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

 Some cute Korean high school students

Proselyting like a pro!

 The sweet skeleton we made for our ward Halloween party

 My cute zone leader, he is tiny!  Weighs like 100 lbs

 Our rockin ward missionaries

 My other cute zone leader. This kid is hilarious, reminds me exactly of Jake, probs why I love him so much

All the sisters in our mission

hi family. so jake's girlfriend loves me more than all of you because she was the only one who emailed me! youuuuuu people. excluding mom and dad of course they love me the most. good thing i'm a missionary and filled with love!

anyway this week was good! went on exchanges, had interviews with the president, had a halloween party, worked hard, shared the gospel. solid week.

oh everyone needs to get a copy of "The Power of Everyday Missionaries" by Clayton M. Christensen. it's all about member missionary work and i am determined to make you all member missionaries! the missionaries need your help people!!! seriously though.

okay first tuesday we taught our one progressing investigator...she's cute i love her! i told you about her last week i think...anyway so she read the pamphlet we gave her except we found out that she reads it to just read it (because she's learning english) and she doesn't really understand anything haha so that was a good tidbit of info. but it was okay. we talked more about God and she said that she's learned a lot of things about God and she knows it in her mind but that she doesn't feel it in her heart. So we talked about prayer and how that's how we show our faith and i shared with her Alma's analogy of the seed. and how if we only have a desire that's enough. and she has that desire but she needs to plant it and through prayer she can plant. and it will either be good and grow or it will be bad. So I invited her to pray to God to know if He really was there. I told her that I knew that He would answer if she asked. And she asked me a question that was interesting. She asked me if every single prayer I have given has been answered. And I said yes just automatically, but when I really thought about it the answer was really yes. Sometimes the answer isn't what I want or expect and sometimes the answer takes a long time for me to recognize it, but I know that heavenly Father answers all of our prayers. Because I know that He listens. And I know that He loves me and that He wants to answer my prayers and I know that He will. I was grateful for that experience that caused me to reflect on how I really felt about my answer to that question. Love her. We're teaching her again tonight. Last time she said I feel like if I believe in God that I'll have to do everything correctly. and i was like well next time we'll talk about the atonement thank you for leading into that! I hope it goes well. I got the impression this morning that we should talk about baptism so hopefully I can invite her to be baptized! Pray for me and for her!

wednesday night to thursday night i went on exchanges and that was super fun. it was nice to go somewhere different and be with someone different and learn from my sister training leader who is a great missionary. wednesday night we taught english and one of the ladies there was like wow you are so pretty. i think you'll hear that a lot while you are here. hahah i was like yeah....i'm trying not to get a big head people okay! at our halloween party there was a lady who came up to me and started asking me about where i was from and stuff and then randomly she's like can we take a picture together? i was like suuuuuuure!!!!!!!!!! and then yesterday when i walked on the bus i stood next to this lady sitting down and smiled at her and she's like you're pretty. hahah thanks lady. hey by the way i'm a missionary! it was a great lead in. hahha missionary work is fun!

I guess my focus this week has been on prayer. I was fasting last week and I read a poem and what popped out at me was that sometimes we ask for the wrong things. the poem is called "God Said No" if you want to read it it's really good. so especially this week i've tried to say more meaningful prayers and really think about what i'm asking and if it's what i should be asking for. it says in the bible dictionary that the object of prayer is not to change the will of God, but it is to secure blessings already prepared for us but us receiving them are contingent upon us asking. Just think Heavenly Father has so many blessings prepared for us and we just have to have the faith and courage to ask! i love prayer and I hope that you take advantage of the time you have to talk to your Heavenly Father. Prayer is such a special privilege!

 

those are my thoughts for the week!! love tons!! pray for me and i'll pray for you  :))))

 

Sister Blickkkk

hi lovely family!! sorry i didn't email at the regular time today. we had a mission conference with the sister missionaries so we got permission to email afterwards. it was super fun to get together with all the sisters and it's so inspiring to see all of us together laboring for the Lord. this week was good i'll just give you the low-down

 

we're really trying to work on helping less-actives come back to church as sadly in Korea there are a lot. monday night we had dinner with the mom and daughter of one of the less-active families in their ward. they're an awesome family and we're developing a good relationship with them. their daughter is 11 and she is so cute. a little shy but because me and sister oh are awesome and fun she opened up and we had fun. the mom is so nice and a return missionary and always asks about missionary work and jokes around with us about missionary work. we're trying to encourage her to come back to church. we shared a message about balance and how it's important to have balance in our families so that we can strengthen and serve each other in times of need. we invited her to read the book of the mormon with her family a little bit each night and she talked to us about how she knew she had to try to do better. Kaari i shared with her your experience that you emailed me about last week about praying and feeling the Lord's love immediately. I hope that she knows that we love her and that she has the courage to come back to church.

