Fun Week, Eh?

06/12/16

오!  안녕하세요, 여러분!

I have probably already used this subject line for a previous email, but I don't really know what I can call it, so I'm using it again.  That is not to say that it was a boring week by any means, we'll just call it a diverse one. ^^

First off, Bob read the Book of Mormon on his own this week!  That was definitely a miracle.  He has seemed really reluctant not to learn, but to actually apply what we are teaching him.  It was really great that he read, and so we will definitely keep praying for him in the future, and he'll be doing really well.  

Next, the highlight of my week.  We went up to the 원당 (Wondang) area of our area, with the intent of visiting a member all the way up there.  After much trials and tribulation (meaning it took us a nice long while to find their house), we found it, and sat in front of it to write a little note to him because we did not really have any time to share any sort of message with him.  While we were writing the note, he walked home from work and saw us on the front steps, and invited us in for a while, which we did.  He gave us a little snack, and he talked to us for a while, and we decided to share a short message anyway based off of 1 Nephi 3:7.  I shared a small testimony about how faith in Christ and the Spirit can really help us through hard times (this, in hindsight, was most definitely a prompting from the Spirit, because that didn't really relate with what we were talking about, and something I will convey shortly hereafter).  Then, we stood up to leave, and he gave us both a huge hug.  I would have never expected that from this certain member, so THAT was a huge miracle.  Then, we left, and had dinner with a different member. That night, I was thinking about the experience and pondering about it, when I realized that he had actually been super stressed when he had come home, and had most likely had a pretty hard day at work.   (That's why the Spirit gave that certain part of the message to me, I believe).  It was all pretty crazy.  The Spirit can truly cause the most marvelous things to happen.  

Have a good week, everybody!

Love,

Elder Tyler Conley

 We found goats!

 A cool thing regarding the city where I live

^^

The Week of Miracles ^^

06/05/16

안녕하세요, 여러분!

This week was a pretty awesome week.  We did see a lot of miracles this week.  This is mostly due to the awesome zone training that we received this week.  Faith was a large subject at that training, and the commitment that all of the missionaries there received was a commitment to pick a miracle every night, and 부탁 the Lord to have us render that miracle during the next day.  This week, we saw two big miracles. 

The first is with Bob.  He is a very good friend of the missionaries, and we decided to start teaching him by reading scriptures with him in English, because he really really likes English.  With our last lesson with him, we gave him the baptismal commitment, and he tentatively accepted!  Now we have a really good focal point to work with, and that will help him progress a whole lot.

The second also involves English.  We have two students at our English Service Activity that we have been trying to pick up as investigators, and after talking about the family with them, Jannette and Blaire have agreed to meet with us again to discuss the gospel.

It's been a pretty great week.  Hope you all have a good one!

Love,

Elder Tyler Conley

The Week of Learning

05/29/16

안녕하세요, 여러분!

Hey everyone, what's up?  This week was a very full week.  We had the actual transfers this week, where everyone does the act of switching companions.  Since Elder Davis became AP, he left on Tuesday, but transfers wasn't until Wednesday.  So, Elder Peterson and I spent all of Tuesday with Elder 이호현 (Ihohyeon).  That was fun.  While we were with him, we visited a less active member's restaurant, and were able to talk with her a little bit.  Then, we went to the church and made a PowerPoint presentation in preparation for Saturday (more on that later).  Then, we taught English Class.  It was kind of an average Tuesday, but we both learned a lot from him.  

Then, on Wednesday, Elder Dye came!  He's from Providence, Utah, only 30 minutes away from my hometown.  He's a cool guy.  On Thursday, we met with Bob.  When we meet with him, we read the Bible and Book of Mormon in English with him.  We specifically read the last half of Matthew ch. 8 and 3rd Nephi 27:11-20.  We laid before him our purpose, and told him exactly what needs to happen on his part for him to achieve the happiness that we can share.  He accepted the commitment to read and pray about the Book of Mormon to find out if it is truly the word of God.  It was a super powerful lesson, and I am super excited to follow up with him this week.  

