Letter from 29 July 2009

Hello!

Sometimes I get letters or emails from people and they have great news, they've been up to interesting things...and I think about what I can write back, and there isn't a whole lot! A mission is actually kind of regular--pretty much the same schedule, doing the same things, teaching the same lessons...or maybe I just need to see life more creatively.

This week we had another lesson with Byun Shin Jeong. She's the one we've met with for awhile, she's thinking about baptism. During the lesson she asked me all of a sudden what I was looking for in a husband. I'm not quite sure why she was thinking about that...anyway, she said the members of are church are pretty much what she's looking for. She wants to marry someone who doesn't drink, who doesn't smoke, who's good with kids, and who's a good dancer. She said it's really rare that men in Korea don't drink or smoke--and she said that the church members were good to their kids, to family. It was interesting to hear her talk about it--talk about it like she was already a member of the church!

This is the last week of the transfer--I find out this Saturday what will happen with companions, areas, etc. So I'll let you all know!

Much love,

Carrie

Letter from 23 July 2009

Hello!

I think we've gotten through monsoon season. I was asking around--people said it lasts 2-3 weeks. It hasn't rained since a huge storm that hit right as we were walking home last week. We got off the subway--though in this area it's above ground. We were at the station and had a few minutes before we needed to head back to our apartment, so wanted to talk to people there--but hardly could, it was so loud! There was lighting and thunder clapping, but mostly just the sound of rain pounding on the roof made it so we couldn't hear people we were trying to talk to, and they couldn't hear us. We left the station--kind of took a deep breath before going out in the rain. The umbrella hardly did any good--there was standing water on the sidewalks that we had to slosh through, my dress got wet at the bottom and wicked water until it was mostly all wet; as we were walking somehow even my hair got wet.

But it hasn't rained since then.

The woman we met in the elevator two weeks called us up suddenly last Friday. We had asked her to read the Book of Mormon. She was reading it Friday afternoon, and thought it was strange, and couldn't understand it, so she called us and told us she didn't want to meet us anymore. We went up to the 19th floor one more time and said goodbye. It was kind of like a breakup.

We've had a few other parting-of-ways lately.

But we're finding people, too. The whole process just keeps going. We met a grandmother, Lee Hyun Sook, her daughter, and granddaughter for the first time this week. The grandmother has some friends who are members of the Church, and wanted to do the English program with her granddaughter. We met on Sunday and introduced ourselves, talked some about the program and introduced our gospel message. We met again on Tuesday--with the grandmother, her granddaughter, Ji min, and grandson, Bom (they're cousins). Bom is staying with them for the six-week school vacation. His mother recently died of cancer. He and Ji min are the same age (9 American age), have the same glasses. We practiced English together, and they--and their grandmother--all know a lot.

At one point, Bom asked his grandmother in Korean: "How do you say 'past' in English?" She told him, and then he said, "I am happy past." "Because of his mother," Lee Hyun Sook said. It broke my heart! The whole family attends church and knows a lot about spiritual, church things. We were telling about how Joseph Smith was confused about how there were so many churches and religions, so he prayed to know which one to join, and Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him to answer his prayer. When Ji min heard that, she said wait, God is a spirit, not a body. I showed her Genesis 1:25-26, talking about how we were created in God's image...and was amazed about how I was showing that, explaining that to a 9-year-old. At the beginning of the lesson, when I asked who God was, Bom (also 9) said "Jesus is his only begotten son." Ji min said the closing prayer for the lesson, and did so beautifully. They are truely part of a wonderful family and are being raised so well. I was grateful for that example.

I love you all, I hope you have a wonderful week.

--Carrie

Letter from 16 July 2009

I've been trying to write down fun quotes again. I want to keep sharing them.

I'm sorry about last week! We had a big meeting on Thursday--the whole mission got together to hear a professor from BYU talk about Korean history and religion. Travel time, and then some technical difficulties with computer resulted in...last week's short email.

It was a great lecture, though, and wonderful to see the other missionaries. It's the first time we've met all together. Now that I live in a house of just two instead of four sisters, it feels like I know the elders--the male missionaries--better. And they're a lot of fun!

We had a neat experience on our way to come email last week. A woman in the elevator started talking to us as we were coming down from our apartment to come email. She's lived there a few years, and has seen the missionaries come and go. We set an appointment to meet her, and we've already met her three times since last week. She lives on the 19th floor. We live on the 6th.

We've had some other neat appointments recently. Last week, we finished the six-week English program with Kim Jeong-ah--had our last lesson.Kim Jeong-ah lives never married, lives alone. She teaches yoga as a hobby, and is the kind of person who seems comfortable in any situation with any person.

After English time, we started gospel time, and asked her if she had read the Book of Mormon. After she said it was hard, we started to talk about some ways of doing it--looking at topics, we suggested. We pulled out the Book of Mormon Introduction card we use, with some questions on it and where to find the answers in the Book of Mormon for another example of how to study. And all of a sudden she said--I've wondered about that question.

