It's still raining like crazy. I'm really beginning to wonder why Korea doesn't have any serious flood problems. I gave up on having dry shoes, and I now use a Korean typhoon quality umbrella instead of my tiny American one. Jeez. You'd think the sky would run out of water at some point, but it doesn't. The wonders of nature.
To improve my email quality, I took some steps and brought by journal. You might be surprised that it took me this long to think of something so genius, and so am I. Anyway, here are this week's highlights:
This week, we ran into members EVERYWHERE. It was amazing! I was really wondering how we could strengthen our relationship with our branch members and how we could develop more trust between them and us, and the Lord provided a way. On Tuesday, we met two members for lunch, and then on our way back home, we met two more on the street, and then while we were trying to find another member's house, a DIFFERENT member drove past us, stopped, and offered us a ride because she was dropping off the son of the member we were going to visit from school. Phew! If you can follow all that, props to you. We met a member family that night too. And that was just Tuesday. And oh my holy goodness, it's helped our relationship with the members SO much! I'm SO grateful that Heavenly Father has been helping us here.
We proselyte SO much recently. It's really good! Sister Hurley loves proselyting so we've been hitting the streets a lot. It's been good for us to get out and talk to more people than usual, and we've had really cool experiences although we haven't been able to find any potential investigators yet. But I know that as we just continue to strive to do our best and share the gospel with full purpose of heart that those investigators will be found. It's only a matter of waiting on the Lord's timing and learning what the Lord would have us learn in the process.
Last one: In Korea, working with members is SUPER important because we missionaries do a lot of the strengthening and fellowshipping and teaching the gospel to help them continue to progress. A lot of our members need help with their personal conversion and we were praying about how to help them in addition to planning and praying for our investigators. We weren't sure what we needed to do, but the Lord took care of everything. Oh my gosh, I love Heavenly Father so much! We have one investigator, Sister Kim. We've been working with her for a while, but the key to reaching her and REALLY helping her progress was member help. We had planned to work with some of the stronger sisters in our branch, but through a series of miracles, her new friends are two of the sisters in our branch who we were most worried about concerning personal conversion. But they are progressing SO much and they're testimonies are growing SO much. Why? Because they're doing missionary work. It's incredible! The reason missionaries can gain such a strong testimony on their missions is because sharing the gospel with others is what strengthens it and deepens conversion. Heavenly Father knew that that also applied to our members, even though we didn't, and He arranged everything. Sister Kim is progressing miraculously and she even came to district (stake) conference yesterday! I've never been so happy to see someone show up to a meeting. It was a miracle.
I love you all so much! The Lord lives, and He loves you.
Love,
Sister Bonney
