Zone mtg. & a true seeker

( sorry it's late! I forgot to "publish")

Hey family!!!!:) it has been a crazy week! But thats nothing new :) haha Everyday in the life of a missionary is full of tons of surprises, and learning moments! :) But this week has been great! We started off the week with a big group zone meeting we organized with president just because we thought the zone really needed it and it turned out just being amazing! basically just turned into a big huge testimony meeting and the spirit was just so strong! can you imagine 33 missionaries and a mission president and his wife all together baring their testimonies and then closing with a big group prayer for our ward members and investigators! Definitley a crazy awesome experience! :) Anyways aside from that another highlight of the week that we had was a super fun meeting with a new investigator of ours :) haha and by super fun, i mean one of the longest, most in depth lessons i have ever had. haha so i was contacting a bunch of phone numbers of people who have been investigators in the past couple of years and came across this man named 성요한(Song, Yo Han). Anyways i called him and he was superr  excited to meet with us. So we ended up meeting him about one hour later. :) We were planning on just kinda going through our missionary purpose and establishing a good base and figuring out where he was at with believing in God and church and those things. Well that was the plan....haha but needless to say that was not the way the lesson went down. :) Well this guy has been searching for God. And by searching i mean i don't think i have ever met anyone who has searched this hard on my mission. He has read the bible over 20 times start to finish and has memorized all of The Book of Revelations as well as several other books in the New testiment. Truly amazing! Anyways we ended up sitting down with him for almost a total of 4 hours disecting the bible and answering all of his questions and relating to the book of mormon. He was so into it it was rediculously cool! and in the end he walked out with the Book of Mormon determined to read and understand it ! :) As i we taught the lesson the thing that touched me so strongly was how blessed we are to have the Book of Mormon. For it truly is another witness of Jesus Christ and it truly makes clear the ambiguities of the Bible. The Book of Mormon truly answers questions of the soul and i felt so blessed to get to testify of the truthfulness and divinity of it to this man who truly was searching to find his savior. He still has a lot of questions and a long way to go but already you can see the sense of clearity that is starting to come over him :) Im so grateful to be a missionary and a servant of the lord! Anyways i hope you all have had a wonderful week! Im praying for you! :) And sure love you all!

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Who we truly are

Hey family! :) sorry i don't have very much time to email today. We ended up having a meeting this morning in the middle of email time with all the other zone leaders haha :) anyways things are going well. our investigators are progressing, haha slowly but sureley :) keep them in your prayers! Especially 최정헌, 박정석, and 박건후 :) their hearts are pure, they just need a little push from the spirit to make the final commitment. The zone is doing good. always keeping us busy that is for sure :) but it is a super awesome experience to be able to assist in helping to train these younger missionaries and see them improve and have the excitement that comes as they figure things out. But the best is just how much more i get to learn as i watch them learn and it always brings back previous experiences and thoughts throughout life. I am truly grateful to my savior for all that he has done for me. I have no doubt that he truly loves each and every one of us. As we bring our weaknesses before him and depend on him to overcome them we truly can come to find who we truly are and gain a strong testimony that through the Lord we truly can accomplish anything. Anyways i love you all and hope you have an amazing week!

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Friends before

wow it has been a crazy busy week! :) haha we have had so much to do lately it is hard to get a second to sit down and process everything that has been going on. haha im definiltey learning on a ton everyday, no surprise there right? haha i definitely still have a ton more to learn! This week we had zone conference with our zone and tons of lessons. Me and my new companion 박재우 are going around to all investigators and previous investigators and working to find those who have been prepared by the lord. Right now we have 3 investigators in particular that we are really focusing on so if you could add them to your prayers that would be grately appreciated. They're names are 최정헌 (Choi Cheung Heun) 박건후 (Pak Geun Hoo) and 최현일 (Choi Heun Eeil). and it looks like there should be a few more names to add to that list after this next week :) right now we have about 20 investigators in our area, but most of them don't acutally have a lot of interest in the gospel; simply they have a lot of interest in learning english and finding out why a white guy from america can speak korean. haha but we are working really hard to spark interest in them and get them to progress to their father in heaven. Anyways there is definiltey a ton of work to be done here and im loving ever single moment of it. I have been able to get close with several of  the ward members here and they are just awesome. Often i feel like new people i meet are actually people i have been friends with for a long time before, and considering i have never lived in Korea before, i can't help but think that we were friends before this life. It is a constant reminder of how we are all connected and sons of daughters of our father in heaven. we all lived, grew up, and learned together before, and it is our job to find our brothers and sisters who are searching to find the path back to our father and help them along the way. It is such an amazing experience! Being a missionary is such a huge blessing. :) if anyone is searching for a way to get closer to their savior, do missionary work with all your heart :) it is the most amazing feeling to be able to share the gospel with others and feel the love of your father in heaven working through you. :) anyways i sure love you all and hope you all have a great week!

