Transferred to Geumcheon!!

THE JACKETS ARE COMING OFF, FOLKS! IT'S GETTING REAAAAAAAAL!!!!

I meant to open with that a while ago... We've been allowed to take off jackets for at least two weeks, now. Surprise!

This week has been CRAZY!!!! Guess who came to the mission this past week? Brother and Sister Burton. They closed the Seoul West mission in 2010 (my mission is like, the reincarnation of that mission). Sister Burton, if you didn't guess already, is the General Relief Society President now, and she made history with us as she is the first (to her knowledge... and to mine) Sister General Authority to give specific instruction to any particular mission. Y'know, we're special, so no big :P

The day after that our mission and the Seoul Mission combined for a fireside with the Burtons, the Oscarsons (Sister Oscarson also being from the General Relief Society Presidency) and President Ringwood (the Area President) speaking. It was a big deal. And it was REALLY cool. I got to see 동기  members that went to the Seoul mission! That was a bit of a treat.

I'M GETTING TRANSFERRED!!!!!

I'm going to a place called 금천, in the 안양 zone, which is the zone just South of the one I'm in now. Everybody that I've talked to that's been to the area I'm going to FREAKED out when I told them. They LOVE 금천. I guess I'll find out why starting on Wednesday. The past couple of days have just been a lot of packing, saying farewell testimonies and whatnot at church, and saying bye to the few investigators that our 3-month old area has. Mister 이 is having dinner with us tonight before I go. I'm going to miss that man. He's so nice. Apparently he's also a body guard. I just found out yesterday. He's still full of surprises.

My new companion's name is Elder Lee, and I had the opportunity to meet him briefly at the fireside on Saturday. He seems really nice, and not nearly as crazy as Elder Brissette. I'm excited. He's not that much older than me missionary-age, so it's going to be a different experience but I'm still excited!

Let's see... We met with some potentials this week, but so far they've all turned down the gospel, or have been to lukewarm towards it to care. BUT, we did have this one man spoil us rotten. He failed to keep his promise to come to church two weeks in a row, so he found time to meet with us and took us to a REALLY nice restaurant. He bought us the best meal I've ever had in Korea! Like, REALLY REALLY nice. I knew that Korean food was good, but like, he took us to a high-up-there restaurant and showed us some of the best of what Korea had to offer kind-of-thing. It was sweet!

Cool things happen on a mission. I'm kinda anxious about the actual missionary work being so slow so far, but a lot of neat things happen. Maybe in my next area they'll be more of the bring people to the gospel kind of things. I'm crossing my fingers for it, actually.

Anyways, just got to keep pushing forward!

Love you all!

Elder Shaver

Here are a few pictures!

The Slytherin tie Michelle brought back for me from London.

With Elder DeMille (my MTC awesome companion) at the temple.

Easter in Seoul

안녕하세요!

Holy cow! I'm almost down to a week from another transfer! Calls come in this Saturday! It's CRAAAAAAZY!

This week has been pretty good, too. Nothing super exciting happened (as in, I didn't eat any unusual animal meat or anything), and our investigators are kinda being all over the place... Seriously, people that we meet (except for a precious few) just want to hang out with 외국인s (foreigners) and take us out to restaurants. Don't get me wrong, I love it! But then, we're trying to teach the gospel, too, but not many people want any part of that. :'(

Gah!

Oh well. Mister 이 is still coming out to church when he can, and he's asking good questions. Plus, he really likes us, and as our senior, that will only ever mean good things for us as long we're in Korea. Old people would spoil us rotten if we didn't stop them from spending tons of money on us. But anyways, there's not much as far as our investigators go, sadly.

Let's see... Oh! Our ward had a ping-pong tounrament this week! Koreans are ridiculous at ping pong! They're ridiculously good at whatever they set their mind to, and they go all out at whatever they do. "Hiking? Well, let me get my special boots, pants, jacket, shades, hat, poles, and backpack with the essentials in it before we go." ( <- You see hikers like this EVERYWHERE) Seriously. That's how it is for EVERYTHING. Biking. Ping Pong. Video games. Sports. School. Music. If they're doing something, they're going to be the extreme best at it that they can manage. The members at the ping pong tournament were really good. Not everybody was spectacular, but there were professionals there with their uniforms and everything (they officiated, and then played some show matches at the end, otherwise it wouldn't have been fair).

There was also an Easter Musical Production last night. We sang in our ward choir, the chamber orchestra that played for us that one time was accompanying us and the soloists who were also singing. And, (here's the go-all-out-on-everything aspect of Korean culture again) the chapel (not ours, this was in 영등포) was decked out with stage lights, microphones, a big computer setup to control them plus the projector, and soundboards and the rest of the works. It was crazy! They even had a dinner prepared for right before it started! People went all out on it, and it was really good! I'll try to get some pictures later, but I need to get them from another missionary who wasn't a part of the program. I'll figure it out.

