Week 42

Dear friends and fam!

Oh my goodness this week was so long I don't even remember what happened haha! I seem to have a lot of those weeks on the mission.. Oh man but it was such an awesome week! There were some pretty awesome miracles. We worked hard and saw and saw some fruit. From our labors. (also we did buy lots of good fruit this week but HOLY COW it was so expensive.. 5 peaches for 10 dollars? Never again)

One super awesome miracle.. Last Thursday after our weekly dinner with Kim Ji Hae (our member) we went to finish an apartment we'd started knocking by her house. We knocked on the door of a woman named Kwan Ki Nam. She was so nice, let us in right away and told us that normally she wouldn't have opened the door for 'religious people', but because she had passed us on the street, and we had said hello to her two times, she wanted to meet and talk with us because we were so friendly. She told us that she was buddhist and so she didn't have interest, but as we went on to share our message, she seemed to become very interested. We introduced the book of mormon to her and bore testimony of the comfort and strength it has given us in our lives, and she was so shocked. She said "really? I read the buddah book all the time, and I never receive anything like that." We explained to her our purpose as missionaries, and that we are teaching people about this book and how their lives can change and benefit from the book of mormon! We shared Moroni 10:3-5, and she said "great! I want to know!" It was such a miracle. Also, she has just had some kind of surgery on her neck so she's been taking it easy, we asked if there was anything we could do to help her, and she said something like "well actually I have forgotten how to pray." She wants us to teach her how to pray. Well okay we can do that for you. Also we had a ping pong tournament this last saturday, which was a HUGE success, so many people came, including Ki Nam and her two sons. Meeting her was evidence to me that greeting and talking to EVERYONE actually makes a difference. If we hadn't have said hello to her, she wouldn't have opened the door for us!

Also we got an awesome referal from one of our members yesterday! Her name is Kwan Kyong Hwa. She is a hair stylist who works for the company Nuskin, so she took a trip to Utah last year and loved it. We visited her at her salon, and she was busy doing hair, so we weren't able to have a full on sit down lesson with us, but she just talked to us while she was doing hair. So she is super english interested , but it turns out that when she was in Utah for a few short days on her business trip, she visited the Salt Lake Temple and basically described it to us as the most amazing experience in her life! She showed us pictures. She had taken pictures with Sister missionaries, saw the Christ statue, and even snuck some photos of people getting their wedding pictures taken. She was in awe. She described the moment when she saw the statue of Christ to us and heard his voice (the recording they play, you know). She said that even though she couldn't understand the words because it was in english, tears just rolled down her cheeks. Our member, 엄준옥 (who came with us) then piped in and said "you felt the spirit!!" How amazing is that? I was just smiling from ear to ear as she was telling us this. It made me so happy. Although our time with her was short, we gave her a book of mormon (she had received one on her trip but lost it, so we gave her another). She accepted it graciously. We're scheduled to meet with her regularly every Sunday. I hope that we can help her feel that same feeling she felt at the Salt Lake temple. I think she has so much desire and potential! Such a cool experience :)

Our sweet investigator Leann threw a party for us this week. She is one of the sweetest people I've ever met... I just love her so much. She had all of her students over (the most adorable children EVER) and we played games and ate food.. She even planned out time for us to teach a lesson. So we taught all the kids about the story of Alma the younger, and about making good choices. They absolutely loved it! They were so involved. It was so much fun. Although the main purpose of the party was for her students to meet foreigners haha.. she was still aware of our purpose as missionaries and respected it. We'll be meeting with her a lot this week. Man I just love her. And I want her to know even more that God loves her. 

This week our district did a service project at this restaurant that feeds old people for free every month. I felt pretty useless because all they wanted us to do was stand at the door and greet people.. but hey if it was helped I was happy to do it! I watched these old people flock in by the hundreds.. literally.. all these grandmas with their flowery sun umbrellas and sparkly shirts.. I can't describe korean old people. They are basically the highlight of my life haha. It was so much fun. Also I would just like to describe to you a korean dessert I ate this week. A really common summer treat here is called pop-bean-su. It is shaved ice with sweet red bean.. I am not particularly a fan of it but koreans LOVE it. Some of them don't have beans, just fruit and other things.  Well anyways, our member made us her home made pop-bean-su this week.. and this is literally what it consisted of. Shaved ice with corn flakes, canned peaches, crushed oreos, rice cake bites, cherry tomatoes (yes you heard right) topped with sweetened condensed milk. As she was making it for us all I could think of was the movie Elf, where he mixes all that stuff with the spaghetti hahaha. And you know what? It wasn't half bad..

I came to a realization this week as I was plucking my eyebrows... Repentance is exactly like plucking your eyebrows. You need to do it every single day, or it adds up fast and before you know it you've got a hairy caterpillar on your face. (believe me, I know) If you do it every day, all you have to do is a few single hairs. If you repent every day, you keep yourself accountable to the Lord. You are able to see the little things you need to work on and improve to become a better missionary, a better person. It is so important to 'pluck' everyday. It is a constant process of perfection. I know. I'm deep. hahaha

I hope you all have a wonderful happy and fantastic week. Until next week!

Sister Holmes

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