It's exciting people! Transfers and a new toaster oven!

Jan 28 2019 

Hello!! I wasnt really sure what to do for a subject line for my email(1 Nephi 13:22) , but the scripture explains itself of why I chose it, so you can have a look at it!

What a week though! I feel like so much has happened, but I'm not totally sure what! I'll just try to start from the beginning. 

Last day in 금정 (Geum Jeong) a member just took us our to get some Natuúr ice cream- hey man, it was ice cream, so no complaints! It was great! 

Then I'm now in 신정 (Shin jeong) and it is so awesome! Surprisingly like half the members speak english super well, like I'd be having a conversation in Korean, then they'd just switch into English and I was like "what the?" And it happened multiple times. But the members here work super hard with the missionaries and are super nice. And I gave my introduction talk in the Branch, and the whole mission presidency was there! So that was surprising, but fun! 

Church name of the week: this one really confused me. But found a church that the first words directly translates to "vulgarity" and the second word is "church" so I thought the church was called the "vulgarity church" which is a really odd name, especially for a church. So I took the space out from in between the 2 words and the translation changed to "the catholic church". Haha, so korean is sometimes more confusing to me.

Deep cleaning: so I got to Shin Jeong and was looking around at the apartment like you do when you move somewhere, and I looked in the fridge and just shut immediately it was horrifying haha! I mean just imagine like your nightmare of a fridge, and that's what it was. There was some mystery sauce dripping from somewhere, old kimchi that just looked like it turned into salsa, and some vegetables that were,  I guess so old they literally had some sort of white hair growing on them! Haha, so it was bad, so I just spent a solid 2 hours just cleaning it out, probably threw away the majority of the fridge, and now we can actually use it! So it was a "fun" experience, and I'll probably just go into the fridge cleaning business in the future, who knows!

My new companion is Joe Dong Jin, and hes awesome. Just like your stereotypical funny asian friend everyone wishes they had, so its gonna be really fun these next few weeks here! And the sisters in our area are disappearing (which is like the worst cause sisters make everything easier) but we are taking over their people being taught, so I'm really hoping to get some good things sometime soon!

Much Love for you all!

Elder Hanks

Our District

Fridge Before...

Fridge after! 

Jan 21 2019

안녕하세요!!

It's been a good week over here! And I'm finally leaving my first area ,금정 (GeumJeong)! But no I'm not changing missions, sorry, haha, but just having an exciting subject like that usually gets people to actually open the email, haha. BUT I am getting emergency transferred! SO apparently there was an Elder up in 신정 (Shin Jeong) who got injured and has to go home on Tuesday, so I'll be going up to take his place tomorrow! Which is really weird cause now I will have had 4 companions in just 3 transfers, so just pretty exciting! 

To the bath house

We are close to getting a baptismal date with our friend E...... so that's exciting! We finished almost everything we need to teach him, we are just working on getting him a date, but I won't be here unfortunately for it, but I'm gonna try to come back. We also have another person being taught who has been taught everything and I guess is just waiting a year in the church to try and learn everything he can and feel right about him, but we're gonna try and meet with him tonight and see if he just wants to get baptized this week! So it'll be hard, but you gotta "Be Bold!"

New toaster oven!

Update: We got a new toaster oven! And to prove that I can actually bake, I made some bomb blueberry muffins. And they were super good, and nothing went wrong! But I'm still afraid to try the cornbread batter we still have, haha,

Church of the Week: I like this one cause we were with a person we were teaching, and I asked him what it meant, and he said "The Sheep Door Church". But I didn't see any sheep greeting people at the door, or frankly any sheep at all, so it was a little confusing, but I liked it!

Yes I can cook once in a while

Being in Geum Jeong has been great though! It's been about 4 months here, and the ward has growing so much with missionary work, and we've been able to get multiple people to church and seen many miracles here! So it's been a blast serving the people in this area. 

If you want to read some really good scriptures to help strengthen your testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith Jr., read Doctrine and Covenants 135. It's awesome!

This gospel is so true! You can just feel the truthfulness of it when you think about it! I'm so comforted to know that Heavenly Father has everything in control and all is well in the Kingdom of Heaven!

Love you all,

Elder Hanks

Chicago style pizza! 

Found a fun "Chiness".....restaurant?

I am not destined to bake but I can sew my shirt back together!

Jan 14 2019

Hello everyone! 

It's been another fantastic week! I don't know why, but we've just been blessed a lot recently! 

