Letter 9/22/2014

Jee-Seung (a 15 year old recent convert) is so amazing. She inspires me so much. I'm so glad that I have the opportunity to know her. She just gets it. Although so many people struggle with the Book of Mormon in Korean because it's so difficult (the formal old fashioned language is difficult) she doesn't have a hard time with it. I think it's like Isaiah. It's hard but if you have the spirit and the desire to understand it, you can. We had just had an investigator tell us that no one likes the Book of Mormon and no one wants to read it. So Jee-Seung almost made me cry when she told me that she didn't have a hard time reading it and she enjoys reading it. She's amazing!

We've been working really hard to organize and visit our less actives this week. We were having a hard time coordinating with our elders so we finally just told them to visit the men and we would visit all of the women. And things have been good! We have a special sacrament meeting coming up!

I had an exchange this week with Sister Glauser. She's one of my favorite people. She just gets it about missionary work. She knows why she's here and she's going to do everything required to do what God wants her to. I sometimes feel especially  impressed to talk to someone on the street but it seems to me that whenever this happens the person is extra rejecting. It's usually a random person in a place that I would have to go far out of my way to talk to (and sometimes turn around to someone behind me or cross the street). So I was talking to Sister Glauser about this because the promptings just lead to rejection. And she said she has a the same problem. We both came to the conclusion that sometimes God asks us to do things to test us to see if we'll really do what He asks. If I'm not willing to talk to everyone and go to great lengths to talk to people that I feel that I need to, why would God send me a prepared person? How could He trust me to find them?

Sister Glauser and I were talking to a woman who wasn't interested but when we asked her to let us know if she knew of any service opportunities for us she offered to buy us dinner!

A less active woman in our ward who moved out of our boundaries but prefers our ward called us on Friday wanting to meet immediately. We got permission to leave our zone to go meet her, not knowing why she suddenly wanted to meet us. But she wanted to meet to give us her tithing! It was so sweet to see her hand us her tithing envelope.

Sister Kei and I met a cute girl from South Africa on the street back in June but we were never able to meet with her. I had a feeling to call her the other day and we were finally able to meet her yesterday! She's so cute! And it was fun to teach in English! Holy Moses, my English has gone downhill. She came here as a missionary through her church but when she got here she found out that instead of teaching about the gospel, she was surprised with teaching English instead.  It was sad. She's been here for 2 years. She read along in her Bible and we were surprised when we asked her to read James 1:5 and it used completely different words than we are used to. (probably because of the "modern" translations) But we're excited for her!