When Did the Conference Fly By?

Wow, first off general conference was soooo amazing!  It went by soooo soooo fast though!!  So in Korea, because their time is so much earlier than in America where General Conference is held, they watch conference the following Saturday and Sunday.  All of us English speakers in the two wards that meet at our building (missionaries and members) had our own little room set up for conference with a TV.  And it was so fun! I loved getting to hear all of the different messages from the General Authorities.  I really loved the Saturday Morning Session.  That was probably my favorite one.  

 

Our room for conference

And now that conference has passed, it's suit-wearing weather in our mission!  From now until April, we're going to be wearing our suits whenever we're doing missionary work; AKA, all the time! Luckily it's not too stifling hot anymore, but the weather hasn't completely transitioned to Fall yet.  It's teetering on the fence.  I can't wait till it starts getting cool all the time outside!

 

I forgot to mention about 3 weeks ago when we had a baptismal service for 2 sisters.  And one of them (이송이) asked me a few weeks in advance to baptize her.  And that was such an honor and such a spiritual experience.  Our ward missionary leader baptized the other sister. After the baptismal service there was a mini 'talent show' kind of thing.  And Elder Wagner volunteered me to play piano in it.  So Elder 박 and I (he's insanely good at piano) had a 'piano battle.'  We played a few songs each going back and forth with the songs getting crazier and crazier, and more and more complex the whole time.  And while the other person would play we would make fun of them to the audience.  It was really last minutely planned, but it turned out to be pretty comical and funny! Now the ward members always come up to me and ask if I was the one who played piano then, and tell me how good they think I am (this even happened yesterday from our bishop's wife, haha).  They're all so sweet haha.

 

This past week we had a ward activity out in 나주 which is a more country-sidey area next to ours.  It was at a soccer field and it was really pretty fun.  The place looked a whole lot like Asia (probably because it is I guess....).  The best was when Elder Wagner found a football (a very poorly made one, but a football nevertheless) that a member must have brought, and we started passing it back and forth.  The members were so amazed at how well we could throw a football!  They had no clue how to throw it correctly and just kind of threw it like a baseball and it was super funny.  Let's just say, us Americans looked pretty snazzy throwing the old pig-skin around!

Some pictures of the park the ward went to

 

We had an amazing lesson this week with one of our investigators named 권승천.  He's fluent in Enlgish but we still teach him in Korean.  He met with some other missionaries about a year ago, but he works for the city and got really busy. But we found him out of the area book and called him and he wanted to meet.  So this was our second lesson with him, and we taught him the Gospel of Christ.  The Spirit was incredibly strong during the lesson.  And he asked the most golden questions about baptism.  "Is baptism essential for my salvation?" "What if I were to die right now; could I be saved?"  We were able to explain and testify about the necessity of baptism to him and he committed to be baptized when he comes to know more.  It was the best lesson I've been in.

 

In regards to Korean, I'm progressing a lot.  Nowhere near that 'fluent' level, but I pick up on a lot more of what people say (as in I know a few of the words or feeling of what they're saying some of the time).   And I can speak a lot better when I teach.  I'm able to teach all of the lessons independently if I needed to without any Korean resources to use as back-ups, so that's good!  And I passed off our mission's Initial Pass-off!  Only 5 more levels to go! ;)

 

A cute English mistake

Korea is great and I love it! Hope all of you are doing great in wherever you are! Stay safe and stay awesome! Love you all!