Week 1

Hello everyone!

 

So I made it Korea safely and have been here about one week! It has been great so far and I am loving it. Missionary work is definetely different than what I thought it would be. We have 0 investigators and only 2 "Potential investigtors" even thought our potential investigators only come to english class and only want to learn english, not about our church. anyway more on that later... the First day with my companion! My companion's name is elder Jeoung! 정장로님. He is hilarious! haha just a stereotypical korean that tries to speak english with a very thick accent. He's the best! A very hard worker and always is trying to do his best to reach out to other people. He is from Pusan so it's nothing is foreign to him. Our first area is called GwayJeoung. When we left the mission home, we walked for about 30 minutes in the blistering heat and humidity to the subway. It was awesome! haha I literally had sweat just dripping down my face as I had my suitcases and packpack on. We rode the subway for about another 20 minutes and then go to our apartment. It jsut got redone so it was actually really nice. We have a room with 2 beds and another room with our clothes. Then the kitchen and another open room with our desks. Surprisingly big. But, it doesn't have air conditioning so our windows are open and we have one small fan that cools us off. haha We planned for a little bit and then we had english class. Everyone said they would be able to come and then last minute they all canceled so we didn't have anyone show up. We left and walked around town for a bit. The cell phone was in my pocket and apparently it went off a couple times but I couldn't feel it. we checked and then called some of them back. They changed their plans and were waiting at teh church for about 15 min! We ran back to the church for a solid 10 min haha my fault... but they were very nice and forgiving. I talked with them in english for a little while just getting to know them and then that was it for the day. The next day we went to visit less actives. we took a bus and train for about 40 min and then walked for another 20 min up this HUGE hill! It was so steep that we had to stop halfway up and rest. once we go to the house, he wasn't there... haha AAHH! We took the bus and train back to our city and tried more less actives. No one was home. Nothing seemed to go right. But it was all ok! The next day we had english class again and Vickie and Julie are our students. We talked in english for about 30 min and then I taught them about the plan of salvation and why I am serving a mission. after what I thought was a very good message, they told me "we can learn about your message, but we don't feel anything. we come here to learn english. it takes us a long time to get here and we don't want to just hear a lesson." ahh... shoot. That was a tough one. Especially because they said they can't feel anything form our message. I felt pretty bad about that, but we continued to talk with them in english and we will meet them again next week for english class. They are our only 2 "potential investigators" but they really have no interest in the church. Sunday was good, I met a lot of people from the ward and everytime I introduced myself to someone, they would say "Oh! President Carter! Are you related to president carter??" haha the 1st counselor calls me President Carter now haha I introduced myself in sacrament and shared my testimony. we stayed for priesthood and sunday school. It was weird because we ended church 15 minutes early to attend to the garden outside haha we watered the garden with everyone and picked weeds out in front of the church. We tried to visit more less actives and they live so far away and none of them are home! we walked, rode the bus, and tried to find them, but either they moved or no one was there.

      So that was my first week here! haha doesn't sound like a lot and it really feels like it hasn't been, but it's always fun! Really hard, but also very fun at times. All of the males say that I look very big and ask if I play football. All the old ladies ask me if I am korean and say that I am a very handsome boy haha I'll have more next week hopefully! Love you all!

 

-Elder Carter