Can you believe that on Monday I will be leaving the US for quite some time? SO wild, and to be honest, it is bitter sweet leaving. I really have enjoyed the MTC; I literally have learned so much about myself and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In no way do I feel ready to be thrown into the field or to try my Korean out, but I really cannot wait to do it anyway. How else am I going to learn, right? Four days. Holy Cow!!
Honestly, it has been a really fun week, but ... I am having a hard time remembering details. Maybe the most real part of the week was Friday. At like 11:00 am, we got our flight plans! We are flying out on Monday at 7:30, which means we have to be at the travel office by 3:30 am! Then, we have a 3-4 hour flight to Detroit, a 2 1/2 hour layover, and then another 13-14 hours to
the promised land! So excited to get there!
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| Travel itinerary and the new name tag: pronounced Jen-keen-su. |
Only a few hours after we got our flight plans we got our all-Korean name tags. That was pretty thrilling as
well. I think this was the day where it really hit me: "I am going
to KOREA"! I have been so excited since then. It sounds
like when we land in Inchun, we slap the new tags on, find the APs, and
then get on the subway and start talking to the people about Jesus
Christ! Thrown to the wolves maybe? Who knows, but I'm giving some Books of Mormon away for sure. It will be Elder
Fleming's and my last hurrah as a companionship, so you know we will make
it count!
On Tuesday,
we had our weekly MTC devotional and this guy named Bishop Causse came
and spoke on this scripture from 2 Corinthians about the Lord calling
the weak things of the world to preach His word. He also talked quite a
bit on becoming a bold missionary! Very, very relatable--for me
at least. I feel so weak with my language skills right now, but I also
know the Lord will provide a way if I "Open My Mouth"! Faith!!!! So he
told some stories that related to that really well and they were
awesome. But then there was a "Thug Life" moment after he said amen. He turned to us and said, "The
closing hymn is supposed to be sung by all of you, but instead I am
just going to be bold and play the closing hymn without any
singing by you." He strolled over to the piano and banged out a
crazy version of a hymn It was so cool! Like big time mic drop. Then basically he
just walked out. I am going to miss devotionals, that is for
sure!
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| The Crew! |
Maybe the coolest moment for me this week happened last night. A
bunch of our District went downstairs for a while, but Elder Fleming and I stayed in the room for some
studying and the kid that wants to get reassigned was in our room
as well. So I kind of started being me and began asking questions to try and figure out what he
was thinking at this point and trying to gauge some things for myself. We
had a really really powerful discussion. I shared with him
the famous story of the Elder who in is farewell talk shared the story
of a dream he had about the pre-existence and his best friend there. To try and sum the story up without taking forever,
the Elder and his friend got their calls to go to earth: the friend was
to be born without the gospel and without much at all; the Elder was to
be born with it all, but most importantly the gospel. Their farewell
was very emotional, but the Elder made a promise that he was going
to find his friend on the earth. Then the dream ended.
A few months
after sharing this story in his farewell, his bishop received a letter
from him with three words that formed a very amazing sentence: "I found
my friend." I believe that in the pre-existence that things like this
happened to all of us, but I especially
believe that something like this happened to me. I just wanted the Elder who is hoping to be moved to think about it. I believe that I had
some friends that were born without the gospel and that some of them currently live in South Korea. I told them "I will come and find you." Dang, I'm holding back tears as I
write this because I just believe it so strongly. I have some friends to
find, and that is why I am going to Korea...
I miss you all, and I love you so much. I cannot
wait to put on my Korean jersey for the Lord! My Provo jersey is getting
pretty worn out (haha).
Godspeed!
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