A Crazy Random Happenstance

*When I say "Deep Throat," I'm making an All the President's Men reference. Her voice wasn't deep. Now you know.

This week began with a referral from the 번부, or the mission office. We just call it The Boo. Anyway, referrals from The Boo almost never happen, so we were pretty darn excited about this and immediately called the number we were given. The lady answered, we'll call her Choi 자매님, and we tried to set up an appointment, but she said she was busy all week. So, we promised to call her again over the weekend and that was that.

[Side note: "I'm busy" is the excuse for everything. Busy with school. Busy with farming. Busy with spending hours in a PC 방. Every time someone tells us they can't meet because they're too busy, I want to slap them upside the head with a Book of Mormon and say, "This is eternal life! No one is too busy for eternal life!"]

Fast forward to Saturday. We had tried to contact Choi 자매님 again a couple of times, but she stubbornly persisted in her busy-ness. It wasn't until Saturday afternoon, when 이지우 자매님 and I had stayed in a bit later because she had a cold and we desperately needed to update our Area Books, that she finally called us. She wanted to meet as soon as possible.

I don't think my companion and I have ever moved faster. 

After forty minutes, a hurried taxi ride, and an awful lot of running, we made it to the opposite end of town and knocked on Choi 자매님's door. She answered the door holding a box of chicken wings and graciously invited us  in to eat them with her.  Random, right? It gets weirder.  In addition to the three of us, there sat two other ladies in Choi 자매님's living room. We'll call them Deep Throat and the Lady in Black. After a few minutes of awkwardly silent chewing, during which I was trying to figure out how we had come to be there and how I was supposed to eat chicken wings with chopsticks, the lady sitting closest to me and 이지우 자매님, Deep Throat, leans over to us and whispers conspiratorially, "I've come to give you a referral."

Um, what?

[Second Side note: Has anyone else noticed how much my mission is like Nancy Drew novel with all these strange situations and random plot twists? Just me? Okay.]

After a few seconds of confused blinking, it finally clicked. "Oh, you're a member!"

As it turns out, she was indeed a member from Suwon, and had come to 충주 with her non-member friend (the Lady in Black) in order to visit her niece, Choi 자매님 (also not a member). She told us that her son was also serving a mission and when we asked where, she replied with a sneaky smile, "Here in 충주. He's in your district. Elder Kim. I'm his mom."

How do these crazy things keep happening?!

Anyway, after my companion and I got over our initial shock, we buckled down and taught Choi 자매님 and the Lady in Black the first lesson. It went really well. The Lady in Black was even in tears (though, sadly, she lives in Suwon, so we can't continue to teach her). But, do you know what this means? We have another new investigator! Yes! Thanks Elder Kim's mom!

Little experiences like this, almost all of my experiences here actually, remind me of the scripture in Alma 31:35 that says, "Behold, O Lord, their souls are precious, and many of them are our brethren; therefore, give unto us, O Lord, power and wisdom that we may bring these, our brethren, again unto thee." As I've been on my mission, I've come to realize how truly precious each and every one of us is to God. Going out of our way to leave notes on member's doors, saying "hello" to everyone we pass on the street, walking twenty minutes in the dark and the freezing cold just to talk the non-member son of one of our members for thirty seconds...all of these are things I do almost every day as I desperately try to show these people that they matter. They are oh-so important to us, and each of them is infinitely more precious to their Heavenly Father. God truly does love us completely and individually and as I looked into the eyes of the Lady in Black and testified to her of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, I knew that it didn't matter that I wouldn't have the opportunity to continue teaching her, that I would probably never see her again. For that brief moment, I could see that she had begun to realize God's love for her. She received her first taste of this gospel that is so beautiful and so true and I was so happy to be the one to share it with her. In that moment, I knew that her soul was precious. I felt God's love for her. And I felt God's love for me.

Every day I become more grateful to be a missionary in this country and to have the opportunity to share the beautiful message of God's love.

Love,

Sister Abba.

Miracle of Miracles

Because of daylight savings time, we are now 14 hours behind Sydney.  This is a good thing because we get her letters earlier.  Korea does not observe daylight savings.   I sent Sydney many of the nice comments people send to me on email and the comments on the blog.   Sydney loves to hear anything from her friends and family.  Any mail is a welcome sight to a missionary.  Thanks to all who have been so supportive and loving.  




