March 31, 2014 English Prayer

March 31, 2014

English Prayer

Hey Family!!

 

So I decided that being a Missionary sometimes feels like being on The Amazing Race and Tuesday was one of those days.  The Elders were our opponents giving us bad directions of how to get to a new investigators house...haha!!  We have been running all over the city on foot, taxis, and buses just trying to not be late to our appointments and not get lost, quite the adventure in a city!!  Tuesday we also visited a member who recently returned from a long visit to her sister in the states.  They often visit America so her kids are AWESOME at English.  The little boy tried to speak English to me the whole time and asked me to say the prayer at the end in English,  I never knew that would feel so weird!  I haven't done that out loud in 10 months!!  So, you should all just expect a really awkward pray-er when I get home, unless you let me do it in Korean:) 

So this week I was hit on by one too many older men, I think the spring weather is making everyone a little...too friendly.  I have started my business card pile, haha!!  First, one guy pulls over in his car on Tuesday when he saw us on the street,  super good at English and already knows about our church, we are going to try meeting him this week and probably hand him over to the Elders to make sure there is only Gospel and English interest, haha!!  other good “old men moments”...We had to run out the other night to get something from a member and some older man says Hi to me and then comes over and tries to get me to go to a karaoke club with him.  Nothing like a drunk politician trying to hit on the blonde foreign girl; that moment was a bit scary.  We got away easy but were disgusted when we got his business card and he was a politician and acted that way.  And finally there was the homeless guy that watched us all through our proselyting activity and then the next day we were in the same area and he kept staring, moving to benches closer to us, and then when we got up he started following us all through the shopping area so we were just running down random streets to lose him, quite the entertaining week!!

Oh, I forgot about shru-da-man-u, the Elders investigator.  he is Korean but changed his name to the interesting indonesian name.  he came to a members restaurant with me, Sister Lee, Elder Allan, and Elder Baldwin.  He is quite the unique guy and kept showing us all these random apps and translators on his phone, a talking cat, and would speak three languages in one sentence.  He has a thing for foreigners and said he would come to church if me and Elder Baldwin would be there, haha.  My favorite is when he pulled up a picture of Tyra Banks and said I look like her, oh goodness!!

Also this week we spent some time with our investigator and her daughter (a super awesome member of our ward) making jam and dumplings and I felt right at home.  All those years of making potstickers with Dad and jam with Mom are coming into use:)

This week was so great and we have been seeing so many miracles and really seen things picking up in our area.  We found some super great new investigators so I want to share my favorite story of one with you.  This woman came to English class two weeks ago and then we arranged to meet with her one on one the next week.  We met her Saturday and had a great time during English where she told me all about her trip to the US.  After English we asked her what she knew about missionaries and she surprised us by telling us she met them 30 years ago outside of her college and received a Book Of Mormon, she even read some of it but the language was just too hard to understand.  But then later on as we were talking about the Book Of Mormon she completely remembered the story of Lehi and his family, me and Sister Lee just sat there in shock.  She is really interested to hear our message and I am so excited to see where things will go:)

I hope you all are as excited as me for General Conference!!  We have to wait an extra week to watch it here.  I encourage you all to take the time to really sit down and listen to our prophets words and pray beforehand to receive the answers and words you need individually.  Last conference as I really took the time to sit down, listen, and take notes I learned so much more than I ever have in the past.  There were so many inspired things and I received so much help and guidance and look forward to receiving the same thing again this year.

I love and miss you all so much, I literally look at pictures every single day!!  Have a great week!!

 

Love,

Sister Jacklin

 

March 24, 2014 Buddha!!!

March 24, 2014

Buddha!!

 

Hey Family!!

 

We are starting week four of the transfer and I cannot figure out where the time has gone!!  I am more than halfway done with my mission now!!

Last Monday me and Sister Lee headed out to a mountain to visit one of the biggest Buddha’s in Asia.  It was a beautiful day and I was in the mountains so I was so happy!!  Though, we thought we were going to die walking up the billions of stairs to the Buddha...we are a little out of shape!!  The Buddha was massive and there were a bunch of temples too.  The cool part was seeing some people praying and we even got in a twenty minute conversation with a man on the mountain and learned a lot about Buddhism, or I at least tried to understand^^  It was the perfect p-day and I am going to continue to spend p-days in the mountains, my happy place^^

This week while proselyting I had way too many people  stroking my hair, a weird experience when you have no idea who they are...On Wednesday we were waiting to meet someone by the bus terminal and all the sudden this lady comes up to us and I hear, "missionary?"  I turned around and seriously this lady looked like a witch and acted like it too.  She was stroking my hair and saying how blonde hair is so much softer, poking at some zit on my face saying who knows what, saying my companion looks like a fox (very offensive in Korea), asking really weird questions, all with her disgustingly smelly breath in my face!!  Quite the experience and it gave us a good laugh.  We’ve have had the most random proselyting experiences lately.

