Week 21 & 22

hey everybody,

how was christmas this past week?? pretty amazing?! christmas in korea was really good here! except for one thing... our investigator, jong min didn't get baptized on the 23rd because we werent able to get his parents permission yet... so its been a little delayed. Im pretty sure we will be able to get his parents permission soon so ill keep you updated on that. that is the hardest thing for korean kids to get baptized, their parents. I think Jong min's parents are coming around though. Another investigator we have Sung Hyun might not get baptized until later in life too. His parents have actually not allowed him to go to church because they hate the idea of church and god... but he wants to get baptized, so when he is older i think he will be baptized!

chirstmas this week was really good! all the missionaries in our mission came the onchoen ward and we had a big missionary party. we watched some mormon messages and listened to president and sister gilbert speak. we had subway catered in and then we all watched Narnia together haha it was really weird watching a movie! after our christmas party we went back to our area and had a bunch of youth at our church so we played games with all of them. On saturday we had a stake youth activity where we had lots of different games, food, perfomances, and testimonies. Since our branch has the most youth in our stake, we prepared a dance to a really popular korean pop song haha Im not sure what the song was called or how to spell it english, but maybe if you search youtube you can find it! maybe type in "ba ba ba jumping korean song" haha maybe you can find it! 5 girls in the pop group wearing white racing outfits and helmets. so that was really funny, me and elder day were helping with the dance and lots of other missionaries were there just laughing haha

yesterday, sunday, was a little bit of a downer. none of our investigators came to church, Jong min went fishing with his dad and another doesnt have a phone so we couldnt contact him. the other investigators name is Min Jay, he didnt coe to church last week either and said he would come this week, but didnt! hopefully he comes next week! after church we met with 3 future missionaries in our branch. 3 sisters are all going to Seoul Korea Mission next month so we all just talked about missionary work and helped them get ready for the mtc. They are really strong spirited! I couldnt really understand what they were saying but i felt the spirit so strongly when they talked about why they wanted to serve missions. woah. they will be really great missionaries for sure! We street contacted a little bit to end the day yesterday and it was pretty rough. Lots of people didnt even respond to us or look at us when we tried talking to them, they are missing out on so much! elder day was pretty surprised by that even after being out for over a year. But next time will be better for sure! just gotta keep trying. Love you all, God be with you!

-elder carter

Week 20

hey everyone,

 

This week was really great! So we were able to meet with our investigators everyday this week. Since they are all young, I played a lot of ping pong this week so im getting better! And Ive converted to holding the paddle in the "asian way" that I used to make fun of... haha its so much easier! On Tuesday, we went looking for less actives. Our branch president gave us a huge stack of less actives to find so we started this week. We spent the whole day walking up hills and apartments trying to find but a lot of them moved and the new people dont know where they moved. We found 18 houses that day! but out of those 18 houses only about 5 lived there. and out of those 5, 2of them wouldn't even talk to us, 1 didn't answer the door(we heard the sink turn off when we knocked) and 1 of them wasn't home. BUT, 1 of them was busy and said that we could come back and he would want to talk to us! Such a blessing! We will head back over there sometime this week! that took all day, but it actually paid off! hopefully at least one can come back to church, hopefully all will come back!

     later on in the week we did some activities with our youth which was good because i dont really know them that well yet. Our investigators were there too and they seem to be more and more comfortable with the youth in our branch.

     Yesterday on Sunday, one investigator came to church and brought his dad's bible with him. The zone leaders gave him a triple combination and then taught him a lesson while me and elder day were in sunday school. They taught him about baptism and then asked him to be baptized... He accepted!! He will be baptized on the 22nd of December! perfect, just in time for Christmas! Oh man Im so happy for him! hes awesome!

Hope Y'all have a good week! christmas is almost coming up!