An Exclamatory Statement. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADDS!!! I hope your birthday was filled with magic and gladness and birthday wonder. I'm glad you liked my package. Love you, sweetie.

An Exciting Announcement. So, every Monday morning at 7:30 our whole mission has a conference call in which we share miracles and listen to any announcements from our mission president. This morning, President Shin made the very exciting announcement that, in December, reporters and photographers and what-have-you from the New York Times are coming to our mission to do an article about the work of sister missionaries here in the Daejeon Mission!. Is that not strange, random, and exciting?! All my companion and I could do was look at each other blankly and say, "Why?"

Who knows. 

But still, it's exciting! Apparently they did a similar story about elder missionaries in Uganda a couple of years ago. All I know is that fancy newspaper people our coming to our under-dog, forgotten mission in the middle of Korea and I'm excited about it. :)

All the Things I Keep Forgetting. I realized this week that I haven't talked a lot about investigators or lessons or any of the other experiences that one normally associates with missionary work. The truth of the matter is, we haven't really had too many. In fact, thus far, I've pretty much told you all there is to tell. My area is just now getting into missionary work, so investigators have been a bit, how should i say this, scarce. Actually, scratch that--non-existent. Non-existent may be a better word. Luckily, I have a terribly clever mission president who has presented our mission with a program that is beginning to counter-act the problem of a lack of teaching appointments. Instead of filling all our extra time with only proselyting, President Shin has set up a program in which missionaries arrange to meet with the members of their ward and teach them one of the six lessons in PMG for twenty minutes. The members are to pretend to be investigators and to ask us lots of questions while we're teaching so that we can 1. practice answering difficult questions, 2. practice teaching the missionary lessons, 3. speak Korean, 4. strengthen the faith of the members, and 5. build stronger relationships with them. It's also a great way to get referrals because, as we teach the members, they really begin to understand what missionaries do and then are far more comfortable referring us to their friends. Brilliant, no? So, even though I haven't had much to report investigator-wise, our ward is really starting to get behind member-missionary work and I feel so blessed to have been able to teach in the homes of every single one of the members of my ward. My love for them has truly grown, as has my desire to work harder and become a better missionary, for I want all the best for this incredible ward.

This week especially, our ward really pulled together in an effort to increase member missionary work. On Saturday, we had a Dessert Party for the youth and almost all of our Young Men and Young Women brought their friends! Our bishop's daughter even brought four! It was wonderful and I truly began to see what an important strength the youth of the Church are. As the Dessert Party finished, my companion and I were able to talk to all of the Young Women and the friends they had brought. Many of them agreed to start coming to our English class and, miracle of miracles, one of them is now our new investigator! In fact, that very night, we met with her and the member who had brought her to the Dessert Party and we taught the Plan of Salvation!

YAYAYAYAYAYAY.

But the good things don't end there! Over the course of these twenty minute visits with our members, Sister Lee and I have been focusing especially on some of our less-active members. We wanted to help one sister in particular, as she a four-year old daughter and six-month old twins, and the only thing that's really stopping her from coming to church is getting her and her children to up and ready by herself. Unfortunately, we didn't have time this week to stop by her house and formally arrange a way for her to get to church, but then, in the middle of sacrament meeting, miracles of miracles, in she hurriedly walked, with one baby strapped to her front, one baby strapped to her back, and her little four-year old trailing behind. As soon as she sat down, the members of my incredible ward each took one of her children to hold and she was able to get up during the meeting and to bear her testimony. And in addition to her, two of our other less actives came to church as well--I've never seen our sacrament meeting so full! 

In D&C 121:9, it says, "Thy friends do stand by thee, and they shall hail thee again with warm hearts and friendly hands." How that perfectly describes my ward here and my dear Cranberry ward back at home. This is truly a Church of families and I feel so blessed to be apart of two incredible ward families, both here in Korea and back in little Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania.

I thank you all for every word of kindness, love, and encouragement you send my way.

I love you all so much.

Love,

Sister Abba.

This is Sydney's costume.  She was Snow White, kind of.  

It's fall in Korea too.  

Giant leaves are exciting, I guess. 

Eating Tentacles & Dancing Gangnam Style

It seems that Sydney is in good spirits this week.  She is becoming more "Korean" every day.  She sure loves it there.  Most the pictures are of her apartment.  I must say, it's a whole lot cleaner than Nicholas'.  There is no purple goo in the corner of the shower.  

