Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Incinerated....what...send Jerky as "snacks" in your pkgs

Incinerated?? 모요?(What?)‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 8/26/09 9:04 PM
To:
spunkyseaturtle@msn.com; grantk@byui.edu; argentinawarrior@gmail.com; bearmum2@aol.com; gay-grant@msn.com; gadairrealtor@aol.com; tetonwildflower@msn.com; bballwhiz@q.com; tggran@yahoo.com; joeadairrealtor@aol.com
Hello everyone in cold Idaho, its actually starting to cool down a little here to though I guarantee its still hotter than what I ever fell in Idaho! So this week has been a fairly good week- lots of hard work but very fun! I love doing this work, it truly is amazing how quickly it can change peoples lives! SO funny story of the week comes from the package that Mom sent me three weeks ago. So we got mail yesterday because of Zone conference and I was slightly disappointed as no package existed but I did have a Korean letter and I was thinking, “now who the devil could this be from, I haven’t left my area yet so no Korean would be writing me!” Well I translated it during Korean study this morning and come to find out my half pound of beef jerky has been confiscated and they needed to know what I wanted them to do with it. So the first word I read was destroy, I was like uhh…ohhh. I better request more deodorant and toothpaste asap today then we were all laughing at what it said at this time because it said the whole package would get thrown into the burner, needless to say I wanted my package, so I called up the number on it and got a Korean and I had to discuss what to do with my package in Korean!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH… so I was wondering what a certain word she was saying meant, I looked it up fast while talking with here and it was incinerate! I quickly said I was a foreigner serving in Korea and that I couldn’t speak Korean well and asked for someone with English ability- to bad the only person they had was maybe thirty [percent fluent but we got it worked out and when we go to the mission home next week the package should be there, or so I hope! Lol If you want to send letters get them sent asap and I will get them next week and after that I probably won’t get any for about 4 weeks.()This weeks spiritual story… it happened just yesterday. So we got back from zone conference and had nothing planned but teaching a less active member who has basically reactivated himself at eight. SO we come in from contacting in the rain and have this appt. and this lady from english class who kinda has the hots for our inactive shows up and sits in on our lesson about the commandments. Where is the miracle in this, this lady has come to church for the last four weeks just to be around this guy but will not here the sisters or meet with them, but she overheard us make an appointment with this guy on Sunday and is now going to meet with us and him to be taught about the fullness of the gospel. The Lord works in mysterious ways sometimes but at least she is now willing to learn and listen!This week has been good, not to much going on in our area as it is basically all students and this is the biggest time of year for Korean tests so no one can really meet, but we will keep working hard!With Great Love and Respect,Elder Greg Grant

Miracles and ...something about "Mormons"

From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 9/16/09 8:56 PM
To:
tetonwildflower@msn.com; grantk@byui.edu; spunkyseaturtle@msn.com; bballwhiz@q.com; argentinawarrior@gmail.com; gadairrealtor@aol.com; bearmum2@aol.com; gay-grant@msn.com; tggran@yahoo.com; joeadairrealtor@aol.com
Hello Idaho and boy am I in love with dong-jak!So transfers were today and guess who is staying for his fourth in dong-jak, that’s me! I am so happy right now its insane. Here in our area we are truly seeing amazing miracles, when Elder Haviland left he left us with basically no investigators because we baptized all them, so we had a rough first few weeks. However, through working hard Elder Skousen and I have built our pool back up and are ready to feel it with the water again! It is amazing the blessings that the Lord blesses you with when you work harder than you ever have before in your whole life! This last week we found five new investigators and one is going to get baptized next Sunday and one the Sunday after, it is amazing how the Lord works! Alright miracle story time and it has nothing to do with baptisms, unless we remember our purpose and say we will eventually baptize this man! SO last night, we had a great day, a real preach my gospel kind of day if you know what I mean, but we had worked our trash of and taught tons of lessons and talked to tons of people. We’d met all of our goals and exceeded them but one, a new investigator. It’s 8:50 and we are on the street to home and we have to take decide to take the short cut which will get us home in plenty of time or keep going and maybe end up running to not be late. You never think things like this really happen, but we decided to go the long way. While walking along we picked our pace up some and Elder skousen got stuck behind a group of old grandmas a ways back so I saw a guy and decided to talk with him as I walked. Come to find out he had just gotten off of work and had read something about “Mormons” and an angel Moroni a couple months back on the internet. Boy was I ever surprised! I had been praying the whole night that if I would talk to everyone(Every man) That walked past that we would find our new investigator because we had set the goal. Well, we ended up taking him to the church and using the extra 30 minutes you can have if you are teaching a lesson to teach him about the restoration. We’ll meet him again next week, it truly was amazing. It really strengthened my testimony of the power of prayer, faith, and planning. If you plan everything perfectly so our father in heaven knows what you will be doing and where you will be he can put miracles in your path- but only if you truly have faith that he will will you be able to see and receive those miracles! The biggest thing I learned was that you must have these two but you must have a a prayer in your heart as well for his help- to help you see the opportunity and then the miracle inside of the opportunity. It is just like in life- if we pray the Lord can help us see different opportunities or things we should be doing!Alright so a little bit of info. About what went on with transfers, nothing really changed with me or elder skousen however our re is changed a lot. We have an amazing ward and a great area so president saw fit to move sheelim to another house and put two more missionaries in dong-jak. So we now have elder rigby from bonnevile-utah and elder Lufkin from rigby Idaho! Elder rigby with and elder from rigby!!! There cool but this area will be being pushed a lot harder with four elders. Our ward will really have to step up to the plate just as we missionaries will. So keep us in your prayers!Lifes great as a missionary. I love hearing from you all! Thanks for your support!Love,Elder Greg Grant P.S. Fall is here and I love it! Can’t wait for winter to hit!