Anyways, that's what happened this week!

Love you all!

Elder Shaver

Korea Week 10 (I have now been in Korea longer than I was at the MTC!)

So this week has been pretty great!

I think that the biggest problem for me as a missionary, is that we're so busy and time flies so fast that by the time email day comes I don't remember much of anything that happened in the week. The lists of things to talk about that I write don't seem to help tons, either.

Last week, I neglected to write about, I attended a Korean wedding. It was really cool. The procession of it was fast, fun and slightly different than what I think North Amercan weddings are like (I've only been to two other weddings... and I was a wee' boy when they happened). The food was great though! and the moms of the couple were both wearing traditional-style Korean dresses, which was pretty neat to see.

Here's a goofy pic with my district that we took last pday!

This week, we got to go to a Korean funeral! Quite the transition, huh? I'm not even sure if it was a funeral. We showed up to this place, we went up to the family of the deceased person (whom we know and love) and there was a picture of the mom (as it turns out it was the mom / mother-in-law of these two) and we did this crazy bow thing to the picture. We bowed so low that our foreheads touched the ground, and then we did it again, and then we did a 90-degree standing bow. Then we turned to the family and did the deep-to-the-ground-bow to them (I would like it to be noted that I felt like I almost faceplanted myself when I was doing these), and then a 90-degree bow. Then they fed us (Koreans ALWAYS feed you). This place that this was taking place at served traditional Korean funeral food. There was Kimchi and rice (big surprise) and there were assorted other side dishes as there always is at a Korean meal. These were weird, though. Some of the notable ones were little whole fishes serves with green beans and sauce, which nobody made me eat, and there were these strips of weird-looking meat.... which I WAS made to eat. I ate one, before anyone told me what it was, and it tasted good, but it felt sooo weird in my mouth. The texture was strange. I learned later that I was eating the not-completely-ground meat of a pig's head, and that the thing making it feel weird was the pig skin (like, the whole layer of skin) that was lining it.

Can you guess what I did?

I bravely ate another piece to show the Koreans that I am willing to experience their culture. I kind of ruined my appetite by doing it, though... and I couldn't get myself to eat another one (never mind the rest of the plate of them, like they were encouraging me to do). So I ate the rest of my rice and some kimchi and called it good. I hope that that doesn't happen again anytime soon. *knocking on wood*

Aside from that; General Conference was GREAT! We got an investigator to come out to Sunday session! We were so happy!

We picked up a new investigator, too! He's a Tae Kwon Do master, and he told us that if we taught him English that he would teach us Tae Kwon Do. He wants to lean English so that he can do Missionary work in Thailand, so we asked him if, since we're missionaries, we could talk about the gospel instead? He agreed! Woohoo! He's super fun, too. We really like him.

I think that that's the report for this week, though. My regards from the super-nice PC 방 in Korea!

I love you all!

Elder Shaver

P.S. Here's a cool painting of chinese characters saying 'Prince of England' because people keep saying I look like him, so an old guy we visited painted this for me.

2 Months in Korea!!

Hello, Everybody!

I'm using the crap computer at the library AGAIN. GAH! At least the keyboards here feel normal now. They're about the same as they are in Canada, except there's a 한글 toggle hotkey! >:)

Oh the fun! I want to be able to do this in Canada when I come back!

Anyways, this week was really slow... Not too too much happened with our investigators. We only met with Mr. 이, and we found out that he's going to bring his wife to church with him next Sunday. Just in time for general conference! BOOYAH!

Other than that, though, we just did a lot of contacting on the street and in the subways. We met one superDUPER cool dude, though. He deserves a good nickname... not just Mr. "모모모" (something-something). He studied theatre for ten years, and he's really eloquent. That basically means that anything that he says that I would normally understand... well, I don't. But the first thing he said to me was "You kind of look like Mr. Bean!"

Huh?

It was hilarious. We laughed a good few minutes from that. I later found out that the only reason that he said it was because he thought I looked down and unhappy. Which, to be honest, I was at that time. He's such a nice guy. He wants to meet again, too. I hope that we'll be able to help him as much as he helps us!

But that's about it for this week. Sorry to cut this one so short, but I guess that there are slow weeks even in missionary work (still important, to be sure! But I guess sometimes the cool things need time to get set up before they happen? I don't know :P )

Oh yeah, Avengers 2 is being filmed in Seoul right now! Fun fact! 

