Hey President!!!
This week was awesome!!! Super good as usual, but some extra cool events too! Lately as you've been talking about people just coming up to the missionaries and saying "hey, I want to learn about what you're spreading," I've kind of just been thinking "yeah sure, that'll never happen to me." BUT! I'm sure you could have guessed at this point that we had an experience along those lines.
We were just walking down this street that we had planned to contact on at that time, and Elder Thorup was mid conversation with this Chinese man, and I thought to myself "maybe it will be better if I just kind of trail behind and if he needs help (not to say I speak chinese, because I don't) he'll let me know. While trailing, I was trying to start talking with some of the people coming the other way, and everyone seemed busy, and there was one man on his phone, I would say hi, another listening to music, hello, another talking to his girlfriend. The trend continued, but as we approached an intersection, one of the men that seemed to be listening to music had caught up with us and asked if we could talk for a while in this nearby coffee shop.
That led to a really good discussion, and I know that the spirit was just sooooo involved in that chain of events. Unfortunately, as per the pattern that seems like that seem to follow here for us, he left the country for Hawai'i today. Unfortunate that we won't get to teach him for 3 to 6 months, but still so cool that we got to see the Lord's hand so blatantly present in our day, after we made a plan and followed it.
Thanks for everything President! See you at the temple!
-Elder Clawson
Hey Everyone!!!
How's it going?!?!?! I hope good. Especially for Lindsay and Tony, it's still their special day!! Wow congratulations!!! A year! And many more to come!!! I don't know the appropriate way to congratulate this sort of thing... Maybe just next year I'll be able to say it in person!! HAH!!
Anyways, like I said in my email to president, this week has been really good.
We started out last monday with this caroling activity that we were going to do, and it kind of didn't work out because the people that tried to organize it didn't do too hot, but they tried and turned out okay! We just didn't get to carol. We were going to try and do it at this pretty crowded station. but since we didn't get a permit or anything for it, they kicked us out, and sent us to this one side where it would be literally impossible to hear us. Totally open, and not super highly trafficked. SOOOO... we were standing around, and since I was getting kind of bored and there was little to no point in trying to sing, a couple of other missionaries and I just started doing a bunch of street contacting in that area. It was super fun, and I talked to this guy that knew a jazz fusion band that I knew and was super into in America. Afterwards we went to the food court and I found this restaurant that sold my favorite food 닭갈비 for pretty cheap. It was pretty awesome.
Tuesday we had our mission conference for Christmas which was pretty fun. It's kind of sad because the sisters that I came to the country with go home at the end of this transfer. HOW CRAZY IS THAT?!?!?!?! Not cool man, why does time go this fast... Well at least I have 6 months more than them. Conference was really cool. There was this activity that we had to meet missionaries that we hadn't ever had a conversation with, and it was really hard for me. Not because I'm not outgoing enough, but because I just know too man stinking people!!! Well I guess you can never know too many people, but it was legitimately not very easy for me. There were maybe only 5 or 6 missionaries in the room that was full of about 80 that I had never talked to before. Call me the social butterfly.
Oh yeah, Christmas eve it was like 10 oclock at night, and I was playing guitar, pretty quietly mind you, and then someone comes and knocks on the door and really rudely tells me to stop playing guitar. I'm just like "it's 10 oclock lady!" in my head, and I just said, yeah okay, I won't play anymore. I guess that's what happens when you have to be up at 3 in the morning everyday to yell at your roommates. (not us, her)
Christmas was awesome!! We opened gifts and had an awesome breakfast, and made horchata again, which was delicious. So awesome man... After all that we went to the stake center and played sports which was super fun. We started with footsol which is basically just really small soccer which was fun, then basketball. I'm not too great at either of those. Not very good translations from water polo... sad face. that's okay! It was still fun!
We also had english class that night which was super awesome because our class brought a ton of food and they we had this super good meal. Also there's this one english class patron who is just like the ditzyest person ever, and she's just filthy rich. It was a pretty funny combination and she was just making a huge mess with the cake she brought. As part of the English portion, I asked everyone what they did for christmas and no one had very good responses for Christmas. For the gospel message I asked if they knew what the meaning of Christmas is and rich ditsy lady all snidely responds "yes, it's about jesus's birth and everyone knows that". It was a really good opportunity to share with people why that was important. They may have known why Christmas is a thing, but none of them could feel why christmas is a thing, and for that little short message, we could share with them how we felt about it, and it was really awesome.
Thursday I called my family! YAYYYAYYY!
Friday was when we had that crazy cool experience that I wrote to president about.
Saturday we had English class again, which was pretty great and lots of other conversation times. Nothing too crazy.
Yesterday was pretty cool. We had the opportunity to teach a practice lesson with some members and this member was bringing up some tough questions, I really liked it. I had a pretty cool experience with Korean then too. The member we were teaching's wife was saying something about the scriptures, and I understood it in Korean, so she told me to explain it to my companion. I couldn't do it. I knew how to say it in Korean, but I could translate it. It was pretty funny. Super cool for me.
Well sorry for the abrupt ending but I gotta go!
Korean phrase for work hard
화이팅!! (hwa-ee-ting)
just koreanized fighting!
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