Sunday, October 3, 2010

Miracles and Lessons

Miracles and Lessons‏



Family!!!!!!!

Hey, so the cold has finally hit Korea and the leaves are all getting ready to drop, we wondered if it would ever come! So my last companion went home and I am now with a companion from the mtc group right above me by the name of Elder Kwak, he’s from San Francisco and we are going to light up kangseo this transfer! We were supposed to have a baptism yesterday but it feel through, he quite answering my calls and just didn’t show up to church. I really have no idea what to do about that. I have been here in banghwa ward for over 6 months now and I have had 13 baptismal dates and only one of them has been baptized, the only thing we can do is keep working hard and happily right! I really am starting to feel like the saints of old, they are working their hardest and trying to do everything right but the mobs keep driving them out of city after city! However we keep seeing miracle after Miracle as well, just like the saints of old. Take for example last night. We had just gotten done eating at our bishops and taken a bus back to the area that our house and church building is in and we had 15 minutes left on the night. Many people would just call it quits and go in but we kept pushing and the lord blessed us for it. 2 minutes before we would have had to start sprinting back to our house we found seoung hewn. He went to college in America for a year and is pretty good at English and he had visited temple square while he was in America. We took him in for the 30 extra minutes we get if we have a lesson and taught him the restoration. I could see a light deep down, and I know that as we discussed the fullness of christs gospel together that he felt the spirit and was touched enough to set up another time to meet with us. Hopefully next time if his wife(A Flight Stewardess) is back from her trip we will be able to meet both of them together! Cool Miracle huh! Another thing I learned was relying on the lord to bless and help us. We ate dinner with one of the poorest couples in the ward this last week and after eating they had told us how difficult finances were for them at the time as they were trying to scrape enough money together for the wife to have a surgery she needed. After when we were leaving they gave us some grapes and we knew they didn’t have much food so we tried to refuse but the lady looked at me and said the equivalent of, “Would you deny us the Lords blessings that come from helping his servants?” It was a very profound moment for me, I could see how deep this sisters faith was and were mine was lacking, she knew that no matter how hard life was that all things were in the lords hands and that he would take care of them both spiritually and physically! I think that is something we can all strive to remember, that we are in the lords hands, and if we are serving him and following him to the best of our abilities he will take care of us no matter what. After that I was thinking of the last two verses in 2 nephi 4, where it talks about relying on the savior and he will take care of everything! I hope that we can all learn from this, and strive in our own lives to rely on the lord more and more until the point where we could hope to see angels and see them!

I love you all,

Elder Grant

Wazz Up October 2010

Hey Ya'll,
So we were supposed to have a baptism yesterday but it has been moved to next week. Why? Well are candidate showed up and he had forgotten something very important. the case to protect his artificial heart from water!!!!!!!! YEah, that was a weird one to translate in Korean. It came out of his mouth and was trasnlated into my mind as a heart machine and I was like what???????? Haha long story short this guy is really prepared and should be good to go next sunday! Our new bishop is really different but he is bringing our ward closer together simply by being very straightforward with people and telling them what he thinks. whatever works right? this last week was not a good one for missionary work as it was one of the korean national Holidays and there is litterally not a soul in seoul at that time, its like tthis city of 50 million people becomes a ghost town, its kinda creepy! Well we did play soccer for the holiday with two other zones, it was pretty fun, though I got injured about halfway through, I took a shot right above the knee and a week later I am still limping, lest you worry, I think it is fine, it just got hit really bad, one of those deep internal bruidses that just kills! But you know me after 10 minutes of sitting down I was back out on the feild gimping around trying to win the game, sadly we lost@! Well IO love you all not much to say this week but hey!
Love,
Elder Grant

