There is an elder in our mission, he is soooo cool and the best at art so I made him draw a picture for me. it's our mission scripture in Korean

Me and my new compy

Me and some of my favorite missionaries!! 

Most of them went home this transfer ㅠㅠ I have no friends anymore

hello loving people that i love so much! hope you are all doing well! 

don't have much to tell you except just that i've learned a lot on my mission and there are some things that i have come to appreciate a lot more while serving. things that maybe i wouldn't have realized or recognized were even blessings in my life. 

1. i'm grateful for parents who have always been kind to me. who have never ever once hit me. (okay maybe you spanked my bum sometimes and made me wash my mouth out with soap but i probably deserved those) and as i look back i know that they love me because of all the things they have done for me and taught me.

2. I'm grateful for parents who not only went to church but really raised our family in the gospel. they taught us the gospel. they taught (mostly through example) the importance of prayer and scripture study. they made sure that we understood gospel principles because they knew that has and would bless our family and us personally forever. 

3.  I'm grateful for examples all around me of people who didn't give up because things got difficult. 

4. I'm grateful that I was raised to know that Heavenly Father's commandments are merely just an excuse for Him to bless us not restrictions and not a list telling us things we can't do just to make life harder for us. 

5. I'm grateful that I understand that in the end the only thing that is important really is my personal worthiness before the Lord. 

I'll share a couple things I learned/really liked from sacrament meeting yesterday. One of the speakers talked about how when it comes down to it, it doesn't matter how big the church is or how many members there are (something that Koreans generally care a lot about). the important thing is how strong our personal faith is. How strong are we on the inside? How well do we know our Savior? So many people today just focus on the outward appearance of faith. If you look like you believe in Jesus than everything's good! Check that off your list, you're saved. Well thanks to the Restoration we know that's not exactly the case. We have the gospel of Jesus Christ in it's fulness people! Do you realize how cool that is?? 

Another member talked about how the most importance choices aren't necessarily going to be between bad and good. like we're probably not going to ask ourselves. hm should i smoke a cigarette today or not? but the important choices  will be between the best choice and a good choice. like at night before we go to sleep. will we pray or will we say we are too tired? when we wake up in the morning will we study the scriptures or will be busy ourselves with other work we have to do? 

Right now I'm literally obsessed with the Gospels. I love reading about Christ's life and all the miracles He performed and I love seeing how the apostles record it differently too. all unique but they all have the same purpose of testifying of Christ. 

As I get close to coming home it's a really weird experience. I almost started crying like five times in church yesterday for I don't even know why. I was thinking about it yesterday and it's so interesting how my perspective has changed over the course of my mission. Starting and things were new and different and not what I expected and I was happy but I still had an idea of what it would be like if I was home. And now that I'm coming close to the time to go home, things are new every and different and rarely do the things that I expect actually happen, but I truly happy every day and it seems so weird that soon I won't be a missionary. I can't picture myself not being a missionary. I can't picture myself being anywhere but Korea. I'm excited to be home with family but I don't know it's a weird feeling. I just do a lot of other things to distract myself from feeling weird about going home. like reading scriptures and actually i'm obsessed with making planners for people. haha mom and dad you'll understand me. anyway i don't think you use those but i can start a planner making business when i come to your mission. okay anyway. i love you super uber a lot!! have a good and count the miracles that you see everyday! 

Sister Blick

hi fam bam! this is the start of a new transfer! almost. but it is THE transfer people!  Sister Stout is transferring and I'm getting yet another companion for the last time! This will be my eleventh companion yiiiiikes. i'm basically super sad that sister stout is leaving and trying not to freak out about it. but if there's anything i've learned over the course of my mission it's that i need to trust the Lord because He knows best. Anyway had a crazy week this week. Let me tell you!

okay first i claim bragging rights. sorry i know i need to humble myself. it's a process.

this week we had MLC and i had to give the closing prayer and Sister Morrise came up after and she said after your prayer President Morrise leaned over and said that will be the best korean prayer you ever hear coming from a foreigner. He's the nicest! When we had interviews he asked if when i went home the mission could keep my korean ability. Maybe if I swim to the bottom of the ocean i can find ursula?