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Nothing funny happens here! September 2, 2009

funny...nah...nothing funny happens here!Lol‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 9/02/09 11:20 PM

자 여로분준기 안냥하십니까Hey everyone so this week is kind of a crazy week, we had tons of appointments and tons of work to get done, it seems like everyone wants to meet on the weekends right now so we have appts. Every hour on the hour Friday, Saturday, and Sunday but on every other day of the week we have maybe two or three which makes for a lot of proselyting time which isn’t necessarily fun in the heat! Lol but if you get your tail side out and get to work during that time the lord always blesses you more than you can ever expect! I really have a testimony of that, at times my companion really hates going out and proselyting and working 24/7 every day but no matter what I make him go out and do it, we have seen amazing blesses from this. We really don’t see many of our blessings on the street they come in the form of random people walking into the church or a grandpa referring his son to us!

So the miracle for the week comes from last night! We were supposed to have three member lessons last night and two of our appointments canceled at the last minute, and the one the member was already there, so I asked him if he wouldn’t mind waiting in the church for about ten minutes while we went out to talk with people on the street. He said yes as he is one of our amazing new converts, 최선묵, and elder skousen and I said a prayer before we headed out that we could find someone to teach with him. You always hear the stories of people doing that and they find someone right? Its no lie, the first guy we talked to……….alright he rejected me fairly hard, about as hard as any civil Korean will reject you which isn’t very good for the morale, but I knew we would find someone. The very next person we spoke with was a 16 year old student. We asked him if he had some time and he did so he came into the church with and we taught him the first lesson- and explained our English program since our member brought it up-dang it- oh well, he has great gospel interest and will meet us two times a week and can come to church and family home evening! Now that’s what we call a very lax Korean when he has that much time on his hands! From this experience I truly have a big testimony that if you have faith the lord will bless you with the help you need to make his work progress!Lol

Funny story……………I don’t have one this week! Lol so that will just have to do! Awesome that you climbed the middle teton mom, looks like you got right up close and personal with some of those deer there!LolI love everyone and hope you have a great week!Love,Elder Greg Grant

You can basically smell the dog in it... Sept. 10, 2009


Not much time but I love you all!‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Thu 9/10/09 2:52 AM

Hey everyone how has the week been going so far?

Today I don’t have much time to write, only about 25 minutes so I am sorry I can’t try to send out a few individual emails! Today we got to go over to the war museum in Seoul, it was a really neat experience. To learn about the Korean war was really cool. It gave me a whole new respect for how much and how rapidly this country has progressed in the last fifty years. It went from being this war torn country with all of its people living in huts to having one of the biggest economies in the world! Quite amazing to learn about after you have seen parts of both the new and old Korea in your proselyting on the streets!

This week there really isn’t a lot to report on, we were supposed to get transfer calls tomorrow but they have been moved to Tuesday so I will find out them if I will be staying here in dong jak for another transfer or not. I love it here and could stay another transfer and love it just as much but going to another area would not be bad either!

This last week on p-day I forgot to include what I was going to eat that night. We went and elder skousen and I both had Dog for the first time. Sorry aunt Tracie it was just something I had to try and no worries I will never be eating it again. It is absolutely the worst meat I have ever eaten! It is covered in fat and you can basically smell the dog in it…YUCK. So that one is down and I can now say that I have eaten dog and all the Koreans will think I am an amazing Korean-American! JThis last week I haven’t been feeling so great, I am, always tired and it makes it hard to proselyte on the street for long stretches of time with the same intensity. I think it may have come from eating the dog meat and a couple of other Korean dishes we have eaten in the last while! I love Korean food but some of it truly can threaten to destroy an American Missionaries system! Lol I think my favorite dish here happens to be an octopus dish. They fry up octopus and make this big stir fry basically and put it in a type of red pepper sauce called koo chew chang it tastes amazing but is fairly expensive so I have had it only a couple of times!

The American food is all starting to taste really sweet when I eat it! Lol food here in korea is always spicy or bland never sweet so American food is always a real shocker to the palate.Good to here that everyone had fun at the tennis tournament and got in some good practice. We tried to proselyte at a tennis court back last week and I almost got to play even in my clothes and then he noticed-don’t know why he didn’t assume with the clothes I was in, that I had Sunday shoes on!Lol he proceeded to tell me that I wouldn’t be able to play in those shoes!Lol it made me think of dad and coach winn at practice basically every day in Sunday shoes. I may not have gotten to play but it was good to talk tennis for a bit even if it was in Korean.

Glad to know fedderer is back on the top of the pile and was very surprised to hear that safina was number one in the womens!Lol they thought it was hilarious that I wanted to play in church clothes but in the end they heard a little about the gospel and why I was in korea so that was good.I’m doing good overall, love korea and everything about it. The only things I really miss are you guys, tennis, and I really wish I could get in a good work out at a gym! Elders here used to do that but it was stopped about 2 weeks before I got here, dang, it would be nice to be able to stay in shape! That’s okay though I will just have to find my muscle again when I get home!Lol

Love you guys a lot, I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love,Elder Greg Grant