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

Exploration...

04/23/16

안녕하세요, 여러분!

This week was a pretty interesting week.  We kind of explored all over our area throughout the week.  We went up to some places named 내유동 (Naeyudong), 고양동 (Goyangdong), and 백석동 (Baegseogdong).  Kind of all over the place.  Going to that first area was an accident, though.  We were able to visit 박옹자 자매님 (Bag Ongja Jamaenim), who was so happy to see us.  She gave us this huge bag of food and told us how happy she was that we came.  It was pretty cute.  I also went on exchanges with Elder Davis, our zone leader, and explored 백석 (Baegseog) area.  We met a lot of cool people there, and were able to get two return appointments.  It was pretty exciting.  

Another exciting thing that happened this week was that 세준 (Sejun) got baptized!  But, I was a 바보 (?) and didn't bring my camera, so no pictures of that.  세준 (Sejun) was taught by the Elders in 일산 (Il-San), and is a really cool kid.  I was super excited for him to get baptized.  We pretty much spent all of church preparing the baptismal font for him.  It was a really cool experience.  Another great thing involved in that was that 임상현 (Imsanghyeon) came to the baptism.  He is one of the last people I would have expected to do so, but I guess that just shows how much he's changed since I first met him.  It was pretty cool.  He still has baptism on his mind, so we will do our best to prepare him for that.

That's all for this week!  Have a good one!

Love,

Elder Tyler Conley

And some extra from my email:

I can't really think of any exciting stories to tell you this week.  I can tell you all that bearing a testimony works miracles.  Elder Davis and I were on the street, and we were talking to a guy, and bore testimony to him about eternal families, and that is definitely the only way he decided to meet with us again, so that was a cool experience.  

Yep, Elder Peterson was Elder Baird's old companion, and is now mine.  He's super awesome.  We are already pretty much best friends.  We believe that we will see a lot of miracles this week.  I think that this week, we will find a lot of new people to teach.  임상현 (Imsanghyeon) is doing pretty awesome.  He came to the baptism, and asked if, when he gets baptized, he has to bear a testimony, so it still sounds like he's expecting it.  We haven't had a chance to teach him a real lesson since Elder Peterson's come yet, but he seems to be doing all right.  

New Companion

04/17/16

안녕하세요, 여러분!

This was a pretty great week.  This week was transfers, and every single team in our district switched.  We got a new Zone Leader, a new greenie, and Elder Peterson, our new district leader, and my new companion.  He came to Korea 2 transfers before me, so usually, if someone says something that we don't understand, we look at each other, and realize that the other one didn't understand it either.  This next transfer or two will be awesome.  I am actually really excited.  Elder Peterson is an awesome missionary.  I actually spent a whole lot of time this week telling about 원당 (Wondang) and about the ward and its members.  So, we did not spend a whole lot of time doing missionary activities, but we set ourselves up to do some super awesome missionary work for this next week.  We are going to see a whole lot of miracles this week.  

This week, I met with an investigator in 금촌 (Geumchon), as a goodbye visit for Elder Benson, with whom I had to go on exchanges with.  The investigator's name was 임현옥 (Imhyeonok), and he is a super cool guy.  Then, on Wednesday, I pretty much spent the whole day in a threesome with the zone leaders, because transfers were weird, so I ended up finally getting my companion at 5 in the afternoon.  It was pretty crazy.  Then, besides initiation for Elder Peterson, we visited a couple of members' houses.  That took so much longer than it should have.  We found one after an hour and a half, and found out it was literally a 30 second walk from our house, so that was embarrassing.  Then, the next one took us about 3 hours, with us walking all over our area to find it.  It was an adventure.  The rest of this transfer will be as well, because our goal for this transfer is to go to all of the places that are in the far regions of our area, and just explore everywhere in our boundaries.  It's gonna be fun! ^^

Have a good week!

Elder Tyler Conley