Hi all!! Love you so much. Can't believe I got to see your beautiful faces this past week. It feels like a million years ago really. It's getting colder and colder here and we've had a couple random snow storms. On thursday the weather was fine until we stepped outside and there was like a freak blizzard. we were far away enough from our house where we didn't want to go back and get our umbrellas and we thought we could tough it out. yeah we were definitely wrong. we were completely soaking wet by the time we got the store to buy umbrellas and we looked ridiculous. aka I looked like a wet dog. It was fun. I got home that night and scared myself when I looked in the mirror...that seems to happen a lot as a missionary I just care less about what I look like. Especially because everyone thinks we're freaks anyways walking around in the freezing cold in skirts. But it's all good!

This week we had the craziest investigator experience both me and Sister Gap were like whaaaat....so we meet this guy who wants help with English but then was interested in the Book of Mormon and wants to find out why people like it so much. Turns out he's way good at English ask he teaches English and is a translator so he wanted to read the Book of Mormon in English because he wanted it to be original and not translated Korean. We were like okay....oh also he doesn't believe in God. He believes in humanity. He's like yeah basically we're kind of like machines and after we die it's like that's the end. Like when a tv breaks that's the end of the tv's life. How sad is that?? So our goal is to instill in this guy some hope through the gospel. Anyway he comes to our second meeting with this document he prepared that has the Book of Mormon line by line first in English and then in Korean. He's like yeah I found it on the internet and copied and pasted it and cut and paste so that I could go line by line. And we were like what the....what kind of person spends that much time on this?? He is seriously meticulous. It was the weirdest thing but awesome. And then he's like yeah so the first five clauses of the Book are really beautiful the way they are written. And we were like oh gosh this guy is way too smart for us...but the lesson turned out to be okay and he's really interested in reading the Book of Mormon so hopefully that will help him. I told him that he couldn't read it with the purpose of proving it wrong and he was like oh no I would never do that but then he said that he doesn't think he'll come to find that it was translated by God's power either...so we'll see what happens. I told him to have an open mind and read it specifically paying attention to how he feels, not only the language (he's studying linguistics so that's why he's fascinated with the whole translation thing) but he's great and hopefully we'll get him to believe in God and have some hope.

Started reading in Matthew today simply about the beginning of Christ's life. Truly grateful for my Savior. In matthew 5:17 I think it talks about Christ going into Capernaum and how the people there are in the shadows of darkness but when Christ visits He brings them light. That's the same for us. If we let Christ into our lives, we let light into our lives, whatever that may mean for us whether it be happiness, peace, understanding, forgiveness. Christ's light overpowers the darkness but we must choose that light.

Love you all tons.

Remember to choose Christ every day!!

 

Love your favorite ever!!!

Sister Blick

hi all. i don't have much to write this week. in fact it will be really short. because i get to talk to you next week!!! ah!! how crazy is that???

 

first i want you all to look up Alma 27:17. right now.

okay

 

did you look it up?

 

because if you didn't. than you must.

 

anyways that will be me in november of 2014.

 

when i read that i laughed. and then i was like yeah that will be me.

 

this week during district meeting we discussed the importance of the Book of Mormon in conversion and how it has played a part in our conversion. Last Monday I had an interesting experience. So we met this lady on the street a couple weeks ago who, when i asked her if she wanted to learn about Christ told me to follow her to her house. So I was like great this is awesome! She ends up taking us to some other place to meet her friend who "has interest in your message" so we met him really awkwardly. got his number and left because he was working at the moment. she then proceeded to take us to meet another one of her friends who she wanted us to meet. basically she gives us referrals but isn't interested in the gospel herself. anyway we decided to meet her again and she took us to this place where like five guys were sitting around a fire thing. oh my gosh it started snowing here by the way! yeah snow is on the ground! and ice....okay back to the story. so she introduces us as her friends. oh while we were walking there she's like can you take off your badges for like a little bit? and we were like no....and she's like ah okay. but yeah so she's like these are my friends! and they're all like laughing and joking that we're americans and blah blah and then it was way awkward because she didn't say anything else like about us being missionaries or anything so we just sat there awkwardly and i was thinking in my head gosh i do not want this to be pointless and i need to open my mouth. so this guy ends up being like oh you're mormon yeah i know mormons. so i walk over to where all the old guys are sitting and start talking to him. and he's Christian and heard of Mormons before and this other guy was like oh what's Mormon? And the guys like they're like Islam and I was like uh no we're Christian. And he's like no you're not. Mormons aren't Christians. And I wanted to be like excuse me?? Yeah I'm the Mormon here thank you. But then I calmed down and I was like no we believe in Jesus Christ and God. And he was trying to quiz me on who created us and who was God's son and i was like Christ. I believe in Jesus Christ. I teach about Jesus Christ. And he's like well what is this Mormon then? And I talked to him about the Book of Mormon and had him read the intro and the testimony of the witnesses and his countenance changed. I felt the Spirit strongly and I know that he did too. I testified about Christ and that the Book of Mormon contained God's words. I knew that I taught what I needed to. And I knew that it is such a privilege to testify about Jesus Christ. Sometimes we think that missionary work is having people accept the gospel and get baptized, but a lot of missionary work is merely giving people the chance to learn and understand more. That guy didn't want to learn more, but I know that his thinking about the church changed and his understanding was clearer. It was an awesome experience.