We're also singing in choir over here "This is the Christ." It reminds me of Vernon choir!

Love you all!

Elder Shaver

Korea Week 8

Hello, everybody!

So this week has been kind of slow. I'm not going to lie, it was actually really rough. I would have this be known to people who plan on going on missions:

It's hard sometimes. I don't mean to scare anybody, and this shouldn't because everybody would probably know this before they make the decision to go. But let me tell you all right now, that when people told me that it was the hardest thing they'd ever done, I had no idea what that really meant and I so got blindsided when I got out here. So here's my advice:

If you're going on a mission and you don't feel as though you have a growing relationship with Heavenly Father, then you need to start right now to get it growing. I don't care how good you think yours is, or how far away your mission is ahead in the future, and I'll put this out there for people who've returned if it applies to them; if it's not GROWING, you need to get it growing RIGHT NOW. If it's not growing, then it's withering because you're not putting in enough effort to keep it there. That's something that I've learned for myself out here. I thought I was fine, but I didn't, and I highly doubt that missionary fully realizes just how much you're going to be relying on Heavenly Father's help when you get out here. If I don't learn or gain anything else from my mission, this life lesson is enough to make coming out here worth it.

Again, I'm not trying to scare anyone. Missionary life is hard, but that's what makes it so great! You learn so much as a missionary. I've only been out for a few months and I could already say that a few months ago. I highly recommend serving a mission and would urge anybody who's making that decision to take the opportunity and go. It'll be the best thing you ever do if you give it your best effort.

But anyways... I'm done being all deep and stuff... It really wears me out.

The update on what's going on as far as missionary work, is that we've picked up two new investigators! Saint Kim didn't come to church (AGAIN >:( ) but we did have two other investigators come! That's the first time it's happened for me since I got out here!

The two new investigators are Mr. Song (it sounds different in Korean, but the romanization is perfect since he likes to sing :P ) and Teacher Kim ('teacher' because he's teaching me Korean).

Mr. Song and Mr. 이 are the ones that came to church. Mr. Song didn't stay for the whole thing, but I'd say that he enjoyed himself and liked it. Mr. 이, we found out in a conversation with him after sacrament, is a 3rd degree black belt it Tae Kwon Do, and that he used to be a Buddhist Priest. He's also ridiculously good at 장기 (Korean equivalent of chess). He's a pretty spectacular guy.

Anyways, so we went to visit our Egyptian Christian friend, William the other day. We went in the evening, which we've never done before, and there was a worker there. The workers have told us to please not go to the refugee house during the weekdays because we get in the way of their work, and we've respected their wish to only visit on the weekends. This worker, however, in true old-Korean-목사 (preacher)-man fashion, told us to get lost. Fun fact about Korea: since it's a Confucianist society, old people almost ALWAYS get their way, so he was rude. He told us that we're not Christian, because we believe in a being who's not Christ, but who we call Christ.... You could really tell that this guy was educated, because he's one of the only old Korean men that could speak fluent English (and he was so stuck up... a certain scripture in 2 Nephi about learned people who ' think they know of themselves comes to mind when I think about this guy). But anyways, this guy told us to get the heck away from the refugee house and stop feeding them non-Christian crap. He even went so far as to say that Muslims are more Christian than us (I've got nothing against Muslims, we've met a few really cool Muslims people out here, actually, but Islam is a totally different religion than Christianity)! Ugh.

So there's a persecution story for you. William is on our side, though, and he told us to come back whenever. That guy only goes to work after 6pm, so we'll just not visit anytime after that. We're pretty sure that he's not the boss of the place, even though he acts like it (because he's old... and Old Korean people do that).

The work goes on! The future only gets brighter!

                                                My companion and me on the street. 

Love you all!

Elder Shaver

No More Hospital Visits!

Alllriiightt.... This computer has a square moniter.... And I can't tell for the life of me if this font is making my letters all purple or not. hoooooray! Haha I guess even the most wired country in the world has crappy old computers hiding around in old libraries.

Anyways! I'm going to get this out of the way: The doctor gave me the 'all-clear' last Friday! No more hospital visits for me! *knocking on wood right now* But, the eye is still super red. It doesn't hurt, but it still freaks out 정초원 자매님. It's funny. Also, it might take months before it goes back to seeing normally. Huzzah! >.<" At least the doctor isn't worried about it. I feel pretty good about it, too. It's much better than it has been.

But, moving on:

Transfers were interesting. They weren't as sad as I thought they would be. Neither were they exciting as I thought it would be. It was kind of like "Well, it's time for transfers!" for everybody else while I kind of waited for something amazing to happen, which it didn't. Oh well. Elder Despain lives in our house now, instead of Elder Thomas. Elder Despain is pretty fun, though. He's my older (one transfer ahead of me), but I don't know him all that well.

