Wednesday, July 15, 2009

P-day, June 15, 2009

Lets all laugh at the funny Americans!‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 7/15/09 10:40 PM

Hey Family and friends who get to read this! Korea is absolutely amazing! I’m really starting to think that some god none spicy chicken sounds good! Maybe a fong’s number ten or something like that! I just got my haircut and man is it short in the back and long on top, Korean stylist can’t seem to get the hang of American hair! Lol

Anyway today was our temple day and as usual it was amazing! The temple here is so small it still amazes me, the cool thing is that all the wards in Korea go once a week for a ward temple night or day according to where they live!

So this last week we had another baptism, a guy by the name of 김 종절Jumped into the font. He is a little bit of a different guy but he lives with his grandma who is a member. He understood really slowly but hearing him talk about why he wanted to get baptized was amazing! He’s got a strong testimony and if he can get away from his current friends and find ones in the church he should do amazing!

This next weekend we have four baptisms lined up; we have a family-two parents and a grandma- and then a man by the name of 죄 선묵 who is 47, I love this man- we picked him up off of an English flyer and he was at first completely English interest but our amazing teaching skills, okay the spirit managed to change his mind it wasn’t us! Lol He helps me with my Korean and I help him with my english- he says he likes talking to me more than elder haviland simply because I have yet to be konglished! I am not sure whether or not to take that as a compliment but he is truly amazing!Lol He has a problem with drinking but has worked hard to overcome it. He’s cut back a ton from when we started and this Saturday’s goal is to drink none! The sad thing is that he and his friends all work so hard throughout the week and the only time they get together is to get wasted on Saturday, so hopefully when he feels the spirit during baptism he will realize he has made the right choice!

Funny story for the week comes from my lack of Korean ability! We were teaching a man whom we had pulled off of the street into the church a short first lesson and I was struggling a bit trying to teach the apostasy apparently as I tried to say, “Christ and his apostles were killed by evil men.” However, what came out was this, “Christ killed his apostles and evil men.” I mixed up the marker on men and Christ. It is crazy how easily you can change the meaning of a Korean sentence! Anyway, the guy was like- uhh…. What was that. And then I realized what I had said and we all had a good laugh over my lack of Korean! Haha you have to laugh at those or your gonna have a heck of a long mission! 

Anyway, this week has been a good one, we got some cheese from the old mission president of Pusan who moved the other day out of the ward! I never realized how much I could miss cheese and how much better it makes food taste! I’ve made the decision to give up peanut butter as it is 10 dollars for a tiny tiny bottle- we would buy one every other week a piece but it just hits the wallet way to hard! Good thing that I like Kimchi then!

Hope all is good. It has been raining so hard here that it breaks your umbrella no matter what kind you have- no worries I got a bit sturdy one for the next time the down pour starts!

Love you all,Elder Greg Grant

Thursday, July 9, 2009

P-day post June 9, 2009

I am sopping wet- I have decided it is time to get a Korea worthy umbrella!!!!!!!!!!‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Thu 7/09/09 12:10 AM
To:

Hey family,So, this week has been a great one- its gonna be a rather short email this week, but hey I can’t write a novel every week. I am sick of the rain here in Korea, Oh my gosh when it rains it rains, I’m sitting here emailing, which I do get an hour and fifteen minutes to do mom, soaking wet! Lol I am half thinking of making like a Korean and buying myself some black Crocs simply cause I won’t have soaking wet shoes on twenty four seven! Lol Then I would really be fashionable!

This week has been one full of miracles, for the last three weeks we haven’t picked up any new investigators and in the last 3 days we have found seven solid ones! I felt for the longest time that we were working our hardest we were fasting and praying with all our might to find more people to teach the only problem was that they weren’t appearing. Finally after a day where we planned down every minute, we had every little thing that we would do and prayed and we went out with more faith than I ever though I could muster, it happened. It started on Sunday, that day were we went out in faith and we found no one and I felt as though no one would even speak with us, overall it was probably one of the most frustrating days of my mission. Anyway that day was Saturday and we went to church on Sunday, after we taught a few lessons and walked out after one,there was this man wandering the halls, he asked us when our worship meeting was and we told him that it was over; to make a long story short this man in the last 10 years has gone from being one of the most wealthy in Korea to being one of the lower class. He is one of the most humble men I have met and is in just the perfect circumstance to accept the gospel, we taught him the first lesson and set up a return appt. for Friday!

