hi pamilyyyy i lub you tons. this week had a lot of fun and awesome things so let me tell you about it!!

first i'll tell you about our investigator! she's so cute I love her. She's Chinese and has been living in Korea for five years. She speaks Mandarin and Korean and English so she's amazing. Anyway we gave her a baptismal date this week!! It was so exciting. She;s so earnest and precious and wants to live the gospel and just learn! It was so awesome to teach her about repentance and baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost and why those things are so important. She struggles with the Word of Wisdom and so she received a priesthood blessing yesterday from a member in our ward who struggled with smoking even as a member. One of our members has fellowshipped her and their relationship is just great. Our investigator really trusts her and we can tell that she really has the desire to live the gospel of Christ and to get to know Jesus Christ better. The change in her life from the gospel is amazing, this gospel truly is such a blessing.

So just some fun things last week after I emailed we went to Gangnam and it started snowing! haha I felt like I was in New York City it was awesome. Also after I emailed I talked to this crazy guy for like fifteen minutes about how someone was trying to kill him and how he knows it's the Korean government and every day they shock him with an invisible gun and spray metal powder at his legs and how he gets attacked all the time. I was like....well good luck with that....yeah we see him everywhere now so we have to be careful.

Last week I also went on exchanges with one of my besty friends from the MTC well actually we weren't really that close in the MTC but we served in the same zone when we got out here so we got super close. Her name is Sister Florence. Anyway it was basically the best day ever. I ate shark soup!! I know I'm branching out. Be proud. I also ate mussles!! Yeah we went out to lunch with some members and our YW pres was like do you like seafood and i was like no and then she ordered me seafood soup I was like...thanks. But it ended up being way good. But spicy. So my mouth was on fire. But I'm getting used to that. Anyway back to exchanges. they were so fun. I'll just tell you the last part of our day. so we walk forever to this members house so give them these lantern things that Sister Florence and her companion made for them and we get to the door and knock and this guy opens the door and after Sister Florence all nice says hi! in English says what do you want? And we were like uhhh this is awkward and she's new to the area so she didn't know the member and she was like are your daughters home? and he was like what? and we were like we have a present for your daughters. and he was like my daughters? and she said yeah...and then said their names and he was like yeah that's not me....HAHAHA it was hilarious I died laughing and she was like this is not funny. It was awesome. Poor guy got two random foreigners trying to speak Korean tell him that we had presents for his daughters. Good times.

One more funny experience. So there was this girl sitting alone at a bus stop so I go up and pretend I'm waiting for the bus naturally and she has a suitcase so I'm like oh are you traveling? and she says in English sorry I don't speak Korean and I was like really? Because she was Asian obviously. and she's like yeah I'm Chinese...hahaha I was like aaaand I feel racist now. But I can't tell!! Anyways we started having a great convo about how she was there for training for work and how she was waiting for the bus to go to the airport and we told her we were missionaries and sharing a really important message and gave her a mormon.org card and right as we were talking about it her bus comes up stops for like 0.00002 seconds and leaves and we were like uhh.....it was SO AWKWARD. I was like well hopefully you look at the website and realize that our message is worth missing your bus to the airport to catch your flight.....yeah that was great.

So yeah this week was fun. But it's raining and windy and freezing outside right now sooo today will probably be rough. But I love you all! Only a few more weeks until I get to talk to you!! I'm pretty sure it's only a phonecall....so you can divy up times....? Yeah not sure how that's going to work considering there's like a million of you. But I love you!! Have a good week and remember to be grateful for the gospel. During Thanksgiving try to express your gratitude as much as you can and show your gratitude to the Lord by bearing your testimony to those around you. And I hope for Christmas you can find someone for the missionaries to teach as your present to the Lord!! Miss you like crazy!!

 

Sister Blickenstaff

hi family. i decided to write you my main email before i try to talk to any of you because it is just way to difficult the other way around. This week I had some funny and some awesome experiences. My new area is sooooo great and I love it.

First story: we met these high school students (ps I LOVE talking to high school students because they are super funny. they either are like the most excited thing in the world to talk to you or they are scared out of their mind) So these were two excited girls that were hilarious they kept yelling 신기하다! which means wonderful! and they said oh my gosh like a million times and they were laughing the whole time we were talking to them. So we invited them to english class and it was just a fun party.

Second story: we had a combined mission conference these weekend and I got to see Sister Chao for the first time!! She's doing great and she's so beautiful and has the best trainer in the world. She was in the MTC with me and she's awesome. She's Korean but lived in Canada for a while so her English is perfect and she's so cute and practically American. Also saw Elder Pace. haha he was asking people if they knew who Sister Blickenstaff was and he found me and was like hi do you know me and I was like of course! Elder Pace! And he was like how do you know me...? And I wanted to be like little did you know I thought you were super cute when we went to school together and you have no idea who i am yeah i'm not a creeper or anything! But i was like oh Vance and Devin were friends with you and we went to school together....But yeah that was fun. Made me laugh because it reminded me of my stalkerish ways.

