Transfer Calls and Exchange Palooza Week

 

안녕하세요!!!

Where do I even start, first of all...things have been absolutely crazy. Sis Gooch and I have been on 3 exchanges this week. One with 부평, 계산, and 연수 sisters. It was a lot of fun, but Sis. Gooch and I are exhausted and are excited to just be companions again.

First exchanges with 부평 was incredibly fun. Sis. Gooch went to 부평 and was companions with Sister Moyer (a new missionary). Sis. Gooch and Sis Moyer were incredibly nervous at first, but I thought that this would be a good opportunity for Sis. Gooch to be the one that another missionary relies on. That meant that Sis. Wright (My MTC district) came to 만수. It was absolute madness!! On Monday night, we went to a member's house to hold FHE with a pair of elders. Sis. Wright just made us all laugh during dinner. She doesn't realize how many awesome sounds she makes when she is assembling/eating food. For FHE we decided to sing hymns and share what we liked about each of them.

The second exchange was on Thursday with Sis. Holdaway who is probably one of the sweetest people in the world. She was extremely nervous and thought that we would get lost a lot. However, that was not true and we were finding everyone that we needed to and had a great HTBT lesson with a new investigator. I have really high hopes for this area and things seem to be turning out for the better.

 

Noteworthy miracles from this week: On our way home from our first exchange, Sis. Gooch and I found 2 potential new investigators. One of them turned into an actual investigator and the other one has a lot of potential.

This truly is the Lord's work. All I really have to do is trust him.

I love you!

Sis. Chao

Missionary Work

Hello Family!

This week has been incredibly hard, but we have seen a lot of miracles in the mission. First of all, do you remember the 박하영 from my last area? Well, it turns out that she is finally ready to be baptized!! She is super excited and so are the missionaries in the area. The church is true. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I will be able to go to the baptism, but that being said...I am sure it will be great! It is a new start for her and I look forward to hearing more about the great things in store for her. 

As for Sis. Gooch and I, we have been working really hard to find new investigators and to help the ones that we do meet with to progress. One of our investigators is married to a member in our ward. She attends church on a regular basis, but she has not been receiving the missionary lessons for some reasons. We decided to introduce ourselves and ask her if the missionary discussion would be something she would be interested. Sis. Gooch and I decided that it would be best to try and talk to Sis. Jeong at church. Long Story short- She wants us to teach her after church, which is great because it allows us to have member lessons. In addition, we asked a YSA who is preparing for her mission to teach with us! Yay!!!!

Another miracle that happened this week is that an old investigator has come back. Her name is Sis. Lee. I met her once with Sis. Gapinski, but it really didn't go anywhere because she had no desire to act. So we decided that we wouldn't drop her, but that we wouldn't meet with her very often. Well, Sis. Lee randomly contacted us and really wanted to meet with us. When we met again, she kept telling me how things felt different when we weren't able to meet with her on a regular basis. She is really curious and I hope that it will help her develop the desire to act instead of wait to be acted upon.

This week has been super cold!! There were times that Sis. Gooch and I literally thought our noses were about to fall off. That being said, it made missionary work a lot of fun because speaking with frozen lips makes an interesting combination. 

Thanks for the package! I got it really fast and my district is super excited to watch the movie on Thanksgiving. Also, the candy is great... This district is fantastic and there are  a lot of miracles happening here. This week, we will be getting transfer calls. I hope that this area remains relatively the same aka open!! 

-Sis. Chao

Meetings and bacteria

안녕하세요!!!

This week has been incredibly busy, but I have learned so much. On Tuesday, Sis. Gooch and I headed to 송파 for Missionary Leadership Council. At that meeting, we really talked about upcoming changes in the mission and what we would like to see our mission become. President mentioned that our mission has been known for our ability to street contact, but he wants our focus to change more now to teaching. He really wants us to focus on the basics, so he asked us to focus our zone training on teaching our missionaries about extending commitments. 

The following day, the zone leaders and I got together and started discussing how we wanted to teach the training. We decided to use Elder Bednar's talk about being a Preach My Gospel Missionary as our backbone and then use PMG to really expand. My portion of teaching was about listening and observing before speaking. Essentially, I learned more about listening than most people because...most people know that I have an attention span of like 5 seconds. Now, I will have one of 30 seconds. Kidding. We taught about how listening truly shows how much you love the speaker. Once people know that you genuinely care for them, you can really know what their needs are. Overall, the training was really good and we learned a lot.

This past P-day was also epic because I was able to reunite with my MTC district. It was so great to see how much everyone has grown spiritually and in Korean. We actually can converse with each other in Korean...it was super weird. I am so excited to see how much more we progress as we are in our home stretches of our mission. It is still super weird to think that my time as a missionary is coming to the end...well not really, I still have a little bit of time. It just motivates me to be an even better missionary.

I got super sick last weekend. I drank some ginger tea...it was delicious and felt much better after.

I really will send pictures next week, I just keep forgetting to bring my cord. :( Anyways, have a wonderful week and I will see you again next week!

Love you,

Sis. Chao

Miracle Week and Tornado Like Winds

안녕하세요!!!

This week has officially marked the end of October and the beginning of November. Do you know what that means? Hello cold weather and huge blasts of wind. Oddly though, it has made missionary work even more fun because it makes us want to talk to more people and do more invitations to get us out of the cold weather. 

Sis. Gooch and I have been working really hard to find new investigators and visit less active members. One day, were set on finding this one less active members house. Every time we have tried to find it, we either get loss or something distracts (street lessons, random members, etc.) So we started off towards the general area when we noticed this random path that looked oddly foresty. We are not sure if it was the spirit or our sense of adventure, but we decided to take this path. It ended up taking us to a bunch of random farms and then out to another main road. At first, we were super confused because there were no people, so we just aimed for the tallest building. As we arrived at the building, we started looking at the address numbers. Sure enough, the numbers were relatively close to the one that we were looking for. After about another half hour, we finally found the apartment building. As we walk up the steps to the less active house, the door is wide open. There is the person we are looking for...washing dishes. She was super surprised to see us because she is normally not there at that time. So we stopped by and shared a little message with her and then invited her and her son to come back. MIRACLE!!!

Another really good thing that happened this week is zone conference. It is always a great thing when President and Sister Morrise give a training to the missionaries. We learned a lot about following and recognizing the spirit. Sis. Gooch and I really want to apply what we learned to our proselyting activities this week. One of the things that I really loved from this conference is the emphasis on studying PMG everyday. It is something that I try to do everyday, but lately have been slacking. Well...there are so many more gems than I thought there were. Seriously, you could highlight the whole PMG because of all the useful words of advice. 

Sis. Gooch and I love serving together. We cannot believe that our transfer together is at the halfway mark. Oh well, that means we have to work even harder because our time is almost up! Also the trees here are beautiful!!!

-Sis. Chao

P.S. I am becoming a badminton star. Look out MOTHER!!! ㅎㅎㅎ