Then the very next day we were walking over to the church after dinner and we hear a, “Sirs, May I speak with you sirs?” from behind us and both of us look at each other just totally stunned to hear that in Korea, because very few people speak English as well as what we had heard, and a man rode up on his bike and said "I want to learn more about your church. I like what you do as missionaries and would like to try to become one someday!" We took this man to the church with us and taught him about what we believe; he has a hard time accepting the Joseph Smith story but I know that God led him to us so that we could teach him of the gospel of Jesus Christ! Having these two people appear out of nowhere after two weeks of hard work with what felt like very little result amazed me. Never in my life have I realized more than at those two moments that God works according to our faith and prayers and that the answer or result comes when we least expect it!In short the last five days have been amaaazzziinnnggg!SO good to hear from all of you and I hope that each and every one of you is doing well! Mom tell Dylan that I can’t email him but he can email me and I will write back to him through snail mail. Letters only take about a week to send from here to there so it isn’t to bad!Lol

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

June 30, 2009 P-Day

Hey Everyone,Sounds as though it has been one of those exciting weeks back home!

Sheesh, why does all the excitement happen after I’m gone? LOL Glad to hear that all are still safe and well though! Glad to hear Federer is once again up to his dominating form in the tennis world! LOL I am always happy to hear that! Maybe he will still be playing when I get home!YAY, I passed of my first set of Korean skills! SO in the mission we have this thing called pass-off and the first section is way intense with tons of vocabulary and different sentences and scriptures you have to remember, the next part is just a regular old grammar book for Korean so it is as easy as studying Korean can be! Anyway, I got all of that done, talk about a stress filled week! Wheew, anyway the Korean is coming slowly but it is coming!

Not so much to write this week we have to go and clean the house today because we have our house check tomorrow! Monsoon season has hit in all its furry! I have never seen it rain so hard or so much in my entire life! At times its way scary to, especially when your walking in it and can’t even see in front of you! Nifty beans huh? So last night was a very cool night great for sleeping except to the fact that a huge storm hit at about 2 in the morning- loudest thunder that I have ever heard- Almost made me wish that I could come home T!Lol it woke all of us in our house up, it sounded like you had your ear right next to the pins when a bowling ball hit- lightning everywhere! It was quite something for a little country-boy from Idaho to see!

So miracles of the week, not much, but there is always at least one everyday! The big one is that we are looking at four baptisms for sure in the next two weeks and we have another two if they can get over there drinking problems! They both should do it, they want to be baptized and are working their tails off to quit drinking but you never know what might come up!

One of them is just the sweetest old man, he’s about 62 and he loves fishing and feeding pigeons, and of course he hits the sauce hard on the weekends with his old man buddies! He’s very upright in telling us about it but he is very ashamed about his problem- he’s doing great though as he managed to drink little enough last Saturday that he could come to church and comprehend all that was going on!(He was still a little buzzed though!) I love this man, he reminds me of funny grandpa dredge somewhat in his personality though he is a lot more shy.

Korean food is amazing, Americans should take a spin off of how they do food- though I still would kill for one of those burgers you will probably have this week! Anyway so we had this meal at a members house and it was absolutely amazing. They make a seaweed soup and bring it to a boil on like a little tiny camp stove in the middle of the table and toss in tons of veggies(Mushrooms, Onions, lettuce) and then throw in slowly very thinly sliced beef and it cooks in about three seconds and you all just eat out of there, wow it is the best thing ever, definitely want to bring that recipe home for you to try. It is a food called shaba shaba in the roman alphabet, its amazinggggggggggggg!

I think its time for lunch! I have had just a couple bits of fruit all day and it is now three O’clock! I AM HUNGRY!
Anyway, I am doing great love to hear from everybody!
Love,Elder Greg Grant