Christmas in Korea

SANTA?

This was the first real week of my second transfer. We've been working really hard with our investigators. We talked a bit about baptism with Van Tu and Chang but they need just a little bit longer before they can commit. That's OK though. We have three appointments scheduled through this next week. If we feel the spirit and if the situation's right we will extend the commitment. It's super exciting! They're both so great.

As you can see we had the 금정 ward Christmas party. We had a great turn out with 17 investigators/potential investigators/nonmember friends of members. Everyone seemed to enjoy it.
The members didn't think we would be busy so they had us do a musical number. I found a three stringed violin in the relief society closet and the new elder can play the guitar. It went well considering we only had time for two practices.

It was a good picture of 금정 area until the car drove in front of the camera. Elder Baker and I have spent a ton of time on the streets putting up adds for our English Class and handing out some materiel that the church has put out for Christmas.

No snow but it's still pretty cold.

Happy birthday James!

It was a crazy week. We had transfers (I am still being trained so
Elder Baker and I are still in Guemjoung, Busan) but we lost the
sister team in the area. We had to move them out and no one is coming
to replace them. This means that a lot of the work that they did will
be put on to us. One nice thing is that we get their two golden
investigators Vantu and Chang.
I also had my birthday this week. I made a cake mix that my mom sent
it and we had it with Vantu and Chang which was really fun and gave
the opportunity for them to get to know me and Elder Baker better.

The pictures are of the Cake me and Elder Smith made, the sunset last
P-day, we were out hiking, and me and Vantu.

Christmas in Korea

Not a ton happened this week. Just lots of contacting and procoliting. I went on another exchange for a day.
Our ward's been having us teach a Kid's English class along with the normal one. No one likes it because it brings in no investigators like Normal English does. It's a bit like a one hour daycare where all of the kids only speak Korean. We had a meeting about it with the primary president and the bishop. She was adiment that we keep it. We'll have to see what the Mission President has to say about that.
The missionaries are heading up a movement to do more member missionary work through social media. We're not aloud to do anything on social media but we're trying to get members, particularly the youth, to post church pictures and videos.

For Korean Christmas bad children get cinderblock bricks. Just kidding. The ward needed some help with decorations so we wrapped the bricks up to look like presents.

I was showing a potential investigator the family flip book. After looking at it the investigator said, "You have a very beautiful family...So your church doesn't believe in birth control?" The investigator said this in english.

I busted up laughing and elder Baker reguided the lesson back on track.

Love you,

James

The ward Christmas part invitation looks awsome. We are distributing these to less active members and trying to get them to the party then back to church.

Dec. 1

This week was pretty good. We had another lesson with Huang Sen and have another man who is calling us but that we have not been able to meet with. He seems really interested in the church. We will meet with him this week. His name is Ho Kyo.
I had an interesting conversation with a man after our English class about temples. He said that he had been reading on the internet that big organized religions (like ours) are not the way Christ would want us to worship because they are too materialistic (this was after english class so everyone was speaking english and I could understand.) He said that our temples are to big and flashy. I explained to him that the temples are very beautiful but that is out of respect. I also got to explain the purpose of temples and why they are so important. I explained the priesthood and how Christ gave Peter the Keys to establish his church over all the earth (a very big place). I wrapped up with the apostasy and the restoration.
I don't know if he felt much but I know that through teaching I was able to refresh my testimony of the temple and of our church. That is a cool thing about serving a mission. You spend all your time teaching, but because of that you also spend all your time learning.
I love being a missionary and it's great to hear from you all,
Elder Harkness

 This is Dongkase. It's Korean Japanese food. What it is is like a pork fried steak covered in sweet sauce. It was what I had for thanksgiving dinner. It's supper good.

Breaking our fast Goonday (military) style. They had a burner at the church and we made eight packs of ramen.

​I made a game to memorize my vocab while we waited for English Class to start.