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!

--

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

General Conference

Spirited away! I mainly took this picture for Bart :)
It was at the painted walls place

This week was a little more eventful than last. the first thing being three of our investigators dropped us...Amanda stopped wanting to meet so we had to drop her and we were teaching this Chinese lady but she told us that her church financially supports her so she can’t get baptized so we had to drop her and then Stella dropped us...she told us that there are too many rules and that she didn’t think the Mormon church was right for her and that maybe she would get baptized in 10 years. But she said she would still come to church every once and a while but she moved to the other sisters area so we gave her to them. She did come to general conference on Saturday but she said she didn’t like it and it felt like a lecture.

But anyways, two really cool things happened this week! First is we have recently been searching out less actives because there are a TON of them and we went to this one lady’s house and she said she wasn’t a member and slammed her door in our face. Then I turned around and saw one little yellow heart on the door across the hall so we decided to knock on that and that was our less active! But it gets even weirder. We came back later and she let us in and we started to share our message and we found out that she is the bishops little sister! We haven’t even ever heard about her at all! The bishop is slacking! But anyways that was cool. Funny story: after that Sister Stradling and I decided to treat ourselves to some Krispy Kremes so we were going to buy a dozen but that day they happen to be having a 1+1 sale where you buy a dozen and get the second dozen free. So many doughnuts O o,  but man they were good. We may have only given away 6 of them but they are gone now so we can work off the weight. It was so worth it.

Krispy Kremes! So many doughnuts o.O

Then there’s this other less active family that we felt prompted to visit but they weren’t home then when we had district meeting we found out that the other elders (Elder smith and Jensen) had visited them and that Elder Park felt like her needed to visit them too so we all got promptings about this family! The lord must need them for something. So that was a cool experience.

A Huge Worm we saw on the street one day.

Transfers were this week and the only change in my district was Elder Jensen left and Elder Smith got a greenie! I am no longer the youngest missionary in the district! His name is Elder Jeong. I don’t really know him yet but he seems nice. Then Sister Masden left which was way sad but we got Sister Pappa! And she’s great so it’s good. I am also now house leader which means I have to text the district leaders when the sisters get home and make sure everyone is following all the rules. The sisters I live with are great so that’s not that hard to do.

Windmills! Also at the painted walls place.

We got to listen to conference this weekend! Let me tell you: conference is like Christmas for the missionaries. Best day ever. I loved all the talks. One of my favorites was Gary Stevensons about the Olympic and the 4 min run. I just thought he made it really fun to listen to. Then I also liked Sister Oscarsons from the general women’s meeting. But that was mainly just because she talked about the lady with MS. Almost brought me to tears. But all the talks were good. A lot of them talked about standing up for what you believe in and having courage. I need to work on the courage thing. It’s hard to talk to people about religion but I know with the Lord’s help I can.

Anyways I hope everyone had a great week! I love you all! And remember to trust in the Lord :)

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

Spring is in the Air

Cherry Blossoms!

Well nothing really happened this week. We literally just went proselyting and put up free English flyers pretty much all week and walked EVERYWHERE. None of our members could meet this week and we had appointments with a few of our investigators but almost all of them canceled. But we have more meetings with members this week and hopefully our investigators are freer too, so hopefully this week will be more eventful.

Cherry Blossoms

Tulip Trees!

Nothing exciting happened this week until Saturday. We had an appointment with our investigator, Ann, and her son, Michael. We had prepared the plan of salvation but instead we got there and she immediately drove us to go see the cherry blossoms (which are BEAUTIFUL!) then to a Buddhist temple nearby. So that was exciting and definitely not what we planned. Then she took us out to eat some famous tofu which was DELICIOUS. Oh I made the mistake of worrying that we wouldn’t have enough food on Saturday because we had appointments from 10:30 to 6 (the only day this week we had appointments) so I prayed that we would have enough to eat and let me tell you, missionary prayers are extremely powerful things...not only did Ann feed us a full out lunch but our other investigator, No Un Keyoung, fed us another full out lunch then our member, Sister No, took us out to dinner that day. I have never been so full in my life...I literally had to lay down on my bed when we got home because i felt like my stomach was going to explode...God has quite the sense of humor.

Anyways, when we met with No Un Keyoung (we teach English to her son and her aunt that lives up in Seoul, who is a member, called us asking us to teach English to her son) her son wasn’t there because he was at a birthday party so we just talked to her for an hour, one of the first things she asked us was where our church was. So hopefully things pick up with her. We taught her about some of the commandments and she said she would keep them.

Then yesterday at church I sat next to a woman in our ward, Sister Joe, and her daughter came in right before the sacrament (she’s around my age) with her friend. Immediately after sacrament sister Joe grabbed my arm and whispered "my daughters friend is a potential investigator talk to her!" so I did. She seems kind of scatter brained and really shy, but we had dinner at their house last night and taught about why there are so many churches on this earth and their daughters friend was hesitant to participate but we’ll see where it goes.

Lanterns for Buddah's Birthday outside the temple.

Well that’s all I have for you this week. Sorry, that nothing too exciting. But spring is coming so it is getting warmer minus the surprise cold that has been the past few days. But hopefully it goes back to being warm

 

Buddha! my favorite is the kid with his finger in Buddha's belly button.

Buddhist Monk

Anyways I love you all and hope you have a great week!

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