Greg's Mission

Hello America

2011-02-20T19:46:00.000-08:00

Hello America!!!!!!!!‏

신촌 와드 북 스테이크 0 0 3 2 7 11 6 2 2 4 4 148
Family!!!!!!!!!
This week has been a great week so far here in the book zone, we see miracles everysecond of every day! This week I spent two days away on splits in 금촌 with Elder 유준상 we had been worrying about how they were doing so wanted to get up and see if we could help them out. Recently they have been having a tough time in their companionship but as of late they seem to be doing a lot better. Here in our area we teuly feel very blessed. When I got back off of the exchange the standards looked to be a fairly long shot for us but in the end we saw tons of miracles and were able to set the example for our zone. Right now we have three people who are preparing to get baptized on the 6th of next month. We have sister moon who is doing amazing, she went with us to hear elder cook speak in young dung po and love i(even though cause she is a little older she slept the whole time!^^). Our only big worry with her is that she has lots of friends in the catholic church that she is attending, and even though she feels that our church is true she wants to continue going there, any ideas on how we can handle this kind of situation, its kinda hard to straight out tell her not to go to her other church, any ideas on how we could dop it in a tactiful manner? Becasue of a funeral she wasn't able to come to church yesterday buit she is already planning on our stake conference for this week! We also have brothers park and kim; brother park is 30 and amazing, he found us by calling the temple apparently a year ago a guy he was roommates with met with the missionaries and they left such a good impression on him that he called us up after a whole year to find out some more! His only big problem is overcoming the word of wisdom, so please pray for him on that account. We then have brother kim who is amazing, he keeps any commitment we give him and really is starting to gain a testimony of his own. We had a great lesson filled with the spirit with both of them yesterday which helped them realize the importance of finding out for themselves. This last week we picked up several good investigators as well. We have a family, 원유미, who has tons of interest in the church and actually called the temple to meet with us. It is such a huge blessing to have the temple in our area, because of the spirit it brings we see so many miracles every week! Just last night as we were going to meet a chinese investigator named Jerry we met another chinese person outside the church and got a text that jerry couldn't come, we spent an incredibly spiritual half-an hour with him speaking of the gospel, his english was just okay so we watched the restoration dvd in chinese and he said that he wanted to attend our church, that he felt it was true! Things are going great. Elder Harris and I are working hard and just seeing amazing things with one another. We feel that we can work harder and hopefully as we do things will soar, just a matter of getting that kind of desire into our whole zone! I love missionary work!!!!
Love,
Elder Grant

Week of Miracles

2011-02-13T19:36:00.000-08:00

SO in the last four hours I have written about this last week 4 times. Once in my Journal, once to report to the ap's and once to president, know I have to write it to you?????????We had tons of miracles but please forgive me for being kind of grim at the prospect of having to write it again!!!!!!!!! Lol
Hello Family!!!!!!!!
This last week as stated above really was filled with miracles! We have three people with baptismal dates and two of them are fairly certain! I also got to be an instrument in the lords hands in helping out a new elder who is really struggling with the work, very homesick but on What I feel was one of the best exchenages of my mission things changed and he realized the power and purpose that comes in missionary work! This elder has been out here for three weeks and is just struggling with homesickness and is very shy so was having a hard time in the work. I brought him over into our area for the exchange and we had a great day! The whyole day i was trying to get him to have the confidence to talk to people and it just wasn't working and so I kept showing the good example by talking to as many as I could. Eventually we got to the point where he would look up at me as I looked at him and told him to bear testimony of the book of mormon and he would just look down and say, "I can't do it." To tell the truth before dinner I was starting to feel slightly annoyed because he wasn't even trying and then I thought of him as a person and how hard it must be for him and was thinking of what i could do to help him and praying at the same time. He sat down in one spot and I sat in the back of the bus we got on. Someone sat next to him and I once again said, "you got it Elder, you can do it, talk to him." 5 minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed by and nothing happend, I finished talking with the guy I was by and said to him again, " him." -------Silence------- at that point the guy got up and got of the bus. This elders whole boday seemed to sigh with relief and out of nowhere, I litterally mean nowhere I was saying, "Elder, what If you were that mans only chance at salvation?"------- His whole body went rigid and you could see the tears well up and start to spring out, I felt horrible to say the least but I also felt a sense of ease, like what I had said was right and would help. we transfered buses and got on the next one and with no prompting from me guess who talked to the man next to him? Yep, the shy elder got the courage up to do it after all day. We had several more very spiritual and hard experiences for this elder that day but by the end when we were talking about what was happening he looked at me and said, "what you said hurt me deep down, but it is true." He told me that he felt like the day had helped him establish and truly realize what the missionary purpose is. The next morning we walked out and he was talking to everyone! It was such a fun exchange and very spiritual overall, it is amazing to see how quickly the lord can help people t change if the will only let him! Saw many other miracles this week but i have already written the others so this is all you get!^^ I love you all
Love,
Elder grant

Miracles around the Temple 1-30-11

2011-02-01T20:30:00.000-08:00

Hello.... miracles around the temple!‏

Hello Family!

So after the first week with Elder Harris all I can say is that i amso grateful for the opportunity. Elder Harris is an incrediblemissionary and we are already seeing tons of success in the areabecause of him and the fire he brings to the work. He is from portlanand has a family of 6!Thisweek we have had many miracles! These miracles have included the start ofachieving a goal of picking up a family of four and making them a succesfulfamily in the gospel(Pmg style), a man letting us into his home while wewere door knocking(Which as you know rarely happens in Korea), a membergiving us a refferal who should get baptized in three weeks(we meet hertonight), and this morning having an absolutley great study about workingwith members which should lead us to increased ward support and alsohopefully what every missionary hopes for,a bunch of refferals! We don'thave many investigators right now but the ones we do have are pretty goodand the new ones we picked up this last week should be amazing! The twobiggest miracles I felt came in the form of avchiecing our goals. On fridayin our planning meeting when we set our vision for the transfer we set alotof goals but our vision was all about establishing a succesful family in thegospel( in our mind a family of a dad, mom, so, and daughter) and our goalswere made accordingly! We decided that on the street even though it isharderto do we would focus on talking to families and focus our message on thefamily. We don't know if they are the start of our goals achievment yet butwe picked up a mom her 12 year old daughter, and 9 year old son plus theyhave another five year old daughter! The husband will hopefully be therewhen we meet in the future! The other miracle came in the form of dinner anda lesson with a recent convert and her non-member husband. Last night wewent to her house and had dinner. The same thing happened last week as welland at that time we had a wonderful lesson on asking and finding out forourselves and how it is all on our shoulders to act to find out. THe thingthat he responded with last week was a short and brief, "I believe in myhear, isn't that enough?" obviously not! Because this sister really wantsher husband to know the truth that she knows and because she really wants aneternal family with him and her son she's asked us over every sunday night.However, last night she invited us over and said don't call, I can't tell myhusband, just show up. huh???? To say the least I was very worried but thespirit said it would be okay. We planned a great lesson on faith and how itis belief and action using scriptures from alma 32 and mostly from james 2,it was a very powerful experience and in the end he commited to read achapter a day and pray every day. However, that's not all. At the end of thelesson I asked him to pray. He said that the last time he prayed was twentyfive years ago and so we briefly reviewed the method of prayer, however hisreal reason for bringing that fact up was that he was trying to evadepraying. When I asked him again he tried to defer it onto us and looked atme and almost suggested that I pray but he saw the look on my face and knewthat I wasn't about to say it and then he turned and said to my companion,you need to pray to bless my family.And we were both silent. That iswhen the holy ghost started working. I spoke of the article I reaad inthe liahona about how having others pray instead of ward leaders is away to increase their faith and make them better people. Then I spokeof his role in his family and explained that he had more power than usto call down the blessings of heaven upon his family and several otherthings and then things got quite and the spirit filled the room andsister 장수금 went and got her son to join us, I then looked at him andhe said, "oh...would you like me to pray? 기도하겠습니다" he then prayed andthe room was filled with a very special spirit! I was so thankful toget to be a part of something which is slowly bringing this familycloser to being an eternal family! I know the gospel is true and thatif really followed will bless many peoples lives and also eventuallyleads all to the happiness that comes with an eternal family. We mustprepare well while we are on this earth, our actions go miles ineternity and our wordsand actions speak tons to those around us! THisnext while lets all try to show the example of Christ to all of thoseclosest to us. If there is anything amiss in our lives the cool thingis that the savior knows and is just waiting for us to turn to him andhe will welcome us back! I love this gospel and IO love all of you!Strong ti'll the ends Baby!!!!!!!Love,Elder Grant

Short One Today 1-24-2011

2011-02-01T20:29:00.000-08:00

Hey Ya'll

SO today is going to be a short email cause I have a headache andstaring at the computer doesn't make it any better! Today was ourtemple day so I didn't email yesterday and we had transfer calls lastnight. Elder Grant thought that he would just get to kick back andrelax this last transfer but not so, they have moved the xone leaderarea over to my area so I will finish out as zone leader of the bookstake zone! Life is going good here we have found several greatinvestigators and the recent converts are all doing good! It seemsthat I have caught a second wind of life even my companion commentedon it. I have caught the desire to ju8st work like crazy these lastfew weeks! hope all goes well for all this next week!LoveGreg

BRRRR...Its the coldest it has been in ten years!!!!!!!‏

2011-01-16T20:14:00.000-08:00

7:44 PM

Hello!!!!!
Man is it cold outside! Glad we have heaters and are blessed to live in a good house or life would be prett dang miserable at night! This last week has been a good week, we improved a little bit from the week before and managed to find three new investigators which takes us up to a total of four people who are meeting with us now! We reall have gotten to see some miracles inthe last few weeks! one of them came on tuesday when it was freezing cold and we were out proselyting and met a 20 year old kid and sat him down and talked with him, he was way cool and we set up an appointment to meet on thursday. Now you have to understand that we set up appointments with probably 3 people a day on the street and abvout 95% of them never talk to us again. On Thursday he actually answered our phone call and showed up to the appointment and it was amazing. We spoke of the restoration and asked him to be baptized if he came to know it was true and thats when it seemed that the spirit kicked in and guided the lesson! in the end we asked him to get baptized on the 30th of this month and he said yes, however he wasn't able to come to church this unday so that date will have to be moved, but a miracle nonetheless. The big thing I am realizing in Missionary work is that a ton of it relies on others agency and has nothing to do with yours! i love this work and the fact that we get to see miracles everyday!
With Love,
ELder Grant