 

The ward members are great and about 95 percent of them speak ridiculously good english.

 *Sister Blick sent me the link to her Dropbox account where she has all her pictures stored, so I don't have any more captions, sorry!!!

 

 

 

 

hiiiiiiiiii i have so many things to tell you ahhh!!  This week was full of little miracles and it was great. oh also i uploaded new pictures on dropbox so check it out.

first funny things that happened.

i got a free coat! hahahah so this lady has been coming to English class for like eveeeer aka 3 years and she's been taught the lessons I think like a million times but that's a different story. anyway the first time i met her she was wearing this coat and i was like oh my gosh your coat is so cute i love it and it looks really warm. and she's like do you want it? you can have it. and I was like nooooo....i couldn't.....and i was like i'll pay you for it and she's like no! I don't want you to pay i'll just give it to you! and i was like sweeeeet. so she gave it to me and it's awesome and i love it. (awkward emoticon)

okay second thing this is just a weird story. so we were on our way to go advertise our english class and this guy walks up to us and is like here's my card and we were like oh do you want to learn english and we gave him a flyer. and he just looks at me and is like you're really pretty. call me. and i was like uhh...thanks...and then we walked away and he runs after us and points to the flyer and is like is this your number? if i call will you answer? and we were like yeah....and he's like oh you're missionaries? i'm Christian. okay i'll call and i can learn english and we can talk about god. And we were like what the....okay! So he calls and we set up an appointment and then the day of the appointment he texts us in the morning and is like yeah i can't meet with you anymore. he's like first i wanted to learn English from you because you are so beautiful but what your church teaches is wrong. And we were like oh you've learned about our church before? and he's like i looked on the internet. gosh people do you believe everything you see on the internet? so yeah we didn't end up meeting with him but it made for a good story.

so two awesome things happened this week! well lots of awesome things happen but these two are especially awesome. and it all has to do with the plan of salvation! So the first was monday night we were advertising our english class and this guy came up and stood next to me (i was holding a poster) so I said hi and asked him if he wanted to learn English and then he started speaking perfect English to me. Seriously that happens here a lot. Koreans are the smartest people on the Earth I think. anyway so we start talking about why i'm here and how there are a lot of different churches around and that he's been waiting for a long time to feel something special but he hasn't found it. and i was like HELLO WELCOME TO THE TRUTH! So for the next twenty minutes I talked to him about different aspects of the gospel like the Atonement, the Plan of Salvation, feeling the Spirit and how we can find truth through reading scriptures and making time for God. It was seriously the best. I talked to him about how even though I'm young I know that this church is true and I know that it brings hope and happiness into our lives. I talked to him about having faith and having hope and that life is hard sometimes but because of the Savior we can be happy and fight through the hard times. I was able to testify that God has a plan for us and because He loves us He wants us to find truth and knowledge and that if we make time for Him He will bless us with answers to our prayers. It was so great and saying that and testify just strengthened my testimony because everything I was saying was true. Everything I was saying was from the heart. So we got his number and hopefully can meet. He says he's busy during the week because of work so pray for me that we can meet with him on the weekends!!