Also, Sister McNatt came to our district! She's my younger (one transfer behind me) and so that's how I kind of know her. And Sister Giles, who's a really cool sister from my older 덩기 (동기? I'm still not sure which 'O' sound it is) is in our zone! It's pretty cool.

As for our investigators... Well, nobody's progressing. Saint Kim has failed to come to church three times in a row, so he no longer has a baptismal date. We want to meet with him again and get him progressing again, but so far we haven't had any luck. ㅠㅠ

We picked up a new investigator, though! Mister 이 (pronounced 'ee'). He's a street vendor, and he's a really cool guy! He's got some great questions and he's (hopefully) reading a 몰몬경 right now! We met him right after I got to Korea, but Elder Brissette and an Elder he was on exchanges with ran into him again and he was like, "Hey you! I wanna talk to you!"

Woohoo!

You know, we didn't know if we'd ever talk to him again, but it's really no myster-이 that we did (HAAA! Inter-lingual puns!). Miracle of the transfer: check!

Other than that, though. We're still looking for people. It's a little disheartening at times when nothing really happens as far as baptisms for such a long time, but miracles happen everyday, and I'm positive that every effort we put in is for something. There's just too many amazing things that happen for it to be any other way. No way whatsoever.

Just gotta keep moving forward, right? :P It all makes sense eventually.

Love you all!

Without Wax,

Elder Shaver

Korea Week 6

Hello everybody!

TRANFERS!!! AAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!

Haha yeah, no big. I'm still a trainee, so really,  there's not much excitement in it for me. Trainees are almost guaranteed to not go anywhere for two transfers. BUT, Elder Thomas is leaving! He's an awesome missionary, and he's going to be missed around here. He's going to 인천 zone, which is a ways away from where we are now. But anyways, Elder Despain is coming to replace him as Elder Pringle's companion. Elder Despain is my older 동기, which means he was in the group that came to this mission before my group did. Also, 정초원 자매님 is training one of the sisters from my younger 동기! I don't know the sisters as well as the elders, but it's still kind of exciting, even if it means the amazing 정햬민 자매님 is leaving (sad face! :( ). Oh well. Such is the mission life. There are people waiting for them in their new areas!

Anyways, the work in our area is moving along! Saint Kim has a baptism date! We're so excited! The only problem is that he's STILL not keeping his committments, despite how much he says that he wants to be a member. College students! They're just so fickle! Aside from him, we met with Wise Guy again, and it's starting to look like his interest in us is more academic than spiritual. He's trying to figure out this religion thing by study rather than trying out the principles that religions teach. So, we're trying to get him to see that you can't know the truth (which is what he's looking for) unless he does something to experiment on it. It's like expecting a seed will grow without planting it. IT DON'T WORK. We'll get him going.

We also gave a Book of Mormon to a really cool Egyptian guy (not the same one that I talked about before). He's a christian, he's been all over the world, and he went through a lot of hard times as a christian in Egypt. I haven't met ANYBODY that's been through the crap that he's been through. He's amazing, AND, he's interested in what we have to say! I don't have a nickname for him yet, though. We also met with a vice-principal (who's actual English name is EJ. Just EJ). She goes to church, but she hates what the preacher preaches there. I might have talked about her a bit already. She's looking into other churches, but feels bound to the church that she doesn't like because her dad (who's on his last legs in life... or, as Koreans say it; 'is about to put down the spoon') goes to that church. Grr. We taught her about the Gospel of Jesus Christ (well, we were on splits that day, actually, and so I wasn't actually a part of that lesson) and it sounds like she's going to be a good investigator. Time will tell, though, when we meet with her again and see if she'll keep committments.

That's the update on our investigators. Moshi is officially not interested anymore. Maybe he is, but he's too busy to meet with us :'(

My eye is being weird. It was healing fine up until Thursday, when I started having a different kind of vision problem, and splitting headache pains around the eye. We had an appointment with the doctor the day after, and he said that the hemmoraging is healing just fine, but the inflammation was still a problem (and, my guess was that it had actually gotten worse given the fact that it hurt so bad). So anyways, he prescribed new eyedrops and told me to trash the old ones. Saturday and Sunday of taking those eyedrops were still brutal, and I wasn't sure if it was even helping, but todayI haven't had any problems so far. No sight problems or pain. My eye is SUPER red, though. I don't know what's going on. I have another appointment with the doctor on Friday, so we'll see what he says.

It's an adventure, that's for sure! I love you all!

Without Wax,

Elder Shaver