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

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