Being hunter's of men

June 23 2019 –

Onionhasaeyo 

So just another week in Korea, unfortunately nothing too exciting, so if you're busy you can skip down to the pictures, haha, or you can read the whole thing to see what the Korea missionary work is like.

First off, the exciting things that happened this week was that we made a bunch of No-Bake Cookies to give to Members and hopefully returning members, but we may have eaten too many of them. We went on exchanges with another team. And we played basketball with Mongolians (they are like super good at basketball, but also really bad, haha. Hard to explain, but it was really funny to watch). We also met a guy, who just has english interest, but said he would take us out to get food all the time, so that'll be a blessing!

Our week (and most weeks here) was mainly just full of a bunch of Proselyting on the street. Which isn't too bad anymore, I mean you got to do it. But to put into perspective what that is like here, yesterday, I met someone on the street who (for the first time in my mission) actually said he has interest in religion! So that was weird, we usually just get a simple hello, a hand if it's an old guy, or a "hello" in english if they want to learn english. So it's kind of rough, but there are prepared people everywhere! just in Korea you have to dig down, look through the rocks and find them. A saying that goes around here is that in Korea we aren't "fishers of men", we say we are "hunters of men" because it's a little easier to fish, and hunting takes a lot of time and diligent searching :)

Now I hope that didn't seem like boasting or anything, but just a little look at the real life. The work is a little hard, but it's pretty rewarding too. It teaches a whole lot of patience and reliance on the Lord. 

We pray really hard each night to find that one person who is looking for the gospel. 

I love an appreciate all of you and all your support! Please send prayers for someone to be lead to us, I really just want to teach and bare testimony of the gospel to someone who is willing to accept it.

Love you all,Elder Hanks

Pictures:

Us

A guy (who we're pretty sure had some mental illness or something) that we met on the bus and was really fun to talk to

And our sunday school lesson. I include this because you all can probably understand as much as I can on the board haha

June 16 2019 – moving?  

So we started our week with literally nothing, our first 3 days were clearer than scotch tape, so we had a lot of walking to try and find who may be searching for the truth on the street. But then we got crazy busy starting thursday.

We had a training meeting for the district leaders, which is great cause we just get to receive advice from our mission president of how to be better missionaries and better leaders in our districts, so that was great!

Then we moved! We didn't move areas, but we just moved houses, and that was not fun! There are so many missionaries who just collect the randomest stuff off the street, and it's terrible cause then we have to deal with it later after they leave. But regardless, it took us like a whole day to move, and the guy that was hired to help move our stuff was not happy we had so much stuff, haha. But he saw we were Christian, so he took us to his church while we were in the middle of moving, haha, so that was interesting. But anyway, moving in and organizing the new house was exhausting, and we had to do it super fast

Our weird appointment of the week: we met a guy on the street who invited us to come over to his house later, so we did that last week and we were waiting for his wife to come home too. But turns out they were both part of a church called 신천지, sorry I don't know what that is in english, (Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of Testimony)  but to put it simply, they are one of the crazy churches in Korea. Korea has a few churches who are famous for being really crazy churches, and this is one of them. So the wife got to work to teach us "the truth". There was a whole lot of false doctrine, but one interesting part is how much they focus on "the Book of Revelations". She told us that this book was the password into Heaven, so if you didn't understand all of the book, you couldn't get into heaven... So it was just really interesting.

But! That being said there was one good thing about it, I did feel the spirit, but I was the spirit confirming to me that it was not true. As I listened, I just thought about the comfort of the true, restored church, with the restored truths that we can talk to Heavenly Father whenever we want, and He will talk to us! That we have a living prophet on the earth, and he receives modern day revelation. That Christ paid for all of our sins with an infinite Atonement! It is so amazing! I love this gospel! It's so awesome!

Love you all,
Elder Hanks

Pictures: 

all our stuff

all our stuff in a little truck

one elder's broken umbrella 

 picture with a member and other Elders

June 9 2019 – Transfers

And... I'm staying. :) frankly me and my companion would have freaked if one of us got transferred. So nothing really happened, I'm staying as the district leader, so that should be fun!

