[ TRANSFER #11 COMES TO A CLOSE ]

Wow, another 6 weeks has already gone by here in Bu-Cheon. Its crazy to think I have already been here for 4 and a half months. Transfer calls will be coming tonight, but because of the new training system it isn't nearly guaranteed that neither of us will be moving unless there is a need. That will put me at 4 transfers here in Bu-Cheon and man do I love it here.

[ 12 week trainer's follow up training + missionaries going home ]

If you remembered, we were supposed to have a baptism yesterday, but well it didn't happen. Sister Oh has kind of disappeared. We don't know exactly what happened. I feel like she just has been reallyyyy busy lately, but accidentally gives the impression that she is ignoring us. I don't know to be honest. I hope this week we can get better contact and help get her back on the road to baptism and confirmation. Same thing goes for the other Sister Oh we are teaching, we haven't had much contact this week. We plan to just stop by her work tonight and see if she is there to say hello.

We did have a sweet miracle this last week. I got a phone call from a member in Geum-Cheon (my 2nd area) telling me she had a family interested in learning English and about the Church. Well, we went there on Friday and it went reallyyy well. It's a family of 5! I am SOO excited let me tell you! Hahah There are 3 boys. They attended church 2 years ago but moved and stopped going since then. We were able to introduce our church well and I see some really good potential! we will meet again this Saturday! The family name is Yoon. Sort of off topic, but not at the same time. So I got a letter from Mark Bracken a few months ago, and those are some of the best letters you are SO funny Mark, but ya anyways, I got a letter from him and he talked about how he wanted to baptize families, which is one of my personal missionary goals. He said he reached a point in him mission where he decided to start praying to find, teach, and baptize FAMILIES. I realized that was exactly what I needed to do! I have been trying it out and over the past few months I have met with more families than I have my whole mission. None have been baptized yet, but we will get there. I know it!

This week on Saturday we had to help in putting together a big charity event. There are some missionaries out serving from our stake, their home stake, that are struggling to pay for their missions, so we did this big like charity drive thing. It was pretty time consuming, but seemed to be successful. I am not sure if they reached their goal on money or not, but hopefully :)

At church on Sunday, brother Kim, the man who comes with his son, came to church again for the 6th time now. He is just being so scared though of baptism. I had a really good talk with him and our ward mission leader about his concerns, specifically the word of wisdom, tithing, and the restoration, and it seemed to go really well. I tried relating it to missions and how we have tons of rules. WE don't know why we have them, but when we follow we are blessed and when we don't we aren't BUT there is ALWAYS repentance. I think we are making progress, slowly but surely.

That's about all I got to update you guys on for this week. Grandma, I still am praying for you and all that is going on. I love you!

I love all of you guys. Sure I haven't seen you for a year and a half, but I love you guys even more! The mission has helped change me for the better. I am started to understand life a little bit better, our purpose and more importantly, God's purpose. He does everything for our benefit. He is GOD and yet he wants to help US. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is so simple if we just keep in mind that it is all for our benefit. I know that Christ is our Savior and that this is His work.

Take care this week. I'll talk to you next week! Love ya!!!

--
Love,

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Elder Messick

[ Missionary buds going home: Elder Rowe & Elder Lambert ]

[ P-Day football!!! My team one the tournament :) ]

[ GENERAL CONFERENCE WEEKEND ]

Hey guys! We just had our General Conference weekend here and man wasn't that such a good conference!?!? So many topics were covered and it was so spiritual. As you could have guessed, Elder Holland was my favorite. He is just such a beast up there and speaks with soooo much power. So passionate and you really can feel his sincerity. I still haven't seen all of conference, I need to see the priesthood session too. I had to go to another area to do two baptismal interviews there, which I think is a pretty dang good excuse to miss it haha. They were baptized yesterday and it went well :)

 Well they came out with a new rule in the mission, well I guess it's not new but I just heard about it. SO, apparently I am no longer allowed to tell you the full names of my investigators anymore. It's for some privacy policy. Weird I know but from now on I will just be putting their last name or their given name or the english name if they have one. I think that God will still know who you are praying for. :)