then we started teaching this girl named Lee. She's actually Chinese and she's here going to Seoul University. She doesn't know Korean so we're teaching her in English which she's really good at. Anyway the first time we met we were trying to get to know her religious background a little bit and she opened up and told us about her experience about finding God. She said that her dad died a little while ago and that was really hard for her family because he was young and the death was sudden. She said that she had so many questions during that time and that she turned to God and the scriptures to find answers. She was talking about how she didn't know if she would see her dad again and she didn't know if he would go to heaven because he didn't really have religion and she wondered why that would happen to him. So she said she was reading the scriptures and she found her answer (which to be honest I didn't really get) but that she knew that her dad was alright and that God loved her. And we were like OH MY GOSH YOU ARE PERFECT so for the second time I was able to testify that she would see her dad again and talk about the plan of salvation and how Heavenly Father has a plan for all his children and I told her about Courtney and how that was hard for our family but because we know that we can see her again and live with her forever we have hope for the future and the eternities. She's so awesome and the Spirit was so strong and I love that I can teach about this true true forever true gospel because it's so glorious! Certain days of the week suck a lot but little things like this make the whole experience worth it.

Don't ever take for granted the knowledge that we have as members of the church. We are so lucky to have been raised in this glorious gospel. Thanks mom and dad for being such faithful examples to your children. Love you tons!!

Sister Blick

transfers are next week!!! ahh what will happen???

hi fam bam i love you tons. and i am beyond grateful for you. i hope thanksgiving day was awesome for you! We got fed by an American family that's living here for the husband's job. He served a mission in Seoul about 12 years ago and they've been living in Korea for four years. They have the cutest daughters and I loved playing with them. I played hide and go seek with the 5 year old and she reminded me of Cutter but a cuter, calmer, nicer, girl hahahah ^^

anyway this week will be short! So our investigator texted us on Friday and told us that she doesn't think she's ready for baptism and kind of eluded to the fact that she doesn't want to keep meeting. That was heartbreaking. We said a prayer to help her and comfort us. We don't know exactly what she's feeling and we're meeting once more this week and we're praying that we can figure out what happened and be able to comfort her. That's the hard thing abou missionary work is that people have their own agency and Satan is working so hard against us. That news was hard to take but we're not giving up on her yet!

Our other investigator that we're teaching is awesome though! It's the husband of a recent convert in the ward and he's great. We taught him the first lesson yesterday and pretty  much everything is new to him because his parents are Buddhist but he didn't really grow up believing it and doesn't have a religion. His wife was the same way before she got baptized so I asked her to share how she came to know that God lives and she said at first it was awkward when she prayed because she didn't know God, but as she prayed to Him she received answers and she knew that He lives. It was awesome. OH BY THE WAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY KRISSY IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY IN KOREA WOOOOOHOOO!! sorry i just thought of that and i knew i would forget. sorry for the insert. anyway. so he said that he's read a little bit of the Book of Mormon so we didn't have to give him that commitment but he basically said that he wants to read the whole thing because the Book of Mormon is evidence for everything and i was like YES YES IT IS! It was awesome and he said that he would be baptized if he finds these things to be true yayy!!! It was great and even though our Korean is horrible it went well!

Oh this week we were trying to heart attack a member's house and the gate to their apartment complex area was locked so did I give up? No! I climbed a wall and hopped over and unlocked the gate so my companion could come in too hahaha whoops....but i didn't get caught! and it was a great story ^^

Last and this week we're trying to meet all the members in our ward and leave them with a spiritual thought and commitment to pray for someone to share the gospel with during the month of December and bear their testimonies about it January fast and testimony meeting. So I challenge you with that too! Our mission scripture is 1 Nephi 13:37. Read it and think about the amazing blessings that we get from sharing the gospel. Those promises are promised to every member because every member must be a missionary! After all you did covenant to do that when you were baptized ^^ So get on it!

Just wanted to share with you the words of a hymn that I found this week

 

God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform

 

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take

The clouds ye so much dread

are big with mercy and shall break

with blessings on your head

 

His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour

The bud may have a bitter taste

But sweet with be the flower

 

Remember that Heavenly Father is all-knowing! He loves you and wants to bless you. Thank you for being wonderful examples to be as I was growing up. You are all my best friends and my life would be desolute without you.

 

Love you more than words can express

Sister Blick