Biking along the Han

Reunited with friends from the MTC

The Football game

This week went by super quickly and it was really really fun. The biggest highlight came on Thursday: it was our Temple P-day, so we went all the way up to the Seoul Mission, which takes like an hour and a half from our area. But it was sooo rewarding! Something cool was just recently announced: missionaries in our mission can now do Baptisms for the Dead.  As a result, a bunch of missionaries got to take part in that, but because of our long travel time, we didn't get to.  Maybe next time! Another cool thing was that we actually got to the temple at the time of a Korean Session, so that was a real test of my Korean ability and I made it through.

Afterwards, a bunch of missionaries went to a place called Yoido and rode bikes along the Han

Zone bike ride along the Han

River! It was super fun.  I also got to
play football, which is super duper rare in Korea. You cannot find a football here, but one missionary had one, so we played around for a while.  Man, it was so fun! 

Then this weekend was Stake Conference and it was a really fun experience! It was held at our church, and there was a bunch of members from the other wards in the Stake. But to be honest, it kind of just felt like a normal size congregation back in Manti 8th Ward.  Although the church isn't huge in numbers in Korea, it showed yesterday that we have some really really strong members over here. It truly is very hard to be a member of the church here. Everything in Korean culture points the opposite direction of the church's beliefs, but somehow these faithful people keep on grinding. It is so stressful as a missionary to keep track of them all and to try and help them all with soo much fighting against them, but it makes it even more rewarding seeing those that we try so hard to help show up to church each week. I love this incredibly unique work in Korea. I love it more than I have ever loved anything before! I surely do know this is God's Work and that He is the boss...The best boss.

Finally, a funny story:  last night I had to give a talk at a ward conference about the blessings of a mission. When they were announcing who was going to be speaking, the person conducting said, "First off, we get to hear from Korea's most handsome missionary... Elder Jenkins!" haha The talk actually went a ton better than I thought--my Korean seemed to work pretty well for it!  Then after I got done speaking, the bishop spoke and he started talking about his mission, but he was kind of just talking about missionaries for a little bit, and then he said "Elder Jenkins sure is a handsome and good looking missionary isn't he?!" And then proceeded to tell them how when we played screen baseball that Elder Jenkins "was just different, like kind of unreal." "Because of him," he explained,  "their team destroyed mine...." hahaha It was sooo funny! 

It was such a good and humbling week for me. I hope all of you had a nice one as well! God is Great! Don't forget it!

Elder Jenkins