It was a question about why God allows suffering to occur. We read the passage the card suggested--about Alma and Amulek, how they taught people the gospel, but then the people who believed were burned. We read what they wrote, and talked about the principles of free agency--how the persecuters had that choice--and of justice--how they couldn't choose the consequences. We talked about how God is just, and how the atonement makes things just.

And to end the lesson, we sang to her. We sang a church song, a children's song about prayer. She loved it, and she sang a song for us--a song about God. There was just a sweet feeling in the lesson. She bought us ice cream on our way to the bus stop, and we said goodbye.

We had dinner again last night with Kim Jeong-jah, the retired international gymnastics judge. Recently for English time she has me correct the autobiography she's writing in English--she decided it would be good language practice, and, she said, every day is the same for her, so instead of writing a journal, she would write about her past. She is endlessly interesting to me. She was born in North Korea, and her and her family were refugees twice during the Korean war. Her husband--her "kid's father," as she says it--was a fencer on the Korean national team and competed in the Olympics. He would come in every night at curfew (there was a curfew--at midnight), and later moved to California and owned a dollar store. She finished a book a couple of years ago about rhythmic gymnastics, and gave me a signed copy.

We invited her to be baptized this week. She didn't really answer. She did say, though, that she had been thinking. Thinking about if her husband had been a member of this church, which teaches no drinking. She's come to church a couple of times, said a few times that maybe she could see herself joining it.

I hope so.

I love you all dearly, and I hope you have a wonderful week!

--Carrie

Email from 2 Weeks Ago

Hello everyone!

A few notible events this week. We went to a fish market with an investigator--the woman who judged gymnastics in the Olympics for years. We went to a tank, and she picked out a fish, and an octipus (sp?). As the man fished them out and got a stick with a hook on it ready, a woman was tying on a big, thick rubber apron...he wacked the fish once on the head with the flat end of the stick, the gills splayed out, and the woman cut it up right there, and another employee chopped up the octipus. They layed everything out neatly, and we went upstairs and ate it at a restaurant--raw fish wrapped in lettuce with spicy sauce; the octipus still moving, its suckers sticking to our chopsticks. Sister Gubler asked how long it keeps moving. "About an hour," she said.

Yesterday, we met with an investigator, Byun Shin jeong who met some members at the English academy where she works. She doesn't like the job--she said it was kind of amazing that she worked there, met that person there, and met us. She stopped progressing for awhile, and now, all of a sudden, she's progressing again. When we meet with members, they all really encourage her to get baptized. Yesterday we got so close to setting a date. We had the calendar out. If you don't mind praying for someone, go ahead and pray for her.

Today was transfers--the last six weeks went by fast! Sister Gubler moved to another area, and now I'm senior with Sister Ee Yae Ji--Sister Lee is the English version. Senior. This will be an adventure.

I love you all, have a wonderful week!

--Carrie

Letter from 1 July 2009

Hello!

This morning, I was doing crunches in the park, and an "aunt," as thery're called here--an woman in maybe her 60's or 70's--came up to me and said I was doing it wrong. She held my knees and counted loudly to ten (in case everyone wasn't staring at the foreigner already) as I did full situps. She said something about *that's* the way you loose weight on your stomach, and walked away.

This week, we met with Yoon Dong-hee, who talked about the "aunts." She said sometimes they're called the "third gender." They have opinions, do what they want to do, have strong wills. Strong. Not male or female, Yoon Dong-hee said. The third gender.

We've been meeting Yoon Dong-hee for maybe four weeks now. We go out on the bus on Monday mornings and meet her at a community center near the girls dorm where she lives. She's a graduate student, wants to practice English. She always gives us something to eat or drink when we see her--last time, she brought a plate of mandu wrapped up in newspaper and two sets of chopsticks that she had prepared at her apartment. Her mother is a preacher, and she said she believed in religion, but nothing specific. She kind of has the same view a lot of people do, it seems--Christ, Buddha, others were good teachers. The mountain analogy: there are many paths, but they all lead to the top.

But she's progressing, which is amazing. She reads the Book of Mormon, asks questions about it. She prays. She wants to attend church. And now...we're passing her off to another set of missionaries. She's technically in our area, but the church building that's closer is in another area.

We also met with Byun Shin-jeong again this week. We talked more about baptism. She lost her job, and she's planning on taking an exam the next two weeks on Sunday (Koreans are often taking tests, and more often studying for them). She knows she can attend church one of the two, but isn't sure about the other week. She said she wants to wait a little longer before she's baptized--because you have to keep going to church after you're baptized, right? That's how she asked it. She gets it.

I also got letters this week--and was so, so grateful for them. They were filled with kind words, testimonies of the Savior and the atonement. They helped me when I was feeling a little down. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Much love,

Carrie