Miracles

The work continues in here in Korea. We are fighting hard, trying to help the work along in our area. This week we have seen some great miracles. Amazing things are happening in 괴정. 

The first thing that I'm thinking about is our new investigator Jeen Haejeng. He's the branch president's friend. We meet the two of them together. Jeen Haejeng is a retired Busan detective who speaks Korean with a really heavy accent. Doing the lessons with him is pretty hard but that's what the Branch president is for. Jeen Heajeng is progressing really well. Every time we put something new in front of him he just says, "Well of course it's that way, they should teach this stuff in schools."

Also we will be doing a big music night in our branch on the 4th of July (not an American music night, just a music night). I will be playing the violin, so all of my free time is being filled with practice. We're super excited to invite all of our investigators and less actives to that. The program includes music followed by testimonies given by the members. We hope that it will be a really spiritual event.

We were out talking to people on the street this week and ran into a man who lived in a neighboring area. "I've seen guys that look like you," he said. "There are two Americans and a Korean." We started talking with him a bit more. He jumped into this massive story. I'll tell you what I understood from the story. 

There was an American soldier who was in Korea during the Korean war. He married a Korean woman and after the war they went to America. There they had a child. This child went on to join the American army and serve in Iraq where he was shot in the arm. 

What I was supposed to understand from that, I don't know. But the man just kept talking and talking until to try and change the subject I handed him a Plan of salvation pamphlet. The man took it flipped through it and found a picture of a family at church.

"I KNOW THAT MAN!" the guy shouted. At this point we realized he was kind of drunk. He went on to exclaim to the world how he knew the man in the picture. We were drawing a lot of attention so I tried to get him to calm down. 

"If you attend the church in your area you'll probably see him there." I said.

"Really?" he asked. 

I wasn't sure if it was too honest but I told him that he probably would. I wonder if the Kim Hae Ward missionaries had a mysterious man appear at church yesterday looking for a man in a Plan of Salvation pamphlet. 

A really cool miracle that happened this week was just last night we were heading back from an appointment with a member and ran into this guy from Mongolia. He saw us and said, "come over here!" He explained that he is a new convert and had just come to Korea for work. He doesn't speak any Korean and was really lost. He had just prayed for help and then we popped up. 

This is proof that God will send us where we need to go, to do what he needs us to do.

Have a great week

할크니스 장로

Elder Harkness

James in a mask

The weekly post

​As you can see an epidemic has hit Korea. It's called MERS and because of it lately we have had a much harder time making appointments and meeting investigators. This week was really a bit of a bummer actually. I went out and bought the mask last Wednesday. A lot of the people who are just out on the street wear them. They have colorful ones for the kids.

In spite of plague and pestilence we are still working hard. We are finding more of the inactive members and inviting them to church. It's funny. The more we have looked the more people in the branch are remembering people who have slipped through the cracks. We haven't began teaching any of these people, most of them tell us to leave when we find their home, but I'm starting to see the work that we are doing here move on. We come home tired every night. It's a really good feeling actually. I just hope that our work will be able to bring some people to church.

​Sorry there are no great stories this week. Hopefully the pictures make up for that.

Have a great week,

Elder Harkness

Got Bread?

This week was definitely an interesting one. We spent a large part of it going through a section of our area called Gamchon. It's a very historic area that was big during the Korean war. Thousands of refugees lived here in shacks which eventually turned into a ramble of cement shacks. Basically this area is the closest I'll get to third world on my mission. We have been looking for inactive's homes which is really hard because the addresses are written in sharpie on walls doors and other places. In all honesty it reminded me a little bit of a corn maze or a video game because of the way it twists and turns. Me and my companion had a lot of fun running through here:) Didn't find anyone who was interested though.

​Another fun part of this week was all of the teaching that we were able to do. We taught one investigator about baptism. He is unfortunately not ready for a baptismal date but it was really great to share with him my testimony of baptism and the blessings that we get from it. We also taught Kim Eekdong. He said that he has been really wondering if God is there. We taught him about prayer and scripture study. As we talked I thought about the story of Enos. I thought about how much this story applies to Kim so I asked him to read it. I haven't heard back from him yet but I am so happy for the Book of Mormon. We've run into a couple more people that want to fight because we have the Book of Mormon. I don't know how they can do without it. My testimony of Jesus Christ comes so much from that book. The message of the Book of Mormon is so great. The book of Mormon is proof that God still cares and is still providing for his children on the earth.

Something that was really funny that happened this week was when we tried to teach prayer. We used an analogy to teach the person the order of prayer. We said that prayer is like a sandwich. Every sandwich starts and ends with bread. This bread is "Dear heavenly..." and "...in the name of..." What we put in the middle is what we want like meat or peanutbutter. These things are like our gratitude, our needs and our wants. After we explained this the man said, "So when I pray, I must prepare bread?" In retrospect I realize that I'm probably not good enough at Korean yet to explain gospel concepts through abstract examples. Oh well.

​This is a memorial to a general who died fighting the Japanese about three hundred years ago. (Koreans really like memorials for people who fought the Japanese) I thought that it was really cool and so I took the picture. The memorial made me think a bit about work for the dead. When someone is brought into the church they have the opportunity to give the blessings of the gospel to their ancestors. People like this guy who has the memorial need baptism just as much as the people we talk to everyday on the street.

Have a great week, 

I know I will,

Harkness 장로

Miracles

So this week was crazy. We had more lessons in this week than I've ever had in this area. One really great story is how we met with Shin Dong Oak. He is the older man who walked into our church a couple of weeks ago. He has a really bad cancer and goes in for treatment at least weekly, so he is not able to meet often. But because Elder Suttner got a transfer call to another area he took us out to eat.  He and three of his friends came. During dinner we found out that one of his friends was baptized into the church as a boy and that another is living next to one of our other churches in Busan and has some real interest in meeting with missionaries. That was a big miracle.

This week we were walking down the street and saw a man who waved to us. We started talking and learned that he was a christian. We had a good talk about Christ and then I tried to give him a Book of Mormon. The man got really offended and our discussion turned into more of a bible bash. Rather than fight, me and my companion left. This experience made me think a lot about my belief in the Book of Mormon. My testimony is hinged on it. The Book of Mormon is one of the greatest things on this earth. It is through the Book of Mormon that we learn that God still loves his people and is constantly giving them guidance. Through the Book of Mormon we can know that Joseph Smith is a prophet. I feel different every time I read that book. It is a blessing that I can go around sharing it's message. There is another investigator that I had in my last area. We taught her about the book of Mormon and even though she was doubtful at first, has come to know that it is the word of God. It is my job to invite all people to read this book and come unto Christ through it's teachings. There is no other job I would rather have :)

​Me and my awesome new companion Elder Quiros.

​This is Maishir a traditional Korean drink. It is made by mixing plums and brown sugar and letting it sit for six months (it's non alcoholic) I really love it and got a ton of it from a sister in the branch. You mix about a table spoon of it with a full glass of water and that's sugary enough for an American. so this thing will last me forever.