No worries..at the dmz 11-28-2010

2011-01-10T00:10:00.000-08:00

Hey Momma Bear,
Don't worry about me, I am still alive and Kicking though you might not find this next bit funny! WHen North Korea struck seouth Korea I was at the DMZ on a tour! It was the very end of our tour so everyone was leaving anyway but you could tell that something had happened! Lol Talk about a crazy thought, there I was looking across the DMZ at there army and people farming behind them while at the other end of it North Korea was attacking our side, Wahh...... No worries, all missionaries are living and look to stay that way! The funny thing about things like this is that most koreans just hear about it and laugh, cause NK does it all the time, however from what we here this time it is a little more serious with some response expected from our side, pray for the saints faith here to be strengthened that a war does arise. Things are going well with the companion and we are having lots of fun! Talk with dad about my debit card, its almost expired so my hands on that end once again have some more work to do because of me, I'm n sorry! Hope this last week was fun for you, can't wait to get some pictures! The one thing I could use at christmas is a new journal! The one you gave me beforee I left was done along time ago but I had bought two exactly like it in the mtc so if they have those blue and tan leather ones at deseret book I would love to have another one of those to finish out the last few months! I love you and am so thankful for all that you do momma bear!
Love
Greggors

Christmas miracles in the works 12-5-10

2011-01-10T00:08:00.000-08:00

Hello, Christmas Miracles in the works!!!!!!!!‏
12/05/10
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Hide details Charles Greg GrantTo Aunt Tracie, Aunt Trisha, Carly Grant, Dad, Dan Adair, Grandma Adair, Grandma Grant, Grandpa Adair, Mckenna, Mom, Robin, Tanner, Tricia Hales, Uncle Joe
From: Charles Greg Grant (charles.grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent: Sun 12/05/10 8:07 PM
To: Aunt Tracie (tggran@yahoo.com); Aunt Trisha (caludy@burgoyne.com); Carly Grant (spunkyseaturtle@msn.com); Dad (grantk@byui.edu); Dan Adair (daniel.adair@myldsmail.net); Grandma Adair (bearmum2@aol.com); Grandma Grant (gay-grant@msn.com); Grandpa Adair (gadairrealtor@aol.com); Mckenna (kuzcomg@hotmail.com); Mom (tetonwildflower@msn.com); Robin (robing@sd215.net); Tanner (t.agrant272@gmail.com); Tricia Hales (tricialou@gmail.com); Uncle Joe (joeadairrealtor@aol.com)

Hello Family and welcome to the Korea Report, though all I know about is missionary work in Korea!!!!!!!!!
WE are set up for some pretty amazing miracles in this the month of our saviors birth! WE have about 12 investigators who have a good desire to be meeting with us whether it be for english or the gospel!:(I hate teaching english, if you can here my words never come to Korea to teach english!!!!!!!! Haha However among them we have 5 people who I am just way excited for! WE have two people who already have dates for the first sunday in January, we tried for christmas which no one really does anything for her in Korea but by chance both of them were busy that day! However we have another two who are absolutley miracle member refferals who should get baptized the week of christmas! One of them came to church for the second time yesterday, the first time was our first week here and I didn't know she was an investigator because I didn't know anyone at that point yet. but she showed up at church with her friend again yesterday and her friend was like재발, please teach her the gospel and yes I meant to put that Korean in their, it was what she said and it is how Koreans beg! lol So we were like fo course we will teach her, I was surprised but it was one of those good surprised! So this next week we have an appointment with her and her two daughters, the mom should gewt baptized and the two daughters will hopefully follow! The other miracle is sister임해원, she is friend with one of the laurels in our ward and has been to church already 5 times and if we can ever help her friend to get the courage up to ask her to be baptized on christmas she will get baptized then, last time when we asked about baptism she was really hesitant cause the mom asked first and then the missionaries followed, not her friend, so this next time will do it right! I think the bigger miracle than this girl going to get baptized is what it is teaching the 18 year old girl who reffered her and her family. Every time we have a lesson we get to see her testimony grow and it kind of opens the family up to one aNOTHERS tender sides because when the spirit is there all you can do is bear pure simple testimony and everyone in the family has done it at one time or another! The best was the first time we met in a teaching setting and asked her to follow the promise found in Moroni to read and ponder and ask! She was kind of silent so we asked her friend if she had done it and the answer was no, it was sweet to get to be able to bear testimony to both of them about the promise and then watch the laurels father who is the 1st counselor in the stake president teach his daughter a great lesson on the power of the holy ghost. In the end of the lesson we challenged both of them to read and pray together, follow up with one another and see if they couldn't help each otehr gain an answer! Its the same challenge I would give to everyone else who isn't sure, give it a try, read, ponder deeply, and pray! It doesn't matter what others say, if it is the word of god thats what it is and that is what you have to take it for! If you haven't tried it before해보세요, just give it a try you can't lose anything through jsut trying can you? I love this gospel and know that it is true and am so happy and glad to get to serve here in Korea at this time!
Love you all!
Elder Grant

Keep writing people!1-9-2011

2011-01-09T23:53:00.001-08:00

Hey I am on, sheesh, not an email in the inbox, what the heck, am I that old of a missionary? Lol
Love you all!

The stress just never ends does it 1-9-2011

2011-01-09T23:51:00.000-08:00

Family,
This last one has been a cold one here in Korea and it sounds as though it was about the same there in america! Haha this last sunday our thirsd new convert was confirmed and all three of them are doing well especially shin song ah, the ward has just brought her right into the church and she is loving every bit of it. lim hae won is as good as any new 18 year old can be in the church and the one that is worrying me to death is lee bum chewn but he'll eventually come around before he has to leave for the army, I hope!
This last week has been a great week, one in which I have really been able to learnb alot and grow spiritually. We started off on tuesday of last week with Elder choi of the seventy speaking to us which was absolutley amazing and really helped me realize the need for obedience to even the very simplest things in life. Throughout life the only way we get blessings are simply by beeing obedient and strivcing to be our best selves! This morning as I was studying I read a talk by Elder Ballard or Packer to Mission presidents in the MTC a long time ago and he was speaking about missionaries and the spirit of obedience and how opur lights are brighter than most other peoples because we are members of the true church. We have to let our lights shine peop, live obediently to the lords commands so you can have the spirit with you and then go out and show others the light that comes from the true gospel, the light and truth we have can be seen by all and many wonder what it is that makes members of our church different, share it. There are so many churches in Korea that have lots of members it is crazy, but in one of my meetings with the ward leaders yesterday I heard something that made me kind of sad and calls for a more valient effort on our part. Other churches here in Korea are not the true church, we know that, and they don't. But almoat every member of a church in Korea is proud of the church they attend and most have specific service hours set every week to share the gospel, and they do it willingly adn boldly. But in this leaders words yesterday our church is the opposite. We pack the truth, but arent' willing to share it. Many members here in Korea and all over the world are ashamed to admit that they are members of the "MORMON" Church, don't be, say it with pride and then if someone comes back and starts dragging the church and its mebers through the mud, don't fight back but let them know the truth because truth in any case can never be proven wrong! Okay after my tangent lets just all make sure we stand up for and are proud of the fact that we attend the Churhc of Jesus Christ of LAtter day saints. its the truth. Life is going great here ion Korea, my companion is a different Kind of guy but we get along just fine and are having fun doing the work together!
I love you all,
Elder Gran
P.S. My english is getting pretty bad, Huh?Lol

The holidays are here! Or are they 12-12-10

2011-01-09T23:43:00.001-08:00

The Holidays are Here, or are they there? Well in any case it's that time of year!!!!!!!!!‏

Merry Christmas from Korea everyone and welcome to the shinceon temple district!We have been really busy in the last week, tons of meetings and lotsof missionary work. Right now we have about 18 investigators and 5 ofthem are on the verge of baptism it is just a matter of helping themto realize the fact that baptism is a beggining and that the hard partis living according to the covenant that they make through baptism.Sister shin sung ha has decided to be baptized this next month on thesecond. Yesterday at church I was so worried when ten minutes throughsacrament she still wasn't there, however after the prayer I heard thedoor open and so I looked up and I don't think there could have been aperson with a bigger smile on their face there than I had at thatmoment! We had three investigators there yesterday, two memberrefferals and then the lady I just told you about, all three of themshould get baptized in the next month and hopefully the young womanwho is carlys' age will get baptized on christmas eve if we can everget her friend to ask because whenever we do it the situation justgets really akward even when the spirit is there, I think it issomething this young member has to do so that not only here friend canprogress in the gospel but so she can as well! We also have myfavorite investigator ever, his name is lee bum kewn, yeah yeah Iknow, almost as bad as gus foot huh mom?, anyway he is amazing! Onlyour second time meeting I was talking about baptism and he looked atme and said, can I be baptized to. We have been working with him sincethen. His job that had him working late nights on sundays andsaturdays ended this last weekend so this next sunday he is going tocome to church and his plan is to get baptized on the second ofjanuary as well. However he has a big problem with smoking anddrinking, and he is only twenty years old, he has been smoking sincehe was 14, crazy huh, it is wicked stuff, if you are in high schooland reading this level, or even if you are an adult, never get intothose bad habits. The good thing about him is that he really wants tostop so is trying. He was up to smoking three packs in a day a whileago and we have him down to less than one pack now and this last timehe told me, "I just have to do it, i can't go down little by littleanymore." So he handed me all of the ciggarettes and lighters he hadwith him, which was a fair amount mind you and that was that, so farhe is doing okay but he's not out of the woods yet, we should get himthere though! Man I love this work! I got an email from president leelast week and it looks like Elder Kim will be transfered this nexttransfer which happens a week early(This wednesday) because ofchristmas. I love elder Kim to death but I am going to be relieved ifwe get split apart, it is tough having a companion who is brand new tomissionary work and is really trunky. he saw his mom this last wek atthe temple and it sent him for a spin. I almost had to bodily keep himfrom sprinting up there to see him. Man it will be a big stressreliever once we are split up, the temple area deffinatley is not aplace to have Koreans, they see their girlfriends, parents, friendsand at least in elder kims case it causes him to lose focus andeventually for both of us to not be able to do the work aseffectively, he isn't very happy with me for keeping me from thetemple and his mom, but hey, we'll stick to the rules! We have hadtons of miracles lately, it is amazing! Last night for example afterwe tried to visit a less active member we set a goal of five peopletalked to and a return appointment with one of them. As we werewalking i saw a man about 50 feet ahead and said "He will accept thegospel!' Well we had a good fifteent minute long talk and in the endwe will meet him this upcoming saturday! Amazing miracles! I reallylove this missionary work! Christ lives and lets not any of us forgetthat this holiday season!With Love,Elder Greg Grant!!!!!!

