"I AM SMILE TO BE WHO I AM."--June 15, 2015

Good afternoon to all~<3

We've had a blast this week. I'll talk a little bit about the logistics of how things worked. President mentioned in a talk a while back that when he was a missionary they had had a 100-hour week of proselyting, and that idea stuck with me until our focus this month on discipleship in our mission. As we talked with President, he didn't want us to give out any commitments about this, but said that we could do to same thing, and if others wanted to do so, they could this week as well. We got up every day at 5:30, and were out by 6:30, skipping studies, and meals, and email, and everything. We were back by 9:30 at night, but if we had a lesson, we could be out until 10. It was a blast, and the mission just exploded. We had more new investigators, lessons, and other numbers in our mission than I ever thought were possible, and as a mission had twice our average number of contacts. Elder Perry and I were on exchanges twice this week, and it was fun to get around and see everyone working so hard. In our companionship we talked with 1350 people, had almost twice as many lessons as we've ever had, and just saw incredible, incredible miracles every day. As we've talked with people as the week has come to a close, a lot of companionships are saying that now every other week will be pale in comparison, because we won't have as much time to be out there where we're most comfortable, on the streets, sharing what means the most to us. For meals we went into convenience stores and found people who were eating and sat with them, or just asked people if they would eat with us. We had people buy us slushies, soda, and meals, as well as people try to pretend we're not there, try to get us sick, several people pretend to not speak any Korean or English because they could only speak Chinese (got 'em), had some older men reject the message but then soften their hearts as we shared Alma 7 and had their story of their family members dying come out ("나에게 딱 맞는 거예요") {"It's perfect for me"}, had a scooter bike coming at us at full speed stop us to shake our hand and talk, and just have stories for days. We met some of the most interesting people I ever have, and just experienced it all.

This week was difficult. Not in ways that I thought it would be. The days went quickly, and we were not over exhausted physically. In fact, I have never felt less hungry, less tired, and more driven, for which I am grateful, but psychologically and emotionally I met a lot of people this week that just seemed to hone in on my weak points and pound. I'm grateful for that. I feel that for maybe the first time on my mission I really felt Godly sorrow for others' choices, and particularly sadness for the misunderstanding and misinformation that leads people away from us before they will open their heart. I want, like Alma, to "go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth..."

But "I know that good and evil have come before all men; he that knoweth not good from evil is blameless; but he that knoweth good and evil, to him it is given according to his desires, whether he desireth good or evil, life or death, joy or remorse of conscience.

Now, seeing that I know these things, why should I desire more than to perform the work to which I have been called?

Why should I desire that I were an angel, that I could speak unto all the ends of the earth?

For behold, the Lord doth grant unto all nations, of their own nation and tongue, to teach his word, yea, in wisdom, all that he seeth fit that they should have; therefore we see that the Lord doth counsel in wisdom, according to that which is just and true."

We know that we do not have all of the skills or knowledge that we need, but we do have the desire to improve and serve with everything that we have. I have realized this week that there is just too much to do in missionary work, and in life, and sometimes, we're just not going to have enough Korean, or eloquence, or whatever, and we come up short. Sometimes people walk away because of that, or won't meet us again, but I have felt that when we truly do everything we can, in humility and obedience trying to do the will of the Lord, we don't have to be perfect, we just need to bear our testimony and give people as much of a choice as they let us give. Perfectionism is a battle with which I have struggled with my whole life, but I feel like I am starting to be able to better prioritize and put my strength where it needs to be. Ether 12 gave me great strength this week as it seemed to answer exactly my questions about imperfect faith, weaknesses, and the importance of doing your best even when others don't accept those efforts.

I'm grateful this week for the opportunity to try to act a little bit more like Jesus with everybody that we met. I've never faced as much rejection and negativity, but it doesn't seem like anything when we look at the huge, huge miracles that we saw in abundance every day, from referrals to people coming and chasing us down after brushing by us before, to chains of people prepared and not that lead us when we talk with everyone to the one who needs us. We met people from dozens of countries and who spoke many languages. There were a couple times that we had serious language barriers It was an incredible week, and one that I will always remember. I'm not sure why, but this week really changed who I am as a missionary, and I think that I will always be a better missionary more able to work hard and testify for the rest of my mission experience. After a long lesson on the street outside the church yesterday, I just looked down the street at Sindang dong, with lots of people, lots of cars, lots of lights, and realized that there we were, just sharing the most important message in the world.