Last week we went on a hike with our branch president. Fun Fact about Korea: so in America when you go hiking, you do like switchbacks up the mountain, like criss-cross right? Well they don't give half a care in Korea, and they just go right up the mountain! Now given that Korea doesn't have Utah sized mountains, but still just hiking straight up a mountain isn't easy! But it was super pretty at the top

We've been doing a lot of sports proselyting here, and it has actually turned out pretty successful! So please pray for us to have any success over here. We also had a Stake Sports Conference we attended, and Elder Campbell got roasted! (by the sun 😉) he had a crazy bad sunburn 😂

We met with a less active brother who also happens to be the Chief of Police over the island of GeoJe! So that was pretty cool, showed us around the station. And found out that the majority of 112 (Korea's 911) calls are for drunk people 🤦‍♂️

Also met two guys that both had mental disorders! We think it was schizophrenia, so they still had social ability, but just a weird story 😂

It's been a super weird transfer, but I've still seen many miracles and amazing things. Even though the work is a little slower here, it's still moving! All prayers are gratefully accepted :)

Much love,
Elder Hanks

Pictures :

Saw this sign here, in Korea, and the 3rd to last word I feel like can't be a real word, that's just too crazy

This was our dinner one day, just a quarter of a watermelon

Some pics from our hike up the mountain

             

     

The curse of Emergency transfers & me

June 2 2019

The curse is confirmed... EMERGENCY TRANSFER!!! "it's true, all of it" -Han Solo. So yeah, my companion (Elder Giles) turned out be a lot more sick than the doctors first thought, so he had to go home this last week. It was super sad to see him go, especially since it had only been like 2 weeks with him and we were working really hard. But the Lord has other plans in store! So yeah, that happened and now I have a new companion! His name is Elder Campbell, and if you have by chance remembered any of my last emails, he was emergency transferred to me in my last area too. So this is my second time with him. This also makes 4 emergency transfers and 9 companions for me in the space of 6 transfers! So I think I’m setting a record, haha.

Other than that is has been a pretty regular week. (So this is probably the part most of you just skip down to the pictures, right? 😉) But we've been trying to do some finding through sports, so we have played soccer with a bunch of students recently, and it actually has worked out pretty well! It's like the best way to get really close with a bunch of kids.

Interesting experience: we were doing weekly planning and trying to figure out when we wanted to meet with a contact we got, so we texted him to see when he had time and he was like "right now" so we were like sweet! And we asked if he wanted to meet at our church and he said "hate" (this is all in korean though, so the literal translation is a little weird, but makes it more funny, haha) but turns out we didn't meet him that day, we tried the next day, set up a time to go eat dinner with him, and we'd buy it for him. But he didn't show up, so we just went and ate and he texts like 45 minutes later and was like "so are you gonna buy me food?" haha, so we realized he actually had no interest in the gospel or us, but just in us buying him food, so that was too bad.

Church of the Week: this week it is the Seawater Church... Again, I’m just curious who comes up with these names

last thought, I’ve been studying out of the Old testament, and have realized how much knowledge has been taken out of that book, but has been restored in our days though the prophet Joseph Smith. I know he was a prophet, President Nelson is the current living prophet! 

Love you all,

Elder Hanks

Pictures:

Just beautiful korea, and our service activity where we take these children of God on walks! It's super fun!

                    

May 26 2019

There's no real relation to the topic besides the fact that it's a good song- A whole new world! 

It's been another good week in Korea! We had a lot of proselyting time and a few miracles too. I hugged a random kid on the street, just cause why not, so that was good! 

First miracle was that we stopped at a store for a bathroom break and walked out with an appointment to play basketball with a phillipino and his daughter an hour later. So did that and he invited us to play again with him and his friends a few days later, which we did, and there were like 15 foreigners there playing basketball! It was so weird but I think we could really have some potential with some of them! So that was a cool miracle.

The good of Facebook: so I got a call from some elders asking me to do a baptismal interview for one of their people, but that it was over 3 hours away from our area, so that was too far. But thanks to today's technology we did his interview over Facebook video call! It was still a spiritual experience, and he was very prepared for the gospel. So that was a cool experience.

We had branch conference which more than doubled our weekly attendance from 13 to 32! So what a sabbath that was! The mission president, stake president, and the area 70 all came to our little branch, so that was nice.

Fun Bible fact: I was reading from Revelations (which by the way is just about as easy to understand as ancient revised Egyptian) and found out that the Greek name for the book translates to "The Apocalypse" so that was interesting!

That's all I got this week, tune in next week for whatever crazy stuff happens this week 😜

Merry Christmas,

Elder Hanks

Pictures :

Saw this mural that is supposed to be an earthquake drill thing, but I just see an upset teacher throwing books at her students 😂  

Our service activity; building Legos with these special needs kids! 

This member and my mission president checked my body out and said I need to do some special stretches everyday to fix my posture! 

Bought some of the greatest pants ever last week 😎