Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Crazy Korean Adventures

10/04/15


!!!  안영하세요여러분!
This was another exciting week, for many reasons.  However, it was not quite as exciting as the last couple of weeks, most likely because I don't feel quite so weirded out by everything.  I actually went on exchanges this week with the zone leaders, because my companion is the district leader.  I went on exchanges with Elder Jolley.   He was a very happy soul.  He is a lot different than Elder Jarrett.  He is a lot louder, and doesn't follow people quite as much when he goes 전도-ing.  Mostly what he would do is ask someone to shake our hands, and when they didn't, he would just say, "Your hair is very stylish," as they walked off.  While we were on the exchange, he was reading a book about different religions from our perspective.  He happened upon Zoroastrianism.  I don't even know what people follow this religion.  It is really weird.  Basically, after people die, the body is not allowed to contaminate fire, earth, or water.  So, because they couldn't bury them, cremate them, or send them off to sea, they would (I'm sorry this is kind of gruesome) put them in a tower and let the vultures eat them.  Let's just say, our exchange was very exciting.
On Tuesday, we got to hang out with Mike and Sue, our investigator and recent convert.  They took us to a mountain park type of thing, and we ate lunch there, and talked about the gospel with him.  It would seem that Mike really does want to come to church, but his Catholic mother with Parkinson's is holding him back.  It is a little sad, but I believe he will be baptized soon.
I passed off the first lesson in Korean, so that's cool.
(I asked Tyler what his language pass-offs were.  His response: "Language pass-off is a system we have in our mission.  We pass off all five of the missionary lessons to our leaders in Korean, along with our How to Begin Teaching and street contacting strategies.  We pass them off to all of the leadership in the mission from the district leader up to the assistant to the President.  I just passed off lesson one to my district leader, who is also my companion.  I am supposed to be done with passing off to the AP's by the end of my second transfer, which is when my training ends.")
And, to answer questions that 여러분 (you) might have, no, I have not seen conference yet.  Because the translation from English to Korean is so hard, they have to wait an extra week before they can release it here.  I do, however, know who the new apostles are already.  One of the Sisters' recent converts, who is American, saw it already and told us.  
We had some cool things happen to us this week while we were 전도-ing.  The first happened on Tuesday.  We had 2 meetings scheduled for that day, as well as language pass-off.  The meetings got canceled, and we forgot to do pass-off.  If that had not happened, we would not have met one of the coolest Korean kids I have ever met.  He was about twenty seven.  We met him at about 6:30, and kept talking with him until about 8:30.  It was crazy.  It was all gospel talk, too.  We were actually able to show him around our church, and he said it had a really good atmosphere.  We really need to follow up on him again.  
On Thursday, we met up with someone who was supposed to be really mean to us.  We met up with a Presbyterian pastor.  For your information, Presbyterians are, almost as a rule, the meanest people to LDS missionaries.  They are pretty much the big church in Korea.  Anyway, we started talking to him, and found out he was a pastor for that church.  We talked some more, and I was nervous for what was going to happen.  He was actually one of the nicest people I have met, and we actually succeeded in giving him a Book of Mormon ^^.  How crazy is that??!
I think that about wraps it up for this week.  See you next week!
사랑해요,
Elder Tyler Conley

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