Third Story: Sunday I was having a particularly hard time so I was fasting and the merciful Lord showed me a couple miracles. So the first one we had an investigator come to church with us and she told us that she's been trying to keep the WoW but when she gets stressed out she smokes. She says that she really wants help and wants to get rid of that habit and that she wants to try this "church thing" out because she's never really done it before and she thinks it will be good for her life. So we'll hopefully start meeting with her more regularly and be able to help her come closer to her Savior and rely on Him to get rid of her addiction. The second miracle we were on the subway home and my dedicated companion started talking to someone and so I jumped in the conversation and we started talking about how we were missionaries and she ended up giving us tangerines randomly yeah people in Korea do that a lot. and the conversation had kind of died out but the Spirit put a thought into my head to say hey since you gave me a gift can I give you a gift? So I tried to rationalize a million reasons of why not to say it but before I could convince myself I blurted it out and she laughed and said what gift? So I introduced the Book of Mormon to her and told her why it was important and she said okay thanks I'll read it! She didn't live in our area and she said she didn't have a phone but we gave her our number and I don't know if she'll read it or if she'll even look into the church, but the Lord showed me that tender mercy of me being able to share something that's so important to me with the Korean people.

Missionary work is really hard, but the blessings that we get in return far outweigh the cost. It's hard to remember that sometimes, but the Lord helps us in everything we do.

I studied this morning about sacrifice and how it shows our acknowledgement of our duty to God and our thankfulness for the blessings He has given us. Sacrifice is really hard, but I read about Abraham and Isaac and after the Lord tells Abraham not to sacrifice his son, he names the place Jehovah-jileh (I think I can't remember exactly) which means The Lord sees and provides. The Lord sees the sacrifices we make and He will provide.

Think about how you can show your dedication to the Lord this week.

Love you all, need your prayers right now.

Sister Blickenstaff

hi hi hiiii i love you so much and i wish i could talk to you forever on p-day but i can't sad. but almost a month until i get to call you!! except i only have like an hour i think so i have no idea how that will work out. anyway in like an hour i'm going to see jer which is going to be so weird but i'm excited!! anyways i'll just share a couple thoughts with you before i have to go. i don't have that long of time anymore since things are a little different in my new area. so yeah i got transferred i'm a little more north. i love the area it's so pretty but it's freeeeeeezing seriously. there a lot of foreigners here because of Seoul University which apparently is like the most prestigious college in korea so it's weird seeing that but i love the area. my new compy is awesome. we're kind of just hangin out together not knowing korean and trying to share the glorious message! no it's not that bad haha but it will definitely be a fun experience.

just a couple of experiences i had and then i gotta hike on out of here.

first one was with an old grandma. i walk across the street and she's just sitting on one of the post things sticking up from the ground and she looks at me with like the biggest goofy smile on her face and i'm like hi and introduce myself as a missionary and she gets so excited and grabs onto my arm and tells me she wants to take us to her house and at first i was freaked out like where the heck is this grandma taking me but she told us as we were walking that recently she had been thinking what church should i go to? and then she was waiting there and she looked up and saw my eyes and then i introduced myself to her as a missionary and she said that was her answer! so she took us to her house and gave me and sister oh some persimmons and was like oh i hope we meet again and sent us on our way. don't ask me why we didn't baptize her right then. i won't get into that part of the story. i hope she finds the missionaries again someday and that she comes to know the truth because heavenly father really does prepare his children.

another was a less active well sort of less active we visited before i left. she comes to church but only sacrament meeting so she's considered active it's weird. we had a message to share with her but i got the impression to share a different scripture so i shared moroni 7:33 with her about faith and how through faith we can do all things. and i asked her what having faith means to her and she opened up and told us how she doesn't feel like she has faith and that she just goes to church because her family goes to church and that she understands why less-actives go inactive. and it was really touching. she started crying and was apologizing to us but we just let her know that we were there to help her and love and support her. she texted us after and told us thank you so much that she feels more comfortable now and that we helped her. i'm grateful that i could listen to the spirit and share that message with her and that we could help uplift her. I don't know if there's anyone like that you know but try to be spiritually sensitive to those around you. maybe someone in your ward is struggling and on the outside they look fine and happy but on the inside they're hurting. maybe they're a message you can share with them that will help their testimony grow and help them on the path toward Christ and life-long activity.

 

okay i have to go now but pay attention to the people around you!! and remember that Christ taught that it's always better to give than to receive. love you all have a good week. pray for me.