So first thing: in Korean culture your first birthday is a pretty big event, and they have a fun party. So one ward member invited us over for his son's (and we ran into president Jeong there, haha) and the tradition is that they put a table out with various objects representing careers, like a badge for police officer; stethoscope for doctor, money for businessman, and so forth, so what the baby grabs is like a symbol of what they will be in the future. But the baby was just crying and wouldn't grab anything, so as a joke one member put the Book of Mormon on the table, and he grabbed it! 😂 And he calmed down and stopped crying! Haha, so it was kind of funny, but really a little testimony of the power of the Book of Mormon.

We also had a member meal with some of our people being taught, and one of them brought his friend! Who's name is S..... (I think there's like a tongue roll in there too somewhere) and he's from Egypt! So it says super cool, and might have some potential in the future! 

Church of the week: I'm quite positive this was created by a previous member of our church who probably really liked primary. I found "The Apricot Tree Church"! I was so tempted to see if they had any popcorn inside 😂

Sad news second: I burnt my tongue again somehow, so I'm probably just not gonna be able to taste when I get home. And I was at a members home doing a lesson, and I just stretched my arms and it ripped my shirt down the middle 😂 but it's all good, cause I took 7 grade CTE (Career & Technology Education class - which has a unit on sewing

...)  and learned how to sew. 👍

Last miracle moment: There's an American member from elder Park's old Area who works on the American military base, and she brought us Taco Bell! So even though it is American Mexican food, it was still Mexican food! So that was a blessed day!

Love you all! All your prayers and needed and very appreciated! So thank you! 

Much love, 

Elder Hanks 

Pictures:

Because we had some extra money, got some ice cream :) 

Our taco bell meal! 

The member meal

Korea! 

Jan 6 2019

Happy New Year!! I hope you all had a good time during the first 2 hour church meetings!

It's been a great week over here in Busan! Saw many miracles!

First off, to address the subject, so in Korea they have their own Korean Age. So, it's based off of the New Year, and then you basically just add a year for some reason, it's weird, but like when you're born, you are one, and then you turn 2 at the next new year! So it's kind of weird, but it's fun. So when I went to the MTC I was 18, and then basically when I got to Korea, I turned 19!! So that was cool, and currently I’m now 20! So it was kind of weird to turn two years older in the course of 5 months, but I’m not complaining! It's just gonna feel like 20 will last like 3 years!

Miracle Moments: So we had an appointment to play basketball with some kids (which unfortunately didn't work out) but the week before we accidentally broke the ball pump at the church, so we needed to go buy a new one to play basketball. So we stopped at this place called Daiso (basically a family dollar like place) to buy a pump. And like 15 seconds after we walked in, this lady came up to us, and in English was like "Are you the Mormon Missionaries?" haha, so that was cool. She has a member friend who told her to find us and talk to us! Just a little testimony builder that everything happens for a reason, if we hadn't broken that pump, we wouldn't have found her!

2nd little miracle: We had 4 people come to church yesterday! It was so great! And the members here did great at member missionary work and totally welcomed them so well! So it was awesome!

3rd small miracle: We got over 100 eggs from our members this week. :)

Church of the Week: I found the "Rain Forest Church"... Sometimes I’m just really curious who comes up with these names, cause I literally have no idea how a rain forest relates to a church, and Korea isn't even a rain forest! But I’m sure it's a great church :)

Funny (sad) story of the week: I think I’m just destined not to bake... So a few days ago we decided to make come corn bread for like a little snack, cause why not! So I followed the provided Cornbread Baking Instructions and greased the pan with a little butter, then put the pan in tour toaster oven to heat it up (because that's what I was instructed to do) But just a few minutes later Elder Birrell saw that it was on fire! (the pan) and apparently the fire melted the heat reflector bar in half! So I’ll attach some pictures, but we now don't have a toaster oven, and we still have some corn bread batter... ㅠㅠ it was a sad day, haha. But I guess I’m just not fit for baking. 

So it's been great here in Korea! I think the work is slowly starting to pick up speed, slowly, but it's moving along! We're really hoping to get a baptism before we leave this area, it'll be really hard, but we have hope! So thank you for all your prayers, they are all needed and individually counted and used, so thank you! 

I love you all!

새해 복 많이 받으세요!

Elder Hanks

Pictures:

Korean tradition to watch the New Year's Sunrise, so we got a pic

Elder Park got this little pug mask for a white elephant, haha

Our Funeral for our toaster..

And what happened to it :(

Blurry (sorry) pic of the food we got from our members! they're so awesome!

