Sad Leaving Iksan

November 23, 2015

          Well, things are quite different now.  I am now in Gwangju, a huge city, in the Nong Seong ward.  There are about 150 active members and 8 missionaries.  My comp is Elder Dubois from Draper, he went to Alta so knows some of my YMAD friends.  He came to Korea just one transfer before me.  He’s the zone leader and I am the district leader for the ward.  I’m not going to lie, things are pretty overwhelming.  The city’s huge, the ward’s huge, and things have been pretty crazy because of the start of the transfer.

          I’m not going to lie, I miss Iksan.  I miss knowing what’s going on, what we need to do, and being comfortable.  I definitely have been thrown out of my comfort zone.  But things went pretty well before I left, and Bishop said that he wished I could stay another transfer.  There are a ton of members here, so it’s quite the difference and I realized how poor I still am with talking with new people.  Hopefully things get better.

          We have a few investigators, but have only been able to meet 2 so far.  All our investigators are pretty young, and I’m used to old guys.  Haha.  We do have a Filipino investigator named Jonathan who has a baptism date for December 23 I believe.  I haven’t met him yet though.  It sounds like he has some issues with tithing and the word of wisdom though.  Hopefully we can help him out!

          Oh yeah, do you all remember my Iksan investigator named Kim Youngyur?  Well, he got super sad when I said I was leaving so he took us out to dinner my last night and said he wrote me a letter.

          It was pretty sad leaving Iksan, and we had a whopping 7 appointments my last day.  So crazy!  I hope I can get a bit more comfortable here and get things figured out a bit more.  It should be good though and there are great things in store!

          Love, Elder Jace Anderson

My old house

Our bishop (Iksan)

One of our members

 

Last week in Iksan?

November 16, 2015

          Time flew by pretty darn fast this last week.  I started it off well by getting toe surgery again.  I didn’t like being able to understand what they were saying.  They kind of messed up on the shot, and then they were talking about how serious my toe was, and yeah.  I wish my toe had been a bit more numb, I don’t like being able to feel them jabbing stuff under my nail.  My toe wasn’t supposed to get wet, but it’s been really rainy so it got soaked.  Hopefully it’s ok!

          We have a new investigator!  His name is Kim Sheekchul, he’s in his 70’s, and we met him on the street.  He said he wanted to meet us again because we were cute.  Hah he’s attending another church very seriously and seems pretty converted to that church.  But we gave him a BoM, so hopefully he read some and recognized its truth.  I don’t know if I’ve said it before, but Korea has sooo many churches!  It is insane!  People that go seem to be either way into it with a super strong belief, or not belief at all.  A lot of people just go for the social aspect, but don’t believe in God or anything.  So when we share a message about a loving God who still cares, well, not many people accept.  It doesn’t help that there are crazy churches here where people claim to be the resurrected Christ or even Heavenly Mother.  So people just put our church in the same group as these ones.  And don’t even get me started on the pastors!

          Anyways, as for our investigators, we told the Jo family and another lady we meet with that this next week is the last week for English.  Hopefully they still meet for the gospel!  I think the family will.  They love us too much to stop.

          Kim Hyobong is the same.  He never reads because he says it hurts his head, so we told him to listen online.  I think he will since we’ve been telling him so many times to do it. 

          Kim Youngyur (came to church once, English interest) is doing well.  He says that ever since meeting with us his interest has been growing a lot.  He didn’t read last time though, so we could see a pretty big difference in him.  I told him it was probably my last time and he got pretty sad.  Really sad actually.  He’s a great guy and I’ll miss him if I end up leaving.

          We finally met Melinda again!  She’s our Filipina less active.  She’s super great and says her dream is to just serve God and be a missionary.  Hopefully we can help her do it!

          Yup, it was a pretty good week and we usually had things to do which is always nice.  It seems like it was my last full week here in Iksan.  I’m still not completely sure, but I’ll find out in just a bit.  I’ve learned a lot here and it feels like I can never leave, like this is my area.  I’ve seen a lot of progress in myself and this area.  I’ve really been blessed with a great experience. 

          Love, Elder Jace Anderson

English class

Kim Youngyur

 Brother Jang and our member that got dropped on his head as a kid and calls us all the time saying crazy stuff.

Protection from the Lord

November 2, 2015

          Hi, I had a little time to email, but a guy called me and is about to commit suicide, so I need to leave and go help him out.  Please pray for him.  His name is Han Bit.  If you remember he is the gay investigator I had a loooong time ago.  I had a good week, everything is well.  Thank you, I love you all.  Please pray for him.  Don’t worry about me.  I am enjoying my time here and am very happy.  Our investigators aren’t really progressing, but I’m sharing the message I love.  Thank you!!!  Sorry I couldn’t write much.  I’ll try to write a letter about last week and send it next time.

 

November 2, 2015

          We had a lot of appointments and taught a lot this week, but I can’t help but feel a little disappointed at the end of it because no one is really progressing at all.  That pretty much sums up 2 weeks ago.  I didn’t have any time to write, so I’m just going to move one.

 

November 9, 2015

          Last P-day we went to Naejang Mountain with the south half of the mission.  It was pretty cool and had lots of fall colors.  It was really great seeing some old friends, especially Elder Tischner!  At the top there was a cool Buddhist temple which reminded me of the stuff we saw in China.  It was a pretty fun time.

          After the little trip I started my split with Elder Woods, one of our zone leaders.  We had a pretty crazy experience that Monday evening in which we got dragged into a pretty sketchy experience.  We met with this guy who turned out to be pretty suicidal and drunk and did lots of sketchy stuff.  But we got out of the ok!  We met with one of our English interest investigators (Son Insook) which went really well!  She said afterward that we had a very deep, profound discussion and that her interest is growing a bit.  Woohoo!

          Elder Woods wanted to know how Iksan was able to change from having nothing to being what it is now.  Sadly, I don’t really know!  But my time is running up here.  Next week is stake conference and then it’s transfers, so I think yesterday was my last time attending the Iksan ward.  Bishop had me give the 10 minute talk, so I spoke on Christ.  Kim Hyobong came of course, but we also had another investigator at church, Kim Youngyur.  It was his first time in his life (he’s probably 50 years old) that he went to any church, but he said that it was a very good experience for him.  He’s the best!  When we invited him, he got really sad because he had plans to go with his wife to visit some friends in another city.  But he called me later that evening saying he talked with his wife and called his friends, cancelled his plans, and would come out on Sunday!  Yay!

          For an update on our other people, Sis. Moon said she went to Seoul and doesn’t know when she’ll come back and doesn’t respond to texts or anything.  The Jo family isn’t really doing much.  They don’t come out to church even though it was my last week, and only the 11 year old daughter is keeping her reading commitments.  We can’t do the English program forever, so we might have to have a pretty tough conversation with them.  I don’t want to have to drop them!

          We had lots of appointments with new people, but none of them showed up.  So it has been a while since we’ve found any new people.  We’re meeting people and teaching, but people just aren’t really acting so they’re not progressing.  I really want to get some more done before I leave, but time is running out.  So we really need some miracles!

          It was a pretty good week.  I learned a lot about myself, had some good experiences, but also some things that I hope I never experience again.  I know that we received a lot of protection from the Lord and I grew closer to President Shin because of the help he gave us, so I think that I learned a lot and progressed some this week.  Thanks for the love and prayers!

          Love,

          Elder Jace Anderson

My favorite picture

Elder Tischner