[ HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013!! ]

The new year is here..ALMOST. It's New Years Eve here and it sure is a cold one!! We have had soo much snow already this year!! It seems like we have already gotten more snow this winter than last and it's not even January! Saturday night was another snow storm. Every time after it snows the temperature drops a lot and gets super cold and it all turns to ice. We got to the church early yesterday and shoveled out the whole parking lot for our members which was quite a bit of work. This morning I had to take my companion to get his foreigner card so he wouldn't get deported. Anyways, I wanted to stop to eat some Subway since there was one in the area. While we were eating we saw 3 car accidents from all the ice on the ground. It's pretty dangerous out there! I'm lucky to not have a car haha!

It's a shorter week to write about since I just wrote on Wednesday, but we still have had quite a bit go on, especially in the lives of our investigators. It just has been amazing to work with them and help them. We set 2 baptismal dates this week, with Jeen Han and Dong Oo. They will be getting baptized on Jan 13th. I am soo stoked for them. Jeen Han seriously is the definition of a golden investigator. He accepts every commitment with a smile and has been reading The Book of Mormon. He already lived the Word of Wisdom so no problems there either :) He is such a shy kid so it's a little tough to help him get fellowshipped by members, but this last Sunday was better than last. And his buddy Dong Oo made it to sacrament meeting and seemed to like it also.

Our other most progressing investigator is Sister Kim and her two children. We are actually with them right now!! Hahah long story. But basically she is just awesome! It's like she is already a member, we just have to get her baptized. I talked a lot with her about it on Saturday and tried to set a date with them for the 20th of Jan but she turned it down. She feels as though she doesn't know enough yet about the gospel and wants to study more. Actually her 2013 goal is to read The Book or Mormon more! Cool!! Anyways, I tried to explain to her we don't need to know everything to be baptized. Life is a learning process. And that's what enduring to the end is all about, learning and growing. And with the gift of the Holy Ghost it is soo much easier to do that. She really liked that and she came to the conclusion of "I will be baptized before you leave just not yet" hahah. So that was great, but just not exactly what we want! We will work on setting an official date with her :)

We had an investigator Mr. Lee and his wife and son take us out to lunch on Saturday which was a blast! They got us pork ribs and it was just a good time. We gave them the General Conference issue of the Liahona in Korean and English and they really liked that. Then their son talked about how he likes basketball so we are going to play sometime and try to introduce our message more with him (that was our first time meeting him).

On Sunday we just us 6 missionaries (since our ward combined there are 6 missionaries in the ward) went and contacted on the street together at a place called 불광 (Bulgwang) subway station. From there we went to visit our bishop and had a really good time. It was supposed to just be a stop by say hello and share a message visit, but it turned in to a dinner appointment. No complaints! Haha. She fed us some delicious traditional Korean food (like seaweed soup, kim chee, rice, pig intestine with noodle, hm what else, Keem which is just like a dried seaweed with oil and salt gosh sooo good it's like potato chips haha.)

I hope you guys have a great new years!! I'll be thinking of you all. Make some great resolutions this week :)

I LOVE YOU!!

--
Love,

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Elder Messick

P.S. Happy birthday to my cute little niece Blair :)

P.P.S. I guess happy birthday shout out #2 to you Kellie :) haha. Love ya.

[ MERRY CHRISTMAS! ]

Hey everyone. :) Merry Christmas to each of you :) It was so awesome getting to talk to each of you on the phone this morning. The weirdest part of that hands down was hearing Dallen's voice. He just has changed so much.

So we have had a lot of great things happening here in Nok-Beun! Some really big miracles. Our investigators here are awesome. They just already seem like investigators to me. :)

First off I'll talk about Brother Dong-Oo and Jeen Han. These kids are 20. I explained about them last week a little I think. These kids are golden to say the least, especially Jeen Han. They have both agreed to baptism twice but we don't have a specific date. Jeen Han came to 3 hours of church on Sunday but Dong-Oo had some stuff come up so he couldn't make it. He was just loving it at church. He kept just like nodding his head the whole time and agreeing with everything going on. Before church he text me saying he was so excited to go to church for the first time. The next day he came to our ward Christmas party too and had a good time. He is going to make a great member of our church! Dong Oo has been a little busy with work so it's a little harder to meet him but he called me last night asking a really sincere question. He asked why do we give gifts to other people if it's supposed to be a holiday celebrating Christ's birth. I was really impressed with this question and had a bit of a hard time answering it to be honest. I have real high hopes for these kids. :)

[ Our investigator Jeen Han at the Christmas Party ]

Another awesome investigator is Sister Kim and her twin kids, who are 15, one boy and one girl. She now has been to church 3 weeks in a row, ever since I got here and the ward really likes her. I think they will want to be baptized this month also. Keep them in your prayers. :)

For our Christmas yesterday, we all met up with the zone and planned to do some caroling but it didn't really work out. It was cool to have President and his wife with us all day. I really love them and they really care about us like we are their own children. They put together a big conference for Christmas on Monday where we did skits and a talent show and watched some Christmas clips about Christ. Lunch was unreal!!! We had ham sandwiches. Man oh man did I miss those. It's funny how something I used to just eat like every day for a sack lunch at school could taste soo dang good.