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Glory of God

Hey family and friends! :) wow another week has already come and gone! its is crazy how fast time is flying by! this week has been awesome! First off i went to the doctor on friday to get a check up on my thumb and they were astounded by the results! my lower joint had completely healed and my upper joint was healing quickly! they moved me down to just a splint for my thumb and they are estimating ill only have to wear it for a few more weeks not months!!! holy miracles! :) other than that our investigators are doing well :) we have been able to transfer a lot of our just english interest investigators to gospel interest investigators and they are really asking great questions. Something i have really come to enjoy on my mission is questions :) both personal questions and questions from others:) i always feel like I can draw closer to my savior as i seek for the answers to these questions through my studies. this week something i was thinking about was the nature of God and that led me to the question of what is the actual meaning of bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of man, God's purpose? I thought about our state before this life. How we are all children of our father in heaven and we dwelled with him as spirits. And it was then that he created the glorious plan for us so that we could become like him. So i then contemplated and thought about what kind of a state we were in before this life that was not in the same state as our father in heaven and i basically came to the conclusion that there were approximately 3 things. The first, although we were his spiritual children we lacked the image of God (i.e a body). Second, we existed but not in a state of glory (i.e we were not glorified beings). and Third was that we lacked the true character of God (ie Christlike Attributes). In order to obtain those things we needed to be separated from God and come to this earth. This prompted Choice. In order to obtain any of the 3 attributes that God had they we lacked we had to exercise choice or our agency. Our first choice was to come to this earth. We could choose to obtain a body or not. We all clearly did so therefore we are here and obtain the 1st attribute. The next two are obtained during this life. The Glory of God is obtained through obediences to the laws and principles of the gospel. in other words keeping the commandments, partaking of the ordinances neccessary for exaltation and living worthy of them at all times. And the final one, or Character, is obtained through the struggles, trails, blessings, relationships, and experiences of this life. There is no short cut to obtaining character. and this is kinda how i came to understand it.... you sow a desire, and reap a thought, sow a thought and reap and action, continually repeating the action reaps a habit, repetion of a habit yeilds a character, and sowing character yeilds our eternal destiny. In other words we work and labor every day focused on righteous desires and as we labor in the spirit we yeild the desired Characteristics that our Savior Jesus Christ emulated. But at the same time the opposite can be true. Therefore as we go through this life we have to constantly be aware and make sure that our thoughts and desires are centered on Christ and continually strive with all our might so that we can obtain the Character of God in the life to come. as preach my gospel says....work work work there is not satisfactory substitute :) so basically that is the answer in a jist that i got to that question :) anyways i hope all is going well back in the states! Sure love you all and am praying for you! I hope you are all safe and sound and are having many wonderful opportunities to see miracles every day in your life! :)

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Thumbs up and pics!!

Haha well mom as far as fun stories go i guess i do have one to tell ya :) Looks like i can no longer say i have never wore a cast :) haha i was playing soccer last p-day and i guess one of the other adults wasn't happy that i kept blocking his shots so he came at me a little agressively and the outcome was a broken thumb :) haha but no worries. The doc said i got in soon enough so everything should heal up just perfect. maybe send a few extra prayers my way but im sure things will be all good soon :) ill get to wear this fancy splint for the next little while though. But it has actually been a super great conversation starter. People are always like- wow did you get hurt? and i tease and say no i just wore it cuz i thought it was a good addition to my style and the laugh and then ask how it happened, i tell them soccer, and then they laugh and are like don't you know youre supposed to play soccer with your feet, and i laugh and am like ya my mom told me that and i guess i should listen to her huh? mom always nows best! :) as a matter of fact my mom is awesome she is the one who helped me get out here to Korea. and then they are like oh what are you doing here in korea and then i go right into im a missionary and it is a great way to start a discussion about families and the way they bless us and then get into how the gospel blesses families! :) anyways things are going well over here in good ole Korea! :) at this point i don't even remember what america looks or feels like. haha :) but the work is going well. The ward is really starting to pick up on missionary work. This next week all the auxillary groups are going to come up with goals and plans for how they will work to do member missionary work :) Anyways keep praying for our investigators. We have a few who are really close to entering that path that leads to eternal life :) Particularly pray for 최종헌 형제님과 정총국 형제님 :) {Brother Chwey Jong Hun, and Brother Jeong Chong Gook} If you would i would be ever so grateful! :) haha anyways sure love you all and hope all is going well! Im praying for you!!!!

