[ HEY GUYS! SORRY I'M LATE!! :) ]

Whats up!? So you are probably wondering why it has taken me so long to email you this week. Well, yesterday was Buddha's birthday so the place that we normally email at was closed. I'm sorry that I couldn't tell you sooner, but I didn't find out until after email last week. But I'm here now and I am happy as ever! :)

Today has been unreal! We have met with 3 new investigators already and it's only 4 o'clock! Today has been a day where we reap the blessings of our hard, diligent service. We met with a man who works next door to our church building and he has a sincere desire to feel the Holy Ghost in his life and have a personal witness that God is there. Then right after him, we met with a girl and her boyfriend who we met from English class two weeks ago. It all started because the girl wants to get a job as a flight attendant and so she wanted to meet with us to practice her final interview and stuff for the job. After the practice, we taught about our special message of the restoration and it was SO good. It caught both Elder Clearwater and especially me off guard. Her boyfriend is so prepared and she really wants to learn more. I am so excited to teach them more and help them gain a testimony of their own.

Last week was temple day and it went really well. I always love the temple. After, we headed to Dong-Dae-Moon and got some ties and just hung out.

For p-day yesterday, we went and played screen golf with Sue and her son. It was way fun, but I didn't do as well as last time :( I'll still take you though dad ;)

We have been working a lot with our investigators and they are progressing really well. In fact, last night I was able to talk on the phone with Lee-Say-Won about baptism more. I was able to hear about her concerns and help her see how she is prepared and that it is the next step for her. We talked about maybe being baptized in two weeks, but we don't have a date or anything, but really she is doing well. 

Also, Kim-So-Hee and Lee-Ju-Yun were able to see a baptism on Sunday. The Zone Leaders had a baptism after church and they got to see it. It went really well. So-Hee thought it was strange at first (but remember she has 0 religious background) but we met after and helped explain it. We left with a challenge to her to think about baptism and if she wants to be baptized. As for Ju-Yun, she still loves the church and everything about it, but just can't be baptized because of her teaching at a Buddhist school situation.

[ Kim-Gee-Hyay's Baptism ]

I hope you guys were able to get that memory card I sent home with pictures from the lake and stuff that the ZL's investigator took. Feel free to send those out or whatever :)

Hmmm. I feel like I have so much time today because we are using Apple computers today and they are SO fast compared to the usual 1995 computer we use hahaha.

Just know that I love you guys. I am so happy I get to serve here in Seoul Korea. This is exactly where God wants me to be. I love the people here so much and am so blessed to be able to serve them. I love being a missionary.

Have a great week. Be safe. Talk to you next week at the normal time...hopefully! :)

love,
-- Elder Messick

[ My new shirt from dad ]

[ Ward member - Na-Suck-Gwan  |  Ward member - Park-Sung-Me ]

[ Celebrating Elder Clearwater's 2 month in country eating some Italian ]

[ TEMPLE DAY TOMORROW! ]

What up!!? How was your week??

Our week had some fun stuff, of course. Weeks out in the mission are never the same. Always something new, something sad, something fun, something really spiritual, or just something cool! We had a few this week. 

On Thursday we were heading to "our" street intersection to do some contacting. Right when we got there a 70 yr old man walks up to me and pulls out an English/Korean translator and asks me "do you know how to use one of these, I want to learn English but I have no idea how the heck to use this thing." It was pretty funny, so I offered for us to go to the church with him, show him how to use it then introduce our church to him. Anyways, while we are there we have a good conversation. Right when we were leaving, I decided to ask if he went to a church. We find out he is sort of a recent convert of our church! But, he had gotten in an argument with a ward member and stopped going 3 years ago. So we decided to talk with him more and find out how we could help. He didn't have a Book of Mormon anymore and so we gave him another. I really feel like we are going to help him with his situation and be able to bring him back into activity. I feel like the Lord really leads us to where we need to be to talk to the people we need to talk to and to have us say the things we need to in order to help people come closer to Christ.

Our investigator Kim-So-Hee is doing really well. Still slow, but still progressing. After our lesson on baptism, she asked if she could see the baptismal font and really thought it was cool. We are going to try to give her a date next time.

We have an investigator named Lee-Hyung who came to church and he really liked it. He reads about our church every day and is a super diligent studier. The only problem is the Word of Wisdom. We have talked about it and he is trying to cut back, but next time we meet we are going to help develop a plan to really tackle it so he can be baptized. OH I don't think I ever told you about his miracle!!!! Ok so he couldn't ever come to church because he always had to work on Sundays. We told him maybe he could find another job and that we would pray for him and guess what!? He got one! So he can come to church every week now :)

Funny story. So we were contacting again and there was a chair that was out in the middle of the road, so Elder Clearwater and I grabbed it and I ended up pushing it all the way home about a mile so we could have a desk chair. Superrr funny the looks that everyone gave me haha.

