less
often. I love being here, and I know it only gets better as I actually
get to being able to speak to people, and understand what they're going
through.
I love you all and keep me updated on things
from back home! Wedding stuff is particularly entertaining, and
Lindsay! I haven't heard from you since I was in America! I wanna here
from the person who I will shortly hereafter no longer share the same
last name as! You're really busy though, I understand
Love you all!
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