Now I will tell you about Saturday.  On Saturday, we had a special English Talent Night.  It went super well!  We have been practicing singing "Amazing Grace" with our English Class students, and they did so well!  They sang 3 verses of it in English, and one student gave a special foreword for it.  They did so well!  The other acts were pretty cool, too.  녹번's (Nogbeon's) act was reenacting the story of 흥부 and 놀부 (Heungbu and Nolbu - you can find the story online).  There were other acts that sang Frozen for us.  It was all a very interesting activity, and very fun.  

On Sunday, we went to church, and it went very well.  Ward Council went very well as well.  The missionaries all gave a special musical number of "In Humility, Our Savior".  That went so well!  We also had a Homecoming for 황서현s (Sister Hwang Seohyeon).  She just returned from the New York New York South mission.  She gave a really great talk in Sacrament Meeting.  We went to Gospel Doctrine Class yesterday, where 노원철b (Brother Nowoncheol) was the teacher.  He asked me what 자라난 세대 was in English, and I told him I had no idea (Google translate doesn't know either), and then, after church, he came up to me, and was like, "Wow, you need to learn a lot more Korean!"  ^^  It was pretty funny.  

I call this week the week of learning because I learned a lot this week.  I have learned a too much to talk about here, but let me tell you, it helped me out a lot.  

That's all, folks!

Love,

Elder Tyler Conley

Transfers

05/22/16

안녕하세요, 여러분!

Yep this week was transfers.  Well, I guess we got transfer calls on Saturday.  The results are thus:  Everyone is staying except for Elder Davis.  He was here only such a short time.  He is going to be AP now!  Pretty crazy.  But yeah, not a whole lot of change happening this time around.  That probably means next transfer will get crazy.  I'm almost guaranteed to leave next transfer, since that is the case.  Actually, it is a small miracle that I got to stay another one!  I really love the ward in 원당, and am so glad that I get to stay another transfer.  This one's going to be awesome!

We also had some mini Music Nights this week.  On Saturday, we had one at 일산. There, the 일산 ward actually had a small choir that performed a medley of "If You Could Hie to Kolob" and "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing".  It was super super awesome, and I just had to think, "How did the composer even come up with this idea?"  Then, we had our 원당 Music Night last night, on Sunday.  It was so awesome!  Almost the whole ward came to it, and the Spirit was so strong, especially during the last number, where our whole zone sang together.  

That's all I've got for this week, because I can't actually think of anything else.  I'll make sure to write a good bit more next week!

Love,

Elder Tyler Conley

For the first time since Tyler's been gone, I wondered what he eats for breakfast every morning.  So I asked him this week.  This is what he said, "When I eat breakfast, I usually fry up some ham, and stick it on top of some rice with red pepper paste (고추장) on it."  Just in case any of you were curious, too.

체육‏

05/15/16

안녕하세요, 여러분!

This week was a pretty great week.  A lot of missionaries are pretty burnt now because of a special 체육대회 that our stake had on Saturday.  As missionaries, we are all usually pretty covered up from the sun, so I think a lot of us had forgotten that sunscreen is an actual necessity.  But, now I'm a little red, and Elder Peterson got pretty destroyed by it.  A 체육대회 is a "sports conference".  The way our stake did it is like a field day that people have where they just play outdoor games and do all that sort of fun stuff.  It was super fun.  우리 원당 돠와드 had the most people there by far.  It was pretty awesome to see how many of our members came.  원당 is a super awesome ward.  They are all super close to each other, and super close with the missionaries.  It's super great.  Actually, the same night as the 체육대회 we still held 가정의밤 (Family Home Evening), even though it would definitely not be surprising if members did not come, since they would all be wiped out.  But, to all of our surprise, 백정환 (Baegjeonghwan) and his family came, and we hung out for a little while and then he took all of the missionaries and his whole family out for dinner.  He is such an awesome member.  

