family family family!!!! hi i love you all so much!! this week was good! i was super sick at the beginning of the week i thought my head was going to explode and i was coughing my lungs out like crazy and i was just a mess. but i'm better now so it's all good! we had a fun p-day last week, we went to a big park and rode tandom bikes around for a little while. yeah i'm super out of shape....reminded me of when i went biking with mom and dad down to Malibu or somewhere like that and my butt was sore for like the next two weeks. but this time wasn't that bad. anyway then we had zone conference on tuesday which was super awesome. our mission is the best and i love our zone. we have the best missionaries in incheon for real. then i got to go on exchanges with only my best friend Sister Gapinski!!! yeah she's my sister training leader now so i went to her area and we got to serve together again for another day! it was super fun. the night we exchanged back we taught Sister Choi and then went to go visit the most recent convert in our ward is seriously the coolest!!! she is getting ready to go to the temple to take out her endowment and we are SO excited for her. her husband isn't a member but her sister-in-law is so they help each other out and she just loves the gospel so much we can tell everytime we talk to her. we talked to her about studying the scriptures and she said it was hard sometimes so we pulled out PMG (I had it with me from my exchange) and showed it to her and she was like this is awesome where can I get one? yeah she's the greatest. we talked to her about the temple and she wants her family to grow in the gospel but her husband has little interest still so she's holding out. the next day we also went to visit Sister Choi to talk about her baptismal interview which was supposed to be this week. we have to push her baptismal date back because she still doesn't have a testimony of Joseph Smith so we are focusing on learning more about him. She just says she doesn't know the kind of person he is so she can't believe him still...we're planning on watching the joseph smith movie with her tonight so pray for us!

okay i have like no time BUT i have to tell you about yesterday because it was literally the greatest day of my mission. --President and Sister Morrise came and spoke at our ward, and they gave such beautiful talks. First, we did a musical number with Bishop on the violin, and another sister on the flute, and Bishop's family and another family and I sang while Sister Hoffman played the piano. We did I am a Child of God and the ward LOVED it! And Sis. Morrise talked about scripture study and quoted an apostle saying that if we read the Book of Mormon every day, our homes will be filled with peace. And then Pres. Morrise spoke about how his father joined the church while stationed here in Korea (SO cool, right??) and then back home, was home teacher to a family and kept visiting and visiting them until they let him in and he read scriptures with them and helped them rekindle their testimonies. And then at the end of his talk, Pres. Morrise talked about the love of God and how He forgives us when we make mistakes, and it made our investigator, Sister Choi cry!! She said she was thinking about her daughter.

 

Also, we had made cookies for a less active family, for family home evening--we had had an appointment with them, but they had called and cancelled it the night before, saying they didn't have time. But we already made the cookies, so we gave them to them at church (they came yesterday we were so happy), and they told us to come over for dinner and family home evening! It was a miracle!

 

And THEN, we went to Seoul for SIster Park's baptism, and when we walked in, she saw us down the hall and we ran to her and hugged! It's been almost a month since we've seen her. She introduced us to her bishop and the ward members and her friends from the English branch...she's so needed by all of them in that ward. She's just wonderful. And Elder Bryan, one of the elders serving in Kajeong last transfer, transferred to Yeongdeungpo at the same time she moved there! So he performed the baptism!! As soon as Sis. Hoffman and I realized that we both died of happiness. We took pictures with them, and then during the service we sang A Child's Prayer with all the missionaries for her during the service, and she cried! And then they went into the font, and it was Elder Bryan's first time ever baptizing!  And then afterwards, she bore her testimony and talked of how she found the church. And she said that when she heard about the resistance in Geomam against building the church, she expected us all to do what she's always seen pastors and members of other churches do--be angry and call the other people Satan and things like that. But on the first day she came to church, it was the day when we decided to invite everyone to fast for the building in Geomam, and Bishop got up and bore his testimony. In it, he said that we need to love the people who persecute us, and continue to be kind and serve others and perservere. She said, when she heard that she knew she needed to get baptized. And we had NO idea!! It's amazing. OH and one of the other elders serving there was like you're sister blick right? you served in anyang? and i was like yeah...and he's like everything there remembers you. they know who you are and always ask about you-members, investigators, everyone. how long did you serve there? i was like uh 3 months and it was my greenie area. and he was like well they all remember who you are. i was so amazed! i remember leaving that area and kind of being sad because i felt like they would all forget who i was after a couple weeks. and now, a year later, they remember me!!! I felt so honored.

And then in the evening, we had dinner with our less active family, and had family home evening with them. We sang opening and closing songs, and we got the kids to act out a scripture story for the parents, and then we talked about what we could learn from the story, and then we played Spoons!! They had never played before and it was SUPER fun!!!

basically the best day ever in the whole world.

TOO MANY MIRACLES BEING A MISSIONARY IS THE BEEEEST!!!

kay love you. more than words can express. til next week!!

 

Sister Blick