Monday, June 1, 2015

Week 47 June 1, 2015 "The Lord truly does watch over and is constantly preparing people!!!

 It is June... What the??? A month from tomorrow I hit my year mark...so weird...haha. Time just flies for sure. I think I am making the most of my mission but maybe I will have to sit down and think about what more I can change. There is always something we as people can change because we aren't perfect and are constantly in need of change. The language will probably forever be a struggle but I am getting there and my conversations with people and fluency of speech is getting better so that's good. Korean has so many grammar forms and crazy rules that sure make it dang hard. My comp keeps saying that I am a lot better than I think and that I don't give myself enough credit so I don't know maybe I just need to be easier on myself. I had a stinking cough/sore throat all week long and it is finally starting to go away so that's nice. My body lately is just trying to get me to stop doing missionary work or something but I wont let it haha. Missionary work and talking to people is too much fun to give up.

     Last P-Day it was happy birthday buddha so of course we had to go to a buddhist temple. We did not know what we were getting ourselves into... The temple was really cool and it was interesting to see the buddhist beliefs and practices up close. So we get there and go up to like the 5th floor because it was a pretty big one. When we got up there we went into this worship room thing to look around and some ladies of course came up and started talking to us. People were like paying buddha, giving him food, and other kinds of worship. Then these guys come up to us who were loading like over 700 kilos of rice into bags that we originally paid to buddha for respect or something and they asked us to carry the bags. So yep we were blessed with a service opportunity when we weren't even looking for one. We had to carry the bags from the 5th floor to the 3rd floor but luckily there was an elevator or else we probably would of died. We had 6 missionaries there and a kid who was visiting from BYUI came with us. So my guess is that when all the buddhist people saw us they were like "hey we should just make all these Americans carry the rice for us" then the others said something like "good idea they probably won't even see it coming" haha. After we were their work horses they took us down to the cafeteria and fed us lunch! We had a bunch of watermelon and a Korean rice dish called bibimbap. So weren't expecting the meal so that was a pretty good deal I will say. After that we went to the members house that the kid from BYUI, Tyler, was staying at. They are members of our ward and had a really nice place. The dinner they made for us was yummy and we taught on the Book of Mormon as our message. I shared Dad's conversion story again and the members loved it. I followed that with my testimony and it was just a spirit filled meeting. It is cool to have a parent who is a convert because it helps in teaching a lot. Plus having a Mom that is just awesome and raised me so well and was so true to the faith and her religion all of her life really helps too. 

     We met this lady on the street who thought she knew us but we both had no clue who she was. She said she had a missionary friend and then walked us into a mart close by to meet her friend. When we got in there she asked her friend if she knew who we were and without hesitation in command form Korean told her not to talk to us. The lady was confused because she thought we were good people and her friend said we weren't. As we walked and my comp talked to her you could tell she was hesitant and worried about her friends' comment. My comp talked about the Book of Mormon and a bunch of other things with her. Afterwards we were just talking and man is it hard to take comments like that. Some people rely so heavily on others opinions and they won't give us a chance. I don't let stuff like that beat me up but it is just interesting. 

     The day of the conference literally everywhere we went there was someone prepared that we were supposed       to talk to. It was crazy we had so many miracles that day!!! Then the other day we saw these guys playing             ball so of course we had to jump in and play. Turns out that two of the guys  we played with have met                   missionaries before and one of them even has a Book of Mormon! Crazy huh? The same guys' grandfather           has a Book  of Mormon and believes it to be God's word. Super cool right? We are playing ball again this week     and are going to try and pick him up as investigator.  The Lord truly does watch over and is constantly                   preparing people!!!  

     We got a lot of practice lessons with members this week so that was good. This week we had a combined mission conference with the Seoul mission where Elder Maynes from the Quorum of the 70 spoke. It was way cool to see all of my buddies from the MTC that went to the Seoul mission. I got to see all of my favorite Koreans from the MTC so that was fun to talk with and see them again. President Ringwood was also at the conference and he gave a great talk! I learned too much at the conference and it would take me forever to write it all so I will end on something I really liked from Elder Maynes' talk. He talked about goals and the importance of them along with a bunch of other things. Life is hard and we are constantly learning new things and being blessed with more and more trials. We can't give up and have to keep growing and bettering ourselves. If you look at it from the aspect of sports particularly basketball. When you are done playing for the day you can't end on a miss right? You gotta end on a make!! You gotta get buckets and when you do then you can take a break. 

Love, 
Elder Picard
Buddhist Temple
All the rice bags I carried. 
Happy Birthday Buddha! 
Our study/planning area 
The kitchen I keep clean 
Sleeping area, guess which area is mine?
Laundry/closet area

No comments:

Post a Comment