Dear everyone! August 31, 2014
I hope you had a great week! We did. ;)
Alright. Where do I start...
Let's start with the most important part of missionary work. As we all know, that's definitely finding less actives' houses. Someone's gotta to find em, and so we missionaries do it. It was Sister Hurley's first experience with LA finding. And in Korea it's especially exciting because we end up checking the mail of everyone on the block where they live trying to find their name. We also have the fabulous Korean address system which means that the official address doesn't mean anything and that instead we have to look for numbers written on the wall in permanent marker. Don't ask. Cause I don't know. But it works. We also ended up tracting to find out which of the houses in the area was hers. But what really matters is that eventually we found the house.
Oh yeah. She had moved. That's really important information!
It was at that point that Sister Hurley and I realized something. Did you know that the FBI does most of their recruiting at BYU? It's a fact. Why? The stats say that it's because most BYU students have served missions so they usually speak a foreign language and have spent time in foreign countries.
You want to know the real reason the FBI does most of their recruiting at BYU? It's cause most of the people there just spend 18 months to 2 years FINDING PEOPLE.
So, as many of you know, I am training right now. That means that my companion, the fabulous Sister Hurley, just barely got to Korea and I'm supposed to show her the ropes of how to be a foreigner and sister missionary in Korea. It's actually a pretty good life. But that also means that as two white, not-fluent-in-Korean missionaries that we can't do everything as smoothly as sometimes we'd like to. That also means that teaching is a test of faith. We have an investigator named Sister Kim (who I've probably mentioned before- she's the only serious investigator we've had in Bangeojin). She's progressing like wildfire, but for some reason, teaching her's been a struggle. She's kind of a skeptical personality and although she's open, she questions a lot. We were able to meet her with a member last week and work out a lot of her concerns about baptism, but she still had so much more that she was struggling to believe.
On Saturday, we had children's English class, which she attends with her two young sons. She came and we shared a spiritual message at the end. We did a short activity where we wrote letters to Heavenly Father to think more clearly about what we want/need to pray about. Sister Kim shared her letter and it was so heartfelt and sincere, and as the Spirit led the message, we were able to recognize how much the Lord has been preparing her over the 5 months she's been meeting with missionaries at English class, at church, and privately. The elders had a baptismal service later that day, and she attended. We were surprised but grateful to see how emotionally invested she was with everything that she experienced there and she had sincere interest in baptism. On Sunday, she had said she would come to church, but when sacrament meeting was starting, she still wasn't there. We gave her a call and she didn't answer. What can you do? Put on a smile anyway and do your best to fellowship the people who ARE there. We did that. BUT part way through sacrament meeting, she called. "Church's already over, isn't it? I'm so sorry. My mother surprise visited us this morning so I couldn't come... There's still gospel principles class, right? Can I come to that?" Even just 2 months ago, she had no interest in the gospel. After that phone call, I was so incredibly grateful to Heavenly Father. She did come to gospel principles class and at that class, the Spirit took charge. One of our recent converts attended the same church Sister Kim attends now. She along with another recent convert of 6 months and our branch mission leader basically wiped out all of her concerns for baptism during those 40 minutes. I've never been so grateful for members in my life. The Lord worked miracles through them yesterday. Church ended and Sister Kim sent us a text asking if we could meet this week to study the Book of Mormon together. We're planning on setting a baptismal date with her on Tuesday.
As we've seen these miracles, I've grown ever so mindful that the Lord is serving with us. He never tells His missionaries, "Go and serve!" Instead He says "Come with me." He doesn't ask us to do it alone because He knows that we can't. We need His help. It is up to us to recognize that and seek Him. And so the Lord calls the weak and the simple -us- because He knows that we will trust Him. I'm so inexpressively grateful for His love and mindfulness. He lives! And I can never deny it. What a privilege and a blessing to be a missionary for the Living God.
I love you all so much!
Love,
Sister Bonney