Happy New Years! 1-02-2011

2011-01-09T23:30:00.000-08:00

Hello Dear Family!
This last week has been the dream of all missionaries dreams! We started on christmas with our cinnamon rolls and activities for the ward We woke up around 7:30 casue we got to sleep in on christmas however it was basically just lying in bed for an extra hour cause after almost two years I have gotten to the point were when about 6:15 hits my eyes fly open automatically!!!!!!!! I can't believe, I, Elder Greg Grant, finally got to the point where it is just natural to wake up early! Lol So we woke up then and my new companion, Elder Nichols called his parents while I started th e cinnamon rolls! Wow, what a project that ended up being! I spent a good hunk of money on it and from 8 in the morning to three we rolled out and tossed in about 100 cinnamon rolls! When all was said and done and I was sitting there looking at them we both looked at each other sand said, well, they at least look delicious, we proceeded at that point to as most people would to taste our cooking and not to be too prideful or anything, but, dang, for a first time effort those were almost good as pillsbury dough boy style!!!!!! Haha Thats when the bigger part of our project started, the delivery! We have about 120 members here in the shinchon ward and we are serving in one of the biggest areas in the mission land wise and also people wise, AHHHHH>>>> Talk about delivery nightmare, no car, no money, what were we going to do? We went out to get all of those closest to the church and our house first and then started spreading out, it was bitter cold that day, just our luck, the coldest day of the winter yet plus the wind was just driving the humidity right through your bones, but we kept going and eventually got to the first counselor in the stake presidencies home, after wandering a half an hour aound trying to find the place, in the end our cold fingers and toeas all got there in one peice and we sang our song for them and left them with out cinammon rolls, about now it was 6 o'clock and I was thinking of the idea of just not going to outbacksteakhouse for Christmas Dinner so we could deliver more and I had the though, "Dang, I wish we had some way to get to all the members tonight, and bring them some christmas cheer." All of the suddent my phone was going off in my pocket, a blocked number, greeat the crazy who was calling me earlier in the day while I was on the phone with the family(P.s. He really is crazy and Kind of stalking us and doesn't like me at all becasue I told him to get off of our church property or I would call the cops!!! Crazy story, ask me about it when I get home, he is of no threat though!!). anyway the personal calling ended up beiong president park that we had just visited, he and his wife had been talking and were worried about us beign out in the cold all night and he said,"I know you won't quit so I want to help, I'll come pick you up!" It was an answer to a prayer! Wow, we saw so many miracles that day and in the end were able top deliver all of the rolls with an exception of two families! WE had a spiritual experience at every house as we sang a Christmas song and bore testimony of Christ! It really brought in the spirit of Christmas in a country were Christmas is more like valentines, a day for couples to get together! Next up in our incredible week was tons of other amazing miracles but the most amazing having to be the fact that we had three baptisms! I was on a high after our last one on sunday! They are all just amazing, prepared, children of God! lim hae won who is carly's age had a tough time making the trip down into the font beacause of an experience she had when she was younger making her deathly afraid of water but she took some pills to calm her nerves and was able to do it though the minute she touched the water her whole body went rigid and when she come out and went into the bathroom she was sobbing, but she was clean! My favorite of the three would have to be shin sung ah who is just an amazing thirty six year old woman who reminds me a lot of trish hales except for not quite as outgoing! She has ana amzing spirit and through all of the effort it took for us to get her baptized I really came to love her so much. She has such a special spirit and will be an amazing member! She is probably one fo my favorite people I have had the opportunity to teach her in Korea! Those two got baptized on Saturday after our new years morning party(The Morning Sunrise is bigger than th emidnight celebration here in Korea, Sounds like dads style!Lol), Then on Sunday we baptized brother lee bum chewn! He is a 20 year old that I called off of some old potential investigator forms and he agreed to meet and he made tdecision to be baptized, it took a giant effort on his part cause in 1 month he went from almost three packs of ciggarettes in a day to none! Amazing, for him to quit we really needed a miracle and it happened after last sunday! He had a short interview with the bishop to see how we could help him quit and then I gave him a blessing and in the blessing was a promise that if he truly wanted to follow the lords will that the lord would provide a way for him to quit. That night he got deathly sick, he went to the hospital and ended up bedridden for three days and didn't have the strength to smoke a single ciggarete. Thrusday and friday he was better but slept the whole two days cause he was so tired and barely made it to the chruch for his interview, and on sunday he had yet to smoke the entire week and said he felt no urges to smoke but that his body still felt a little bit sick, Cool Miracle huh?
SO overall the last few weeks have been amazing! I finally have a regular companion, when I first met him I could have sworn I was looking at a carbon copy of tanner with darker hair but now that I have gotten to know him some he and tanner are way different. They both talk 24/7 none stop but tanner isn't quite the nerd that he is! Haha We will have fun the next while together! Jesus Christ lives and loves each of you no matter your circumstancve!
Love,
Elder Grant

Christmas--no time to write today

2011-01-09T23:28:00.000-08:00

Christmas!!!!!!!!‏
To see messages related to this one, group messages by conversation.
12/26/10

No time to right today, gotta go do missionary work and of course have a good p-day!!!!!!!!!! Christmas was great and it was fun to get to talk to everyone, I love you all!!!!!!!!!!
Love Elder grant

First Snow of the Year in Korea 11-28-10

2011-01-09T23:26:00.001-08:00

Hello, Talk about bitter cold out on the streets, though not near as bad as it sounds like it is in Rexburg! WE had our first snow of the year yesterday, I think we got all of about 20 flakes, but everyone was crazed that it was"SNOWING" come on people, lets go up to the north of Idaho and see some real snow! Haha, this last week has been fun and we have seen many miracles, one of the miracles has come in the form of a young man we found last week! WE were meeting him for the second time on friday and we had planned to watch the restoration DVD with him but the DVD player in our church wouldn't work jso we had to go and borrow one from the temple which is luckily right by our church! Haha So we went up there with him to get the DVD player and while up there he got to walk into the lobby of the temple abd wait and we spoke about the role of the temple in heavenly fathers plan, you could feel the spirit in amazing force, it was a wonderful experience as we talked but after we watched the movie what happened next was even better! We were reviewing the restoration and how one of the key parts of it was the fact that the priesthood had been restored to the earth again. We moved from that to how you had to have the priesthood to be able to baptize and how baptism was only valid if you were baptized by someone holding that authority! AS we talked once again the spirit feeled the room and I kept getting the feeling that I needed to invit him to be baptized but I just couldn't find the right moment in the conversation and then I found it and said something about how baptism is needed to return to our father in heaven and he looked at me and said, "나도 침례를 받을 수 있나요?" or the equivalent in english of can I get baptized too? THe spirit once again filled the room and I came back with a probably overenthusiastic but happy response of "Of Course, lets talk about how!" Amazing but then before we ended we asked him if he had any questions and he asked about the temple. Apparently his friend died awhile back and as he heard our explanation of the temple he thought that it sounded right, that of course the lord would provide another opportunity for people who had not found his truth while upon this earth to learn later. He said that after he was baptized he wanted to prepare to do the ordinances for his friend in the temple! Wow, talk about Golden Investigator! The only problem is that until the 1st of January he is working a job that requires him to work the weekends from 8 at night to 8 in the morning so he is really tired and has a hard time coming to church. We almost had him out yesterday but in the end he was just too tired, hopefully he comes this next week! The rest of the week has been good, doing missionary work with Elder kim is good, he is still a young missionary so has a good desire and we see miracles when we are working outside every day, because of culture differences sometimes in the house we don't get along to well but for the most part we love each other to death! He always knows if I am mad cause I start speaking really fast english! Lol we laugh about that, I think it has only happened twice though! Haha About the only two times I have used ebglish in the last two weeks! Looking at the way I spelled that word I would say the effectsa are taking place! Life is great and we will continuew to work hard! Hope everyone had a great thanksgiving even if travel was a little bit hard, did anyone make it out for black friday shopping? haha
Love
Elder Grant

merrry 상탄철‏ 12-19-10

2011-01-09T23:21:00.002-08:00

merrry 상탄철‏
12/19/10

Hello family and friends and welcome to christmas in Korea!!! MerryChristmas!!!!!!!This last week has been kind of a very complicated week but it hasbeen fun! Like I said in my letter last week, last monday was transfercalls and no matter how much I love Elder Kim I am glad that we gottransfered! Haha however I am his district leader still so we stillget to be with one another! I am really happy about that because Ireally do love him at times he is just hard to be with 24/7! Haha soif Elderkim got transfered what does that mean for me? Well thankfully I amstaying in shincheon ward because I just set 2 more dates this lastweek and I love it here, plus I will be training a new missionary fromAmerica. He still is not here because the missionaries from ourmission went home a week early so they could be with their familiesfor christmas. So during this last week I have been kind of up in theair! The first day I was with Elder Kim and his new companion becausehe moved to the area right next to us and the second day we saw asmall miracle happen! Last monday after email we went with some wardmembers to play soccer with one another and one of them was an 18 yearold young man who lived in america for high school for two years, 전준경,jeon kyoong, and I got to be really good friends with him. After I gotthe call from President about transfers and he told me I would have tobe in a threesome for a week I started worrying alot about what wouldhappen to our area if I was gone for a week. That night the firstthing I prayed about was finding a way for me to stay in my area tolook after my investigators for the next week. As I prayed for thatmethod I thought of him and remembered that he said he was going toquite his job the next day. A quick call to president later and I hadsecured the permission I needed to make it happen! i gave him a callon wendnesday night and he said, "will I have to cut my hair, soesthat mean no music?"The answer of course was yes! I have no idea why Ithought of him for being my companion because he has supper long hairand is kinda one of those kids whom just seem to cause their parentshair to stick straight up! Haha he said that he needed some time topthink and twenty minutes latter he was on the other end of the linesaying, "Lets do this!" The last few days with him have beenabsolutley amazing! My biggest worry was making sure missionary workwas fun for him so that he would want to go out in a year when he wasplanning on going out. We have had tons of fun but I think what madethe biggest difference was that the first day we had an amazing lessonwith an investigator that the senior couple found and we are teachinghim together because he lives in our area! I was guided by the spiritin that lesson to speak about his son who had died and the temple andhow he could be with his son again. He had several obstacles toovercome like pmg says but we worked through all of them and at onepoint he broke down and cried and said, "I don't know what to do, Ijust don't know what to do." His circumstances are really tough and heknows the church is true but if he switches churches he will lose hisjob. At the end of the lesson he had decided to come to church. we hadthat lesson and following that spirit I sat down with jeon kyoong andtalked about the purpose of the missionary and the reason for what wedo. It really helped him understand the gospel a little bit more andit has turned this week into a great week of missionary work! Hopeeveryone has a great christmas on this next saturday, I can;t wait tospeakto you!Love,Elder Greg Grantp.s. Carly, he befriended you on Facebook!Lol