That same day we met our new investigator who is from Kenya. He is so awesome and was really excited to receive the Book Of Mormon cause it could help him come closer to God.  We had to meet in a cafe so it was really loud but we taught him about Joseph Smith and he listened really well.  After we taught him he talked for about half an hour about the power of scriptures, prayer, and especially faith.  His words were so powerful and I really learned a lot from him about faith and the power of believing.  I think he is going to teach us as much or more than we teach him.  It is also super cute hearing my companion trying to speak English, she is really trying and I think it makes her realize what it is like to be an American missionary in Korea.

Friday, a woman in our ward invited us to come to her English group.  There are about 12 women in her group that get together every week to practice English.  It felt like just like I was out to lunch with Mom and Shauna again^^  They spoke English really well and we talked a lot about their kids and other things about their week and later during break time they were asking me questions about my family and parents and our relationship, and don't worry I only had good things to say.  Parenting style in Korea is much different I think. They also asked some questions about the Church and I think we will continue to attend cause there is definitely some potential to meet separately with some of the women.

Sunday!!  My Birthday!!  Nothing too exciting to tell, but Sister Hingano and Sister Cho woke me up at 6:30 with a Birthday cake, candles, and Happy Birthday which was so sweet.  Cake for breakfast is always the best^^  They continued to serenade me with a billion different versions of Happy Birthday throughout the day. 

All in all it was a great week^^  We are having lots of success right now in finding investigators through our English program, so I am having to learn to teach English really quickly.  If anyone has good ideas they would be much appreciated!!

 

I love you!!

Love,

 

Sister Jacklin

March 17, 2014 Miracle Fast

March 17, 2014
Miracle Fast

 

 

 

안녕하세요 사랑하는 가족!!

So, I have a story from last week that I forgot to tell and I think it is pretty important.  We were visiting a less-active and she ended up feeding us dinner; a delicious, spicy noodle bowl with veggies and some kind of scary looking seafood but it tasted good (mollusc?)  Well one of the veggies was a couple baby tomatoes and so I pushed them off to the side planning to sneak them to my companion when the sister looked away.  Well that didn't happen and I decided it was time to suck it up and conquer my fears.  Well turns out tomatoes are as disgusting as I remember and I literally almost threw-up while eating it.  But, be proud mom, I covered it up so no one saw that I didn't like it.  Let’s just say that I don't plan on eating a tomato EVER again!!  To make matters worse, the soup on the side that was basically like eating the bottom of the ocean, green and slimy...

Another random funny moment from the week, on Thursday when we showed up for our proselyting activity our District leader announced that our "special" challenge was a law of chastity activity and he gave us all law of chastity pamphlets to hand out...we all just sat there and laughed and couldn't believe he was serious!!  Good thing it turned out to all be a joke but it would be pretty funny to see us all out there on the streets teaching the law of chastity.  We also met this super awesome christian man from Kenya named Gideon, he definitely loves God!!  We got his number and are going to try and meet this week!!

This week our District decided to do a District fast all together and it is amazing because we are already starting to see the miracles.  Yesterday church was super full and there were quite a few less actives that came who we have been trying to get to church for a long time.  The Elders were also able to make our recent converts little brother and another recent converts older brother investigators and they both came to church, yay!!  And we also found a new investigator this week who came to church!!  She is 14 Korean age, that means she is Luke's age, and her mom saw one of our English flyers and contacted us.  We had quite the adventure getting her to English class, running halfway across the city cause she couldn't go by herself, and then when we got there she freaked out at all the people and would not go into English class so we met separately.  She was super shy just hanging onto me and my companion but as she started meeting people she warmed up and loved our recent convert.  We all hung out for a while and after some positive peer pressure she decided to come to church with us the next day, she already attended another church by herself. She had a super good experience and we ended up teaching a lesson to her and watching the short restoration video.  It was a super good lesson because we were teaching our recent convert, investigator, and a less-active.  Our recent convert was such a rock star talking about Baptism, Prophets, and the Restoration.  She is really gaining her own testimony and has already started doing missionary work.

This week I started rereading last October's general conference and wanted to share a quote that I really liked.  It is a quote by Elder Holland from Elder Dube's talk, "The past is to be learned from but not lived in.  We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes.  And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead and remember that faith is always pointed toward the future."   I loved that this shares a message of learning from our mistakes but not dwelling and moving on because we can always grow and do better, that is how I feel in my missionary work that I can always try a little harder and do better.  I also love the message of the importance of faith because it is something I have been focused on lately, faith in God and faith in ourselves.  As we have these two things we can accomplish anything we want and become the best disciples of Christ possible as we continually learn and grow.

I love you all and hope that this will be a good week and that the spring weather has started.  We had a bunch of rain this week and I can totally sympathize with that Washington weather!!

 

Love,

 

Sister Jacklin

Picture #1:  Just another normal day in Cheonan

Picture #2:  Hingano just having a party spring cleaning:)

 

 

March 10, 2014 A week of learning

March 10, 2014

A week of learning

Family,

Hope Everyone had a fabulous week.  This week was a week of learning, miracles, and lots of laughs.