I've completed my first transfer! Yes!

In this new transfer, we added three new elders to our ward, so now their are six of us! Hopefully, our new found strength in numbers will help us in finding investigators because we are struggling.

[Our newbies are Elder Arnett, Elder Gliattli, and Elder 이용환. The last two are greenies like me, so I'm not the baby of the group anymore. :(]

Now that I've completed my first transfer, I thought we might take a nice walk down memory lane and discuss...

11 Things About Korea That I Haven't Bothered to Tell You.

Yeah. Sorry about that. It's been a busy six weeks.

Nevertheless, let the list-making begin!

1. The first thing I noticed that was different about Korea? Not the buildings, not the smell, not the people, no, the chalkboards. I can't really explain it, but the chalkboards are different here. It's extremely off-putting.

2. The ward members cannot pronounce my name. I tried to tell them to just call me "Nitas 자매" like they did in the MTC, but they didn't like that too much. So now, I'm 아바 자매, or Sister Abba. Like the Swedish pop band. Like "Dancing Queen."

3. Food trash. Also known as the bane of my existence. I mean, I'm glad this country is environmentally conscientious, but every time my companion and I decide to gather and take out our food trash, it's like an episode of Dirty Jobs. I hate it.

4. Everyone smokes in this country. Honestly. It's like I'm back in the 1960's and smoking is glamorous and no one knows anything about lung cancer.

5. I eat kimchi almost every day. In fact, I've eaten so much that I can now tell the difference between good kimchi and bad kimchi. For instance, a couple of days ago, my companion and I went out to dinner and as I was mindlessly shoveling kimchi into my mouth, I paused and said, "This is not very good kimchi." My companion then took a bite herself, chewed, swallowed, and looked at me with this huge grin on her face and said, "자매님! You're right! This is some of the worst kimchi I've ever had! You know kimchi now. You've become more Korean!"

6. Speaking of food, you would all be very proud of how much seafood I've eaten in the past six weeks. Before, I would have balked at the idea of putting anything that resembled a creepy, crawly, sea creature even close to my mouth, but now I'm a pro at it! Just last night we went to a ward member's house for dinner and had spaghetti (real spaghetti! yay!) I spied a whole array of sea creatures: shrimp, mussels, and something small and vaguely tentacley. But did I hesitate? No! I popped those tentacles into my mouth like they were nothing! I mean, I probably still wouldn't spend money on seafood, but I'm definitely no longer afraid of them swimming happily around in my stomach. :)

7. We sleep on the floor on mattress-like things that also fold up into tiny couches. They're called "yo"s. No one knows why.

8. Someone once told me that I probably wouldn't eat bread too often in Korea. Lies. I have never seen more bakeries and coffee shops in my entire life. There are at least three of each on every street and you can bet that if I have the money and the time, I will stop and buy myself a chocolate chip croissant.

9. The inexplicable obsession this place has with corn. And not corn of the cob, mind you, oh no--canned corn. I've seen it on pizza, I've seen it in salads, I've seen corn-flavored popcorn, and once, most memorably, I saw corn-flavored ice cream. The only response I have to this--whhhhhyyyy???

10. The buses. Granted, I haven't ridden too many city buses in my lifetime and I'm sure Korea isn't the only country that's like this, but my goodness, these bus drivers are crazy. Every day it's like riding the Knight Bus, only faster and more death-defying.

11. 채육 대회. This is something that the stakes in Korea do every year. Essentially, all the wards in the stake gather together for a day and compete against each other in various athletic competitions. It's rather exciting. However, fun fact--even in Korea, I get picked last. I just have one of those faces, I guess.  I did win one competition though! At the very end of the day, the stake president called all the missionaries up and we did a shoe toss! (You know, like, when you loosen your shoe and then try to kick it off and launch it the farthest. Hey, I don't make up the games, I just play them.) Anyway, both the elders and the sisters had to do it and from the sisters, I won! For our prize, Elder Andersen (the elder who won) and I both got enormous boxes of ramen! But before we could claim them, we had one last task to complete: to do the Gangnam Style dance. In front of the whole stake. So awkward. But we did it because missionaries do what their stake presidents tell them to do. Even if it's dancing to Gangnam Style.

I love you all. Korea continues to be as ridiculous and as wonderful as you imagine it to be.

Have a Happy Halloween!