 

-elder carter

Week 19

hello everybody,

This week was a solid week with elder day. I met our branch yesterday at church and they are amazing! I got such a warm welcome from them and everyone seemed excited to have a new missionary in their area. Living with the zone leaders is really good too, their english is not very good so we always try to talk to each other everynight. I was honestly a little uncomfortable with them at first because we cant really speak much to each other, but now its very good! i love living with them! So our investigators in this area are all young men, our branch president and presidency want us to focus on the young men because there are so many here in the branch. The past few transfers in this area, they've had maybe 6 baptisms of all young men and they were all referals from 1 friend refering all them. So our investigators now are about 15 years old and all friends. We have about 4 investigators and see them almost everyday. They come to the church and we play games with them and teach them very short lessons here and there. 2 of them actually came to church yesterday and we talked to them about faith after church. Their understanding of the gospel is improving as we continue to talk so they are making some progress. We also have a different investigator about 70 years old that i havent met before. He was supposed to come to church yesterday but then he didnt and we cant get a hold of him yet. Im just geting used to the area but i already love it! so much to be thankful for around this time of the year! love you all!

-elder carter

Week 18

Hey everyone,

 

Ya this week was sweet! We got transfer calls on thrusdays and I am leaving my area this time! I will be going to a place called Gupo a little more north of my area. So I had to say goodbye to everyone in our branch on sunday and it was tough! I love those people so much. I can't really speak with many of them but I've always felt the love they have for other people. On Saturday we were able to meet with Vicky, Julie, and Mr. Yu again. Since this was our last time meeting together they ordered chicken for us to eat! haha it was delicous as always. We talked about America for awhile and they had some questions about some english phrases. After we talked about that, we both just shared our testimonies and told them how much we have come to love them. we told them that we pray for them individually every single day and they really appreciated that. They said they actually have felt closer to god as we met so that was a good sign. Before we finished I invited Julie to pray but she wouldn't do it... dang it haha I asked probably 5 times and just waited but she wouldn't pray. I told her that if I prayed first she could pray after, but she still wouldn't do it, so I just prayed... Gah! Then we invited them to come to Ahn Yay Jin's baptism the next day but vicky and mr. yu were busy and julie just flat out said no, she wasn't busy but wouldn't come to the baptism. So tough! Elder Kim's new companion elder jackson, is from my mtc district and he is the best! I know he will be able to help Vicky julie and mr yu out! Then on Sunday I gave my goodbye speech with President and Sister Gilbert up on the stand! so scary... but it was good and then we had the baptism after!! I was able to baptize her but it didn't go perfectly! so the clerk turned on the water and just left it on through out priesthood meeting and sunday school. when we went back to check on it, the water was super hot! When I got in, i thought it was actually a little bit uncomfortable. Ahn Yay Jin was already scared of water because she doesn't know how to swim and was afraid of something happening. I guess she's had a bad experience of almost drowning before in her life. So I baptized her the first time, and she was kind of resisting going under so she didn't go all the way under. The second time I did it some hair wasnt tied all the back and didn't go under so we had to do it again! after the second time, she just put her hands over he face and started to cry for some reason! I felt horrible!! I dont know why she cried but it was not good! then after me and the sisters calmed her down, we did it a third time and she went all the way under! When I was changing in the bathroom, maybe 5 or 10 min after the baptism, I was in my garments and i could see steam coming from them! thats how hot the water was! But, after we dried off and changed, she was smiling and happy she was baptized! so overall, it was pretty successful! But I still felt really bad! Now today I met my new companion elder Day from Lehi, Utah. He will show me his family pictures tonight, but he said he has family that might live in Kensington?? He said he knows lindsay and brown, and also he played basketball at our park in Kensington. Is there a Gardner family that moved in our ward maybe a year or two ago? someone let me know! super weird... he described our park perfectly haha but I think this transfer will be good, I'm living in a 4 man house with the 2 zone leaders, who are Korean, so hopefully I can learn a lot! pretty good week last week!

 

-Elder carter

Baptism - Sister Jin

With members

With Mr. Yu, Julie, and Vicky