Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Baptism by fire...

September 28th, 2014
Dear everyone!

Once again, in the land of paradise, Sister Hurley and I have spent a glorious week converting everyone as the beautiful sister missionaries of Bangeojin. The men flock to us and refer their friends, and we've run out of Books of Mormon for the third time this week.

Um..... Excuse me? That's not real. In case you were wondering. Sister missionaries have beautiful spirits, but.... um..... hiking up hills everyday doesn't do much for your image. Neither does the humidity. Just cause it's almost October doesn't mean it's fall. Jeez. This is Korea! The weather has a mind of it's own. So, we're still sweating.

But we did have a baptism this week. Sister Kim was baptized on Friday night, and it was wonderful. It was mildly adventerous though. No matter how many baptisms we have in Bangeojin, we can never seem to figure out how to turn on the boiler so we can have hot water in the font. Well, after an hour of running around the church with the elders trying to figure it out, we finally got it on. We'd filled the font half way up with cold water, so we figured that if we turned on only hot water for the rest that would be a good idea. It's incredible God trusts people our age with things like this. I wouldn't. We left the hot water on and ran out to grab dinner. 20 minutes later we get a call from a member who'd showed up super early. "Um... The font is full....And the hot water is definitely working...." Yeah. The room with the font felt like a sauna. We could've cooked ramen in that water. We did our best to put in more cold water and balance it out, but sometimes your best just isn't enough, you know? Well, "I think I just burned her face off" are not words you expect to hear from the elder who just baptized your investigator. But it all turned okay and she didn't mention the temperature of the font later, which I'm going to take as a good thing. Some things don't need to be remembered...

But despite all that, it was a beautiful baptismal service and Sister Kim felt the Spirit. It was really wonderful to see all the members who had helped her as well. She and we couldn't have done it without them. Later that night after we'd all gone home, Sister Kim texted us: "Thank you for leading me onto the right path. Today was wonderful." It's moments like these that words can't describe the feelings in your heart.

We've had so many other miracles this week, but since I'm out of time for today, stayed tuned for next week! Remember, (literally) heaven only knows can happen when you put two white girls together in Korea.

The Lord lives and He's at the head of this work. Gah! I love missionary work!

I love you all so much!

Love,
Sister Bonney

PS The awkward moment when you run into a Croatian man only to have him ask how many wives you can have in our church. "Just one!" "Aw..You disappoint me! I was thinking about changing religions.." It's moments like this that you know the Lord has a sense of humor.