It's that time of year! 11-30-10

2011-01-09T23:21:00.001-08:00

Yes mom I got the package, no worries, i won't be left christmasless!Lol thanks for sending the recipes, if I can find all of the things Ineed hopefully I can make christmas a little bit happier for others!Hope you got kenny's program on tape, I definatley want to see that!Lol I have two packages in the mail to you. One is kind of a smallerone and one is a big one that is on a boat, the smaller one hasletters for people and a book of mormon for t, sorry I sent it lastp-day and meant to take more video but ran out of time. The second oneby boat is christmas presents and Korean stuff with some of my thingsas well if you could save them for me. Names are on the shirts forwho's they are! I will call on christmas eve in america and it shouldbe between 5-10, so if you could all be at home I would love you, noneof this going of skiing or up to the woods on that day! Haha I amloving life right now! In two days I will get my new greenie, i can'tdecide whether I would prefer an american or Korean, both have theirperks but I think an american coming to a foreign country two daysbefore christmas could drive me nuts, I garuntee he would be homesick,lets hope for a Korean then! haha Hope you have a great time attarghee, Have a good long list of things to talk about, lots aboutschool, work, and things that need to happen when I get back would begood cause it is the last time we get to talk directly before that! Isure love all of you,love,Greg

Back to District Leader 11-21-10

2011-01-09T23:17:00.000-08:00

Wow, so this last week has been a hectic one but one of the most fulfilling of my whole mission! As i am finallyt out of the zone leader position I am finding I have a lot mor time, I still have a lot to do as district leader but it can all be done at nights and in the morning and I only have to do 2 exchanges compared to the 10 I had to do each transfer before! All this extra time on my hands and wow, are we seeing miracles with it as we use it wisely! It seems like almost everyday we foind somewone around the church and ask them if they would like to go look at the temple and they say yes, it makes a great opportunity to explain about the plan of salvation and then shift into the restoration which what brought us the knowledge nof that plan! The Temple really is amazing! We had two people to church this last week, one a sister that I have come to love in the last two weeks, shin song aa, no worries she is almost forty so it is not that kiond of love!Lol She met the sisters a couple of times before we got whitewashed in and she is just an amzingly prepared person, she has such a sweet and yet tender spirit, she feels the spirit and reacts to it like none of my other investigaators ever have, she is very tender when she feels it, but because of those promptings it is strengthing her sprout of a testimony into something solid really quickly. We also have a reffereal from a girl carly's age in our ward. Her friend lim hae woon, these girls are so funny and yet a couple of the most quite girls that I have ever met! SAhe has been to church three times and yesterday for the first time we met her. She will probably get baptized in the next four weeks and she said that she told her mom about how our church is just like one big family amnd the feelings she feels every time she comes and she said that her mom wanted to come and check out our church for herself as well and she said if the mom comes so does her little sister who is one of the top ranked 16 year old girls in Korea for none other than TENNIS, we will definatley have to go play some time! Haha Things are going good here and well, we will just keep onj doing the Lords work!
love you all,
Elder Grant

I finally leave after over a year 11-17-10

2011-01-09T21:19:00.000-08:00

Elder Grant has finally been transfered out of the kangseo stake afterover a year, I am going to miss everyone there! I got moved to a newand an even better area. The whitewashed the area that the temple isin and sent me and my new companion to it! I live five minutes fromthe church and our church is conected to the temple yards, talk abioutclose!Lol My new companion is elder kim byeoung eww and he is in justhis second transfer so he hasn't even hit three months yet and he'spure Korean, and one of the few who don't speak even a little bit ofenglish! This is the first time I have spoken english in...oh... aweek now... kinda crazy hbut it should help my language skills a ton!The new area is absolutley amazing. With the temple right next to ourchurch it provides constant questions and we see a lot of miraclesbecause of the spirit that the temple brings. The funny thing is thatall on the same block as our temple there is a jehovas witness church,bhuddist temple, a 'HUGE" presbyterian church, and we can add inseveral other little tiny denominstions as well. There are so manychurches in Korea, living in america you simply can have no idea abouthow many there are. You go up on a roof at nighttime and across thearea you can see there will be over thirty bright red neon crossesshining, it's crazy! Inn my new area they have 3 of the best schoolsin korea, or in other words the Korean IVY league equivalent, makesfor quit the party town but we are seeing miracles every day! One ofthe best ones we have had so far was this little old disabled man whorides around on a handicapped wheelchair and lives in what looks likea little hut from world war two surrounded by other little huts,probably some of the most third world stuff i have seen in korea. Thestory behind this man is that he used to be one of the biggest gangbosses in Korea, you shake his hand and his hand is huge and you canfeel the strength that used to be there, Kinda like shaking grandpagrants hand except he still has tons of strength left in It! This mandid tons of bad things and says for the last forty yeaars he hasregretted all that he has done and hasn't been able to find peace,every church he has gone to has condemned him for his actions and hesays he never felt at peace until we came along! We had an amazingspiritual discussion in his little hut that i cant stand up straightin and commitesd this little sweet soul to baptism and coming tochurch and he agreed to all of it, amazing, he felt the spirit and isnow acting on it! We will continue to see miracles evere day, Love youall,Elder Grant

Miracles! 11-7-10

2011-01-09T21:12:00.000-08:00

Hello Family! How are all of you?

This last week has been crazy hectic with a lot of leadership meetings and other such stuff going on in the mission and the zone but nonetheless it has been fairly satisfying! I feel as though the Lord has blessed us to be able to use our time more effectively as of lately and while we have been seeing much success this week things finally worked out in our part! I am way excited, we found a mother and her daughter to teach plus we now also have a part member family’s mom we are teaching as well. After 8 months of being here in this area I finally got her husband and two little boys who are members to come out to church, now it’s just a matter of working with her! Our baptism from last week was confirmed yesterday and once again it amazed me as I participated to feel the lord’s spirit in such abundance! We have seen some pretty cool miracles from the beginning of this week to the end and they just seem to not stop its almost as if once again the doors of heaven have been opened in bangwha! Lol for example a couple of nights ago as we were out on the street tracting we ran into this kid and had a great 154 minute talk. He had been a foreign exchange student in Utah and had lived with an LDS family. He said that he had always wanted to meet the missionaries in Korea but had never known how to find them and that the one time he had seen them he was riding a bus and they were walking on the street. He was way cool and way interested in the church. He said that the example the kids in Utah set for him had had a really big influence in his life and because of that he wanted to learn more. He couldn’t come to church yesterday cause he had a test but he promised to come to church this next week and we should meet him a couple of times before that as well, cool, huh? Lately in My study I have been studying a lot in 3 nephi and it just impresses me more and more as I continue to study it, christ’s love for all of us is absolutely amazing. I think one of my favorite parts comes in chapter 19 verse nine where the nephrites are praying for that which they desire most. It really made me think. When president Burton was here he told us that we should be careful for what we desire because the Lord Grants us our greatest desires, it really made me think what my hearts desire is at this time, am I in line with the lords desires? As I thought of that I thought about just life in General as well, we should ask ourselves many times in a day whether or not our desires are in line with the lords, are we striving to be what he would have us be, do what he would have us do, if we look back and try and bring our desires in line with his everyday I think it would go a long way to bringing us closer to him and also in allowing us to have the spirit more! Pretty cool that that is what the nephrites did and their hearts desire was answered. All is well on my end of the world, if not a little cold and wet with all the rain and wind! I sure love this work and at times wish that the world would stop spinning so I could just keep doing it! I love you all, Jesus is the Christ and he loves each and everyone of us!

Love,

Elder Grant

Crazy day at church 10-31-10

2011-01-09T21:10:00.000-08:00

Hey Family,

So I have been sitting here for the last half an hour trying to write you a letter but I seem to keep getting calls from president and the Aps concerning a certain two elders in our Zone who apparently think they are above the rules, geez, I hate calling people out on things. Anyway now that we have that all sorted out I can get down to the business of taking care of the family!Lol So we had a baptism this last Sunday of a young man my age, he’s got a long way to progress before he’ll take off on his own in the church but if we keep an eye on him and help him come closer to Christ eventually he will get there! Yesterday was a crazy day at church, I don’t think I have ever felt so stressed in all of my life! Haha we had a baptism candidate who was twenty minutes late my best friend in Korea, our ward mission leader, going less active and another investigator 15 minutes late to our appointment to take him to the church, yikes, talk about blood pressure spike! However in the end miracles abounded, my favorite person in Korea came to church and talked to me for half an hour about our bishop and his counselors who are seeming to wreck our ward. In Korea every ward has one person who argues with everything that is said and six weeks ago it was bishop but then he got called to be bishop, hopefully it helps his family, and I explained to kim unn sook our ward mission leader and my best friend in Korea, about just following our leaders and supporting them no matter what so long as there actions confirm with the gospel, I told how you taught me that dad, back in deacons quorum when I felt like the young mens presidency wasn’t doing anything and so wondered why I should go. in the end however he expressed how he knew that the gospel was true and that he would never leave the church but then said he was going to move and switch wards when I got transferred, you have to understand the Korean culture to get this story!Lol These last two weeks have been rather slow but we are still working hard! Sorry for sounding negative last week, it wasn’t as bad as I made it sound, just having a tough day and feeling the stress from all of the different things that I have to do! Yikes Love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Grant

Just wanna be normal missionary 10-25-10

2011-01-09T21:06:00.000-08:00

AHhhhhhhhhhhhhh………I want to be a Normal missionary!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello family and yes I just want to be a normal missionary! This last week has been I tough one, I think I we have been in our area for a total of like three days and it’s starting to take its toll on both my body and our area! We have a date for this upcoming Sunday for a guy who is my age, he’s a little bit of the loner type but all he wants t do is follow Christ’s example so he should be good. Our investigators are all hitting the wall, they are either not willing to progress so we have to quite meeting them or they feel to much pressure from us about the church and its doctrine so they just don’t show up to their appointments, that one drives me nuts, if you have an appointment keep it or just at least tell us you can’t come. Anywho, Hope you are all doing well, life is fun and the missionary work goes on. I was out in my last area in sheheoung for exchanges yesterday and got to see four out of the five people that I baptized out there plus just out of pure coincidence got to meet some of my investigators including the group of 16 year old boys I taught just on the street as we were proselyting. Weather has gotten really cold lately so its time to break out the coat and hope I last through until the end of February where it starts to warm up a little bit!