MIracles wrought by Faith‏

HEllo Family!!!!!!!!!
The work here in 방화, is going absolutely great, we see miracles around every corner. Take today for example, we were going to the church this morning to have lunch with a member and we saw that he was there inside waiting for us already and so we said, if we are to hit the standards this week we have to use every opportunity we get, lets bring someone into the church! We set a goal for to people talked to, getting them into the church with our member and setting a returned appointment with them. The first person we talked to ignored us pretty good but the next person we talked to, a 19 year old boy and his friend, came back into the church with us. They both havbe huge interest in the gospel, we did the same thing last night too, just on our way to a members we had a goal set for a lesson and return appointment and it happened right when we were about out of time! I have learned so much about faith and really on the lord this week, it’s crazy. I had the same kind of story out in 김포 when I was on exchanges. I told Elder Jeoung, lets set some goals to accomplish before we get to this members house, we set a goal of ten talked to, 2 numbers, and one lesson. WE went and we got to the house but still needed to talk to four people so we kept going, we got to ten and no one had sat down with us yet, that just wouldn’t do I thought, and on the 13th person we talked to we found an amazingly prepared college student who will meet them after the holiday. After that we stood up and I talked to these two 17 year olds walking past and they sat down and talked, scheduling to meet with us as well, what miracles! Lately I have been studying the doctrine of faith, relying on God, and calling down the powers of heaven. It truly is a powerful doctrine and if we would all live according to it and exercise the necessary faith the church would increase rapidly according to the brethren! I love this work and wow, does the lord ever provide miracles. Our baptismal date is set for Sunday, though it is going to be hard to get him a good interview as he says he can’t meet us even once this week. He has a slight handicap so its been a challenge teaching him but he wants to continue to come to church and he says yes to baptism, so we will do our part! Our zone is starting to do better, we are all seeing many miracles after we fasted together last week. We had three baptisms on Sunday and are looking for two more this upcoming weekend! Not many problems going on in the zone but we have a couple who have really bad attitudes about the work and need a correction. Anyone have any instant solutions to people with the "CAN"T DO" attitude going on? We shared some of our miracles and all we got out of them was a, "Well your'e the zone leaders, thats what your supposed to do!" Come on now, I am no better a missionary than you, just get up off your duffer and show some faith. The last few times people have been complaining to me I have just wanted to let fly a5t them, good thing that I am not like that! That may be one of my big faults as a leader though, I have a hard time coming down on people, any suggestions?
THis week is the week of what is equivavlent to thanksgiving in Korea so it should be a really good one, even if a hard one on missionary work!
Love ya'll
Elder Greg Grant

Miracles in the week

Family, Good to hear from you this last week!

Yeah, the typhoon, was kinda a fun experience to go through but one I never need again, I actually slept through the whole thing and when we woke up at six it was just throwing out its last rages and knocking out a few more windows! Haha I guess that is a bonus in missionary work, you are so tired that you sleep until the internal alarm at 6:30 tells you that it is time to wake up! This last week we saw lots of miracles. We found four new people to teach and I think the best one came on Saturday. We just got done wioth our weekly planning meeting which we had to do on Saturday cause I had to go to some leadership training on Thursday and Friday and we went out in faith. We set the goal of ten people talked to and a lesson with a return appointment. I knew in full faith that it would happen according to our plan if we worked to fulfill our goals before we went and visited the people we had planned to visit. We got to eight people and we were at the front door of the apartment that we planned to visit and I said, nope, we have to talk to two more. The ninth person was prepared for us almost two years ago when he received a book of mormon on the street and he has been reading it a little bit here an and there he’s almost half way through, however he said he was to busy to meet and to call him latter. The 10th person we talked to was a 20 year college student and man, he is way humble. He sat down with us for ten minutes in front of this apartment and we had a great talk and he choose to meet us later. Not a very big miracle you may think, well not quite as big as it’s about to become. While we were talking to him the 9th guy we had talked to had come back and was waiting for us to finish talking with him and he said, I would like to invite you to come up to my house to talk for a little bit! VERY BIG MIRACLE. We talked for an hour and it turns out he quite attending his other church 3 months ago because he felt like it was corrupt and that people were only in it for the money and he has been reading the book of mormon and feels like it is good. Plus, get this, the rest of his family is in American cause his soon is attending stnfford and the missionaries live in the same apartment as them, coincidence, I think NOT! Hopefully we can help him progress, he has a lot messed up ideas about religion but hopefully hearing the truth will help him!

I love you all, would love to hear from youin a paper letter!

Love Elder Grant

Yeah, we got hit by a typhoon!!!!!!!!


