Letter 2/9/2014

This week was crazy. We weren't able to do very much work last week because of Seol-nal but this week boomed beyond imagination.

 

We called a lady we met on the street the day before my birthday and she wanted to meet with us for English (and maaaybe religion). We've met with her twice already and she's a trip. She's 77 and hilarious. She spent most of her life in Germany so she speaks a lot of German when she wants to speak English and sometimes she speaks a little Japanese on accident too. She really likes to talk. We can't even sneak in to change the subject because she doesn't pause to breathe!!!! She offered to give our closing prayer yesterday (she said the Lord's Prayer).

 

A woman saw a flyer for our English class and came last week but said she didn't want to come again. We asked if she wanted to meet with us one\on-one and she was really excited about that. So we met with her yesterday and she has the potential to be a golden investigator. She used to be Christian but drifted from it. When we talked about Heavenly Father and prayer she started tearing up and said she would pray.

A woman and her grandson started attending our children's English class a couple of weeks ago and the boy (Seong-Bin) goes to the primary activities afterwards. We were able to talk to the grandmother during one of these activities - the grandma is raising Seong-Bin. She asked us to come over to teach him English and the gospel. She's catholic. We met with them twice this week too.

 

And this grandmother told a friend about us and this friend also wants to meet with us for English and gospel. So we met with her once.

And for the climax:

I don't know if I've told you about this family or not. They attend both English classes every week. They lived in California for two years and want their daughters to keep their English. The dad has amazing English and is working on his PhD right now. They're really amazing and we keep trying to meet with them but the father's mother lives with them and she didn't want us over. They haven't been coming to class as frequently lately and have expressed that they don't like our system. We were really afraid of losing them. But after our Wednesday class the mother asked us to come over and teach their daughters personally. We were super excited. The fed us on Thursday and told us that they also want us to teach their daughters about our church. The Dad believes in God and has read the Bible, the Qur'an and the Book of Mormon. But he hates Christians and Christian churches. But he feels like we're different, more pure. So he wants his daughters to know about us. We're super excited about this! SO EXCITED! We skipped and sang all the way home (unless we saw people, of course) that night.

 

I'm jealous of you being able to spend time with the chibs (our little ones - this is a left over from Japanese/English our family spoke - chibi means little. She is referring to me being done with running our family business, and being able to homeschool the kids and spend lots of time with them in Korea).
Pack what you wish you had had in Japan. I think you'll be in a fairly populated area.

My Koreannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn ( I asked about her Korean)

Everyone tells me I'm good for the amount of time I've been out. My comp said my pronunciation is the best of the missionaries "my age". I think Japanese has been helping me with putting sentences together. I was able to start translating last transfer for the elder who came in with me. But I speak with "Satori", which is the Busan dialect - because of Japanese. So it's fun. I can't control it. My comp was trying to help me out the other night but it wasn't doing much good. I don't speak flat enough so I sound more sing-songy. I speak through my nose more and my tones go up and down. My comp assures me that it's cute but I don't like it because people don't understand me even if my pronunciation is perfect. And I pronounce my words too clearly to understand. That's right. TOO CLEARLY. I didn't think that would be a problem. whateva.