but yes, korea.: Week of Miracles

I hope you all had a splendid conference. No I did not watch it, but I hopefully I will soon. Send me all your thoughts from your favorite talks!

This week was the week of miracles! So many good things happened. We saw big miracles, little miracles, less-active miracles, pizza miracles. It was a veritable smorgasbord of miraculous missionary wonder.

The Miracle of Pizza Boy

We were on the train home from Zone Conference, which was in Daejeon (Nick and Daddy, I bought you ties!), and Sister M...... was telling me the plot to She's the Man (we tell each other movie plots a lot. We've already made it through all the movies that one of us or the other of us haven't seen (wow grammar), so now we just tell each other about the movies we've both already seen). Anyway there was this boy on the train and we noticed him move from his seat to the one behind him so that he was sitting across the aisle from us. Then, out of nowhere, he offered us a slice of Costco pizza and a bottle of soda. He spoke to us in English and said, "This is Korean pizza and this (holding up the soda) tastes kind of like Sprite? Would you like to eat it?" Um, heck yes we would.

And then we talked for a while and found out that was going home to Mokpo and that he was really interested in learning English from the missionaries. So we got his number and referred him to the elders there. And it turned out that the Mokpo elders had been fasting for referrals that day. Miracles abounding!

The Miracle of 이승희

This week we had to drop our investigator 이승희. We've been teaching her since I got here, but it's been clear for a while that although she loves us and will listen to the missionary lessons, her interest is almost entirely English. Story of my life. So we set an end date for our lessons with her and this past week we finally reached the end of the road. I'm not gonna lie, it was really sad. I felt like we had failed her, but I also felt like she had failed us too. We bore our final testimonies to her and then asked her to say the closing prayer. I was crying by now, as I usually do (I don't know if it's the mission or just me but I am an incredibly emotional person. What's happening to me?!?!) and as 이승희 bowed her head to say her last prayer with us, she started crying too. But when she prayed, for the first time she really prayed. I felt it and I know she did too. She was having a conversation with God and it was so, so beautiful. After it was over, we hugged each other tight and she said something very touching to me. "한국 엄마, 미국 딸." (Korean mother, American daughter). I don't know if anything will ever happen with her, but I hope she always remembers how much we loved her. I know I will.

The Miracle of 김제니

Our less-active of over twenty years!!!! I know I've talked about her before. She came to church again this week and she bore her testimony. It was the greatest ever. I don't know what it was, but this week all of sudden she started asking us questions about to bear her testimony and what she needed to do and if it were okay that she didn't know that much about the Book of Mormon yet. We assured that she could bear her testimony on whatever gospel-related thing she wished. And she did! She got up there and told the ward how much she loved them and that she was sorry she had been coming out for so long. She said she loves the Church for it's purity and it's focus on families. She truly knows that we are all brothers and sisters, children of God, and she has felt the love of a family she's never really had when she is among members of the Church. Ah! I just love her so much and am so proud of her!

Missionary work is the greatest!

I love you all!

Sister Arvanitas