 That's about it for this week. I love you all and hope you have a great week! Be safe :)

 love,
-- Elder Messick

{ HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!! }

WOW! That was pretty awesome getting to talk with all of you this morning on the phone. You all sound sooo happy and it sounds like sooo much has happened in the last six months. I'm sure you noticed i talk in English pretty funny now. I talk all slow and in pieces because i am used to talking to Koreans and we have to speak slowly for them to understand so sorry about that haha! Anyways, i am sooo happy i was able to talk with everyone, even Grandma and Grandpa! It just put a big ol' smile on my face. Your Korean skills sounded so good. You guys remembered a lot of words, and Kenzie, busting out the Nong-Gu (basketball). That was sweet :) That sure was great getting to talk with all of you. Crazy to think we only have one more of those...

I am not to sure on what to update you on today since we just had all that time talking on the phone. I guess i can talk about a new investigator that we have picked up. His name is Jack. We met him about a week and a half ago when we were doing basketball contacting, and then we met again on Friday. He is a really cool guy, 25 yrs old. He lived in America for 10 years going to high school and college. He really likes to just have some Americans to talk to and have some friends. His religion is catholic but he isn't like a devout catholic. We have introduced why we are here and our special message about the Book of Mormon. We will be meeting again hopefully sometime this week.

Our old zone leader, Elder Frei, went home this transfer. So we have a new missionary in the house, named Elder Arveseth, from Utah. Since Elder Frei went home he actually had his parents come out and we were able to eat dinner with them last night at our ward mission leader's house. It was way fun.

Lee-Say-Won is well kinda stuck it seems like. When we meet she just is loving it and wants to apply it, but when she goes home, she just doesn't. I don't know why. She seems maybe just a little lazy about it, I'm not sure, but she has committed to read and pray and all we can do is just continually invite.

I don't know if i was able to express this clearly enough on the phone but I just want to say how much I love my mission. I love the experiences that i get to have out here. I love the people. That is my favorite part. I get to work with God's children and help them learn who their Father is. It is such a big and special responsibility and i am so grateful that God trusts me in His work. I know that He is out here helping us every day. He helps lead and guide not only us, but those who He is preparing. I love this Gospel. I know that it is the true source of JOY. I want to share that with everyone in all of Korea, well in Seoul, Korea.

I love you guys so much. I hope you have a great week. I'm excited to read all about it! Have a great Mother's day mom and all you other moms :) 사랑해요!

 Love,
-- Elder Messick

[ WOW 1 YEAR!!! AND GETTING READY FOR TRANSFER #8 ]

Hey everyone!!!

Can you believe that it's been a year! Wow. I can't believe how fast that went. The simplest way I think I can explain this last year is just that it was the fastest, hardest, and most rewarding time of my life yet.  I have learned so much and grown so much, yet I still have sooo much learning and growning to do.

To celebrate my 1 year I was able to do some pretty sweet stuff! 1) I ate a live octopus!!!! It was sooo cool feeling. And to be honest the taste wasn't too bad either. So they bring it out to you on a plate, just from out of the water and slice the legs off. The legs still are wiggling around and they suck to the bottom of the plate. And when you put it in your mouth they wiggle and stick to your tongue and it's just soo cool.  I got a great video for you all to see when I get back home of it :)

2) At night I was able to go up onto the roof and burn a shirt and tie.  That was a pretty cool and fun thing too!

Anyways, last p-day was temple day and it was really great.  It was Elder Clearwater's first time going to the Seoul Temple so that was cool.  After we went to a place called, Nam-Dae-Moon, and we bought some nick nacks and stuff. Oh and while we were there there was a huge protest for like murdering dogs or something like that. It was pretty wild!

We had a dinner together with our investigator Lee-Say-Won at a member's home this week. It went sooo well. They have a daughter who is a returned missionary from Canada and they are the same age. They get along super well and she bore a powerful personal testimony of Joseph Smith and the Restoration.  Lee-Say-Won is still a little scared and nervous, but is doing well.  She, along with Lee-Ju-Yun, came to church yesterday.

Grandma, you asked for an update about the lady we met in the bookstore last transfer. Well she is super cool! The only problem is that she is a busy mom and really has no time to meet.  In our mission we have a rule that we can't meet girl investigators without another male adult there(AKA ward member). So the only time she can really meet is in the day and that's when all our members are at work so it's really hard. But we make phone contact a lot! She has had me teach her the whole lesson of the restoration on the phone and we have even talked about baptism and the plan of salvation. She is really prepared, but we just need to meet! haha.