I had two main prayers this week; to always have the strength to open my mouth, and to know what to say when I did, and those prayers were answered as I felt more strength than my own with us this week. I was grateful that we were still able to maintain about a 4.5:1 contact to phone number ratio, and a 20ish:1 contact to return appointment ratio, so I hope that we and the whole mission will have lots of people to meet with in the upcoming weeks and that we will be able to continue to see miracles from this time. We tried lots of different things this week, and some worked, and some didn't, from a different kind of subway proselyting to setting up a table outside a nearby high school. We just had a blast, and only spent about 3 hours in the office all week, which was awe-some. This week is what missionary work should be, what I imagined it would be. This upcoming week will be busy in a different way as we catch up with what needs to be done, plan transfers, and have four conferences, but it will be difficult and rewarding in its own way, I hope. As I sit here writing missionaries are sending in pictures for making a slide show/movie this week, and one elder has sent in about 40 pictures, but one sister has him beat with 30 emails coming to almost 200 pictures ㅎ ㅎ  We're not including them all.

Some selected quotes:

"That's your last name, really? I'm sorry, man."

"Don't try to convert me, I'm been Calvinist for 6 generations."

"Surfing seriously harms you and others around you."

"His phone ring in class, teacher say [hand motion], he back phone one month later."

"How long does it take to get to Guro?" "Uh, 33 years."

"I'm in conversation with friend, so I will finish conversation with you."

And, from a t-shirt, and my closing thought for this week,

"I AM SMILE TO BE WHO I AM."

All of my love, and always grateful for you,

Elder South

Thank you much to the Wengels for lots of love and a wonderful card from Grandma South, which means a lot. That is very thoughtful. Also a big thanks to the Catmulls and my family for a wonderful package which got here later in the week and was a great boost to us- I haven't even thought of macadamia nuts in two years

Off to work--June 8, 2015

Dearest all,

I love you and hope that all goes well. We are doing a 100-hour week of missionary work this week, which means, among other things, no time for email! So just checking in, and I'll let you know how it goes next week. We're already having a blast.

All love~

Elder South

"You can see God."--June 1, 2015

Good day to family and beloved friends. We've had a great week- the weeks seem so short, but as we look back each week we see so many instances of the Lord's hand in the work. We are trying to do everything we can to give the Lord our all, and to continue to rely on ourselves less and Him more even though we have been serving now for a while. We do a lot of recitations, but they don't do any good unless we can take them and put them in our heart, and let them change who we are. We're trying to focus on letting everything get into us, on letting a mission change who we are. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve here and with Elder Perry. Investigators are progressing well and the work is moving forward.  Where did May go? It's June, and it happened quick. It's a pretty busy time, that's for sure, with lots of meetings and trainings, but a very rewarding time to be here as a missionary and to be working with President and Sister Christensen especially.

I don't remember if I explained last week already, but someone called my number and said that she wanted to learn English, so without another thought I just referred her number to the sisters and didn't think about it again until last Sunday, when she and her son came to church. We have been meeting the son regularly, and he is progressing very well. We had dinner at a member's house with him this past Monday, shabu shabu {Wikipedia says: a Japanese dish featuring thinly sliced beef boiled in water. The term is anonomatopœia, derived from the sound emitted when the ingredients are stirred in the cooking pot"} and met him several times this week. We drove up to Dobong with him, his little brother, and his mom on Saturday to attend a baptismal service, and it was a great experience for everyone. He had a fun time, is interested in baptism, and his mom made very good friends in a very short time with the sister missionaries up there, so we're excited to continue meeting with them. As we finished meeting with him one night, the moon was out and the clouds were swirling over Seoul, and he looked over the city and said, "You can see God."

Last week was Buddha's birthday, which is a huge holiday here, and we happen to live a couple kilometers away from the biggest Buddhist temple in Korea, so we went and had a fine time seeing the sights and admiring the lanterns and the sights. We met a very nice woman who lived previously in Salt Lake and she explained much of the tradition behind the day and the associated customs.

We met a Brother Nam on the street about three months back at city hall in our area, and set an appointment, but couldn't go because something came up. His phone number was wrong, or something, and so we have been out of contact, but as I was on exchanges this week we ran into him again and had a sit down lesson with him over mango smoothies. He only comes to our area about once a month, and lives an hour and a half away in Incheon, so it was really nothing short of a miracle to establish contact again and get him meeting missionaries. That same night we met another large Chinese tourist group, and we just started talking with two of the members on the outskirts of the group, but everyone as they were waiting to catch their bus started to trickle over until we were preaching to the crowd again. If only it was this much fun for Koreans that we spoke their language (kind of).