I love you all,

Elder Grant

Happy Birthday Dad 10-17-10

2011-01-09T21:04:00.000-08:00

Hey Dad,HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!! I think it is now legal to say that your getting young again! haha Hope today was a great day for you! Sounds like life is busy as always out where you are at, hopefully you're happy with all thats going on! I sure am loving life here as a missionary! I love everything about it, getting to fell the spirit, recieving daily guidabce everything. I had a really humbling and testimony building experience for me this last week and it truly has me amazed. I was out in my old area, sheheuong, to do a baptismal interview and during the interview this man had several problems but was willing to overcome them all and near the end of the questions you have the question about keeping the sabbath day holy, I asked him this question and he responded that he had no problem but that two times a year during his workplaces busiest time he would have to work on sundays but other than that he was good. It was at this moment that I felt I had to say something about his working on sundays but I had no idea what I needed to say so I kind of just shrugged it off and was about to move on when he finished speaking when the feeling came once more, at this point I was finally able to get out of the way and recognize that it was someone elses thought patterns going through my mind and not my own so I opened my mouth to speak. I didn't kknow what I was going to day at that time but for five minutes I went on with this man in perfect fluent Korean. In the last year and a half I have gotten to be okay at Korean but its the hardest language in the world for americans to learn so I was nowhere near fluent, but for five minutes as words came out of my mouth I was. I told him that at some point in his near future there would be a shift in his life requiring him to work on sunday and that at that time it was time to quite his job and find another one. I told him it would be the hardest thing in his life but that if he would do it it would bring his family who are all already members greater blessings then he could ever imagine. I can't really describe what happened there in words, but I know with almost 100 percent surety that it was the lord working through me. I felt the spirit in amazing abundance and he did so as well. He told me that he understood and would always remember what he had felt and heard while we were talking. Hopefully somewhere down the road those words remind him to come to the lord. It was an amazing experience for me. I have had places where I thought I was speaking as the lord wanted me to speak but never before have I felt as though I was acually an instrument like that, for words to go directlyto one of his children from him. Amazing experience and I just wanted to share it with you, you always taught me the importance of living with the spirit, I didn't fully understand why or how to do it, but I think now I understand why however the how is going to take some time! Thanks for all you have done for me dad. your influence in my life is bigger than anyone elses here upon this earth, I love you and can't wait to see you after serving our lord and savior honorably here in the land of Korea!Love,your son, Greggors On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 10:58 AM,

:Hey buddy, Just got back from home teaching. We talked about the importance of couples praying together and reading scriptures together. I think that if the ward couples would learn to pray and read together we would have many fewer problems in the ward. Too many think that they are too busy for this Pause for family prayer! I'll be right back.... Now Michael has kicked Tanner in the face and Carly told Tanner he deserved it and...well, things haven't changed too much since you left. Oh the joys of being a parent. Not much to report--worked about 60 hours this week and I am still behind; church has been somewhat mellow. Lots of new callings in the next two weeks, so back to the training board; I hope that all will go well. Much love, If the boys go down easily, I'll be back; if not, know that we love you and pray constantly for you. Dad

Allergies...when you're older? 10-17-10

2011-01-09T21:02:00.001-08:00

DO allergies come out more when you get older? I have never had allergies in my life until now, I hate it!
Hell Family,
Yeah, I hate allergies but its a good thing you can walk into any pharmacy in Korea and they will give you any drug you ask for for way cheap, i am amazed that they don't have very much drug abuse here because of that! This last week has been absolutely amazing, we have seen miracles around every turn and I feel now more than ever that the lord is guiding me in life. We found two incredibly prepared young men this week and both dropped everything to come to church with us on sunday. One of them has already decided to be baptized on the last sunday of this month! IT's so much fun getting to watch the gospel of christ weork changes in peoples lives. This last week i have been studying alot about christ's leadership abilities and his teaching abilities. The thing I have learned the most is love. Love for anyone you interact with. If their is no love in a situation no one responds in a manner which is effective in accomplishing anything. Take for example this young man we are metting that is severly handicapped. He is a pain in the neck and calls non-stop but just hangs up when you pick up(Litterally he called250 times in one day). We had just finsihed english class and we were talking to him and he was just being a pain in the butt and not being respectful to the members or us so I was letting him have it pretty good and you could tell that it was making him hurt inside. I felt like he needed love at that momen, I remembered mom with kendall and how he does things better through feeling loved than anything else. At that moment, I got on my knees and looked up into his drooping face and said,"There is only one thing you need to know buddy, Jesus loves you and I do too!" In that one instant his face went from frown to a beeming smile this most amazing smile I'd seen fromanyone. We spent the next 20 minutes talking of Jesus's love and how we need to follow the example he gave us so we can feel that love even more. It amazed me that by simply softenting my voice and changing what I was talking about that I could get that kind of reaction out of someone! I love this work, I pray for you all, hope to see you in the not too distant future!
Love,
Elder Greg Grant

Crazy Good Week 10-10-10

2011-01-09T20:56:00.000-08:00

Hello Family and welcome to week number two with Elder Kwak and life in Seoul.

I am still here in Seoul in kangseogu in an area called Bangwha! I really love getting to serve here, the members are not the best at helping with missionary work or loving one another but we sure love them and they love us back in return, it’s just a matter of helping them realize the importance of the gospel. Take for example a family that we are meeting right now, one of my favorite ever. Her English name is Julia and her Kids are Alex and Candy! They are so stinking cute and the whole family including the dad is extremely prepared, no word of wisdom problems which is rare in Korea and they don’t attend another church, its been fun to help them build a belief in Christ from the ground up! Julia really has gained a testimony of the Book of Mormon and the church in the past three months; you can see it in her eyes. They have lots of concerns about starting to attend church but they have committed to start coming at the beginning of November. We have been looking to find a way to help speed that process up and we thought we had found it last week when we found out that the little daughter was best friends with a little girl in the ward because her dad was helping us teach and then even better we found out that the sister in our ward is their sons English teacher! We thought we had found a key into helping this family progress better! A couple of days ago we went to this ladies house to ask if she could help us teach one time or even if she would just come out to an activity we were planning with them and she flat out said no! She was not very nice about it either and quickly changed the topic. I brought it back around to it again and explained that it would be a big help and also that it would bless not only their family but hers as well “NO” I am his teacher so I won’t do it, its to much of a word they use in korea that can’t be translated but kind of means pressure. I have probably never been madder on my whole mission. For goodness sakes people if the gospel is true I don’t care how much부담 you feel if you don’t share it you will pay the consequence in the next life, I am still mad just thinking about it. Any way we also saw some other way cool things this week. We picked up a new family of four and we also set a baptismal date with a sixteen year old student who is fairly severely Handicapped. I was wondering dad or mom, what are the “Guidelines” for a situation like this? He can tell the difference between good and wrong and he understands what we tell him when we teach but as soon as he leaves the room whatever we said is all gone, do we baptize him? President says baptism is a gift and needs to be given to all and I would kind of agree on the same lines cause we can’t judge who is accountable and who is not only god can do that, what do the general authorities say? Anyway, it was a great week, we say tons of success and had met the standards of excellence by Friday in time to be able to “Relax” and enjoy general conference! Haha My favorite talk was the one about the scorpions and following the instructions that are given to protect us, what were all of yours? Well this week was great and hopefully with all 28 investigators we have we can get some of them to the waters edge and then give them the Holy Ghost!

Love ya’ll,

Elder Grant

Miracles and Lessons

2010-10-03T21:25:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-03T15:20:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-03T14:49:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-03T14:45:00.000-07:00

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!!!!!!!!

2010-10-03T14:42:00.000-07:00

‏
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

2010-10-03T14:38:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-03T14:17:00.000-07:00

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

Miracles and Faith‏

2010-08-11T23:16:00.000-07:00

8/09/10

Hey family How is life going? I am having a blast haha!

