Sept 30th Letter

안녕하세요 여러분!

 

I've decided that I need to be more like my dilligent companion and write in my journal more. That way things stick out to me that I can tell you!

 

It's Sister Dues' 20th birthday today! :D We're all wearing harmonie (grandma) pants (or mom bae pajis as they're known here), eating Pizza School (wich cheese crust!) and playing Korean board games and Pokemon at the church in honor of her birth :D

 

The attatched picutres are of Sister Deus and her very first pair of harmonie pants, of her again on her birthday. The first one is an awesome sign we found when we got lost in Nampyung! Had to take a picture and send it for you all. It's Konglish for "Happiness" :) Tell you the story behind it later.

 

This week has been good! And crazy!

 

We have two investigators right now. A cute 17 year old who's learning English with us and the son of some friends we made just walking on the street one day. Brother In Su. He's 33 and told us when we first met him, he's Catholic. :) We're also doing English with him. We found out that he understands Gospel vocabulary in English also. And because he asked us and we got permission to do our lesson in English this past week, we found out a lot that maybe we wouldn't have known specifically if we hadn't. It was really cool.

 

We'd taught him the entire Restoration last time and invited him to read and pray about the Book of Mormon and Sister Dues and I were thinking about how we can help him get an answer. We knew that he had been more religeous when he was younger, and felt like pray had been benificial to him at the time, but he wasn't actively worshiping currently. We weren't sure if he recognized how he'd been able to get answers to his prayers-how the Spirit felt to him personally, so we looked up a lot of scriptures about gaining a testimony and the voice of the Spirit and just went. It was hard for me to go to that lesson with nothing more than a few scriptures-I get so nervous before we meet, even when I feel prepared.  I think it's because he was older and already had a religeon.

 

So we walk up to the house and say hello to his mom, our friend, working in the garden. She looks down at us with a sad look on her face and says, "He says meeting with you is not interesting anymore. You've all run out of things to say." I looked at Sister Dues and then back to our sweet grandmother. "Really?" I questioned, my stomach dropping. "Well, he doesn't say that, but I can tell by his manner." She replied. "So, maybe he'd not like to meet anymore, huh?" After she saw the dissapointment on our faces, she tried to cheer us up. "Why don't you just go ask him yourself!" she said and shooed us into the house.

 

Slowly, and somewhat sadly, we entered. We sat down and I just asked him about it straight out in English (because he's pro). He looked at us. "I just feel like we've run out of things to talk about. So it's not as fun anymore. We've just run out of things." I sat back. Hum. What do I say to that? "We could just assign subjects for each visit to talk about for 30 minutes!" He didn't seem excited. Then he offered another idea. "Why don't you just teach me your gospel in English? That has the question/answer style that would help me." I looked at Sister Deus. We aren't allowed to teach in English if they can speak Korean. But still, we could call our district leader right there and ask for a try. So I brought it up to him and asked him if he'd like me to call. Which he did! Elder Barney (used to be a boxer but the sweetest elder!) said that was okay! But if he had questions, we'd teach him again in Korean. So we got permission and set to it! (It was so nice to be able to just teach the Gospel for the whole hour!)

 

We began to teach him about prayer and talking with God and receiving answers. We'd just turned to the book of Enos to share his experience when I all of the sudden asked him about something in the Bible and his excperience reading it. He responded that he couldn't believe the miracles of Jesus actually occured. He thinks of them as fairy tales. Hmmm... We thought. So we backed up a little bit, putting Enos aside. We started with the very basic of questions. Did he believe in God? Did he believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God?

It was the begining of a long question-and-answer session where we taught him a condensed version of the Plan of Salvation and he looked so interested/surprised that we believe in God as a person. He told us he believed in God as nature, not as a person; we asked him about prayer and then eventually he told us that he didn't believe in God at all. We asked him if there was a God, if he would want to know.

