Happy Easter!

All the lanterns for Buddhas birthday!

I hope everyone had a fantastic Easter! They don’t really celebrate Easter here. Like at all but I will talk about that at the end.

Still a really slow week. We had to drop another two of our investigators so we are down to three and they are all busy moms that can’t meet a lot so that’s hard. We only had one lesson this whole week and it wasn’t until Saturday. But we have been trying to find less actives so that has been an adventure.

 

Beautiful bridge!

We visited one family at the beginning of the week whose father is really active and is part of the ward council I’m not sure what his calling is but his wife is less active and so are his kids. We shared a short message with them and then just visited with them and the wife (Sister Moon) started commenting on my face and I had no idea what she was saying so I just thanked her because I was assuming it was good. Afterwards Sister Stradling told me that she was talking about how perfect my features are and how when she was in college she had to do an etching of the Venus De Milo and so she studied the face a lot and my nose reminded her of the Venus De Milo. So apparently my nose looks like the one on the Venus De Milo. Fun fact.

We had a combined Zone conference up in Daejeon this week. It was all about purifying ourselves with missionary work because we are doing a 40 day fast where we all promise to purify ourselves of everything that is distracting us and at least one companionship in the mission is fasting every day. President thought that it would be a good idea to prepare ourselves for when Elder D Todd Christofferson comes on May 31. So we pretty much talked about that the whole time. But I saw Sister Jensen from the MTC! The one that wasn’t my companion and she told me she looked up to me so much so that made me feel good about myself :)

We also found out as we were coming back to Jeon Ju that a ship off the coast of Korea had capsized with over 500 students on board mostly high school students. Last I heard 300 are still unaccounted for. Korea is DEVESTATED. Everyone is talking about it. It makes me sad the more I hear about it :) I am sure if you haven’t heard about it and are curious you can look it up on google. So they have all been in my prayers lately.

Anyways, on a happier note: we met with Sister No (our investigator in our apartment complex it’s easier to just call her that) on Saturday and it went so well! Her husband was there for the first time and we taught her little boy English then taught about fasting and tithing. It was the first time I have taught a whole family and it was amazing! There is just a different spirit there when it’s a whole family together. Sister Stradling shared an experience that her dad had with tithing and I shared about Jakobs spina bifida that we did that family fast for (I had to look up a lot of words for that one) and it was just so great! We asked if they would come to church and her husband told us that he used to go to church a lot when he was younger but he doesn’t anymore. They didn’t end up coming to church but we are hopeful :)

So things with them are going well and we are meeting with Debbie (the women whose mother invited the missionaries into her house when she was 10 and now she wants to know more) on Friday and Sister Oh (the one we meet with the Relief Society President) tomorrow so that will be good.

And now to Easter! So we went to church yesterday and no one even mentioned it was Easter (they call it resurrection day here) and it was really sad! But after Sunday school the bishop asked sister Stradling and I if we had plans after five. We told him no and he just walked away so we were really confused. So we get home from church and start our studies then at 4:30 the young women’s president (Sister Lee) calls and says she’s picking us up for a dinner. Then she takes us to the Relief Society Presidents house (sister sung) and the bishop and his family are there and we all ate together! All the men were cooking and waited until the women were done eating to eat so that was cool. Sister Sung lives in this authentic Korea house and she her husband showed us around some and taught us about it with Sister Lee translating it into English. So that was cool. We shared a message about the resurrection and sang Christ the Lord has Risen Today with everyone. No one in the ward even knew that is was Easter but I feel like we had a really successful Easter for no one here even celebrating it :)

 

Cherry Blossoms at Buddhas temple!

 

The guards at the Buddhist temple

Oh and yesterday after church we had a ward council meeting that lasted 2 hours where we pretty much just talked about where we wanted the ward activity (picnic) to be held on Buddha’s birthday. I think it’s funny that we talked amore about Buddha’s birthday on Easter than Easter.

Anyways I hope everyone is well and has a great Easter. I love you all!

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- Sister Collyer 콜리여 자매 (kol-lee-yeo ja- mae)