Septermber 24, 2018: The Book of Mormon is True

Dear People,

Yesterday was Korea's equivalent of Thanksgiving-day called Chuseok. Bishop Jung invited us and the Thompsons to his house for a traditional lunch. The Thompsons couldn't make it so it was going to be just Bishop, his wife, Elder Buxton, and me. We got there to find a table with enough food to easily feed the six people that were originally going to come. We started eating and realized that they had both already eaten so they only took a couple bites and then sat and carefully watched us eat the food that was all prepared just for us. It was really high pressure. Especially in our stomachs.

We had an awesome Thanksgiving dinner with the Thompsons and Hye-ran that night. Don't tell anyone in my MTC group though or they will be jealous. Sister Thompson made pumpkin pie. Hye-ran was fascinated with the turkey and cranberry sauce combination, she is either a really good actress or she loved it.

We got a call from Elder Heap in Daejeon who had sent out a mass "Happy Chuseok" text. One of the many responses they got was someone in Gunsan who had time to meet that day so they called us to refer him. We decided to do the same thing and sent a simple message to all of our Kakao Talk contacts. One of the many people to respond to us was Tommy, one of the very first people I taught on my mission when I first served here. He had since moved away but in his text he said that he was in town because he's visiting his parents. We are going to meet tomorrow. That was such a tender mercy. I love Tommy so much and am so excited to see him again.

We've been reading the Book of Mormon over the phone almost every day with Hye-ran. It's so exciting to be able to understand and explain the confusing parts to her and hear her interesting comments. Nephi reminds her of Joseph of Egypt because they both seemed to be the favorite child and their brothers tried to kill them. When people read and understand the Book of Mormon, there is little that can stop their progress. The Book of Mormon is true. 

I'm so grateful for the gift of the Holy Ghost. Just before starting emailing we were eating lunch and something felt really wrong. Like I was carrying some burden I couldn't identify. I started praying and immediately remembered that I forgot to invite Hye-ran to a dinner appointment with a member tonight. I called her. She can come. I felt completely fine afterwards.

I'm in happy denial that anything special is going to happen next Wednesday. I'm just going to not think about it and probably regret not buying presents for people.

-Elder Brown

Today we went to a "Cat Cafe". You pay to hang out with some cats. 

Delicious pig feet.

September 17, 2018: Mother

Dear People,

Yesterday I morning I was reading about the reason Helaman's stripling warriors did not fear death and plainly understood the priority that some things hold over preserving their lives:

"Now they never had fought, yet they did not fear death; and they did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives; yea, they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them. And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it."

It's pretty easy to discern when someone is teaching, how strongly they are living and applying the principles they teach. I can imagine how sincere and intense their family home evenings must have been. 

Later in the day I was talking on the phone with a friend named Jason who's been obsessing over something unimportant and hoping that an extremely unlikely event will occur. I told him that it would honestly be best to just forget about it and move on. He asked "should I not have hope for a miracle?" 

As I thought about how to respond to that, a teaching of my angel mother came to my mind. I must have been four or five years old because it was in the Highland house. My mother was teaching us about prayer. She explained the concept that God will will grant our requests but only if our requests are in line with His will. I vividly remember the object lesson because it involved candy bars, something I was very interested in at the time. She said that no matter how hard we pray that candy bars with appear in the kitchen cupboard, it won't happen because that's not an important thing. I was disappointed but I remember that it made sense to me.

I shared that teaching with him emphasizing that the things that are important to God are things that will give us not fleeting, but everlasting joy. There is only one way to achieve that.

I'm so grateful for my angel mother. 

Sister Thompson, a senior sister missionary in relation to her past callings in primary told us: "Teach a child a song and the song with teach the child." 

My mom has taught me many songs, sung and unsung, that teach me regularly.

-Elder Brown

 We found a tree growing out of the drain in our balcony

 I discovered a brand of cat milk where they have the opening on the bottom so you can eat it frozen without cutting yourself trying to tear at the plastic.

Ward Conference

Ward Conference

Baptism

Baptism

September 3, 2018: Miracles

Dear People,

For the last several months we have been doing mission wide fasts for finding. As we entered our meetinghouse after we started the fast Sunday morning we were greeted by the bishop's wife who excitedly introduced us to her (non-member) younger sister who agreed to take the missionary lessons starting that day after church.
She is super accepting and basically has a date for the 16th, ward conference. We are meeting her again tonight. 

That evening after we ended the fast we had a little time to contact some of our seventy so-called "people with interest" in our area book planner to find out if they actually had interest or not.

One of the first names on the list was a man from Ireland named Niall who neither of us had met and who had very little information on his record. We had called him three times before with no answer so we were just going to move him to the "unable to contact" category but...

"You know what they say, Elder Buxton, fourth time's a charm"
We both were totally not expecting him to answer so when he did Elder Buxton was a little off-guard. After some kind of awkward small talk there was a pause and Elder Buxton asked: "Yeah, so we were just wondering if you had any . . . interest."

He started talking about how his (Korean) wife goes to a church but he has been looking for a church to go to preferably in English and preferably on Sunday mornings. We told him that we meet on Sunday mornings and we translate. He said he would love to come to our ward conference with his little two kids.

Last Saturday night we were walking through this popular lake park that has a lot of people on the weekends. A young woman with her daughter and son approached us excitedly:

"Are you missionaries?"

"Yeah!"

"Wow, I love Jesus so much, my dream is to become a missionary!"

"No way, that's so great, we love Jesus too! We are trying to be like Him."

To her 4 year old son- "You love Jesus too right?"

"Yeah!" *hugs my legs for a second and then holds my hand as we continue walking.

We talked for a while. It sounds weird in English but she said we "smell" like Jesus. Her maybe seven year-old daughter was all like "Mo-om, we didn't come here to talk to missionaries!"

We have her number and will hopefully meet again soon. She asked us to teach her and her kids English too.

Another miracle in Gunsan is that a brother and sister, both recently returned missionaries just moved in. The will be a huge strength.

We have a new bishop, a meetinghouse that was cleaned of junk for the first time in like thirty years and great new members and friends. I sure hope I don't transfer or go home any time soon.

Favorite quote of the week is from President Ballard:

"Life can be filled with faith, joy, happiness, hope, and love when we exercise the smallest amount of real faith in Christ."

This stylized quote was in the Liahona. It didn't mean much to me when I first saw it but I ripped it out and stuck it to my wall. when I read it over the next day or so I kept thinking about "real faith in Christ". I asked myself what fake/not real faith in Jesus Christ would be. I started to feel like a lot of my daily activities aren't actually an exercise in faith because I know that what I'm doing is right and I know what results will come. I'm re-learning that exercising faith is doing things that I don't want to do, that I haven't done well in the past. Getting into unfamiliar, unknown territory, and doing it because we think it's what Jesus would want us to do. That's when life can be filled with faith, joy, happiness, hope and love.

I'm still not doing this very well but when I do have little moments of real faith it works.

Elder Brown

We spent ten bucks each and way too much time in a "teddy bear museum" last preparation day. I don't know what I was expecting but it turned out to be walking through a bunch of exhibits of little teddy bears posed in random scenes. At the end there were actually a few vintage teddy bears and stuffed animals. Most of them were really creepy and had been knocked over for some reason. There were some cute bear head things that we got to wear though. That almost made it worth it.