Well I will first talk about our investigator Sister Oh. Just so you don't get confused, we have 2 investigators with this last name, so she is Oh #1. Haha. Anyways, she is still doing wonderful, except the fact that she couldn't make it to General Conference and we don't know why. She told me like 2 or 3 times on Friday she would be there, but then didn't come or answer her phone. We will call her tonight and see if we can get ahold of her and figure out what happened. As far as I know she is still wanting to be baptized this coming Sunday. Hopeuflly we can get it all to happen. :)

We did have two investigators come to sacrament. One of them is FULL of potential. Her name is also Sister Oh. The one I met on the street like 5 times. Remember? Anyways, she LOVED conference and said she had a lot of questions answered. I see everything with her going in the right direction. Brother Park also came, but he was only there for 30 minutes. He also told our members that he isn't religious and meets us for English. Uh... :/ haha.

This week I met up with a lady and her husband in Gangnam. I know you all know that word from the song Gangnam Style hahah. Anyways, so this lady, I got her number from Mindy Hawkins. They have a foreign exchange student at their house and he is Korean and his parents were interested in our beliefs, so I got her number from Mindy to call and help her get in contact with missionaries. Long story short, her and her husband took us out to a nice resturaunt and we had a really good talk. They are just hilarious!! We were able to introduce the message very naturally and normally and she told me like 3 times she would try to read The Book of Mormon. How cool is that. I also told her that the missionaries in her area would give her a call in a few days. I hope it goes well!

Now for the grand finale of the week! I know you all remember Mr. Bong and have been wondering about him for some time, as I haven't mentioned anythinga bout him. Well that's becuase he has beeng going to countless trials, leading him to get a new phone number and we lost all contact with him. I had his addresss from the baptismal record and it's out of our area. I visited him once about 3 weeks or so ago but nobody was home. I left a note on the door. Well one day last week I felt like we needed to back to his house so I set aside some time in my planner to make that happen. On wednesday evening we headed over there to meet him. Get to the door and to be honest I was a little nervous. I knock and he asked who it was. As I told him who I was he said "I'm not interested go away" basically. And let me tell you it felt like a knife stabbing me in the heart. I have such love for him and it just killed me to hear that. After recovering from that we left, leaving a Gospel Principles book with my testimony written in it by his door. We walked the what felt like forever walk back to the bus stop to go home. I was on the phone with the ZL asking for advise on how to handle the situation when all the sudden he and I both just had a feeling that we had to go back there again...that same night! So never turn down a promting right!? I talked with my comp and we turned right back and went again. We stopped in a private place to pray and ask for help on how to handle the situation. As I was at the door for the second time, I felt like all I needed to do was just talk, so I did. I literally talked at a door for 10 minutes or so. I don't know what I was really saying but it was 100% guided by the spirit. No question. At one point I knew he was right on the other side of the door listening. He started to talk back to me and explain everything that had been going on. He wouldn't let me in but said he wanted to talk on the phone so he taught me his new phone number and we talked about 15 minutes. He told me of how he is going through a divorce, his wife right now is making terrible decisions and feels like it's his fault, he lost his job, he hasn't seen his kids in a really long time, and ya just soooo hard. But we are now in contact. What a miracle to me! Follow the promtings of the spirit! And please continue to pray for him.

Well I'm out of time for this week. Grandma, know that I love you and stay stong please. Everyone else also have a great week! I love you all!

--
Love,

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Elder Messick

[ EPIC WEEK TO SAY THE LEAST :) ]

WOW! I can't believe what a week we had here in Bu-Cheon. Just unbelieveable to me. We really are seeing the fruits of our hard labor here over the last 4 months or so. The area has really been coming to life. Just incredible how the Lord has His hand in this work.

I don't even know where to begin to tell you of the miracles we've seen. I'll begin with one that started about 2 months ago. So I don't know if you remember, but about 2 months ago I met a lady who called out to us by our name, I ended up giving her a Book of Mormon and since we were super sweaty she wanted to buy us ice cream. I was never able to get her number. Well I ran into her on the street like 3 or 4 times since then. Then one morning I saw her and I totally blew it. It just was like awkward. Kind of like a hello but I dunno it just was awkward hahah. So right after we walked away I turned to my comp and told him how next time I get the opportunity to see her I will get her number and set up an appointment. Well sure enough, later that VERY SAME DAY, as we were getting out of another persons car, boom there she was!! I was shocked to say the least, but I went right up to her and got her number and set an appointment. We met again this last Saturday and the lesson was unreal! She took notes the whole time and accepted what we call a soft baptismal commitment so easily. We have another appointment tonight :) Her name is Oh-Hyay-Young.