Also we did a culture night for a ward activity because there was a holiday this week and we each made food from the countries we represented. i made beef and broccoli except it was chicken and broccoli with carrots because meat is way expensive here. and it was a hit! all the ward members said they liked mine the best^^ thanks mommy!!

okay sorry for the pridefulness. don't worry i know that every thing i do is because the Lord lets me and if he wanted to take everything away He could in like .5 seconds. so i have to remain worthy of the gifts He has given me and the ones He will give me.

miracle of the week!

so we have like no investigators. we have a lot of potentials that we either never end up meeting, meeting once and never again, or meet once but are too busy so we meet like once in a blue moon. i wasn't getting discouraged but i was just kind of stumped. sister stout and i talk to everyone we see and we work really hard but nothing was coming of it i felt. we had a ton of meetings last week and we were really busy but the appointments we had scheduled with investigators fell through and at the end of the week we hadn't taught one lesson or picked up a new investigator. i asked the Lord to provide because I knew He would. I knew we had been working hard and that even though we did everything we could, He could do more. He could help us accomplish what He wanted us to accomplish. Saturday night while we were watching conference, we got a text from a potential investigator who the first time we called spent 20 minutes on the phone trying to find a time to meet (she is extremely busy so it was hard) and then when the appointment came something came up and she cancelled. we concluded she was just too busy and didn't think about her again. But she texted and said tomorrow I have time in the morning can you meet? Usually we wouldn't be able to as it was sunday morning at the time we have church but this week was conference and as we watch it in English, not with our ward anyway we could kind of adjust the time so we agreed to meet with her. Let me tell you Heavenly Father let that work out. She's from China (Chinese people are seriously the nicest) and has been living here for about 5 years. She told us her dad passed away when she was younger and after that her mom moved to Korea and she stayed in China and went to school so she basically grew up by herself. She moved to Korea because she wanted to be close with her family again. Her family goes to church but she says she doesn't believe yet, but for some reason feels like she needs to believe in God but she doesn't really know who He is and if He really exists. We were able to share our experiences of coming to know that God exists and teach her about prayer and the receiving answers to prayers. She was so excited to pray! She was so sincere and earnest, something you don't see often sadly. Mostly people just want us to teach them English or they want to teach me about their church. It was just a miracle and I knew the Lord provided it for us. Plus she told me she would teach me Chinese. haha. So win-win! Her english name is Jenny  so pray for her!

Conference was awesome. I loved Elder Packer's talk. I was just reminded that no matter when is thrown our way, the gospel is true. Nothing changes that. Nobody's harsh fighting words or cold reaction. The gospel is true and always will be. And I can be confident in that fact. Also everyone talked about families and their husbands or wives and shoot now I want to go home and get married. Gll jk I won't dad don't worry. #dontwanttogettakenoutofthewill but families are so important and i love all of you! seriously weird to think that I will be with you for Christmas....weird. but that doesn't come for a while! anyway. love you!!

Til next week! Sister Blick.

HAPPY OCTOBER what the where did september go people?? time flies when your happy as can be i guess! well this week was another good one. every week is good really! love my companion to death. love korea. love everything. love missionary work.

we got to go to the temple which is always awesome. then i got to meet up with Sister Choi afterward! she had a holiday from school and SO lucky I was going to the temple that week so p-day was on thursday and i could actually do something with her! so she came to gangnam and we had lunch together. she's the cutest. i love her so much. i told her i went to the temple and she's like what inspiration did you receive today? and i was like ...a lot? she's like remember last time at church you said when you went to the temple you received inspiration that you were going to leave incheon. did that really happen? and I was like oh yeeah!! so she's like so what inspiration did you receive today? i just told her i felt a lot of peace. Sister Hoffman says SIster Choi is doing well and that she even bore her testimony in church yesterday!!! they are trying to pick up her daughter as an investigator too!! Miracles happen!!

okay sorry i have no time to write anything sorry!!! love you til next week.

Sister Blick

hello loving family! another week come and gone i don't understand how it happens. did i say that last week? probably. i don't remember. this week was awesome of course. every week is the best. every night i collapse in bed and every morning....mornings are a struggle. but don't worry dad i'm obedient. just an obedient zombie that has to keep jake's wedding in the back of my mind in order to go running and exercise throughout the week...

anyway. miracles of the week!

