Week 88 Transfers~!

June 17, 2018

This week we got transfer calls! I will be staying with my companion. No change. No new excitement. BUT my house mate is going to my old area and it was fun to tell him all of the things that will happen and all of the cool things about Gangnam!

SO this week we had a few adventures. The first was Tuesday. I went on exchanges and we had an activity down south! The farthest our mission goes! We had a proselyting activity in Anseong and it was lots of fun! There are some arcade punching bag things and they measure how hard you punch. So after sticker boarding, we did a friendly bet and loser bought ice cream. We had five people take turns punching the back and the weakest punch lost. I definitely didn’t buy haha.

Another cool thing that happened this week was with our investigators. We have been seeing really big miracles the past two weeks with investigators! They are progressing so well and accepting the gospel! It is really amazing to see them and to teach them. They come to church and enjoy it! It has been super super great!

One cool adventure was we have a sports activity that we do at our church every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and the third Saturday of the month. Our ward leaders were inspired to have the missionaries stay at the church and just invite people in off the streets. We threw out the idea of sports and they liked it. At first it was not effective and not many people would come. We would just go and sit at the church for 2 hours a day and do nothing. But as kept at it with faith that it would get better, it has. And recently the Lord has been sending a lot of people our way! One of the people that came was a professionally rapper and really likes sports! We played with him both Thursday and Friday! And he came to church on Sunday! This activity is doing really really good!

The mosquitoes are out and I am getting eaten alive! Luckily we will have AC so we can close the windows and maybe I’ll survive this summer!

I want to finish by talking about a training I gave on Wednesday. Our district leader asked me to train on member relationships because he felt that I am good at it. I don’t know what he sees but I accepted. As I tried to collect my thoughts on building good relationships with members, one thing kept coming to my mind. No matter what you can’t make someone love you. Memorizing their name, asking about their family, eating their food, giving gifts, all of this is nice, but you can’t buy someone’s love. You can’t make anyone love you. And many many missionaries try to make members love them. And I trained on loving people first. And if they can feel your love they will love you back. A member from my first area and I were able to see each other again in Gangnam. He talked about how after I left Bundang the members and missionary relationship became weaker. And I asked why? What happened? What changed? and he told me that the members could tell that I loved them. Though I couldn’t really talk to them, or understand them, they could see and feel my love. He told me how one day as he and his family drove home his dad just talked and talked about how much I love the people in Bundang.

Unfortunately I am not worthy of those compliments and I still need to work on loving those who aren’t so easy to love, but I can promise that loving people will go a long way. AND people can feel if your love is genuine or not. I have felt when my companions genuinely loved me. Elder Jenkins, Elder Lydon, Elder Packer, Elder Perry. And I love them.

Charity is a hard thing to possess, but it is worth it!

Elder Goon