Well I'm pretty sure I updated you on a lot of other stuff over the phone. I need to get goin' now. I hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I love you guys!!

--
Love,

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Elder Messick

P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY KEL! I love you sis.

[ I took Dong Oo and Jeen Han out to eat some kim chee stew. :) ]

[ Member Sheek-saw(meal) ]

[ IT'S ALMOST CHRISTMAS!! :) ]

Hey everyone!

Well my companion and I are getting into the swing of things here and have pretty much everything in order. Well we did, and then we now have another hill to climb haha. So, this last Sunday our ward was combined with two bordering wards turning 3 wards into 1. It's going to be great! We had about 200 people at church on Sunday, UNREAL! :) Now, we have lots of members names to learn on top of countless other things we now have to figure out. There now are 6 missionaries in our ward, 4 elders and 2 sisters. Just speculation, but I think that the other 2 elders' area will be shut down at the next transfer in a few weeks. Our bishop's name is Bishop An. He was the bishop of one of the other wards for about a year and I think it will be very good for missionary work here.

At church yesterday only one of our investigators could make it, but man she is a good investigator! Sister Kim. She wasn't an investigator before we got here, but they were meeting her kids. She now has come to church 2 weeks in a row and thinks it's all really good. During Gospel Principles class the teacher asked me to explain the plan of salvation for her and she really seemed to like that. She thinks it all makes sense and I'm sure it brought her comfort, since her husband has passed away. I have very high hopes for her and her children.

On Saturday night I had a pretty cool experience. So we were out on the streets contacting when I got a call that some girl left her phone at the church and wanted us to go look for it. Right when we show up at the church, there was a lady from another ward in our chapel so we just said hello. She called me over and said this "I was just thinking, it would be so good if the missionaries where here, then boom there you were." She ended up talking to us about a less-active who she knew who had just moved into our ward a week ago and wanted us to contact her. That night when I got home I gave her a call. No answer. A few minutes later I got a text from her asking who we were. As I went on to explain, she was more than thrilled to hear from us! She asked about church, where the building was, and what time sacrament was. The next day we met her at the Subway station and went with her to sacrament. She said she enjoyed it. I was happy that we were at the right spot at the right time to be able to get in contact with this great sister.

I have been helping my companion a lot with adjusting to Korean life and culture. Taking him out to eat some Korean dishes and helping him to speak as much Korean as possible. Sometimes when we contact someone, I will just stand a few feet behind him and try to let him do the whole thing himself until he needs me then I'll help him out. He really is tearin' it up and is going to be a great missionary.

Sorry but I can't think of too much else to update on.

Oh wait, this week we met 2 new 20 yr old investigators, Won and Hong. They are really cool and are curious about The Book of Mormon. They really like to read, so that's good they will have fun reading this book :)

Well fam, I look forward to talking to you on the phone one last time this Christmas! Remember the purpose of Christmas, to remember the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. Without him, we would be absolutely nothing after this life, but he completed the Atonement and suffered for each of us. He lives today and allowed each of us to conquer death and live again. I love our Savior.

Have a great week fam. I love you!!

--
Love,

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Elder Messick

P.S. HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY TO YOU SYDNEY!!! :)

[ 강남 Style ]

[ My Christmas countdown santa from the Masters family :) ]

[ WOW WHAT A TRANSFER! ]

Hey everyone. Wow! This last transfer call blew my mind! I have been transferred, as I expected, but the location, definitely caught me off guard. I am back in my greenie area!!! Nok-Beun 녹번! It gets even crazier. I am whitewashing the area, and training there! This is now my 3rd round of training. Can you believe it!! President even made 2 or 3 funny comments about me training so much in the last meeting haha. I am so excited to be back in my greenie area, most likely to "die" where I was "born."

So I am training another new missionary. His name is Elder Fonnesbeck from a small town in Idaho. He is a really cool guy and it seems like we're gonna have a great 2 transfers together. He is ready to get down and work, which is good because that's what we do out here. :)

Our house that we came to was a bit of a mess I guess you could say, so we have been doing lots of cleaning to try to get it better. All we have finished though is the kitchen. We still have to do the bathroom and the floors. Our house is a pretty nice house though and a lot bigger than my last house so it will be really nice. :)

We have a few really good investigators here in this area. First is Brother Kim. He is 29 yrs old and is just so cool. He has a baptismal date set up right now, but we are going to push it back a little bit because we still need to get his confidence in the commandments up a little bit, specifically tithing. He quit smoking and drinking 3 weeks ago and hasn't relapsed once yet. :) He was at church yesterday and things just look good for him.