Sister Abba

She says this is a random reminder that she's in Asia

They made sweet potato cakes for a couple in their ward who was celebrating their anniversary

Sydney's district before transfers.  This is a "sticker picture"

She found the Hello Kitty section at the store

Sydney wrote, "In other news, I was supposed to get my new name tag a few weeks ago.  Instead, this happened.  I'm not amused."  I told her to keep it for Nick.

We Caught A Thief!

I'm glad Sydney learned to be forgiving.  As her mom, I'm still ticked at this punk, who got away with all the candy I sent her.  I expected this from Mexico but not Korea.  I'll have to seal her Christmas package really tightly.  I hope he's too terrified to ever do anything like this again.  

That's right, dear readers, I came to Korea to be a missionary and somehow I've also taken on the role of amateur detective. Just call me Nancy Drew. But, before we get to the exciting story of my sleuthing, let's rewind and talk about English Village!  I'm going to do my best to explain, but if any of you still haven't the foggiest idea what English Village is by the end of this post, just Google it. The internet, in all it's wisdom, will explain what I cannot.

English Village is essentially an extremely complex and randomly themed English class. For normal English Villages the point is to practice English, but when it's organized by a zone of missionaries, the purpose is twofold. In addition to speaking practice, English Village is a great way to introduce people to the Church and to give them a subtle tour of the building. Are you with me thus far? Probably not, but I'm just going to press onward anyway. Maybe it would help if I took you through, room by room. Here we go...

Welcome to English Village!

You enter at the Post Office, where you are given a passport and one hundred American dollars (not legal tender) to spend throughout your journey. From there, you head straight to the airport where you choose to fly to one of four exotic destinations: Los Angeles, New York, Orlando, or Salt Lake City! After the airport, you board your plane, where the glamorous air-hostess explains, in the slowest English she can manage, the various room of English Village. In case you couldn't guess, the glamorous air-hostess was me. Even Koreans complain that I talk too fast. Once your flight has landed, you're hungry, of course, and so you stop at the nearest restaurant and order some...pancakes!

Side note: If only I had the time to explain the stress these pancakes caused. To all future attempters of English Village, pancakes is not the way to go.

At the restaurant, you learn about table etiquette and how to pay a proper tip--a lesson even Americans could probably do with learning. Unfortunately, the restaurant makes you a little sick, so you then must visit the doctor's office for a check-up. In the waiting room, you can check your height, weight, and eyesight or simply peruse the wide selection of Church magazines (this is where I would be wiggling my eyebrows suggestively). Once the doctor has made sure you're sufficiently healthy, you head straight to the clothing store and then to the movie theater to browse a collection of missionary P-day clothes and watch a few Mormon Messages (my eyebrows are wiggling again). Finally, to end your English Village trip, you stop by the chapel and learn to sing a hymn. Fun, right?

All in all, our English Village went really well. The members loved it and a bunch of investigators, less actives, and even random people off the street came too! Since our mission president wants every zone to start doing this once every two transfers, hopefully by next time more members will feel comfortable bringing their friends and family members to come, have fun, practice English, and meet the missionaries!

Now, for my thrilling detective story. This is going to be like an episode of Monk, so get excited.

Since English Village took place in 정주, the biggest city in our zone, my companion and I were away from our apartment for almost two full days. When we finally returned to 중주 late Saturday night, we saw that there was a small package stuffed into our mailbox--a package for me from my family! As I pulled it out of the mailbox, I noticed the top was slightly ripped open, but since I was far too excited to care, I thought nothing of it and ran immediately upstairs with my companion so we could look through my spoils. However, it soon became abundantly clear that something was missing--my iPod. And if this wasn't enough, my Kit-Kats too. I knew my mom would never put just one measly fun-sized bar of my favorite candy into a package she was sending to the other side of the world. So yeah, I was angry. I can get over a stolen iPod, but once you touch my Kit-Kats, you've crossed a line.