Lately Elder Grose and I have been working hard and we have changed a lot about how we have bee doing the work and because of that we are seeing miracles around every corner. Three weeks in we had a total of two investigators and now in just a matter of one week we have eighteen, crazy,Huh? But even better than that is the fact that out of these people we had four to church on Sunday and we invited all four to be baptized on the 22nd of this month and all four said yes! Talk about crazy! So here is the story; coming into Saturday we wanted five to church but it was looking like we would have only one and I swear I have never worked harder to get people out to church as I did last week. But we had tons of faith in the lord and we went to work to get our goal calling all of our investigators. We still had no one after contacting everyone. Our last hope was this family of five that we are meeting. Okay a family of four and the daughters friend who meets with us as well because she basically lives at there house. We met and studied English and the gospel together and just had a blast and in the end I commited them to come to church and all the kids said yes, the parents had another commitment at that time, hopefully we get them this week. So now we go onto Sunday and we figured we would at least get four people there and we were hoping to set a date with one of them. That’s when I got a call from our fifty-five year old guy who has been the last three weeks saying he couldn’t come because he had some problems with his teeth and had to go to the dentist. I was more than sad but we were still happy cause our family was coming. That’s when church started and our ward mission leader runs up to me and says one of the young women in the ward has brought her friend and I need to set up to talk with her after church, wow, talk about a blessing. Anyway as you now know we had four to church and my comp. taught the three kids after and set a date with them while I talked to this girl for the first time with her friend and our mission leader. It was way awkward at first but thanks to your beautiful faces and a couple of pictures of bugs on dads face everyone was laughing and we were good friends in a matter of just a few minutes. That’s when we got down to business. I taught about the book of mormon and its role in our life and how through reading it, prayer, and attending church we can show and gain faith in Christ.I then taught about christs example and his ministry here upon the earth and how after doing those three things we can show and gain even greater faith by following christs example to be baptized. I then did what is known as the soft baptismal commitment in our mission where I asked here that if she came to know that these things were true would she be baptized and follow christs example. She said yes and then without realizing it, and totally following the spirit I said,” On the 22nd we have a baptismal service, of course you don’t know much about our church but through us and your friends help you can be prepared by then for baptism. Will you follow christs example and be baptized on the twenty-second by someone holding the priesthood authority of god?” Out of her mouth came a yes and I felt the spirit in great abundance and so did she. Right as she said yes her friend and our mission leader said the English equivalent of “WHAT?WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY? You mean you’ll get baptized?” Good thing the spirit was still present because she came back with a, “well if that’s what Christ did and this is christs church like I think it is I have to be baptized then, right?” Talk about prepared and talk about a miracle! She is seventeen, the son of the family is 17 and the daughter and her friend are both 14, what a week of miracles! Next week is transfer calls, hopefully I stay in bangwha to see it through! Please pray for them to get all the way their, they are so prepared and need our church so much in their lives! I thank you for all your prayers and love you all a ton!

Love,

Elder Grant

weeklllllllyyyyyyyyyyyy EMAILLLLLLLLLL- Man I hate writing these! But to get you must write, right?‏

2010-08-11T23:15:00.000-07:00

weeklllllllyyyyyyyyyyyy EMAILLLLLLLLLL- Man I hate writing these! But to get you must write, right?‏
8/01/10

Hey family!

So this week things have finally started picking up here in bangwha! Elder Grose and I are finally starting to mesh our styles together and things are really looking to take of in an incredible fashion! We have one fifty year old man that has been to church for the last three weeks straight who showed up to church yesterday wearing a suit and when we taught him about fasting and offerings after the meeting he paid his fast offering on the spot! Haha, he is a great man. He came to church the week before when the stake president came to speak and the stake president spent two hours talking with him, we think that’s why he came dressed the way he did this week. Cause most the time people who aren’t members just come in regular clothes! We also saw another miracle as well, elder grose and I in looking at the stats on Saturday saw two of our goals that we didn’t think we would get, 2 people to sacrament and we still needed one more investigator to hit the standards. Well, they can’t become a new investigator if you meet them on the street but I remembered these two girls that had come to our English class the week before and their dad had called to say thanks and I had saved his number. I called him up and we set up an appointment for three the next day. Church rolls around and who shows up but one of the part member family members I have been trying to get to the waters of baptism for the last three months, plus the older gentleman I was just talking about. Then we met this family and it turns out they have tons of interest in the gospel and not just in English so we picked up the parents the 17 year old brother, the 14 year old sister, and her friend! Amazing miracle huh? Hopefully we can get them all out to church so that we can eventually get them to the waters of baptism! We had interview with president lee this week and he is just amazing! There will never exist the father like relationship that was their with president burton because of the culture and language difference but I love this man and he loves me so we are set to see miracles while working together!!!!!!!! I love all of you and hope you have a great week! P.s. Send EmailS!!!!!!!

Love,

Elder Grant

Tender mercies

2010-08-11T01:28:00.001-07:00

Hello‏
7/25/10

Hey Family, don’t have much time to write today but know that I love you and this is the lords work. We had a cool story this week that I think was one of those tender mercies of the lord. We were working hard and it was about 95 degrees and 100 percent humidity and after two hours we had nothing, we couldn’t get anyone to stop and talk to us. Eldr Grose was getting mad and I was just plain down frustrated and tossing down at anyone I could get my hands on cause that’s the best thing to do when it doesn’t work is to just work harder. At that point in time as we were streetboarding two guys walked up on their own volition and started talking to us one talked to elder grose and another one talked to me. This guy was way good at English and had interest in our English program but moreover he wanted to learn about our church, elder groses guy was a student in high school but we both got appointments for this week, wow was I thankful I kept working and didn’t give up! I read alma 26 this Sunday and had to give an unexpected talk in church yesterday. I shared this and alma 26 about relying on the lord and enduring in hard circumstances and then how the lord will eventually bless us because he is always watching us. I went for twenty minutes with no preparation, wow, I was surprised I could do that in Korean!Haha

Love you all,

Elder Grant

Rainy season with no rain! Again?

2010-08-11T01:16:00.000-07:00

Hey ya'll its rainy seasin with no rain, I love it!!!!!!!!!!‏
7/11/10

가족야! 안녕!

Okay now that after ten minutes I got my computer to switch from Korean to English……… Lets get on with life! Hey everyone so with Elder Tucker going home I am staying here in Bang wha and I will be serving next transfer with Elder Grose from Pleasantville Utah, and man is he ever different from Elder Tucker! Haha The mission has now been completely combined and we have a fifty fifty ratio of missionaries in almost every zone across the mission! Well, the combination wasn’t all joy and fun either though.

With us moving over to the new mission president there have been a lot of changes rule wise. Almost every missionary in our mission would have followed president burton to Hell and back in day, we loved him and respected him and everything that came out of his mouth was inspired by the spirit and made sense! Well, with the combination we are now under President Lee who is an absolutely great man but many things are being complained about by the missionaries and not to complain or anything but I Kinda feel like I am 6 years old and am being told when I can tie my shoes and when I can go use the bathroom. Okay enough of that but any ideas about how we can help the elders to just accept what has come and go with it. The first thing I know that I have to do is just obey and seem happy about doing it no matter what. A lot of the elders are bad talking president Lee and in our zone this last week just went in a downward spiral, so I am open to suggestions!

Elder Grose and I were similar when I was about 16 years old!Lol Elder Grose is a really shy and tentative Elder and has trouble talking to anyone. The differences between him and elder tucker are like night and day and I have to say after spending three months with elder tucker I pretty much just speak what is on my mind now and I am bold in almost everything I do!Lol I have to relax a little bit more so I don’t drive my comp. nuts but it should be a great next transfer, he is one of the most humble people whom I have ever met! We have already started seeing miracles together as well! We went through our potential investigators list last week and we already have about ten appointments set up for this week, talk about crazy huh! Right now we still haven’t had a baptism for this month as the one we had set for last week didn’t go through but he will be getting baptized this coming Sunday! He is the coolest ever he’s twenty four and we just have amazing times every time we meet him! This last week with E. Tucker we went out for dinner with him(young il) and his girlfriend(yun he) and went bowling, way fun and it got us on the good side of his girlfriend so she is now down with him getting baptized and having to live the law of chastity which she didn’t like the idea of much before! Its been fun to see him change and his girlfriend start to change even if just ever so slowly! I think that is my favorite thing about the gospel is just the changes it brings about in people, they learn, they feel, and then they act and it changes their whole lifes course!

Love you all,

Elder Grant

Leave the man alone....

2010-08-11T01:00:00.000-07:00

Sheesh, satan, leave the man alone!!!!!!!!‏
7/18/10
)

Okay so the heading about having rainy season but no rain, well that was a premature statement on my part! Since I said that it has yet to quite raining here in Korea and just keeps pouring buckets upon buckets every day. This last week has been a fairly tough one missionary work wise, it seemed like everything we tried to do just fell through no matter how hard we tried.

We were supposed to have a baptism yesterday but as you can tell from the last statement it didn’t happen and man does it kill me. Young il had his interview on Friday and the Elder who did it said that he bore and amazing testimony on the atonement of Christ and that he was prepared for baptism and knew what it meant근대, apparently he wasn’t converted deep down. So the next day as my companion was making calls to potential investigators I was making the program and setting up all the things that had

The whole of Seoul

2010-08-10T23:53:00.000-07:00

The WHole of Seoul!!!!!!‏
7/05/10

From: Charles Greg Grant (charles.grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent: Mon 7/05/10 1:57 AM

Hey Ya'll!!!,
So today was our first p-day being the new seoul mission and also being allowed to go wherever we wanted! However it is also my companions last p-day in korea so we went to some of the big shopping centers here, it was sweet and I found a whole thing of oatmeal for only ten dollars! Lol Never thought that would be the highlight of my week!
WE have a young man getting baptized this weekend he is twenty three and is dating a girl that is 27, he has such a good heart and really wants to get baptized however his girlfriend is a naughty girl and therefore may end up as satans means of keeping him from coming unto christ. People just don;t realize how important the knowledge that we have in this church really is. If we as members of this church and others as non-members had any clue as to how much our lives could be changed just by striving to follow the gospel to the absolute T I think it would change the world. For now we all have to do all that we can to share the wonderful knowldege of the gospel with others!
Our missions combined this last weekend so everything is really crazyh right now. Since my companion is going home I will be staying in bangwha and I will find out who my new companion is tommorow at live transfers, its going to be straight up like the old general conference style mission calls! I will let you all know how it goes!
Love you all,
Elder Grant

Hey, Long Time no See

2010-08-10T23:31:00.000-07:00

HEy Long time no see!!!!!‏
6/27/10

Dear Family!!!!!!!!

Sorry its been such a long time since I emailed you for real’s but when your companions time in Korea is limited it seems like he always wants to make the most of the time he has left! Haha, however I haven’t minded going around everywhere with him! In the last 12 weeks I have been to the zoo, Buddhist temple, biggest mall in Korea, fishing, an amusement park, and to cap it of today I have to be at the mission office all day while my companion has his final interview! We had to have a bunch of fun ones to make up for the lame one today I guess!