I am sorry my email was so short this week. But hey, we'll be talking on the phone in just one week!! I hope you have a great week everyone. And Kenzie, HAPPY 19th BIRTHDAY!!!!!
Love,
Elder Messick

P.S. HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY MOM!!! I LOVE YOUUUU
P.P.S. TONS OF PICTURES :)
P.P.P.S. congratulations Randi :)

[ CRAZY WEEK! WORK HARD = SUCCESS ]

Hey everyone!! We had a great week here in Song-Pa. We are seeing lots of success and have been really working hard to fulfill all that is required of us.

This last week as you know was Lee-Say-Won's scheduled baptismal date, but I have a long story about that. She wasn't able to get baptized because she is really going through a really tough time emotionally. She didn't open up too much until I had a phone call with her where we found out a lot. Right now her father has liver cancer and he just had surgery to get it all removed. She is struggling with that and didn't understand why he has to go through that. I was able to share some scriptures over the phone and explain how it's a trial of her faith and it will make her stong and how God has a plan for everything. It helped her out a lot, but still is wanting to take things slow. She was able to make it to church yesterday though which was awesome :)

Actually chuch yesterday was sick!! It was actually our ward conference. I never thought that was like a big deal, but here it seems to be a huge deal. It really got our ward doing less-active work! On average we have about 60-70 people come to sacrament meeting, but this week we have about 120 people! And 3 of those were our investigators :) (Lee-Say-Won; Lee-Ju-Yun; and Kim-So-Hee)

I mentioned how we had a really successful week. Well my companion and I have been really trying to focus on hitting our weekly goals that we set in our weekly planning session and we have been seeing lots of success from that. This last week we were able to pick up 4 new investigators! 2 of those were former investigators, 1 was a miracle find, and the 4th was a random person who got our number from calling information hahaha.

I mentioned a miracle find. So his name is Lee-hung (이형) He only has a two syllable name, kinda cool. Anyways, my companion and i were contacting on the street corner when some guy on the scooter started to talk to us. Not sure why, but asked for a flier. Ended up calling us and wanted to come to our english class. Next week, he shows up to class and says he wanted to learn more about the bible. Cool! We set up a time to meet and figured we would be doing our 30/30 program. Well, he showed up to the appointed and told us he only wants to learn about the gospel! Then he pulls out the gospel principles book we gave him with about 50 pages of it already highlighted! We started to teach about the restoration and then he ended up explaining the whole thing to us. How cool is that! He really loves it and is reading the Book of Mormon and praying. Our only concerns right now are with church attendance because he works on sunday and the word of wisdom. We will be meeting with him tonight and we hope it goes well!

We had another really cool experience this week with a less-active visit. We were heading to a lesson kinda far away and I thought it would be a good idea to just try and say hi to this less active 15 yr old girl on the way. I was looking at the record and noticed the whole family was members so I was hoping to just talk with one of them. We show up and they have their door open, super rare. Anyways, we were able to get her to the door and when she saw it was us she didn't look too excited at all. She kind of just had the impression of she didn't want to talk to us. She said come back and visit when my daughter is home. However, I felt a stong impression to just talk with her and find out what was up with her life. Every question or statement I made i just felt the Spirit so strongly and just guiding the conversation. By the end of our visit, she had went and got us juice and told us to come back again next week with a smile on her face. It was really a cool experience to just see the whole situation change. I am grateful for the Sprit and how it can work though us as missionaries to ask inspired questions.

 Can you believe I get to call home in just 2 weeks! I can't!!! That came soo fast. I am excited to talk to all of you on mother's day :).

 Also, I just wanted to give Kenzie a big birthday shoutout!!!!!! I know it's not for a week, but i am so excited for you! Happy 19th kenz :))))

 There is nothing like missionary work. I just love it! Ya, its hard, and sometimes things don't go the way we wanted, but that's ok, becuase it's not our work, it's His. He is in this and it will happen His way in His time. I know that and have a testimony of that. If we just do our best and leave the rest to the Lord it will be ok. I love our Savior so much and i feel His hand in this work every day. I am so grateful that i get to share this message with the people of Korea. I love these people. I know that the Lord cares about each one of them. I hope I can do my best to accomplish what He needs me to do. I love you guys and i hope that your week is amazing. Talk to you soon. I love you!

 Love,
-- Elder Messick

 P.S. HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!! oh and happy 1 year to me :)

The amazingggg view from the apartment of our ward mission leader!