All the more reason to hate calculus!

Hello from Korea!

This week has been what it's been. For how awesome this area is, it sure can be hard on missionaries.

We didn't get to meet with anybody this week, even though we had some pretty great contacts and several referrals from the office to try to meet. We couldn't set up an appointment with Samir, either. Such is the life, I suppose.

There were some little miracles that happened, though.

Let me start with what I titled this week's email (I've decided I'm going to try to do that every week now, now that I've just noticed that I haven't ever): So it's been a while since I've gone to see a dentist. This past week, after eating a good lunch, I notice randomly that there is something that feels weird on my teeth. It felt like a popcorn husk stuck in my gums, but rougher. So I go to the bathroom and try to pick it out with a flosspick, and there's definitely something there, because I can see it, but I don't know what it is. Definitely not anything from the fried rice I just ate. So I start probing with the flosspick, and the tip of it disappeared. There was a hole in my tooth!

And I HATE oral surgery! 

I was feeling pretty down. I was dreading it for a couple of days before I made it to the dentist for the appointment I promptly set up after discovering it, but it turned out that there wasn't a hole at all. There was just a lot of tartar build-up that they called a calculus, and all they did was clean it off for me. It was a relief.

Plus, on the way home, a member from a neighboring ward ran into us on the subway and decided to take us to a buffet for lunch. It was a pretty great day.

Anyways, things were pretty average aside from that. Elder Pettit almost flooded the house (but not really), and we've started planning a ward Halloween party. We'll see what happens with that. Korea doesn't really have Halloween, but they do parties every year it sounds like.

Anyways, that's the week. Love you all!

Elder Shaver

Happy Thanksgiving

Another week!

It was finally one where I feel like I have something fun to talk about (maybe it's because I wrote things down as the week went by... maybe I should do that more.)

So this week we did a number of things. I went on exchanges with Elder Fullmer, and we did some fun exploring and whatnot, including the inside of the World Cup Stadium that's nearby. 

In the world cup stadium!

While we were on that exchange, we ran into some foreigners. Foreigners are never friendly for some reason, but we decided to say hi anyways. WE asked them where they're from, and they say Canada.
Heck yes! I'm all over it! I tell them "so am I," and then they ask, "what Province?" I tell them BC.
Then the guy (they were a middle aged couple) got this funny grin growing on his face and said; "keep going." So I tell them, "well, I'm from a smaller city called Vernon, have you heard of it?" And he says; "Heck yeah, we're from Vernon!"

DAY. MADE.

We went on to find out that we both live on Mission Hill and everything. And we had a great chat about home and about what we're doing in Korea and whatnot. They didn't want to hear anything about the church, so we went our separate ways pretty quick. Oh well. It was quite the coincidence.

Aside from that, we did the usual stuff. There was a big family history event at our church that the stake had us staff. We got to catch some of the super cool festival that was going on. I discovered that cotton candy should only be eaten in smaller quantities (at least, smaller than Elder Knapp and I bought), and we got to catch the Lunar eclipse. It looked way cool.
                                         

Some paper statues from the festival.

General Conference was sweet, too! Because of the family history event, though, we watched all but one of the sessions on Sunday. We had a marathon that took pretty much the whole day. It was worth it though. And plus, we got fed so much for doing the family history event. I still have almost all of my groceries from last week, so I'm set!

Transfer calls also happened, but nobody in my area is moving at all. Some people in my MTC group are moving up, though. Elder Grossgebauer is going Zone Leader! And almost all of us are senior companions, now!

I had to save the best for last: We FINALLY got to meet Samir. It's been hard to get a hold of the guy between our schedules and missed calls, etc... But we finally sat down with him and got to know him a bit more.
This man is amazing. He listens better than anybody I've ever met out here. We gave him a book of Mormon in Urdu, (he's American, but his parents' business took him all over the world as he grew up, so Urdu is his best language apparently) and we talked about the gospel a little bit, but we haven't taught him anything in depth yet. But I feel like we will soon! He's super interested. He's known members of the church for a long time, and he's always been curious to know more, he tells us. We're so excited to meet with him in the future. And maybe jam with him sometime. I can't wait to see what a nose flute is (he makes those for money).
              

A random statue that we saw and thought was weird!

Things are starting to look better! But that's all for this week.

Love you all!

Elder Shaver

ps I did get the relief society care package. I'm appreciating the stuff that's in there. :P 

Not Super Fun

Alright, so this week wasn't so super fun. Not because anything bad happened, but nothing spectacular really happened, either.

The people that we had are all either too busy or are just dodging us (or punking, in the Korean missionary language). Seriously, it stinks. We had the worst week for stats this week that I've ever had in my mission. And there's not much a  chance of it getting better this week with how much the stake has booked us (without checking with us first... grr!) So we're going to be busy doing a family history event at our church building for five hours on four different days this week. We're not happy about it at all. That's a LOT of time. We're only going to get maybe three or four hours of proselyting time on those days, and skip appointments. Plus, there's a huge city festival happening at the same time at the palace next door, so most people are going to be preoccupied with that, we think.