Another miracle happening here this week is with Oh-Seung-Hee. She is just soo awesome :) She came to church again this week! And sorry I tried to get a picture with her but she said she doesn't like pictures hahaha but she said to tell you hi for her. I will just get a picture with her at the baptism ;) Well I just blew the big surprise ahha. Yes she has accepted a baptismal commitment for the 21st of this month! Her daughter also accepted, but there is just a little problem. There is like a rule that they have to come to church at least 3 times before they can get baptized and she can't make it right now, so I will talk with the mission president about this. Her daughter's name is Lee-Sue-Jeen, or Sarah. Sister Oh will be joining us at General Conference on sunday.

And for the last HUGE miracle of the week. The 3 kids. This week we were just out contacting at one of our normal spots and two kids were walking so I said hi to them. We chatted and I invited them to our church on saturday for some ping pong and to show them a video introducing our church. They agreed. This is kinda common, but usually ended with a fake number or them punking. Well this is a little better story than that. They showed up Saturday and actually ended up bringing a friend too. We hung out for a little then watched the DVD, The Restoration. They watched very intently and liked it. At the end they all accepted a soft baptism and agreed to church the next day. Sure enough right as sacrament meeting started the three of them walked through the door! We should be meeting this week and eating ramon and sharing a little more about our church.

So at church this week we had 5 poeple there and our ward just loved us hahaha. We really are working our tails off and are seeing the success from that. I know that all of this is becuase He is right here in the work. I would be nothing without Him in this. There is no question about that. I look forward to hearing what He has to say to the world next week. It's weird that it will be my last one as a missionary. I don't understand how that is even possible haha.

Well family, I love you all. Take care. Til next week... :)

--
Love,

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Elder Messick

P.S. Happy Birthday to my FAVORITE nephew :) Big 4!!! Love you D-man.
P.P.S. Happy Birthday Kari :)

Check out who I saw!!!! Lee-Ju-Yun. Now my best bud in the mish Elder Jones is meeting her in Song-Pa :) He got her back to church!!

A picture from last week's conference...

[ HEY! FUN WEEK :) ]

Hey guys! Well this weeks email update is going to be really short because I have been loading a ton of pictures for you guys and it makes it hard to do other stuff. But, as my 7th grade math teacher would say, a picture is worth a thousand words :)

This week was a big holiday called 추석 (Chew-Suck) and it's basically a three day celebration of their ancestors and a time of giving thanks. It is compared with our thanksgiving, but it's a bigger deal here.

This week as far as investigators goes was pretty good. On Sunday we were invited to eat dinner with this husband and wife. Their daughter is a missionary right now in Temple Square, but both of her parents aren't members. She wrote us a letter telling us they are interested and so now we are trying to teach them. It was a great visit and we will be going back this week to share the message of the restoration.

Something kinda funny. So at church on Sunday as I am standing at the front door greeting people, I decide to look at the program. Guess what I saw. My name as speaker!!! I was like WHAT!??!?!? I went and asked the counselor if there was a mistake. His response... "Oh did they not call you?" hahahah! So I still had to speak and I just winged it but it went well. Everyone cracked up when I told them nobody told me I was speaking. :)

Also, this week I taught my first district meeting on contacting then I gave another training at president interviews on how to get personal revelation through sanctifying ourselves (see Joshua 3:5 and a few others). That pretty much sums it up other than the pics.

This work is true. God lives. There's no question about it.

I love you guys. Have a great week!!!

--
Love,

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Elder Messick

[ Me and my comp ] 

[ Pres. and Sis Christensen ]

[ Korea + Moroni :) ]

[ Sis. Richardson...my sisters from the MTC go home in 3 weeks!!! ]

[ Gwanghwamun palace PART 1 ]

[ Gwanghwamun Palace ROUND 2  ]

[ Hiking ROUND 1 ]

[ Hiking ROUND 2  Book Han Mountain ]

[ Hiking ROUND 3 ]

[ Randoms ]