Hey hey hey Family! Guess what? i got my flight plans! Yay me! I am so so so excited! I'm going to Korea! I leave Momday morning may 24th from the Salt lake airport at 8:37am. I have a 3 hour layover in LA and then at 12:30 pm I take off for the Inchon Airport in South Korea. It is about a 9 hour flight (eww) and i'll land 5:20pm South Korean Time. I'll basically be travling for like 24 hours. Its going to be great! The time difference betweeen Utah and Seoul is about 14 hours, so I guess it would be a 13 hour difference between California and Korea. For example when you wake up at 7am in Modesto on the 27th it will be 8pm in Korea on the 28th. I think that is how it goes. Anyways, my whole district is getting way excited and we've all begun packing. I'm pretty sure i'll be sending a package home so look for it. So many exciting things have happened this week I hope I have enough time to write it all.
Last tuesday at our devotional we heard from Elder Holland!!! It was soo cool. he is know for being very enthusiastic and exciting and he didn't let us down. It was a really awesome talk about what missionary work can really do for your life and how we should act as missionaries now and after our missions. Loved it!
So there is this tradition that the departing district sings a special musical number their last sunday, so my district and the native Korean district have been practicing this compilation of "I'll Go Where You Want Me To Go" (in korean of course, oh did you know I can sing in korean? cool huh) and a traditional Korean folksong called Arirang about this hill you have to cross over to get from North Korea to South Korea. It is pretty sweet. So we've been practicing this song and our Branch President, President Shin who is this crazy powerful korean man who was instrumental in getting the church in korea, heard us and told us we had to audition to be one of the special musical numbers at the firesides and devotionals. Well we do what our branch president says so we went and auditioned and got picked to sing on wednesday at the new missionary meeting for all the new missionaries. Cool I suppose, but then the lady who is in charge of special musical numbers recruited us all to sing last sunday at the fireside. We sang some random scripture put to music. it was a pretty simple song I liked it and it was easy to learn luckily since we had the music foor like 2 days. So ya, I sang in front of the whole MTC. Pretty sweet. Afterwards i got to shake president Smith's hand. He is the MTC president.
Next exciting thingt. My companion Sister Leishman and I were selected by our teacher brother Erickson to participate in the How to Begin Teaching Training given to all the new missionaries their first night in the MTC. My experience with that particular meeting my first day at the MTC was not the best. It pretty much just freaked me out because I realized that as a missionary I would have to like talk to people and get to know them and help them with thier problems. LOL something you think I would have realized before. Silly me. But I am honored that my teacher thinks we are good enough to be the example for the new missionaries. We got to go to a special training on Monday. It was so cool and the spirit was way strong. The first few min of meeting someone are crucial to their progression in the Gospel. So we will teach wednesday night three different investigators while all the new missionaries watch.
Sister Leishman and I also got our shots this week. I didn;t even cry and they gave me a circus bandaid. I was very proud of it and showed it off to everyone.
We have a goal this week to contact at least 120 people. Pretty much start a conversation with them and then bear our testimonies in Korean. It is a pretty lofty goal considerinf our usual weekli goal is 14 and we have a hard time meeting it. But so far so good. I already have one today, 9 more to go.
I lovce you all and I love this work. I am so excited to go to Korea. I know the Church is ture. Thanks you for all your support and love and be happy : )
oh if you want to dear elder me you have to do it by friday morning otherwise i won;t get it : )