went on an exchange with a sister from our zone and saw a miracle while proselyting that reminded us of the reason why we "talk to everyone" as missionaries. we were walking on the street just on our way to drop something off at a less actives house and we said hi to a lady walking the opposite direction as us. something about her was different so instead of just passing by i turned around and tried to keep talking to her. she turned back around too and we introduced ourself as missionaries. she asked me if i had something to give her and i said well actually we teach about this book called the Book of Mormon and she said oh you're the Mormon church? I've been wondering about what you believe. do you have time right now? do you want to go get some coffee and talk? Trying to hide our excitement we said of course (don't worry once we got to the cafe we told her we don't drink coffee and we got hot chocolate instead) and went to the nearest cafe where we taught her the first lesson! Got her contact information and set an appointment for Saturday. But we ran into a stumbling block: we called the number and it wasn't her. it was some man that had no idea what i was talking about. We were disappointed but no need to fear! she told us where she lives. except she didn't tell us the apartment number. we knew the apartment name and the building and the floor but not the actually apartment number. So we went finding!! there were 6 different apartments on her floor. Friday we went and three people answered that weren't her and the other ones didn't answer. I was freaking out because I was like what the heck where is this woman??? So we went to try again last night the three other houses that didn't answer and the first one we rang at was her house!! So we met with her again last night and she's the greatest! :) Has great potential. Her name is Sister Shin.

another miracle. sister stout and i did a TON of less active finding (we have a lot of old addresses for less actives and we don't know if they actually live them. yeah the records here are a little....yeah. anyway) so one night we headed out to do that and then we were going to visit a potential investigator later that night. but Sister stout ended up getting a little lost and we ended up near the potential investigators house first. it wasn't our plan but we just decided we were there so we should go with the flow and visit her first. good thing we did because she was home!!! she said she was just planning on going out to exercise and if we didn't come just then we would have missed her because she wouldn't have been home. uhm miracle? yes. (coincidence? I think NOT!) so we taught kind of a lesson and picked her up as an investigator! her name is Sister Seo

We haven't met Luleka again. We text her but she doesn't text back so....yeah we'll keep trying with her. Our Catholic investigator (Sister Jeong) is super Catholic and fed us a really weird lunch so we're not sure if we should keep going back...

We had a special sacrament meeting yesterday. I got to perform a musical number with a famous Russian celloist! yeah i'm legit. thanks mom for keeping me in piano lessons. Anyway like a ton of less actives came to church yesterday and it was a really good day! ate lunch with our ward after church and had a grand ole time.

Lastly, I just wanted to share with you a few thoughts about what I thought about this week in personal study. I've started studying the chapter about Christlike Attibutes in PMG and the other day I studied about virtue. I was looking in the TG and it led me to read the story of Ruth. It says that Boaz was happy to marry her because everyone knew she was a virtuous woman. So I read about her and thought about her dedication to her family and her willingness to help Naomi because she loved her so much. She served her mother in law and wanted to keep serving her. Virtue is something that comes from inside and can be reflected by our actions. What are our thoughts and our desires and what do they lead us to DO? It's important who we are but it's also important that who we are leads us to DO things that reflect that. It's important that we are like the Savior but we need to ACT like the Savior. Do as He would do. I was studying faith this morning and I feel like I have learned the most about faith on my mission. I don't have perfect faith but I feel like I understand faith and I understand what we need to do help our faith grow. That's a really important lesson I'm learned on my mission. My MTC teacher had us write a letter in the MTC to ourself that she would send to us when we had 3 months left on our mission. Well believe it or not that time has come so I got the letter a couple of weeks ago. she told us to write something we didn't want to forget. So this is what I wrote:

Caitlin never forget the lessons the Spirit taught you about faith in the MTC. Your faith will carry you through the darkest of times IF you choose to exercise it. Your faith will bring you many blessings IF you choose to exercise. Your faith will bring you hope IF you choose to exercise it. Caitlin exercise your faith in every way you know how. Now and for the rest of your life. Know that Christ is your Savior. He has and WILL save you always. Every promise will be fulfilled if you are faithful.

faith is so important. and it is SO important that we actively work to strengthen our faith in our Savior. I hope you are doing things in your daily life to strengthen your faith! and I hope you are doing your part in helping the Lord in the work of salvation, whatever that may be. Help the missionaries in your area! Love you so much!! Til next week :))

 Pic 1: yeah eaten alive.

2: my dress broke in the middle of the day

3: after our miracle lesson!