Since neither my companion no I were ready to give up on my stolen stuff, with the permission of our mission president, we went to the apartment office the next day and watched the security camera tapes. Check that off the list of things I never thought I'd do on my mission. I felt like my companion and I were Monk and Natalie as we watched the tapes intently, waiting for the moment when one of us could point at the TV screen and declare, "He's the guy!" Oh, and believe me, that moment came. Red jumpsuit, reflective tennis shoes, dark hair. Just a fourteen-year old kid. At first, I was incredibly excited because I felt like a detective, but then, as I continued to watch this random teenage boy go through the package that my mom had lovingly put together for me, I felt violated, upset, and just, angry. Since it was Sunday [yesterday] and we had an appointment at a member's house that night, my companion and I couldn't go immediately to the police station, so we left for our member's house, resolving to go to the police station first thing Monday morning. My companion had assigned me beforehand to give the spiritual thought at the end of our visit with our members, but as we ate dinner, I couldn't get it out of my head just how angry I was. And as I thought about my anger, I realized the message I needed to share--forgiveness. As the saying goes, "Practice what you preach." I knew that I needed to forgive this kid who has stolen from me and so, with the translation help of my wonderful companion, I shared my story with our members and then spoke of the importance of forgiveness. As I spoke, I felt my anger ebb away and I knew that my Heavenly Father was pleased with my new found desire to forgive.

But the story doesn't end there. As our member dropped us off at our apartment, and I turned to walk into our apartment building, I saw him. Red jumpsuit. Reflective shoes. Dark hair. The thief. As soon as he saw that I was a foreigner, he tried to hurry away, but luckily my companion is both bold and fluent in Korean, so she simply went up to him and asked, "Did you steal her iPod?" 

He denied it. 

She said, "We watched the security tape. You stole it Friday at 9:15. Where is it?"

"Upstairs."

So after a few minutes and one rather awkward ride together in the elevator, I had my iPod back. And you know what? As I took it back from the now-slightly-terrified kid who had stolen from me, I looked him in the eye, smiled brightly, and said with all the gratitude I could muster, "Thank you very much." He bowed low. I bowed back. All was well.

Four lessons are to be learned from this:

1. If you're going to steal, never wear the same bright red jumpsuit you wore on the day you committed your crime. Honestly.

2. Don't assume that because you steal from a foreigner, that that foreigner's companion is not fluent in Korean and a freaking boss at catching thieves.

3. God really does work in mysterious ways. As we watched the security tapes Sunday afternoon, we had a great conversation about religion with the man who worked at our apartment office. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he accepted it.

4. Always forgive.

In last year's April General Conference, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said, "We must recognize that we are all imperfect--that we are beggars before God. Haven't we all, at one time or another, meekly approached the mercy seat and pleaded for grace? Haven't we wished with all the energy of our souls for mercy--to be forgiven for the mistakes we have made and the sins we have committed? Because we all depend on the mercy of God, how can we deny to others any measure of the grace we so desperately desire for ourselves? Should we not forgive as we wish to be forgiven?"

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

I encourage you all this week to remember the ultimate example of forgiveness, even Jesus Christ.

Always choose to forgive.

I love you always.

Sister Arvanitas

Sydney's new coat to keep her warm

The airplane at English Village

Airplane window

Another airplane window

Airplane gate

Restaurant to eat pancakes

Who did the impromptu flower-arranging? me. I think I've found my spiritual gift...

Doctor's office

Doctor's waiting room

Clothing store for English Village

"He's the guy!"

just call me Detective Inspector Arvanitas.

In which.....

In which intestines are consumed.

On Tuesday, we added an extra friend to our companionship! Don't freak out, though, it wasn't a permanent thing. One of the young women in our ward, 김선영,(Sun-Young) is preparing to put in her mission papers soon and so we wanted to take her with us for an entire day so that she could see A Day in the Life of the Sister Missionaries! I think she really liked it and hopefully the whole experience made her more excited to serve a mission. To her good fortune, the day she was with us, another member in our ward decided to take us out to dinner. This doesn't normally happen, so it was an exciting time for everyone. Dinner was yummy and I was happy to be sitting in a warm restaurant with the soothing sounds of other people speaking a language I don't yet understand. However, after dinner, as we were waiting for the bus to take us to another appointment, 김선영 (Sun-Young) started typing something into her phone's translator. She then handed it to me and said, "This is what you just ate for dinner!"

곱창 - (n) The small intestine of cattle.

Oh, boy.

But actually, it was fine. I didn't know what it was while I was eating it and it tasted yummy to me, so all was well. Also, I hold firmly to Life Fact #54--"The tastiest food is always the food that is free."

In which old friends are reunited.