Also, yesterday, after a super awesome set of church meetings, we had a mini music night in 금촌 와드 where Elder Bradshaw and Elder Pelina came down and did a bunch of musical numbers with different members of the zone, and the members up there gave short talks about their conversion.  It was pretty cool.  The Spirit was super strong there.  On our final number as a whole zone, while we sang, you could just see the light that the other people were feeling from hearing these voices.  It was really awesome.  

See you all next week!

Love,

Elder Tyler Conley

 Conveyor belt sushi buffet

Sweet Barbecue Party!!

05/08/16

안녕하세요, 여러분!

This was a pretty fun week.  I got to Skype my family today for Mother's Day, and that was pretty great.  The zone leaders busted in halfway through and shoved about a million cookies in my mouth, but besides that, communication went very well.  

This week, we were finally through a miracle able to visit with 백정환's (Baegjeonghwan's) family on a weekday.  We had been trying to visit with them for so long, and so we decided to just go up to the middle of nowhere, where they live.  We thought we would go try to find their house before we called to see if they were home, but then we felt like we should call them from right where we were.  We called them and asked if they had about 10 minutes to meet and talk and share a short message, and they told us that they had exactly 10 minutes right then.  It was their only free time of that day!  We were able to meet with them, and now there's definitely a reason why 백정환b (Baegjeonghwan) and I are best friends.

Then, on Saturday, there was a big 강원도 (Gang Won-do)Music Night, so the other 2 원당 (Wondang) teams had to do exchanges with 금촌 (Geumchon).  Then, all of us went to our ward barbecue party.  It was sooooooooo fun!  Pretty much our whole ward, plus some others came.  임상현 (Imsanghyeon) actually came, too!  But, regrettably, he came a little late, and left a little early, so we weren't able to teach him a lesson again.  After all the meat was consumed, we cleaned up a little bit, and then just conversed with all of the members and had some fun, like people normally do at parties.  Then, we all played some Korean games, which I actually cannot explain, because I don't really understand them myself.  It was an awesome experience!

Love you all!

Elder Tyler Conley

Fun Week, Eh?

05/01/16

안녕하세요, 여러분! 

This was a pretty fun week.  It started off with some interviews with President Sonksen, which really helped me out a lot.  He definitely has the spirit of revelation with him.  I really look forward with having interviews with him.  Later that day, we almost got ourselves lost.  We went to the far regions of our area, where I have only been once for an extremely short period of time.  We met a couple cool people there, including one old guy who critiqued our 전도.  He had some really good insights on how to do it, but it kind of confused us at first.  

Then, on Wednesday, we met with a less active named 박명진 (Bagmyeongjin).  He is a pretty cool guy.  He served a mission in 부산 (Busan) a while back, so he knows all of our rules, including the little loopholes.  He literally told us he wasn't coming to church because he was lazy.  He also rebuked Elder Peterson for studying grammar so in-depth.  He gave us a parable: "Dinner you afternoon my house five.  Understand?"  So, yeah, that's how it goes with grammar, I guess.  

On Thursday, we almost died, because we had back to back dinner appointments with some of our ward members, who really really like to feed missionaries.  The first one knew about it, so she told us she would go easy, and then brought out these two massive trays full of bread on them, then when we went to the second one with the bishop, he said, "We have a house rule here.  Three plates minimum."  So, yeah, our tummies were not very happy that night.  But the food was delicious.  

On Saturday, we had a music 전도 (proselyting) activity, where people brought some musical instruments and played them on the street.  Sadly, they don't really have trombones in Korea, so I ended up just talking to people on the street.  But, I got to see a couple people from my 동기 (MTC district), so that was fun.  

Then, for all of this morning, the zone leaders pretty much beat me up during all of studies.  They've totally lost it.  We have fun in Korea ^^

Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Tyler Conley

 With Elder Peterson

 With Elder Baird

With Elder Baird and Elder Polley