September 9, 2013 - Hey, Y'all!

September 9, 2013

Hello :)

Thank you for all the advice and everything. It's helpful to get an outside perspective - a lot of times I think about things so much that I just start running in circles and don't have any new ideas and get stuck in a rut - so thanks a ton. It's just aggravating when I was all excited and had all these great things I wanted to try and new ideas and mindsets and I feel like I've gone backward a lot since coming here. Forward in some ways, backward in a lot. It's not so much that I can't think of the words for Korean or anything, just that it takes so much brainpower to always have to think about how I'm saying that I don't feel very natural. Anyway. I guess it's something that'll come with time. 

But it was a good week! Hehe, funny story - so there is a less active member that we've been trying to get in touch with for a while, we leave cards and cookie on her doorstep and everything, but she's never home, we called her "ghost lady".  everyone here is always so busy and doesn't always answer their phones. Anyway, she suddenly called us one night and invited us over the next day, which was exciting! So we go over there and ring the video/doorbell-esque thing, and she doesn't answer...so we call her and ask her if she's home, etc, and apparently, we had the wrong building number. We'd been leaving cookies and stuff for this random person this whole time :) But the meeting was great -she's super nice, has an adorable daughter, wants to come to church but can't, and said we should come back to visit! And I followed the whole conversation! It was awesome :) That's happened twice this week! ^^ As missionaries for the ward, we (us sisters and 4 other elders) are visiting the members of the ward to get to know them better and encourage them to do member missionary work. We visited a sister, her husband who isn't a member, and his mom who lives with them (I tried to talk with her once at church a couple weeks ago, and had no idea what she was saying or what was going on (grandmas here are especially hard to understand, they don't use the same sentence endings (culural/age sort of thing) so I especially have no idea what's going on.) but she really likes me now, even though we haven't had a proper conversation :)). Anyway, it was both kind of cool and kind of awkward with her husband there, she was very open about talking about how she'd like him to learn about the message of the gospel, and asked us to pray for him. I love missionary work :) And I understood most of that conversation too! Woot! :) Gifts of the Spirit are real. It just takes a little patience and diligence to aquire them :)

One of our investigators left for Thailand this last week :( She's the best, and we miss her! We had a good-bye party for her at the ward for Family Home Evening which was super fun (we play the funniest game there - it's probably just funny because everything is funny as a missionary, and the Bishop is hilarious (even in Korean :))) and she brought one of her friends, who also (thank goodness) speaks English really well - she's super cute and has the funniest laugh and giggles at everything :) And she said she'd start coming to our English class on Saturdays! She came this week and we talked to her lots and shared a little about the church, but mostly got to know her more. Ah, I wish you could meet these people! They're the best :) Anyway, I'll send a picture of some of them :)

And we did a whole lot more stuff too. I just don't have time to talk about 90% of it. Too bad. If you have any questions, ask! :D

Love you all!

토마스 자매