We're not happy. They already took up a lot of our time this week too, because they said we had to make posters for it too. Of course, we can't just say "no, we're busy, please find someone else." That's just not how it works here when you're a missionary.

Ugh. I guess there are just those kinds of weeks. Such is the life of a missionary. 

In other news; transfer calls this coming Saturday! We've got bets on who's leaving. We're still wondering if Elder Knapp is going to stay with me one more with his track record (except for his trainer, he's only gone one transfer with each of his companions). He keeps telling me that I'm going to train this time around. I kinda hope not. It'd be fun, but not yet! :S

That's all for this week, though! Happy birthday to Mom and Grandpa P!

Elder Shaver

Oh, and this happened. We roasted marshmallows over a gas burner using chopsticks at English class. Korea life, baby!

Time is Flying!

Holy cow! September's almost over! I'm at my year mark at the end of next transfer!!! What's going on?!

Haha anyways, it's been another rough week as far as stats go. So many of our people flake out of appointments at the last minute (as I'm sure I've mentioned a couple of times) and so it's been kind of slow.

There's all that, and our new convert didn't show up to his confirmation yesterday! We still don't know why, because we haven't gotten a hold of him. We visited him at his work on Saturday night, and he said that he was coming, but he didn't. I hope that something didn't go sour! I'm worried! :S

We started an English gospel principles class last week, and it was my turn yesterday to teach it yesterday. It kind of crashed and burned. I'll be honest. Apparently, after you only teach in Korean for so long, it becomes weird to try to teach in English, even if it's my first language. Go figure, right? Plus, the people that came weren't THAT good at English. We invited our English class members out to it as a way to invite them to learn more about church and as a way to practice their English more, but all of the members of the advanced class never come. They're the only ones that would probably understand what's going on in that class. Gah! It's unfortunate that it ended up working out this way. Oh well.

Aside from that, there were some fun little tidbits throughout the week. We went to the temple, and dropped by the same bathhouse that we stopped by the last time that I went to the temple. It was way less awkward the second time going. :P

The zone leaders did an exchange with Elder Knapp and I, but cut it shorter than they normally are, so I ended up only getting to sleep and study at the zone leader's house (which is in MY area and NOT theirs). It was a good study, though. Elder 이상범 had a pretty good training about remembering my reason for coming here and what I want to have become at the end of my mission. It was a great boost to my enthusiasm and determination.

We also got to see part of a free opera as we were walking home one night. I didn't think that an opera could be as fun as that turned out to be. Honestly, it was pretty cool, even though I couldn't understand the Italian (or the Korean that the narrator used to explain the Italian. Figures :P ).

Anyways, that's my week! I love you all, and I'll see you again next week!

바이바이!

Elder Shaver

Elder Knapp and me at the temple.

It's been a fun week!

We had our regular interviews with our President, which is always fun as well as just nice to see the Morrises. Sister Morrise made her famous caramel popcorn again. It was awesome!

We also had a baptism! Well, we didn't really do much for it, but officially it counts as ours. hehehe. It was good, though. We're buddies with the investigator, and he really wanted to be a member. Plus, the missionary that worked with him a lot got to come down for it, too. So it was a pretty good day. I didn't realize just how stressful it could be to get it all ready, though! Interviews, planning, ACK! So much craziness!

We also got to meet Calida again before she leaves this Thursday, and we got to meet her friend that she referred to us! His name is Samir, and he's SO cool!!!! He's got a crazy story, but we don't know all of it yet. We do know that he's American, but has an Indian name and speaks and reads Urdu, and he lives in Korea as an English teacher and a musician (he plays a LOT of instruments, including some weird ones like nose flutes, but it's SWEET!!). Basically, Elder Knapp and I are SO excited to meet with this guy. He's got gospel interest, and it just so happens that we have an Urdu Book of Mormon gathering dust on a shelf at our house. It's awesome.

Other than that, though, it's just been work as usual. Elder Fullmer is a prankster at home, and we get back at him sometimes (but I'm never the target, so I just watch and have fun >:) haha ). The members are starting to feed us more often, so we must be doing something right. And our investigators that we're working with right now are being punks (in the missionary sense, which means 'unreliable'). Such is the missionary life in Korea. I'm loving it!

Love you all!

Elder Shaver

Elder Knapp, 안정현investigator,  안기훈member, Me

Cool Chinese garden in our area

The adventure continues!

So there are some crazy things that go on in this country. I'll say that much.

Maybe it's because I'm a missionary, though, because things never got this fun before.