On Wednesday, my companion and I traveled to Daejeon for the Trainer & Trainee (TNT) Meeting. The TNT Meeting is when all the new missionaries and their respective trainers meet for the day and talk about how things have been as brand-new missionaries in the field. But do you know what else this means? I got to see all my old MTC friends again! Most importantly, I got to see my lovely, lovely Sister Pappa again.

My emotions were pretty much like,

YAYAYAYAYAY.

But honestly, I did not quite realize how much I would miss her till we were separated for an entire month. I'm glad to report that my dear Pappa is doing very well in 광주 with her new companion and I could not be happier for her. But still, I wish we could see each other more often.

Other than this bright spot of joy, the rest of the TNT Meeting was pretty...meh. Or as the Koreans will shrug their shoulders and say--그냥.(Just that)

In which a lesson goes from "okay" to "almost comically horrible".

Thursday, we met with Hannah again. We had planned to go over the Restoration with her and her kids and we even had a member and her young son there to help us, but our planned "first thirty minutes of English" turned into more like "first forty-five minutes of English." My companion handled things wonderfully though and simply asked Hannah if we could just watch the Restoration video with her, talk about it a little, and then end the lesson there. She agreed.

This is where things started to go awry. Firstly, her two kids clearly did not want to be there and looked tired and bored. Then, Hannah kept getting up and leaving to answer phone calls from work. Finally, as the video was just getting to the good part of the First Vision, the TV went crazy. I don't know, something happened with the color and everything turned all red and orange and then, just as the music was building, the volume all of a sudden went way too loud and everyone nearly jumped out of their seats.

Anyway, I was having the hardest time trying not to burst out laughing and I was just glad when our train wreck of a lesson finally came to a close.

Don't worry though. We're teaching her the Restoration again next week.

In which General Conference was the best thing ever.

Earl Count: 12!

Thanks Earl for being in the choir and representing the rest of the family for me. It's always nice to see a familiar face. (Sydney's Uncle Earl had quite a bit of TV coverage this conference)

I don't think I've ever watched General Conference as intently as I did this time. It was like when ABC Family has their Harry Potter Weekends, only better.

Though it's hard to write about just one, I really loved Elder Scott's talk this conference. I loved how he talked about God seeing our weaknesses differently than rebellion. On my mission thus far, I have realized that I have a ton of weaknesses. More than I'd like to think about. But like Elder Scott said, "When the Lord speaks of weaknesses, it is always with mercy."

I know that through God, our weaknesses can become strong. I'm still working on my weaknesses, but I am ever grateful for a loving and merciful God who understands that I'm doing my very best.

I love you all very much.

Sister Sydney

Sister Pappa and Sister Arvanitas, reunited

This picture was sent to an unused email account.  This is Sydney's Mission President and wife with all the missionaries who arrived with her and their trainers.  

Sydney and Sister Lee

구도자는 고구마 같습니다.

Note: I've decided to start writing vocab and city names in Korean. If you want to know how to pronounce them, just copy and paste them into GoogleTranslate and it will tell both the definition and the pronunciation. Isn't it just the best? :)   (You all can do that to figure out the title of this letter.  It's like a little game.  Steve and I can't have all the fun.)

This week comes to you in three parts.

Greenie Splits with Sister Jacklin!

Sister Jacklin and I were in the MTC together and now we're in the same zone. She serves in 정주, a city about an hour train ride away from us. There are only six sisters in my zone and all of them, except for Sister Jacklin and me, are Korean, so it's always a good time when we get to go on splits because, since it's such a strange sight to see two American girls wandering around Korea, lots of people stop and talk to us. Back in the MTC, she seemed so old, as I was just coming in and she was already preparing to leave. But out here in the mission field, we're both new and clueless, so we spent an exciting day together trying to find our way and understand Korean. 

Since our split was in 정주, we began the day by visiting one of the members in Sister Jacklin's ward. This member was so nice to us. We were just there to teach her a short, twenty minute lesson, but she kept bringing us out juice to drink and food to eat and pictures of her family to look at and even though we could speak almost zero Korean, she was so patient and sweet to us and would say what words she could in English so that we wouldn't be completely lost. After we shared our little spiritual thought, she ushered us into her car so that she could take us out to lunch (don't worry, going to lunch with her was always part of plan). I wish I could tell you what we ate, but I honestly have no idea. I would call it "Yak Bone Soup." As we were finishing our soup, I suddenly realized what Sister Jacklin and I had achieved. We had successfully taught a lesson and made conversion during lunch...in Korean! I mean, it was broken Korean with a lot of random English thrown in, but still Korean. We had done it. And we're only greenies! (a greenie is a brand new missionary)