The next set of investigators is the Kim family. She is a single mother, her husband passed away a while back, and has twin kids, a boy and a girl. The other missionaries had met the kids 2 times but never got to meet the mom. When I came to the area I gave the mom a call asking to meet. We set an appointment for Saturday. They really liked us and she has lots of interest in Jesus Christ. I invited her out to church and she came for all 3 hours yesterday with her daughter. She seemed to really like it and the ward did a great job with fellowshipping. That was a miracle to me to help her come out to church. She won't be coming next Sunday because of a prior appointment, but wants to come on the 23rd!

Lastly, we are meeting with the Park family. Ya, another family!!! This situation was very similar to the one above. They missionaries have met with just the kids 2 or 3 times to help with English, but haven't been able to teach much about the gospel. When we went over to their house on Saturday, I felt like I should ask the kids if it was alright to invite their parents in for gospel time. When I asked the mother if that would be ok, she seemed happy with the invite and went and got her husband. We had a very natural and normal conversation about their beliefs in God and religion. The mother looks especially interested. Again, there is a lot of potential here.

On sunday at church when I gave my introduction talk, everyone was shocked to see me again and couldn't believe I was back in the ward. It was cool being able to talk with lots of members and being able to understand them and have conversations. I am just so happy to be back. Of course I wondered a little bit why I was back, but the Lord answered this question for me very quickly through the scriptures this week as I read D&C 112:19. I just need to go where I am called and the Lord will have people prepared there for me.

I am sooo excited to be in the same ward again as Dong-Sun, the second person I help to be baptized. When I sent him a text on Tuesday night that I was moving back to Nok-Beun he sent this reply. "Today is not April Fool's Day." Hahahah! He is pretty happy that I am back. He has been strong in the gospel, has received the Aaronic Priesthood, visited the temple, and read The Book of Mormon multiple times. His life and how it has changed is a miracle.

The last thing of the week. I was able to see my trainer again. His mission just came to an end and his family came to pick him up. He has spent the last few days going to all the places he's served and on Sunday he came to Nok-Beun. That night I got to eat dinner with him and his parents along with his youngest sister at our bishop's house. It was a very fun night. :)

Well family, have a great week. I love you all!!!

--
Love,

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Elder Messick

[ The first snow! Man it came down...on transfer day!!!!! ] 

[ Christensen family with our Bishop ] 

[ Sister Jeen, she will be baptized in the spring ] 

[ Kevin. Brother Kim. ] 

[ Me and my comp ]

[ TRANSFER CALLS! ]

Hey guys! Well tonight's the night for me! We will be getting our transfer calls, sending me into transfer #13. Of course anything can happen, but it's looking like I will be heading to my next and most likely last area. It makes me sad to think I will leave Bu-Cheon because I really love this area. I say that about all of them, but this area is just awesome! Every member is just the best!! I will come back here to visit no question. :)

Well I think the highlight of my week this week was Boo. Let me explain. So this was a girl who I home taught while going to school at BYU-H. She was a senior, I was just a freshman so it was a bit awkward, but we did it anyways because it was our calling. She was really quiet and our meetings weren't very long. BUT, after I got my mission call to Korea she totally lit up! She was so happy every time we met and she loved to tell me about Korea. Well she graduated from school and now is teaching at an English Academy in the area right next to mine. This week we had a dinner appointment with a member who lives in that area, so I was able to set up a little meeting to say hi. We chatted and she told me how much we helped her at BYU-H. It was so great getting to see her again. It was strange being able to speak in a different language to her than before. At BYU-H she prayed in Korean and I couldn't understand a word, now we can have a casual conversation without even thinking twice. There is not a doubt in my mind that the gift of tongues is real. On top of that, there isn't a question in my mind that I was called by revelation to be her home teacher, to help her and to prepare me. She will be a lifelong friend of mine.

Another thing that happened this week is with our investigator sister Jeen. She is the investigator just waiting to get married before baptism. Anyways, she had a dog and it was basically like her kid. This week it was hit by a car and she has been having a really hard time with that so we have been trying to comfort her with that. It's given her a stronger desire to keep all of God's commandments, now we just have to re-explain the commandment of baptism I guess!

Brother Kim has been out in the countryside now for 2 weekends so we haven't had a chance to meet, but we will try to meet him tomorrow.

Other than that we did tons of member visits this week giving away these cool member cards that my companion and I put together. It is laminated and has a picture of us and a magnet on the back to put it on their fridge with D&C 76 22 on it. They all love it. :)

Well I need to head, but I love you all so much. have a great week. :)

--
Love,

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Elder Messick