안녕하세요!
What a week! I feel like I say that every week but . . . every
week is basically an adventure in Korea.
This week we were overbooked with appointment after
appointment. We have had hardly any time to do weekly planning. But we are so
blessed! It's nice not having to think "What are we going to for 6 hours
tomorrow?" We also have a lot of investigators right now and a lot of
people progressing and building their faith.
But it did mean that we were literally RUNNING from
appointment to appointment. And when you mix that with how hot it is outside – we
have been showing to our appointments out of breath and gross. 0_0 Today we are
going to a Korean bathhouse which should be really relaxing and nice. It will
be Sister Sweetnam’s first time! Exciting!
On Thursday we went on exchanges with other sisters in our
zone. I stayed in Seongnam and Sister Sweetnam went to Bundang. I got to be
with Sister Northridge! It was so much fun ~~
We barely got back home after exchanging when I decided to
call a potential investigator. As I was talking with her on the phone Sister
Northridge sayed "hi" to a lady walking past us. This lady was also
on the phone and we realized that we were on the phone with each other! I don't
know what she was doing in our neighborhood but we were thinking "what a
miracle!" She said she wanted to learn English from the bible so we went
with her to her apartment. As we stepped in there something felt a little off.
I turned to Sister Northridge with a confused look. The lady seemed nice and so
we sat down and she pulled out her Bible.
The next 20 minutes was her telling us about her church -
pulling information from random Bible verses and repeating again and again
broken English phrases. I asked her over and over again what church she was
from but she would never say the name. Finally
I said "Thank you for your time but we are here for two purposes: to share
our unique message of the restoration and to help you learn English. If you are
not interested in these then we will have to leave." We smiled and left
after she said "Next time I'll bring someone who knows English
better." She thought we didn't understand but we understood perfectly
well.
Hopefully we will not be having that experience again!
We are not interested in Bible-bashing or proving that are
church is right and others aren't. We are just here to share the gospel with
those who will hear us. If they won't hear us we just smile, nod and move on.
That night, we moved on alright. We met with an investigator
who we had given a Book of Mormon to last week. We were pleased to find that
she had marked, annotated and cross-referenced her heart out. She was so
excited to share about everything she learned. She wanted to meet us the next
day too because she was so excited to share what she is learning with us.
It is so wonderful to see someone falling in love with the
Book of Mormon just like I fall in love with it every day.
Our mission, right now, is focusing on getting member
present lessons because that has been a struggle in our mission. I know that
firsthand because I have had a lot of . . . less than pleasant experiences
teaching with members. But I decided to forget everything I had experienced and
start afresh. So we made goals to get members at our lessons. They were both
really good. One of them, we had the American lady in our ward come and
practice her testimony in Korean. After we taught about the restoration with
our investigator the member came in with tears in her eyes and was able to give
a simple, heart-felt testimony that this church is true and that Joseph Smith
was a prophet. It was such a wonderful experience for her and for us. It reminded
me that we can go on and on about doctrines and principles but all that matters
is the sincere, heart-felt testimony.
And for the cherry-on-top of the week: The elders had a
baptism again on Sunday! But this time, it was the other set of elders in our
district, Elder Hansen and Elder Cook. This is Elder Hansen's first baptism in
the year and a half he's been on his mission. We are so proud of him and I've
never seen a happier elder in my life. Now the members are asking us when we're
going to get a baptism. I just smile and say we are working hard and fasting.
But I don't let it phase me because:
Miracles are happening in SeongNam!!
Sorry this is kinda long this week:
I love you all! Have an awesome week!
- Sister Holdaway
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Not a lot of pictures this week but my "hole-y"
socks. No worries – these made it in the garbage last night.
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