Brother Sin we met again this week, and he is just so prepared for the Gospel. He says that he understands the doctrine and his head feels much clearer everytime he reads the Book of Mormon. He's ready to be baptized, but we're referring him up to Sanggye since he lives up there, and the wonderful ward will welcome him with open arms.

As the weather warms there are a whole lot of foreigners in our area, since our areas includes all the biggest tourist sites. in any given week we talk with people from France, Vietnam, Germany, Russia, Punjabi, UAE, America, the Netherlands, Cambodia, and usually many more, so we just need to throw any fear we would ever have about talking with someone out the window and go for it.

One of our former investigators we met this week, and he referred two more people who we have started meeting in a traditional Korean house turned gallery. One of these new friends is a tea connoisseur, and because he has some experience with our church, he knew our restrictions concerning tea. He prepared for us a special 20-year old flower root tea blend in traditional clay pots over zelkova wood in a very fun quaint little gallery. As you might imagine for such a blend, the tea tasted somewhere between dirt and tree bark, but we were grateful for the experience.

I have been studying expressions to stress emphasis and degree this week, and I had a dream this week that I was studying the grammar book I usually use, and one of the grammar forms was a form that attached to the verb stem and expressed the meaning that you would be willing to give blood in order to accomplish this verb. It sounds kind of weird, but the huge variety of Korean expressions and idiomatic forms made it very believable, and it was weird to wake up to. 이상하기가 이를 데가 없었네 ㅋㅋ

This week I bought an avocado in a convenience store for $2.50, and it was worth every penny.

We stopped in this week at a huge press center to try to talk with them about getting an editorial in the paper about my time in Seoul, and it was quite a different experience as we entered the world of the white collar. We made some allies at the reception desk, but were dismissed without a second thought by the editor on the 11th floor who told his secretary to show us out without a word. If that's not how it went, I would think that something was wrong in the world of press, so we kept trying, and made a break in on the third floor. We're in email contact, and hopefully we can get something in. It will take a miracle, but God is a God of miracles.

We had a combined mission conference with Seoul South this week just south of the river, and President Maynes addressed us. There was some mixup between the missions as to what time it started, so there was some confusion, and we ended up having to make some quick last minute set ups in a building that we had never worked in before without the other assistants, but all's well that end's well, I guess. President Maynes talked about goals. He shared how when he was younger it was his goal to make 50 free throws in a row before his mother called him in for the night. He made it to the 40s a couple of times, and the 30s more, and the 20s a lot, but never 50. In spite of that, he was a much better player than he would have been otherwise. We're also here to do big things, and that starts with desires, goals, and plans built against those goals.

My favorite song from this past week is "I'm Trying to be Like Jesus."

I'm trying to be like Jesus;
I'm following in his ways.
I'm trying to love as he did, in all that I do and say.
At times I am tempted to make a wrong choice,
But I try to listen as the still small voice whispers,

"Love one another as Jesus loves you.
Try to show kindness in all that you do.
Be gentle and loving in deed and in thought,
For these are the things Jesus taught."


I'm trying to love my neighbor;
I'm learning to serve my friends.
I watch for the day of gladness when Jesus will come again.
I try to remember the lessons he taught.
Then the Holy Spirit enters into my thoughts, saying:

"Love one another as Jesus loves you.
Try to show kindness in all that you do.
Be gentle and loving in deed and in thought,
For these are the things Jesus taught."


"And it came to pass that in this year there was one Samuel, a Lamanite, came into the land... and began to preach unto the people. And it came to pass that he did preach, many days, repentance unto the people... and he said unto them: Behold, I, Samuel... do speak the words of the Lord which he doth put into my heart."

All my love until later. Congratulations, dearest grandmother, on retirement. Maybe condolences are more appropriate, I don't know, I sure know that you have touched the lives of a lot of people for the better.

Best,

Elder South

Should Americans be eating more lotus roots?--May 24, 2015

{Note: Sam is still working on the mission office and now is a time of big transition: his only mission president to date, President Christensen, will be leaving June 30 and the new president, President Sonksen, will be starting July 1. Sam is the consistent factor during the transition, and that is some of what he is talking about.} 

Good afternoon to family and friends- I hope that all goes well. Congratulations on finishing up the school year, and best wishes for an enjoyable and productive summer. We've been having a great time and are just so grateful to be serving here. It's a crazy crazy transfer, as you can imagine, trying to set up conferences and interviews and transfers and everything so that President and Sister Sonksen will have a smooth transition and so that President Christensen can do all that he needs to before he goes home. A favorite joke in the office right now if we can't figure something out is "Just let Elder South deal with it when we leave." Funny for everyone else.