We have a baptism scheduled for the 11th of July! He is a 24 year old man by the name of 강영일, kang young ill, he is just amazing! Elder tucker actually first met him on the bus on his way out to do some baptismal interviews for me when I was still out in shi heoung and we just started meeting him again about two weeks ago! He loves sports, studying, and his girlfriend is fluent at Japanese and looking to get baptized as well!!!! This last week he also brought one of his friends and we talked together and his friend has tons of interest! He’s been to church only once and didn’t come this last Sunday because of the world cup game(WE LOST>>>WHAT HOW COULD WE LOSE? OH…THAT’S RIGHT, KOREANS AREN’T VERY ATHLETIC!!!!!!!HAHA)! Keep him in your prayers if you would, he’s a great guy but he has stuggles with the word of wisdom and also with the law of chastity probably. He has cut from a whole pack to just five cigarettes a day but definitely needs the lords help to get the rest of the way!

This last Saturday I had to do a baptismal interview for only the second time on my mission and wow did it rack my nerves! I had a woman who had had big problems in life and she was confessing it all out to me! Let me tell you I have never felt the weight nor the power of the calling as a missionary as much as I did then. This woman as almost every other woman over the age of forty in Korea had had an abortion but she had also had other problems earlier in her life which could have prevented her form getting baptized. After hearing all this and talking for a while I finished the interview and called up to president burton cause she had to have another interview with him. I told him what was going on and he says, “Well, Elder looks like you’ve gotten yourself a good one!” I was thinking yeah thanks president holy smokes this is crazy, I never want to be a bishop if this is what they hear every day. Then president stunned me by saying, “ Well since I am going home in 4 days I don’t have any counselors any more and I can’t make it down there to do the interview for her. So because of the seriousness of the matter I feel it inappropriate to do it over the phone so what I am going to do is have you do it. President then gave me very specific instructions on what to ask and then said at the end of talking with her I want to you to go with the feeling that you get from the spirit. I was astounded and shocked that so much power was being put into my hands to decide whether or not this woman was worthy for baptism. After another 30 minutes of talking with her and learning all the details I asked her to bear her testimony about why she wanted to be baptized and the gospel. She gave a very sweet and short testimony of the atonement and the power of it that she has felt in her life. At that time I felt the saviors overwhelming love fro both her and me, I knew in my heart that she had fully repented and was forgiven of her sins despite the seriousness of the matter. I heard from the elders who baptized her last night that her baptism went great and she cried through the whole thing! Its really cool to come to understand a little bit more the power of the atonement through an experience like that! I love this gospel and know that it is true and all I want to do while I am out here is help people begin the long road back to our father in heaven by being baptized! This gospel heals people not only externally but internally as well! I love all of you and hope you’ll allow yourselves to be guided by the lords hands this week!

Love,

Elder Greg Grant

Rainy Season with no rain

2010-08-10T23:25:00.000-07:00

Hey ya'll its rainy seasin with no rain, I love it!!!!!!!!!!‏
7/11/10

Sent: Sun 7/11/10 10:04 PM

가족야! 안녕!

Okay now that after ten minutes I got my computer to switch from Korean to English……… Lets get on with life! Hey everyone so with Elder Tucker going home I am staying here in Bang wha and I will be serving next transfer with Elder Grose from Pleasantville Utah, and man is he ever different from Elder Tucker! Haha The mission has now been completely combined and we have a fifty fifty ratio of missionaries in almost every zone across the mission! Well, the combination wasn’t all joy and fun either though.

With us moving over to the new mission president there have been a lot of changes rule wise. Almost every missionary in our mission would have followed president burton to Hell and back in day, we loved him and respected him and everything that came out of his mouth was inspired by the spirit and made sense! Well, with the combination we are now under President Lee who is an absolutely great man but many things are being complained about by the missionaries and not to complain or anything but I Kinda feel like I am 6 years old and am being told when I can tie my shoes and when I can go use the bathroom. Okay enough of that but any ideas about how we can help the elders to just accept what has come and go with it. The first thing I know that I have to do is just obey and seem happy about doing it no matter what. A lot of the elders are bad talking president Lee and in our zone this last week just went in a downward spiral, so I am open to suggestions!

Elder Grose and I were similar when I was about 16 years old!Lol Elder Grose is a really shy and tentative Elder and has trouble talking to anyone. The differences between him and elder tucker are like night and day and I have to say after spending three months with elder tucker I pretty much just speak what is on my mind now and I am bold in almost everything I do!Lol I have to relax a little bit more so I don’t drive my comp. nuts but it should be a great next transfer, he is one of the most humble people whom I have ever met! We have already started seeing miracles together as well! We went through our potential investigators list last week and we already have about ten appointments set up for this week, talk about crazy huh! Right now we still haven’t had a baptism for this month as the one we had set for last week didn’t go through but he will be getting baptized this coming Sunday! He is the coolest ever he’s twenty four and we just have amazing times every time we meet him! This last week with E. Tucker we went out for dinner with him(young il) and his girlfriend(yun he) and went bowling, way fun and it got us on the good side of his girlfriend so she is now down with him getting baptized and having to live the law of chastity which she didn’t like the idea of much before! Its been fun to see him change and his girlfriend start to change even if just ever so slowly! I think that is my favorite thing about the gospel is just the changes it brings about in people, they learn, they feel, and then they act and it changes their whole lifes course!

Love you all,

Elder Grant

New Address in Seoul Mission

2010-08-10T23:24:00.001-07:00

Address‏
6/20/10
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Hide details Charles Greg Grant Charles Greg Grantcharles.grant@myldsmail.net

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View detailsTo Aunt Tracie, Aunt Trisha, Carly Grant, Dad, Dan Adair, Grandma Adair, Grandma Grant, Grandpa Adair, Mckenna, Mom, Tanner Grant, Tricia Hales, Uncle Joe
From: Charles Greg Grant (charles.grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent: Sun 6/20/10 8:39 PM
To: Aunt Tracie (tggran@yahoo.com); Aunt Trisha (caludy@burgoyne.com); Carly Grant (spunkyseaturtle@msn.com); Dad (grantk@byui.edu); Dan Adair (daniel.adair@myldsmail.net); Grandma Adair (bearmum2@aol.com); Grandma Grant (gay-grant@msn.com); Grandpa Adair (gadairrealtor@aol.com); Mckenna (kuzcomg@hotmail.com); Mom (tetonwildflower@msn.com); Tanner Grant (bballwhiz@q.com); Tricia Hales (tricialou@gmail.com); Uncle Joe (joeadairrealtor@aol.com)

Please send all future mail to me to:
Korea Seoul Mission
Gwanghwamun PO Box 210
Jongno-Gu
Seoul-si 110-602
South Korea

I am going to an amusement park here in Korea today so we only have about five minutes to email, but I got to read everyones emails and was happy to hear from you all! I am doing well and Healthy and just loving missionary work! Thats all it is really about is love, if you love everything and people can see that love you have for them, life, and the gospel it changes them! I love you all!
Elder Grant

G G G GO O O A A ALLLLLLL

2010-08-10T23:17:00.001-07:00

GGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLl‏
6/13/10
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Hide details Charles Greg GrantTo Aunt Tracie, Aunt Trisha, Carly Grant, Dad, Dan Adair, Grandma Adair, Grandma Grant, Grandpa Adair, Mckenna, Mom, Tanner Grant, Tricia Hales, Uncle Joe
From: Charles Greg Grant (charles.grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent: Sun 6/13/10 9:07 PM
To: Aunt Tracie (tggran@yahoo.com); Aunt Trisha (caludy@burgoyne.com); Carly Grant (spunkyseaturtle@msn.com); Dad (grantk@byui.edu); Dan Adair (daniel.adair@myldsmail.net); Grandma Adair (bearmum2@aol.com); Grandma Grant (gay-grant@msn.com); Grandpa Adair (gadairrealtor@aol.com); Mckenna (kuzcomg@hotmail.com); Mom (tetonwildflower@msn.com); Tanner Grant (bballwhiz@q.com); Tricia Hales (tricialou@gmail.com); Uncle Joe (joeadairrealtor@aol.com)

안양하십니까,오늘 뭐 하려고 하니? 나는Chinatown으로 가려고 해. 왜 요즈음에 email을 안 받았냐? 재 가족을 사랑 하 지만 계속해서email 받고십어요!!!!!!!!!! Hey Everyone, so how is the life going in the United States? Things are pretty crazy here but as usual the right attitude can make anything and everything fun!

This week marked the start of the world cup which is huge here in Korea, there isn’t much that happens bigger than this! We were on exchanges with some elders from the seoul mission preparing for the combination and we were switching back Saturday night and had to switch back at the place where they had the one of the biggest gatherings to watch the game in Korea, we went up and out of the subway station to see what it was like and oh my was it crazy, over 300,000 people packed into this little area, it was insane, I got some crazy pictures. We were there for the start of the game and in the first two minutes one of Koreas star players had a shot on Goal and everyone erupted, three minutes later when the scored in only the seventh minute of the game the whole country shook! I don’t think I have heard a louder sound. We were in our house when they scored the second goal, planning, and the whole apartment complex at the same time all shouted “GOOOOOAAALLLL” it was crazy! Korea won two to zero over Greece so the Country is going crazy thinking that this year could be there year! It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to be here for this!

This week missionary work wise was kinda rough for our area, we had to be out in another elders area for three days and we had splits and it rained a lot but we still had fun though at times it felt as though no one would talk to or even just listen to our all important message. These last few days I have really started to love missionary work and I am starting to realize what love can do. The savior loved us, so he died for us. I am sharing a message with people about that, and how they can access the wonderful power of his atoning sacrifice. When we were out helping an elder who has attitude problems this week I learned that you have to love every bit of it. I was about ready to hit this elder upside the head as he just has a horrible attitude and I’ll share a little part about the exchange that I really enjoyed . So we were out in sheheuong which is my old area because my elder lee had to go to his army service for three days so we were with his companion elder lee from America. We went out to do a service project which I had set up to do two weeks before I was transferred and had never gotten to do. We set up one with a group of disable young adults anywhere from 18-30, it was so much fun. We got to do arts and crafts with them and love them as people, which they probably don’t get very often. Me and my companion had a blast and at the end I had three of these precious souls of our father in heaven hanging all over me asking me not to leave. It was a precious experience for me cause it reminded me of Kenny, and it taught me the true meaning of christlike love, you can’t hold anything back, it must be sincere or people can tell, but when you are sincere, watch out, because people will fill it and respond back. This elder went in their and he took and just cut the crafts out and threw them at the kids he was working with to color and then sat back in his chair with a scowl on his face for the whole two hours we were there, I was ready to give him a good one upside the head. He treated these people as if they were animals, I let him know after we left to that he better shape up when he goes there. The people there loved me and my companion to death and can’t stand this elder because he has volunteered to help but it is like its something he is forced to do. Serving through love changes lives! Hopefully as I serve through love I can help this Elder change as well, he’s got such a great spirit he just hasn’t quite caught on to what he is doing in Korea yet, any ideas as to how I can help him?