 

Sister Blick

 This is Kayla, the one that spent the day with us as a missionary!

 On Halloween these people were walking around so I had to take a picture with them naturally

When we ate Baskin Robbins, seriously I told you it was huge!

 I'm pretty sure I look horrible in this picture but this is one of my favorite ladies in my ward.  She always calls me her special unforgettable friend.

 Me and some cute girls I met on the street.  My coat's like wearing a blanket, it's the beeeeeeeest

One of my favorite families in the ward.  So sad to leave them!

hi hi hiiiii family. today isn't actually p-day but we get to email. i get to go to the temple on thursday so they made it like a temple p-day but we still email on mondays. it's weird. but anyways hiiii i miss you!! can you believe it's alreay november what??? soon i'll be calling you on the phone!! and I only have like a year left on my mission....weird....time flies when you're working hard.

Some fun things this week. since it was halloween we had a sort of halloween themed english class this week. each week we play a game so this week we bought krispy kremes (they were sooo good) and tied them on strings and did the whole eat them without hands game. it was hilarious and so fun. we had them spin six times and walk to where the donut was and they were like drunkies. who knew spinning six times was so debilitating. it was great.

this week was cool because there's a girl in our ward who is thinking about going on a mission. she's so cute and i love her and she speaks english since she went to Hawaii so i love her even more. anyway so we got permission from president for her to spend the day with us and kind of see what it was like. i'm literally doing everything i can to encourage her to serve a mission. it's been cool to share my experience and thoughts with her about sacrifice and serving the Lord and how my mission has helped me and stuff like that. it helped me think about why i'm serving and how blessed i've been from this experience. she asked me if i would ever regret serving and I was like no I would never regret it. There has been so much that i've learned that I would never trade anything for the experiences that I've had. The day she served with us was also october 31 so we went to baskin robbins and got a massive amount of ice cream and ate the whole thing. i thought i was going to explode. like seriously i probably gained five pounds from all the ice cream. picture to follow later. we had a couple miracles this week. well i consider them miracles at least. so we met with this lady for the first time this week who wanted to learn English which is where we get most of our investigators and she's so cute. Her english isn't that great but we started talking about what she wanted to learn about and she was like actually I want to learn about this book what is it? and pointed to the Book of Mormon and we were like weeeell let us tell you!! So we talked about the Book of Mormon and had her read a little bit of the introduction and she was like why do we need it? And we were like weeeelll let us tell you! And we talked about how it testifies of Jesus Christ and how it talks about God's plan for us and how we can find truth from reading it. And then we asked her to start reading it and she was like yeah of course. It was awesome. So we'll meet with her again this week and then I get transferred so I'm sad. Also I decided I have to start practicing talking on the phone because i am literally terrified of doing it. Mom you know how much I hated calling people and that was in English. So I was like freaking out about calling people but I knew that I had to do. So I got out the potential investigators list which was not very long and looked to see who I could call. I didn't know what I was going to say or what I was supposed to say so I was scared but I knew that the Lord would help me. So I called one person and they were like yeah I'm busy sorry so that was a bummer and I called a couple others but they didn't answer. There was one lady that I wanted to call but it said she had English interest so I wasn't sure what I would even say but I was like okay I'll just call her! So I called and introduced myself and asked her if she would like to meet so learn about our English/gospel program and she was like yeah sure when do you want to meet? So I set up an appointment and we'll meet her this friday!! Now that probably seems lame to you but it was amazing for me! So it was a miracle.

Spiritual thought for the week:

Read His Grace is Sufficient by Brad Wilcox

I was studying about repentance and forgiveness this week and about Christ's grace. Christ promises to forgive us if we confess and forsake our sins. He promises. Part of repentance and forgiveness is us forgiving ourselves. Because we are weak, Satan uses doubt and worry to weigh us down and make us think we aren't good enough for the Lord because we make mistakes. But that is what is so great about Christ's mercy is that even when we make mistakes, he still loves us. When we sin, Christ's Atonement is there to bless us. How merciful is the Lord that even when we sin He blesses us through forgiveness. I think we go through certain experiences to humble us. To make us step back and look at ourselves and the things we've been doing and evaluate what we need to change and how we can improve. And recognizing that we have weaknesses is okay as long as we rely on the Lord to help us overcome them and not succumb to Satan's temptations that our weaknesses make us unworthy to p[rogress and bring fear of failure in our minds.  We can commit to change and the Lord will continue to send us love to us. It's hard because even though we repent out mistakes aren't completely wiped from our memory but because the Lord forgives us, we don't need to dwell on them. We need to change, be more committed and obedient, look forward, and be humble.

Love you to death

Sister Blick