 

So we had a big mission conference for 추석 (Korean thanksgiving), and that was pretty great. President Morrise gave a some words to start, and then HIS old mission president gave us a training on serving in Korea! He was super fun! He gave us a bunch of insights on Korean people and culture and talked about some things that he would like to see missionaries do more often in his country (as a native Korean). It was really great. He even brought President Morrise's old missionary photo, as well as Elder Rock's (a senior missionary serving here with his wife) old missionary photo. AND he brought a photo of another missionary's dad because he was his mission president, too! There were good laughs all around (for those that could see the tiny things, anyways). The conference also had a proselyting activity, and skits and cheers (not unlike EFY) that were super fun. and there was a talent show that was even more fun! I took part in the talent show. Why not, right? There were some pretty fantastic talents at the show. My favourite just might be thedance number put on by the 부평 missionaries, with Elder HIgham (a fellow Canadian Elder) starring as Lehi. It was great.

 

Other than that, though, it was a pretty bland week. Not much happened, and I was just feeling down. We only got one good lesson in with our investigators (literally all but maybe one of the people we're working with have the worst time sitting down and focusing for longer than 10 minutes, it's actually really funny, but we are, at the same time, trying to teach them). Anyways, that went on for pretty much the whole week, until about last night.

 

Elder Knapp and I were making our way home after a long day, and we're both pretty beat after the week we had had and from all the sitting around at meetings and studies that happen on Sundays followed by the hours of walking since we had no appointments to go to, and we ran into a 외국인 (foreigner). But this one looked familiar. Almost like... a MacKenzie! And it WAS!!!! I never thought it would happen, but we stumbled upon Calida as we were walking home! It made my day!!! It gets even better when she gave us some food to go home with AND A REFERRAL!! Best day ever! I can't wait to meet with this one, too. He sounds like quite the character. Plus, he wants to become a member, by the sounds of it! I'm so excited!

 

The adventure continues!

 

Love you all!

 

Elder Shaver

Sculpting what??

Another week down, I don't know how many more I have left to enjoy :P

So this week has been pretty interesting. Well, actually, it's more me-scrambling-to-get-to-know-what's-going-on-in-the-area than it really is anything else. This area is pretty sweet. It feels a lot more like home because there aren't any giant buildings everywhere, there is GRASS, and the streets aren't super crowded. The people are pretty fun, too.

I haven't really gotten to know all of our investigators, but I'll tell you about a couple of them. Some really interesting ones.

So there's 안 [An] (I'll only use last names on here), who we just picked up yesterday. He's met with the missionaries for a month or so, and he's totally getting baptized soon! There's a weird situation, though, that I'll try to explain. There are two elder companionships here, and this investigator was meeting with the companionship that I didn't move into. BUT, one elder from that companionship REALLY wanted to stay here so that he could keep working with 안 because he was getting ready to be baptized. So that elder got moved over to the companionship that I'm in, but because 안 did some special school thing that took him out of town for a month, they couldn't work with him. That elder just got moved out and I came to replace him. So, we wound up with a great investigator who's well on the way to getting baptized this month, but the catch is, neither of us know anything about 안. So we're scrambling to find out where he's at and what he still needs to know and what we gotta do to get him ready to be baptized! Ack! The funny side of it, though, is that the other elders are making a huff (jokingly) that we stole their investigator.

 Another one is 원 [won]. This guy is full-on buddist, but he's super interested in the Book of Mormon. Plus, he just likes us missionaries. He's a sculptor. That's what he spends his time doing. Here's the interesting thing: He has a shameless philia for poop. Almost all of his sculptures are of people squat pooping. (Imagine how I reacted walking into his studio for the first time. Shouldn't be too hard). But he's super cool. He's really nice, and he loves it when we help him around his shop or even just come to visit. He's let other elders before me sculpt with him (of different things, of course). He did, one time, ask me to draw a poop for his new signboard that goes in front of his studio (he teaches sculpting to people for his income). I kind of hesitated and stood there awkwardly for a minute, and then, apparently reading my mind, said "ok, draw a pig instead." So I did that. He seems really happy with how I did. So I guess that makes me happy that he's happy.

I feel like talking about what I'm studying this week. I started this morning, on a prompt from President Morrise, to study what Nephi means when he says "the arm of flesh" (2 Nephi 4... I forget which verse) and what the difference between trusting the arm of flesh and trusting God is. I've looked a little bit about it today, and I've figured that at least part of it has to do with fearing God more than man. I learned that from the story of Martin Harris losing the first 116 pages of the Book of Mormon (D&C 3). There's more to it though. Maybe I could get some insights from you all? The question is; we know that we're supposed to work hard in order to have God help us, but how do we work hard while still putting our trust in God and not our own strength?

That's all I got for now, though.

Love you all!

Elder Shaver

Elder Knapp

Suwon

The palace at night.