I love being a missionary

As always we had family home evening last Monday night. It was really good because a less active member who I've been trying to contact for the last transfer came. He's really liked the message that we shared (Heleman 12:5) and said that it seems really applicable in his life right now. He wants to go to church but his parents are against it. His name is Brother Geer Jeenyoung. Pray for him if you have the opportunity.

On Tuesday morning Elder Mitchel and had companionship study. We looked at how we could make our tracting more effective. We decided to dedicate specific times to specific age groups and mark up our map with places that we could talk to people of those groups. The method proved pretty effective and we had a really successful day. One of the people we found was a College student who really wants to help us out with our english class. He got really excited by it and said that he'll bring all of his friends and his younger brother's friends this week. It seems like he has some interest in the gospel too. 

This week I went to both of my districts district meetings. There are a lot of great missionaries who transferred into my zone.

On Friday we ran into a couple on the streets. The husband is Korean and the wife is from Turkey. They said that they have heard a lot about our church and would like to meet some time and even start going to church.

Saturday, we spent the morning running around a far part of our area trying to make it to an appointment.  After two buss rides, a jog and a taxi ride we finally made it. The appointment was with one of the sisters' investigators. She said that she wanted some help with English and we thought that we could painlessly go out do the service project and be back in no time. We were wrong.

Easter was fantastic. It was a very spiritual Sunday. We had lots of less active members at church and went out with the missionaries in our district to share the Easter message in the evening.

Great week! I love being a missionary and being able to share the message with those around me. Easter was a great time to remember Jesus Christ who I represent.

Small steps

참 crazy week. There were some really cool things that happened though. 

I got to see more of those genealogy books. We had dinner with one sister in our ward. She too has really caught the Spirit of Elijah and is digging through these old books for her family records. Come to find out, her line crosses with that other sister in our ward about four hundred years ago. 

One part of this week was the road trip me and my companion took to the outskirts of our area to visit some members and look for investigators. It was pretty fun to get out of the city of Busan and see some country. The members were really awesome. There was this one less active we visited named Song Hwejun. He seemed really excited to see us and gave us his tithing. On Sunday we gave the tithing to the first counselor in the Bishopric. All that he could say was, "Good job, but I still just wish he would come to church." One step at a time I guess.

One of the things that we had to do this week was make transfer plans for the people in our zone. The calls came in on Saturday night. Elder Mitchel and I got the info the next morning and had to plan out all of the bus and train travel that the missionaries would be taking. It's kind of like a really big puzzle working with the other four zones. No missionary can be alone at one time.

Anyways I hope you all have a great week!

Elder Harkness

Happiness comes through helping others

This week wasn't as busy as the last couple have been. Only one exchange, and I stayed in my area for this one. 

I had a fun experience in our weekly English class. It was my turn to give the spiritual message. I remembered this game that we did in seminary. In the game a class is divided into several teams and each team can pick an x or an o. The game is set up so that only if all of the teams work together can you win, but there are lots of opportunities for backstabbing and pushing the other teams down. It was fun to see how competitive these older Korean folk got. Unfortunately because they couldn't work together, in the end they all lost which led into my message about service.

I think that missionary work is based on similar principles. If you work for the good of others you are elevated. If you work only for yourself then life becomes miserable and you loose. I have definitely found this principal to be true in my life. 

The bishop in our ward recently called new ward missionaries. My companion and I have been going around and visiting them sharing this message. I am just paraphrasing but in the scriptures it says that if we first seek the kingdom of God (giving up our own selfish motives and opinions) then we will have countless blessing added to us. The ward missionaries have really liked this message and expressed how excited they are to work and teach with us. 

One fun story. There is this fourteen year old boy who lives by the church. He has been coming to church for a long time. Because he lives with his grandparents and they are strict Buddhist they won't let him get baptized. They do however let him come to the church and really like us. We were doing a lesson with him and he got a text from a friend. We jokingly told him that he should invite his friend over which he did. Soon we had two new fourteen year old boys in our church. We taught them about scriptures and prayer. Walking out of the lesson one of the boys said how much more fun we were than the school teachers. I guess that means the lesson was a hit and we have a couple new investigators.

Peace until next week,

할크니스 장로

One more thing. The book in the pictures is a family genealogy. This is one of the members. Using this book (she had to learn Chinese characters to read it) she has done her family history and some of the temple work for ancestors all the way back to before 1000 AD when her family immigrated from China to Korea. Super cool right?

Seeing Van Tu again

As always a week full of exchanges and other fun missionary and zone leader things. 

First off, the week started off with us getting punked. (That is a missionary term for when you schedule to meet with someone and they never show up.) It was pretty sad because we planned and went with a member to meet this guy. We found him out on the streets. He was working at a drive in movie. When we went this week the man working was not him and claimed not to know him. Well, we will try again next week.

The next day was pretty fun. We went to one of our district meetings. This district is doing really well. It was really great to be able to learn and teach with them. The subject was helping investigators understand repentance and the importance of the sacrament. After that I went on an exchange into another part of my zone. The missionaries in that area had a really good English class. Lots of people came to that English class, but none of them showed any interest in the gospel. The missionaries solution was a Book of Mormon English class. I got to teach the class during my exchange. It was super fun! I was just really surprised that anyone would want to learn English from the Book of Mormon.  I figure that in a couple months there will be this lost American who asks directions from a Korean and gets a response like this, "Behold I say unto you, the ticket office is found down yonder street."

Coming off of that exchange I had a day back in Haeundae. During that time we had an interesting lesson with one of our investigators. He attends another church really diligently. In the lesson we told him about the priesthood. I feel like he has really started to understand. He committed to pray and study to find if our church is the real church.

The next day I was on the exchange road again. Off to the mission headquarters with the AP. It was pretty fun except for the part where my chopstick grip on a piece of chicken slipped and it fell into some spicy red sauce staining the AP's and my shirt.

The week ended with Busan stake conference. I got to see Van Tu and his family.