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Nice thumb!

Burgers and soda!!

Mountain climbs

dang i can't believe how fast time is going by. i know i say it every week haha but seriously it just keeps getting faster and faster! :) well this week has been exciting. lots of crazy experiences and definitely been busy. Seems like we always have something going on. and i guess that is a good thing right? :) the last thing you ever want as a missionary is a day were you don't have any appointments or not much of a schedule...haha! anyways things are going super well over here, the ward is full of great members and now we are just working to help them think more about missionary work. The missionaries in my zone are all just crazy awesome. I am so blessed to get to learn so much from them everyday! anyways i have so much i wish i could talk about! but sadly not much time today. Sadly things came up so we had to email kinda late today :) anyways keeping praying for our investigators. They all have their mountains they are working to climb in order to follow their savior. One thing that has been cool though is to just see the light in each one of their eyes. The things they are working to get over are certainly not easy; however you can tell that each one of them has a testimony that it will be worth it! I think that is something i too need to often remember... mountains in life were never meant to be easy to climb. But every mountain we climb will be worth it. Our savior Jesus Christ suffered and knows every one of our pains, our struggles, and our challenges. I know he would never allow us to feel those pains unless he knows it would benefit us. Why would the Lord allow us to have pain, knowing that it would inevitably cause him more pain, if he didn't know it would be for our gain. As we face the challenges in this life i know things will be difficult, painful, and sometimes feel like it is too much to bare. But just keep pushing through. There will always be a light at the end of the tunnel. i hope you all remember how much you are loved. And how big of a difference you can make in another's life by helping them realize how loved they are as well. I love you all and hope you have a great week!

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Companionship of the Holy Ghost

wow crazy week! :) haha i can't believe it is already over! things are going super well over here in 대전. sure learning a ton everyday! This week we were busy between investigator appointments, ward appointments, missionary appointments, ward campout, giving a talk on sunday. haha just lots to do this week i guess :) i definitley like the feeling here in 대전! there is always something going on, someone needing help, or something to plan! It is sure great to be a servant of the Lord. Something that has really stuck out to me this week is the importance of the Holy Ghost. I know for a fact i wouldn't be able to do anything without its guidance. Constantly having the companionship of the Holy Ghost has been such a tremendous blessing throughout my mission. From the gifts of the spirit, such as with the language and discerning feelings, to just the comfort and strength that it brings. It is such a humbling experience to see how the spirit can enter the hearts of the children of men and bare witness of our father in heaven and his son Jesus Christ. The clarity, and direction that comes through the spirit is astounding, i can't imagine learning anything without it. There has been several humbling experiences on my mission to the point that i feel as though the Lord has put me in a situation not so that I can teach someone, but literally just so the Lord could come in and touch the life of that person through the Holy Ghost. I don't have much to offer. There is nothing i can come close to teaching as well as the Holy Ghost teaches it ever time. But my favorite part is the part where the spirit gives me the chance to bare my personal testimony that the things the spirit has already testified of are true. I have been blessed so much to have my testimony strengthened, fortified, built upon and brought to a whole new level of understanding. Family and friends- God lives and he loves you. You have a savior. He came down for you. He suffered for you. And through him you can overcome everything. You can be made clean. The spirit is there. He bares witness that Christ lives. I know you have felt the love of your savior in your life. One time. Do all you can to remember that moment. Cherish it. The spirit will bare its confirmation. He will teach you. This gospel is true. It is restored. We truly can be with our families forever. We truly can do great things. The savior knows you. one by one. he is with you, and is knocking. I pray that you may open his door. That you may feel his love. That you may repent of your sins, turn your heart to the Lord, and become more than you ever thought possible through the infinite power of his atonement! I love you all. 예수 그리스도의 이름으로 간증 드립니다. 아멘.~

:):):)

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