Today is a huge holiday in Korea, the day when Buddha came, so everyone has work off. We're going to try to visit a temple downtown, and on account of our meeting this morning and a lesson this evening we are short on time so I will be more brief today.

We went on exchanges to Dongdaemun this week where we split up with different missionaries. It's always a little bit weird to go work where I was when I first came to Korea, to see that everything is the same but how different I am. It was a great exchange- exchanges are always just jam packed with miracles, and we had some really cool experiences. A guy on the street invited us to eat with him and we taught a lesson, and we taught a lesson with a local member who taught the first lesson probably better than I've ever heard it- I learned a lot! Some older people we met didn't want to talk at first but I learned a new trick- talking about how it doesn't make sense that we don't eat lotus root and garlic stalks in America really makes people over 75 years old open up to you. We exchanged back to our normal companionships and had a great dinner and lesson with Brother Yun and his son from Sanggye. We visited a former investigator and had a good lesson as we ate tomatoes with honey. I proselyted to a student on the bus, and as I started talking his face was strangely similar to a startled rabbit who looks up and sees a diving peregrine falcon 10 feet away. We were yelled at and hugged. A guy gave me a rose. I have once again discovered the wonder of corn silk tea- ohk soosoosoo yum tea. Apparently if someone deflects a comment that they are good at something, you can tell them to "get off the mountain." Wonder and discoveries every day, both in and out.

A sister called me last week, and she and her son came to church yesterday. He is very interested, and we are meeting him again tonight. We had 12 week follow up training for new missionaries and for this group talked a lot about adjusting to a loving life here, making it our home. We ran into some big Chinese groups, and had the opportunity to just sit there and preach like in the days of old to the groups for a few minutes out on the street, which may have been an odd sight for passing Koreans on the way home. Both groups had great questions, but both ended up out of hand in massive selfie photo shoots. Elder Perry still hasn't recovered from the girls grabbing him, it seems. We met a Russian guy that had an excellent command of the English word "no."

We had the opportunity this week to go to Kangneung on exchanges.  I love Seoul, but it was refreshing and a treat to visit another part of Korea's beauty. We saw rice paddies with white cranes stalking, old farmers working all day, lots of fun and lots of miracles. It was a quintessential far Eastern experience as we walked through a path surrounded by rice paddies with white egrets and 4 different kinds of cranes stalking, with old farmers bent over working all day. We stopped an older man with more miles on him than the scooter he was riding, if that's possible, and it was a treat to see him puttering away through the paddies with a Book of Mormon strapped to his bike.  We got a chance to go to the seashore to proselyte, and ate dinner there as well. The water was so clear and it was just beautiful and natural. We saw lots of drying squid, and there were fishermen catching fish using a casting net called a tumang. It was really cool to talk with them, and to see them catch fish in that way- it of course drew our minds immediately to those missionaries so long ago called on the shores of another sea. We didn't have a camera, but we asked a few people to take a picture of us and send it to us, which one kind soul did- see below with Elder Ney, with whom I came to Korea.

Elders South and Ney by the Sea

Every day is an adventure. We meet so many types of people, and see so much good in people. The light of Christ shines in so many of the people of Korea whatever their religious beliefs or situations are. I finished Alma this past week again, and was thinking about just how incredible of a leader and a disciple Moroni is. My goal this week has just been to be like him in his adamant faithfulness and firm resolve to put God first.

Below is a poem I jotted down on the way back from Taebaek a few weeks ago but never shared. I don't know, but it may not be quite the same in Google Translate.

{editor's note: it's definitely not the same in Google Translate it seems. But here's the best I can do.

Besides bustle of the city far miracle

Some villages hidden deep in the heart of the mountains chyeojyeo spread.

The flag of rags flapping away yo, rural miso aging yiyo,

The birds were declared a sublime calm.

Hayo clean air, clear water Look at these,

God is the fortress of pure creation.

Egret governs the rolling distance brooklet.

Like stars in the dark night only

The hillsides covered conifers and forsythia and cherry trees 

which bloom beautifully and only alone.

The heart open and the sky as changchanghan

Arirang is a sign that seemed to hang over the valley humming.

The vines in the mist beside us in jinaganeunde under mysterious cauldron

SpongeBob SquarePants just as a passing thought to the next mangswae spirit.

The purity in the creation of life hadeora flexible dissipation.

Tongue in order that you can maintain back while entangled our lives

You are missing the nature of the US?

We are who we are in search for what has itna?

They knew the deceased 身 土 不二

人, 山, 心, 日光

It was not the two of two

Do all things, all things in His'll

Gangwon