 

tuesday we had an appointment with a lady who wants help with english. her daughter is a member and is studying at the U. She's been to utah and absolutely loves it and really wants to learn english so we said we could teach her. anyway i started talking to her about her daughter and asked her if she had seen a difference in her daughter since she had become a member and she said yes that her daughter was happier and a better person. She said that she loves the kind of people that Mormons are and said that she wished more people in the world were like us. She says that she thinks we are very honest and sincere people and that we really love God. So I talked about how it has helped me realize what's important in life and it helps us have good morals. I invited her to learn more about what her daughter believes and she said yes! She started by saying that she's Catholic but that's open to hearing about what we believe. So I gave her a restoration pamphlet in English and asked her to read it a) to practice English and b) to introduce her to what we believe. As we kept talking she then revealed that she says she's Catholic but she doesn't really believe in God. She said that when she got married her husband's family was Catholic so she became Catholic. She says she thinks there is a God, but she doesn't think she can believe in Him because too many bad things happen. I talked to her about how there is opposition in all things and that according to God's plan for us if we want to experience joy, there must also be sorrow and so forth. She said that she doesn't know if she can believe, but I told her that if she keeps her mind and heart open that I know she can believe. And i said you don't have to believe a lot right now. At the beginning you just have to believe a little and as you start to learn you will believe more and more. She said if you teach me and I don't accept what you teach will you be disappointed? And I said well of course we'll be disappointed because we know that our message is true and we hope that you will find that too, but it's your choice and if you choose not to accept it we will respect it. She liked that because she thinks that Mormons are respectful of others beliefs. So we'll teach her tomorrow again. Pray for her!! And that we can teach well....

 

A lot of people here think Mormons are pagans (to be honest I'm not really sure what that means glll....) and so that's why they aren't interested and think we are weird. We met a lady on the street that started asking questions (one of them being "are you from Russia?" weird i know) about the church and if we were pagans and stuff and we were able to share with the book of mormon and talk about how we believed in God and Jesus Christ. I don't think she was really interested but it was a success that we were able to clarify what we believe so that she knew the truth about our church.

 

saturday we had dinner at the bishops house with a lady that is sort of a weird investigator situation i'll explain and her daughter in law. So this lady her english name is Grace is super old and we met her through English class. She's friends with the English class coordinator (a member) so she comes to church a lot like almost every week but won't let the missionaries teach her. so she hasn't received the lessons but she comes to church but she doesn't want to get baptized and i'm not really sure what she believes....it's just a weird situation. anyway her daughter in law is vietnamese but speaks pretty good Korean (i like her because her Korean is easy to understand and i feel like we have that foreigner bond). she has one boy that's almost two and is pregnant with a daughter and is due in like two weeks. anyways grace wants her daughter to have korean friends so she wanted to invite her to the church and was like oh and if she wants to learn about your gospel than that's cool too. So we had dinner with them and the bishop's family (their family is way tote) and we gave her a book of mormon in vietnamese and talked about how the book of mormon blesses families and the bishop and bishop's wife bore great testimony and it was cool. i don't really think she's interested, but we invited her and she's really nice and sweet so we'll see what happens.

 

sunday we had dinner at another members house and it was freaking booooomb. okay i am obsessed with sweet potato people. like koreans love it and i love it too. it's so delicious and the food they make is so delicious. mmmm korea. we talked about being steadfast and immovable (mosiah 5:15) and why it's important to build faith on Christ. Sunday I read Jesus the Christ too and that's an amazing book. I love learning about my Savior and I hope you all find times in your busy schedules to learn more about the Savior and study His words.

 

Love you so much. Til next week!! ^^

 

Sister Blick

 

ps. got a halloween package from our ward and it was the greatest thing ever!! they're so cute!! make sure they know i am so happy!!!