Tuesday we had a combined District meeting where we received some awesome training from our District and Zone leader.  Our District leader said something in his training that really stood out to me. He talked about how trust goes two ways, We have to trust God and his plan and then act on it and as we do that, God can trust us.  I loved this and thought about how I want to work so hard and live the gospel so that God can trust me and guide me to find his prepared children and to those who need my help. 

This week we have been focusing a lot on being as obedient as we possibly can be and talking to as many people as we can.  As we have done this I have really seen the blessings.  We have struggled so much to find new investigators but this week we were able to get two new investigators and have a high potential investigator that we will hopefully meet this week.  Three of our investigators are Buddhist and the other one is Roman Catholic so it will be quite interesting.  The Roman Catholic investigator is a woman in her 30's who is fluent in English.  I can already tell I am going to love her.  It will be interesting though since she is super catholic, she even tried being a nun once!!  The other new investigator is a grandma whose husband is a member, we visited them this week and it felt just like being in nana's house:)  Except I couldn't understand a single thing she said because of her accent and the form of Korean she was speaking.  When I have situations like that I just smile and nod!!  With all these investigators we are going to rely on our testimonies and the power of the Book of Mormon a lot as we teach.

Yesterday we had Stake Conference, Cheongju so great!!  I got to see some of the members from Hheungdeok, a few recent converts, and some of the missionaries from my old Zone.  Also Elder Nash, a member of the Seventy, and his wife visited and spoke.  I had a few minutes to talk with Sister Nash after the meeting and it made my day.  It was so nice to just chat with a nice American mom.  We drove with our ward mission leader and his family and had quite the adventure on the way home.  In the middle of the country side he goes off on some side road and they take us to see the home of this girl that led a freedom movement in the 1900's.  We walked around, took pictures, piled back in the car, but only drove a few minutes before stopping at another small museum about this girl.  A few more stops along the way and we made it back to Cheonan just a few hours late, haha!!  We didn't feel too bad though since the Elders ended up doing almost the same thing.  But so fun to get to see some cultural sites and enjoy some time with members.

Something else that has really stuck out to me this week is with the language.  I have been trying a new method to learn words lately and have been studying super hard.  I have noticed that I study the words during language study and then that same day someone uses the new word and I am able to understand what they are saying.  It is just one small way I have been seeing the Lord's hand helping me.  As I put in the effort to study he has helped me know what to study.  I am always so excited as I am better able to understand the language so I can communicate with my companion and with investigators and members.

Fun week with me and Sister Lee running all over town and lots of cookies and teaching ballet to Sister Cho in our house, it was a party!!

Love you all and hope you have a great (rainy) week:)

Loved seth's prom pictures, send some more!!

Love,

Sister Jacklin

 Picture #1:  You know, just fighting for Korea's freedom ㅎㅎㅎ

Picture #2:  Me and Hing are basically Korean

 

March 3, 2014 The end of 5th transfer

March 3, 2014

The end of 5^th transfer

Hey Family!!

I am starting my 6th transfer today and hardly can believe it.  I still feel like a greenie!!

Last Monday night my companion and I were talking on our way home and I was saying how I just want us to be able to find a new investigator and to be able to do it on our own.  We keep having so many potential investigators but they keep not working out.  Well, Tuesday during District meeting we got a call from a woman interested in learning English and went out to visit her that afternoon.  Not to mention the getting lost thanks to the elders directions, we ran around one intersection about five times, if only there was video!!  Anyways,  she is a 33 year old woman and is so, so sweet.  Right now she is mostly interested in learning English but is good with hearing our message.  This was a such a testimony builder for me because it was a direct answer to my prayers and made me realize that God is watching over me and is not leaving us alone in this work. 

Then there was Wednesday both good, bad, and stupid.  We met up with a member for lunch and we were hurrying so fast to get there that I completely biffed it on the stairs, oh so graceful, I know!!  The restaurant we went to was a SUPER nice buffet with the most amazing food; steak, crab, sushi, salad, dessert, fruit, and pretty much any other food you can think of.  The woman that took us is from the small branch in the city next door and all of the missionaries that serve here call her mom because she loves and takes such good care of the missionaries.  We had such a good time with her, lots of talking and LOTS of food:)

After that we headed to the church to do a few things.  After getting to the church we ran to give something to our investigator by the church and when we came back 20 min. later The other people at the church had left and locked the doors with my keys and all my stuff inside! ahhh!! panic mode!!  We called the Elders but they were heading to dinner at a members, so we were literally running through the city to charge our bus cards, hop on a bus, and run to the members.  Literally, our lives should just be filmed.  By the time we made it back to the church we had already used half the night and were exhausted.  Sometimes I'll just admit that I am a blonde!!  We just laughed at it and moved on.

Hope you all have a wonderful week:)  사랑해요!!!

Love,

Sister Jacklin

Picture #1: my companion and I rocking the masks we were forced to wear by a member:)

Picture #2: our last district meeting!!  So sad to see this crazy crew get split up.