Talk about one crazy week. Let me start this out with a precurser, I am fine and my apartment is all in one peice! Okay now lets get to the exciting part. So last week on wednesday night we had a really bad typhoon came into the main part of Korea(Aka Seoul) and when it hit it hit. We got tons of rain and had lots of flooding and the best part was that the 100 mile and hour plus winds shredded through our apartment building blowing out nearly 65% of the glass windows, talk about crazy~!!!!! When we went out to work we soon found out that about half the pwer around seoul was out, the subways were shut down, and that there were trees lying around everywhere! Suffice it to say I have a pretty good set of pictures and that the lord truly protected us in our tiny apartment. I have no clue what to say about this last week except it was fun and tiring. I was on exchanges out of my own area for basically 4 days straight with other missionaries but we got alot done! One of my favorites was getting to go back and work with Elder Skousen again who was my second companion. We had no appointments in the day but by the end we had set up two people for baptism and found three others to meet with them, needless to say after I got back to my area the next day it was the most tired I have ever been on my mission! One of the people we met we met in the last 5 minutes of the night where instead of just going home we decided to look in this park right by there house. We ran into a 17 year old kid there, they met him on saturday, then he came to church on sunday and the plan is for him to get baptized in another 2 weeks, crazy that a miracle like that just comes! I love missionary work for that very reason. Lately I have been feeling really down to the fact that I haven't been able to baptize here in bangwha yet, we have been working really hard and that is all that we want to do as a companionship but it just doesn't seem to work out. WE find all of these prepared people, we get them out to church once or twice and then they say they never want to come back again, I can't understand, once you taste of the goodness aren't you supossed to want to shrea it with others not leave it? Hopefully we can see some miracles like I did with Elder Skousen in the next few weeks! We have one man who I have spoken of before, 송윤섭, Who is just amazing. He has been to church 6 times and we are hopefully going to meet his family of 4 kids and his wife soon as well. This man truly is one of the special ones, he just doesn't realize it yet! Hopefully we can get him there quickly!
I love you all,
Elder Greg Grant

8-29-10 I am 23 and I want to get baptized

This last week has been a crazy one and hopefully we start to see some fruit from our efforts!:) Out of our five dates one will hopefully get baptized this Sunday and three in the near future after one of them heals from some pretty serious surgery. The other one, well she just kinda disappeared, but her friend says she still likes the church, just that her parents think we are a cult, sheesh, if people would just think for themselves. I got to do a baptismal interview for elder skousen this week(My second companion) and it was a sweet experience. It was with a girl named lee mee ran, and she has been meeting with missionaries for almost 6 months but hasn’t been able to get baptized because of her dad. She believes in the church ful heartedly and one day called elder skousen up and said, “ I am twenty three and I want to get baptized and there is nothing my dad can do, especially if I don’t tell him!” So I came to be doing here interview. She has a sweet spirit and when I asked her why she wanted to get baptized even though she knew that her dad would be furious if he found out. She looked back at me and responded with the sweetest answer ever(The translation to English doesn’t have the same feeling as in Korean) But in extent she said, I don’t want to disappoint God. In all that I do I want to make him happy, And I know that by being baptized I can make him happier than by doing anything else! What a sweet spirit she knew the lord would take care of all else and said as much, she said she had no worries, because she was doing what the lord wanted. That’s something we can all apply into out own lives. Let us all think about what makes the lord happy and then let us all strive to do those things! I love you all and know this work is the lords work!

Love,

Elder Greg Grant

Staying in Bangwha with Elder Grose

Hello Family
and welcome to I am sick of my investigators not coming to church grant. I have never felt so concerned about the welfare of the souls of the children of God as I am right now. This last week once again we had lots of people lined up to come and at the last minute 3 of them had to go somewhere with family and one of them was there for two meetings but didn't stay for sacrament, ahhhhh.... drive me nuts. All of our dates have had to be moved to next month but I have faith in the lord and we believe hat everything will work out okay. News from the transfer is that I am staying with Elder Grose in bangwha for this next transfer. Since he goes home hwen this transfer is over I will be in bangwha till at least thanksgiving, talk about a long time, I got here in april! I love it though, I have a great realationship with the ward and am finally starting to get them to be willing to help me so hopefully things will start to pick up in the area of ward missionary work. If I could offer any suggestion to anyone I would tell you to do missionary work more faithfully as just regular members of the ward. Take care of those who are less active, invite those who aren't members to your home for dinner and casually talk about the gospel! Here in Korea that is the biggest problem, people are too scared to do missionary work. I am so excited for this transfer and hopefull we can start to see success!
I love you all,
Elder Grant