4: sister stout and i pigging out

Sister Blick

hi my beautiful family! another week has come and gone already what is going on? just so you know i'm super self conscious when i write emails now because a few members of our family have been criticizing my english ability so i've heard!!!! -__- but for real yesterday my companion and i taught a lesson to a south african woman and the whole time i was thinking wow my english is so bad i can't think of what to say right now i sound like a blabbering idiot. but it's cool the Spirit helped me^^

 

oh first i have to tell you a funny quote from my companion. okay it might not be that funny because i've realized that my sense of humor has deteriorated over time but....yeah. anyway i love my companion she's the greatest. like SUCH  a good missionary. i love teaching with her. i love serving with her. and we are good friends...at least in my eyes. awkward if she hates me. but i like her! anyway so last week we were planning to teach someone about prophets using the gospel art book and she's like "yeah we can make it cool and exciting (she flips to the picture of noah) like sometimes a lot of people hate you and make fun of you but then you end up with a lot of animals and you win." HAHHAHAHAH i was dying #gospeljokes I thought it was funny.

 

yeah so my Korean companion left to Spain! her parents aren't members so she got special permission to have them come pick her up and take her to the airport so we met her parents in the morning (right after we woke up so we looked quite frightening) and they took her to the airport. it was sad to see her go but not really because she gets to serve in Spain and that's pretty legit. It's different with her not here she was the best but I love Sister Stout and we just went back to normal companionship so it was okay!

 

we don't have any investigators right now but we are busy trying to bring less-actives to church, trying to find investigators, and preparing for some missonary ward activities in the future. i'm tired as heck every day of my life but it's the best kind of tired! because i know i'm tiring myself out for the Lord. I don't know if I can fully express my happiness people. really though I am so happy every day and I see little miracles every day. I love being a missonary and I love serving in Korea. I love the people here, I love the language, I love my companion, I love the scriptures, I'm obsessed with PMG. I just have so much love! I have so many faults still and so many weaknesses but it's okay because the Lord still uses me as his instrument and I work every day to do better and be better.

 

anyway we met with a south african woman last night (i already said that) but anyway she is the coolest. Sister Stout met her on the street a couple months ago and they just havent been able to meet for real since then so we called her and she said we could meet! it was really interesting. she said that she came here as a missionary but she's like it's weird because they told us we would come out here as missionaries and then we got out here and it's kind of a business, we teach english and the focus is mostly teaching english so we have to work extra hard to remember the gospel and stuff. sister stout and i were like well...that's unfortunate. so she's kind of a missionary but doesn't really do missionary work. and she's willing to listen so it's cool! then comes the embarrassing part. i was like so what part of south africa are you from? and she names some place and i was like yeah i have no idea and she's like well do you know anything about south africa? and i was like i have a friend from ghana. and she's like yeah...that's a different country. like 7 hours away by plane. oh hi i'm an idiot. yeah yeah stop making fun of me. i tried to hide my embarrassment i was like i never took geography....it's the same continent so that's okay right...? the worst. but we taught her about the restoration and it was so cool! different experience teaching it in english that's for sure. it was cool because as we were teaching i was just reminded how true everything was. as she was listening she kept saying this is just new and different so i'm trying hard to follow along. and i realized yeah this all sounds incredible and is definitely different and may be hard to believe but as i was listening to my companion teach and i was teaching i just knew yes! everything is true. everything that we are teaching is true. and i was fully confident that she could come to that conclusion as well if she wanted to. and that's where her agency comes into play. but all i could do was teach and testify and then let her decide. she committed to read the book of mormon and pray about it! said a great prayer at the end of the lesson. we were kind of disappointed because she said she was really busy and made it apparent that we can't meet for like 3 weeks -__- but hopefully we will still be able to contact her until then. her name is luleka. pray for her!

 

we also met this cute old lady that is super catholic and i think just old and lonely but she's so cute and nice so hopefully she will accept the gospel too!

 

weeks go by too fast and it's sad that my time as a missionary is slowly winding down. (emphasis on the slowly) i never want it to end. it's so interesting seeing the change that takes place. when i first came out i felt like my mission was never ending like i would never see the day that i would go home and that thought discouraged me at times when it was hard. but now that it's ending, i wish it was farther away. i wish i had more time. not because i have regrets or i wish i could do better but because i know that the work will never end and there will always be more to do. but that's the cool part i guess. is that even after i do go back home and live my life missionary work will never stop like Joseph Smith said. and even though maybe i won't be in korea as a missionary, i will still be a missionary wherever i go and there will still be work that the Lord wants me to do wherever I am. the church is true people! and the gospel is the greatest gift and brings us the greatest happiness.

 

love you all!! til next week^^

 

Sister Blick

 

ps if you get the chance watch the movie Ephraims Rescue. I'm literally obsessed. there are so many good quotable lines!!!