Dec 30 2018 

Well it's felt like a really long week! But it was still great! To start off I finally played a sport!!! WOOO! We got a bunch of Elders together and played soccer, and some random Korean students were there, so we just played with them too! It was so great!

And it was also Christmas! So that was exciting! We had a zone conference and all the missionaries just did little plays and performance things, so it was pretty fun, we also had some Turkey (from Costco of course) and our companionship got all the leftovers! so we've been eating well this past week! 

A Quick Christmas Miracle: So on Christmas we went back to the church to pick up the leftover food that night, and as we were coming out of the church, there was a kid walking by, and we said hello and talked to him, then he asked us how he could come to this church!! So we were like whoa! It was a Christmas Miracle! :)

Cool Experience: We got to bring back one of the lost sheep back into the fold! So there was an inactive sister who reached out to us to help her translate stuff into English, so we helped, then just continued helping her with English questions. But we went and visited a while back, and just talked and found out she was just having a hard time, she's been inactive for about 5 years, and was about to get a divorce! But we gave her a book of mormon and just said whatever the spirit said to say, and we left! Later we helped her again with some presentation in English, and found out that the day after we met with her, she met with her husband and talked through it, they aren't getting a divorce now, and now she's gonna come back to church and is trying to help us help her son get reactive!! So it was a super awesome experience!

A New Hope: We have been meeting another guy for a while because he had English interests, but we also teach him gospel when we meet as part of our English teaching program, and he actually started to improve, and now he accepted an invitation of baptism! So we are really hoping and praying for him, he said he isn't super sure he is ready to give up coffee and tea, so we're gonna keep trying, if you want to pray for him, all prayers are welcome and needed! His name is O......

Christmas even chicken dinner with Elder Birrell and Elder Park 

Church Name of the Week: We saw this church and I didn't know how to translate it, so I asked Elder Park, and he said he thinks it meant the "Sweet Rain Church". So I don't know how it started, but I'm sure one of them probably happened to watch the Mormon Message "A Shower of Heavenly Blessings" by Elder Uchtdorf

Funny Story: So in a Christmas package, I got some chocolate chip muffin mix! (Shoutout to Grandma and Grandpa Beckman) and we were all very excited about that. So I put them in our little oven, and we went out to do some quick proselyting! Unfortunately they were in there a little too long, cause out came what looked like just some chocolate muffins... but we ate them anyway!

miniature penguin bowling I got for christmas

It was a great week! This gospel is so true! I hope you all had just an awesome christmas and hope you all have a great new year!

Much Love,

Elder Hanks

Christmas phone call via FB video calling - on our Sunday Dec 23 night, which was Max's 24th in the morning. 

  

Dec 24 2018 

메리 크리스마스!!! (Merry Christmas)

Wow being in a trio is so weird!! there was some adjusting that had to be done, but it's super fun! It makes street contacting really different, cause we can't really all go up to one guy and like surround him and talk to him about of message of happiness, cause that would be really weird, so it's just an adventure, it'll make this next transfer a lot of fun! 

Quick companion highlight: Elder Park (박인수) is a Korean from the Seoul South area, and he is super fun! This is actually his last transfer too. And he is super fluent in English, like everyone is always taken back at how good he is an English, and his birthday was this past week! So we had a birthday cake!

Elder Birrell: He's from Holliday, Utah, and he's a great companion! He's always happy and talks to everyone, so that's super helpful. He's been out a little over a year, and this companionship is just really fun!

So we decorated our house for christmas, cause we didn't really have anything set up, so I'll attach a picture later of what we were able to pull off. Christmas season is just super fun, and we all like christmas (as every person in the world should) so hopefully we'll have a fun christmas!

some of our christmas decorations

christmas party fun

Finding Elder Gonzales- my MTC companion 

Church of the Week: So one church I saw and translated as either "the identification Church" or "The Same Church" not sure which one is right, but I think both would be pretty fun. I'm particularly fond of the second translation, cause then you could just ask people what church they go to and be like "oh cool! I attend The Same Church!" and it'd be really fun and confusing for them. :)

Christmas Choir performance

We had our last choir performance yesterday, and Elder 최 (choi) who's the President of the Asia North Area was in the area and he came! So that was super cool, and there was just such a great spirit there! And it was funny cause the theme of the choir tour was "He is the Gift" but in the program was accidentally put "Hi is the Gift" so that was a little funny, but there really is such an amazing spirit about Christmas! So it was a great week!

I can't wait to hear about all your Christmas's this week!

Much Love,

Elder Hanks