After lunch, the member we were with once again hurried us into her car and began driving us to a mystery location. As she drove, she kept saying "시장! 시장!" and I could only hope that 시장 wasn't Korean for "another restaurant where I'm going to stuff you full of more rice and soup" because I had just eaten a huge bowl of Yak Bone Soup and I did not feel confident in my stomach's ability to hold any more. But luckily, 시장 is the word for "open market," so I was saved from the possibility of puking. However, this lovely member's purpose in stopping at the market was to buy us grapes to take home and eat later. At least, Sister Jacklin and I hoped we were supposed to take. The whole time, we only vaguely understood of what was happening, but we were at least 60% sure that we were supposed to take the grapes.

A Wonderful Lesson with Our Investigator

I think I might have mentioned this in my last letter, but we have investigators! We meet her and her two kids twice a week to teach them 30 minutes of English and 30 minutes of the gospel. I'll just call her Hannah, since that's the English name she's chosen. Anyway, we had intended to teach them the Restoration this week, but since we were running out of time, we switched last minute to the Plan of Salvation. During our lesson, we watched one of the videos from this year's Youth Conference "Stand Ye in Holy Places" DVD--the one on the Plan of Salvation. Oh goodness, what an emotional wreck I was after that video. You should all watch it. But my emotions aside, I think Hannah was really able to feel the Spirit because, believe me, it was there and it was powerful. And that's not all! To end our lesson, Hannah said the prayer--she prayed! For the very first time! In her prayer, she asked God to help her think seriously about our message this weekend and I truly hope she does because even after meeting her only a few times, I want absolutely everything for her and her family. Till now, I never understood what it felt like to have God's love work through me in order to reach another person, but I think I get it now. I think it feels like this.

Farming for Sweet Potatoes

It's harvesting season in Korea and that means lots and lots of 고구마!(sweet potato) For those of you who don't know, sweet potato farming is done in five parts. 

1. Cut and move aside the stems. This is done with a sickle and it is awesome. Words cannot describe how excited I was when the bishop handed me an old timey sickle and was just like, "Get to work."

2. Unearth the potatoes with a shovel. The bishop and the member who owned the farm handled this. It looked absolutely exhausting.

3. Brush off the dirt and set the potatoes in a row. 

4. Gather them all together!

5. Sort the good potatoes from the bad and box them up to be sold.

All in all, I thought the whole process was wonderful. Definitely difficult, but still fun. And since manual labor like this doesn't take too much thought, I had a lot of time to just work and think. And as I thought, I realized: investigators are like sweet potatoes. These sweet potatoes were so precious to their farmer. He had spent all year planting them and caring for them and worrying about them and now they were finished and ready to harvest. And so it is with people--when they hear the gospel for the first time, a seed is planted. Gradually, as this seed grows, the person becomes more susceptible to the truth of the gospel, until one day they just know. They're finally ready. It's time to be harvested. In D&C 4:4, it says,

"For behold the field is white already to harvest; and lo, he that thrusteth in his sickle with his might, the same layeth up in store that he perisheth not, but bringesth salvation to his soul."

People are already ready to hear our message. We just need to go out and harvest them. And yes, it's scary and confusing at first. Like my bishop said to me, "Here's a sickle; get to work." I had no idea what I was doing at first, but at time went on, I figured it out. It's the same with missionary work--I'll figure it out. I just need to keep swinging my sickle.

"For behold the field is white already to harvest."

I have been called to the Korea Daejeon Mission and the field is white.

And do you know what the word "Daejeon" means?

Big Field.

I love you all,

아바냐타스 자매

Sydney and her old timey sickle

She didn't label this picture but she probably got to take these home. 

Sydney thrusting in her sickle

Lots of sweet potatoes

Look closely, that would be a giant brown spider.  Sydney is naming these pictures her "Spider Series"

Looking back towards the city from the sweet potato farm

A cemetery across from the sweet potato farm

"This week all I wanted was pizza. warning: Koreans put corn on their pizza. Whhhyyyy???"
This would be Sydney's caption for this picture. 

I love that the pizza shop is called "Pizza School"

                                         This is the video they showed their investigator "Hannah"