He told us that after he left his childhood faith behind, other Christians always told him how with God in their lives, they are happier. They encouraged him to pray and find out for himself. "But I didn't believe them. I was happy. Until one day, when I was in college. I wanted to know if there really was a God. So I studied lots of books. And I thought a lot. And I thought about what everyone that I'd known told me .And I prayed. Privately."

We were listening expectingly. "But I never got an answer."

Then we understood that from then on, he gave up that there was a God.

He said once in his last lesson that, like Jospeh Smith, he has searched for truth. He's wanted to know. But it's hard for him because the way we testified that he could know, wasn't through physical evidence that he could touch or smell or taste. It's through feelings, we said. He just shook his head.

He asked us then, "I have one question. When did you know there was a God?"

 

I really thought for a moment. I'd shared my experience with how I knew the Book of Mormon was true many times, and I'd read scriptures for investigators of prophets that testified of God's existence, but I hadn't ever felt like I needed to search deeply until that moment when he really wanted to know. So I told him.

"I haven't always known. In fact, there are times throughout my life and even now that I wonder. But I have received testimony after testimony and witness after witness, whether listening to another's testimony or thinking back on my day and how God's hand was in it, that I knew. God has been there for me in my saddest and most discouraging moments. I recognized Him especially then.  And those moments have pulled me through the times I doubt. I'm still not perfect. I'm so selfish and choose not to see His hand which touches my life every moment. But He's been there for me and surrounded me in a warm feeling of love many times. I can't deny to you that He does live,"

 

Then Sister Deus bore the most powerful testimony I've ever heard her express. She said that her experience is a little different from mine. She's a micro-biology major. She's a scientist. And she's wondered and felt the very things that he was feeling. She shared her personal conversion story, which is one of the most powerful I've ever heard in my life. And I could feel the Spirit in the room. "I could feel His arms of love wrapping around me in that moment," she said. "I testify that He knows me and He knows you. He does live. And He loves you."

 

I was so thankful for Sister Dues and her firm testimony. At the end, we could do nothing but invite him to try, to try again. To really find out if God is there. And we promised that an answer would come. In God's time.

 

I just want you all to know that I do know God lives! He is our Father and He loves us! And if there is anyone you know that is feeling sad today or needs a friend, go on over and sit next to them. Laugh together! Tell them that you love them. And they He does too. :)

 

Really quick-the "Happiness" sign story!

 

So Sister Dues and I were ready. We were bound for adventure into the wild blue, unexplored area of Nampyung. It was another region in our area where some of our less actives live that we'd never been to, and by golly, we were going to find them! According to the elders, there were less active members that hadn't been visited for over a year there. Definately time for a visit.

We'd planned to find and prosylte and look for houses all day, so we packed two peanut butter sandwitches and a map we'd gotten from City Hall. Then we went to the church to copy some of our English program flyers and met the elders there, heading out to explore another area-Yo Sang Po- that'd we'd also not been to before. Somehow we convinced them to come with us so we'd be safer or something (I think Elder Hall had been there once before, and it ended up being a good thing we brought him) so after a quick haircut (it'd been closed for ChuSeok) we hopped on a bus and headed out to the countryside.

 

Make a long story short, after finding our way to the district office and playing with their electronic map/taking videos and pictures of where our less actives live, we got off on the right stop, but kept walking past it and got lost for a coulple of ours. Walking on the side of the road, with huge semi type trucks rushing by and nearly killing our trail of four poor lost forigners. We'd eaten our sandwitches hours ago, it was 5:30pm and the elders hadn't brought anything at all. Elder Hunter kept looking for a convenience store of anykind and kept making jokes about asking for snacks. I ended up giving him our last piece of bread. We were all dying.

We asked a man if we were in the right area. We weren't.

At that point, most everyone was ready to throw in the towel. We'd been able to find our one less active. We could come back and search another day. But I pushed them. I said let's give it one more shot. So we got on the bus again, and got off again at the right stop. It's where we found the "Happiness" sign.

 

We walked down the road and 15 minutes later, we found it! God love su!

 

I just want you to know I love you :)

Sister Brooksby