A Week of Stories

What a week!! Everyday seemed to have lots of cool experiences and little miracles. I'll relay them in chronological order...

Monday: Monday was P-day. Actually, nothing too terribly exciting happened this day. After P-day had ended, we went to one of our investigator's houses to meet, for the last time. ㅠㅠ (Korean crying face) He was here in Jecheon going to college, but now the school year has ended and he is moving back to the southern part of the peninsula to his home. Kind of funny thing though, since it was our last time meeting, he wanted to get our information in case we ever wanted to meet again (after the mission) so amidst the information I gave him was my full name. Anyway, right before we left, we asked him to pray, and during his prayer, everytime he would mention me, he wouldn't say Elder Fund, but rather "Jakob Fund" haha I don't think he fully understood the whole title thing, especially because the way you address people in Korea, in all circumstances, is a lot different than America. So it was kind of funny, to hear my real name, especially spoken in a Korean accent. It was strange, yet somehow touching. Okay, I'm getting too mushy too quickly. On to the next one.

Tuesday: Tuesday, we went on an exchange with the only other companionship in our district. I stayed back in my area with a missionary named Elder Cowles, who came in to the MTC with the group after me. It was such a good exchange. Since we were in my area, I was the senior, and let me just tell you, this was another gift of tongues day. I could understand people with about 5 times more clarity than normal, and my speaking flowed a lot better as well. Then, because it is my favorite place in the whole world (besides the temple of course) we went to Yeongwol again. I don't think I will ever get over how beautiful that place is. However, this time we decided not to go to the main city, but rather trek an hour in the opposite direction, to a nameless town way out in the boonies. We didn't even know initially if there would be any people living in the direction, but we just decided to keep walking, and walking until we found one. (The gorgeous scenery around us was a bit of a motivator to keep going^^) Anyway. When we finally got there, we decided to go ahead and tract out the whole town. I don't even know if you can even really call it a town because, while there were people living there, most of the buildings were rafting businesses. (remember that there is a huge river that runs right through Yeoungwol) Regardless, we talked to every person in our path, including an old Harmony (that's the Korean word for grandmother, or just any old lady really). We gave away some copies of the Book of Mormon, taught some street lessons, and eventually found out that we had worked the whole town. (Side note, it was raining off an on the whole time) I don't know if anything/what will come from that, but I definitely think some seeds were planted. Elder Cowles kept saying how cool it was that we may very well have been the first missionaries ever to visit that town. I'm not exactly sure if that is true, but if it is, that is a really cool thought :) Oh how I love Yeongwol. I always have the coolest experiences there.

Wednesday, was pretty uneventful. We switched back and then did the normal missionary thing.

Thursday we went to Cheongju again because....

Friday: We had another mission tour and "met" our new mission President. President Shin Yong-In. He was already the MTC branch president for all the missionaries, so we skipped most of the pleasantries and got right down to business (yes, I am singing the song from Mulan in my head right now). Suffice it to say, he has a plan and I can tell that he is going to be a powerful tool in helping to really pump up the work in Daejeon. I'm so excited!! Also, not that this is important, but I experimented and did something to my hair (which is going to be a secret mwahahaha) and everyone kept telling me how handsome I was. (in Korea, people use handsome a lot more freely than in America. Friends call each other handsome, strangers call each other handsome. It has the same feeling, but people are just less reserved to tell you if you are good looking or not...) Anyway, so the good news is, after 20 years, I have finally figured out how to manage my hair. Wahoo!! No more crazy Korean mushroom hair ^^

Saturday: We got a fan! Yes, we have been living without a fan this entire summer so far. If you want to know how I have been sleeping, the answer is... I haven't :) But that's all over now because we got a fan!! It was literally Christmas in July :)

Sunday: Sunday we had no water. In the morning at least. After church we had water, but there was 1 problem. It looked fine coming out of the faucet, but if you got a cup of water, it was a bit unsettling to see that it was actually brown in color. Yeah.... So we couldn't cook at all because even the filtered water from the seek wasn't suitable to drink. But, it's normal now, so no worries :) Also, another side note, I could understand a lot of things at Church, so I'm incredibly grateful that I am actually starting to get somewhat of a grip on this language. I feel like the Korean language is a giant puzzle. At least a 1 million piece puzzle. Yeah... But the good news is, it feels like I finally got all the border pieces put together. Now I just need to work on the inside:)

All in all, it was a good week and believe it or not, this was the condensed version of all my adventures :) Life is so great here, I just wish we could add more investigators to my list of adventures, but we will continue working and accepting the Lord's timing until that happens. Have a good week everyone! The Church is true!

 

Elder Jakob Tyler Fund

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