I want you to all know that I love this gospel and that I can’t wait to share it with more people, it drives me, the love, let it drive all of us to come closer to Christ so we can help our brothers and sisters in this world!

Love ya’ll,

Elder Grant

OOps---confused P-days

2010-08-10T22:57:00.000-07:00

Hello Family!

Apparently we got our days mixed up, my p-day is on Monday which is Sunday night there in the good ole’ western united states! This week has been a fun-filled week of work and meetings and probably one of the most successful weeks I have had as a missionary number wise and miracle wise!

It started off with our zone leader counsel with president burton and then just got better with our zone conference and our combined district meetings where we as zone leaders provide training. So time wise we were pretty stretched this last week but the Lord blessed us with miracles every second of the time that we “Were” able to work in. This last week we had five referrals and picked up eight new investigators and established 2 new baptismal dates for not this Sunday but the next, Yahoo! Focusing on baptism and the book of Mormon with everyone we meet is really starting to see some incredible results. This last transfer our focus was on using the book of Mormon in everything we do. As I have done this I have felt the most successful I have ever felt as a missionary and I have grown to have a deeper knowledge and faith in the Book of Mormon. I know that because we are using this Amazing Book filled with the words of God we are seeing so much success.

This last week was not all work either, we had a lot of fun times. We had a ward party on Wednesday which we had a few investigators to and it was an absolute blast! We played basketball and a Korean game called chokew, which is basically soccer combined with tennis, in other words, Poser Toccer- I don’t like it cause it’s way Hard!Lol Our menu at the party was chicken tortillas! American Food, only not! Koreans ideas of American are vastly skewed! We had a sweet potatoe salad and no one ate it as salad they put it on their wraps with peanut butter sauce, mustard, salsa, all sorts of weird veggies and to top it all off threw just a little bit of chicken in it! Hey, apparently I am turning Korean, my first thought was, there is no way in heaven that that tastes good, wasn;t bad though! Howevere I wouldn’t recommend it for picnics in America!

Love you all,

Elder Grant

Crazy Life--North Korea Sout Korea too

2010-06-01T23:40:00.000-07:00

Crazy Life‏
From: Charles Greg Grant (charles.grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent: Mon 5/31/10 9:52 PM

Hey everybody, This weeks email will be short and sweet. Just to say that I love all of you and can't wait to here from you. With the situation going on in Korea President Burton wanted us to tell all our parents that everything is fine. They are in contact with the U.S. embassy and there has been an official statement released saying that there isn;t any danger to american citizens who are at this time residing in Korea. Fun week this last week, we especially had a good time at zone leader council where president taught us about all the lessons he has learned about leadership as it was his last one with us. It was a very spiritual experience and we all left feeling a thousand times more spiritual and having learned much through the spirit. Things are starting to look up in bangwha, we still have no dates but we have a couple who are progressing well and look to have good potential for baptism in the future! I love you all, have a great week!
Love Elder Grant

Lots of changes and crazy Miracles‏ May 29, 2010

2010-05-26T20:26:00.000-07:00

Hello, Most important things first, Elder Grant is experiencing a change in Mission Home address. Starting in four weeks if you could all begin to send mail to

SEOUL MISSION

Seoul-si

JongRo-Gu

Gwanghwa-mun 110-602

P.O. Box 210

I would greatly appreciate it. The last few days have been extremely hectic and it doesn’t look to slow down any before we combine with the seoul mission on the 29th of June. From here on out our p-days are being moved to Monday in a worldwide effort by the church to standardize missionary work around the world, thus meaning that today is not a p-day and that all I get to do is email you guys and go right back to work, they announced the change on Tuesday so this week is a long, p-day free, week of missionary work, you don;t realize how much you need that day until you don;t get it. So this last week was transfers but Elder Grant will be staying in bangwha with Elder Tucker. However, our zone experienced some huge changes. We had four people that went home and one area close, out of those four only two of them were planned to go back to America. One was discovered to have a worthiness issue and the other has OCD and so isn’t able to deal with missionary work, talk about crazy huh. So because this elder with the worthiness problem just got discovered on the day before p-day he has to go home making it so we have one less possible companionship so they ended up shutting down an area in our zone where the ward just can;t seem to work with missionaries very well.

This last week we’ve seen miracles every day. We were meeting a man on Saturday and we got to the subway station about thirty minutes early after getting out of a meeting with some other missionaries and we were talking about what to do, so I said, well we need some more lessons and a new investigator to reach our goals so lets do it. We threw down our goals and walked right up out of the station. Right as we came out there was a man walking along beside us so I greeted him and we started talking, this man talked with us for about twenty minutes before our appointment showed up and as I was sitting there and we were talking I was thinking about how we were going to commit him and how he would respond. I thought, “commit him to come to church!”, what commit him to come to church on the street, I had always done that with people in passing but this was like a place in which we could get a new investigator and doing something like that could cost us his trust and friendship as he could come to see us as purely people who go around saying believe in christ, however who am I to say no to the spirit. So as we were parting I threw down the will you come to church commitment to him and he got a little bit freaked out but we explained that just if he had time we would love him to come and see what our church is like. That night we texted him our churches address and told him once again the time. I prayed that night that he would come because I really felt like that was the commitment I needed to give him. Half-way through sacrament Elder Tucker looks at me with a surprised look on his face, “Elder, He’s on his way to the church right now!” I was way surprised and so grateful at the same time. He arrived five minutes to late for sacrament meeting because of his job but we were able to sit him down with a member and teach him about the gospel, he really is an amazing person and prepared. It was a testimony to me that as you find and then commit people through the spirit, it makes for much more effective missionary work.

Hope you all have a great week this week, I’ll pray for you if you will pray for me!

Love,

Elder Greg Grant

Twelve Apostles!!!!‏

2010-05-26T20:22:00.000-07:00

Hey Ya’ll and welcome to the sunny/rainy/cloudy/muggy I don’t know what to call it land of Korea. Seems lately like we have been having all sorts of weather. This week has been a really good one. We got to have a special meeting and shake hands with elder Christofferson on Monday, what a special treat to here from an apostle of the lord. His main message was about the book of Mormon and how using it in our own lives and in missionary work we could help to change others lives for the better. I feel like that is so true, if people just read and pray and follow the basics they won;t live problem free but the problems they have will seem less big as they feel a certain peace through the gospel. This last week we went and visited a man and his family who was diagnosed with cancer maybe four weeks ago and is deteriorating rather rapidly. He expressed great concern about his sons particularly his oldest son who says he is done with church when he turns twenty which is the legal age here in Korea. This man was a bishop up until he moved about three months ago, he asked us what he could do to help his three sons. I asked him if they did FHE, read and prayed together, not surprisingly as most Koreans do he said that no they didn;t and never really had. I immediately testified that if they would do that it would change their families lives. I truly feel that just by doing those three simple things together families grow closer and the world has less influence on the children and other members of a family. These three things protect against bad friends, arguments, pornography, a variety of things. I remember very few of the lessons we had when I was little but I do know that because we did it all of the people in my family are better people because of it. So I will commit you missionary style, will you follow the prophets counsel and do these three things as told to? You dang well better or I’ll swim the ocean to come get you all! Lol Well I have got another fun filled p-day ahead of me, see ya’ll next week!

Love,

Elder Grant

Man was it good to hear all of your voices May 2010

2010-05-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

Man was it good to hear all of your voices, long time no see, i uh… mean… no talk to huh? Lol SO this last week has been a crazy yet good one and I basically told you all of the goings on over the phone when we talked. Today fro p-day we are planning on heading over to the zoo so we don’t have much time to do anything but it should be lotsa fun! I sure love all of you and am thankful for all of your support. This week I have been studying on how to follow the spirit and one of the things I studied alot of was when nephi in chapter 6 was constrained by the spirit to kill laban. Nephi knew that laban was a bad man and he also knew he needed the plates but he still had a hard time following it. Nephi had to go through a kind of check process before he realized that it was the spirit and he realized that he had to follow it. WE in our lives need to do the same things. As we live worthily and ask for the spirits guidance it will come, its just a matter of following it. Take today for instance. We had gone up to surprise some elders in our zone to study with them and on the way back a little boy sat down in front of me and normally I don;t talk to little 14 year olds especially when their moms and right there but I felt like I needed to talk to him so talk I did, in English, as far as he could go with intros., and then i switched to Korean and he was amazed! Lol This little boy is actually suffering from some type of lung disease and his dream is to become a preacher. He loved talking to me and especially loved the fact that I was Christian. I made friends and he asked me what the book of mormom was and so I explained to him using the intro. And pictures and he loved it and was impressed, even asked me where he could buy it! I told him he could get it for free and asked his mom if I could give it to him, she said yes. This little boys face just lit up brighter than any i have ever seen, I shared my favorite scrip. And he dog marked the page for latter. He was a little disappointed when I told him I didn;t make money but I explained why and by the time we were done he left the bus saying I want to be like you when I grow up! Amazing story huh, testimony to me that the spirit guides us! I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Grant

Mother's day phone call 2010

2010-05-26T20:07:00.000-07:00

RE: Hey Momma!!!!!!‏
From: Susan Grant (tetonwildflower@msn.com)
Sent: Wed 5/12/10 8:29 PM
To: Greg Grant (charles.grant@myldsmail.net); tetonwildflower@msn.com

Hey Handsome,

It was so great to hear your voice on Sunday, truly, it's a joy to know you are alive and well and still motivated about being on god's errand Greg. It makes my heart rest at ease, but I also sensed the burden of responsibility in your voice and the tenderness of heart you are experiencing. Those phone calls are tough, on all of us I think: ) Much as I love talking with you, I sense they're a little hard; I hope the homesick faded quickly; there were things I wanted to talk about with you, but didn't want to make you cry (okay, me!) Thank you for making the effort and for talking with everyone so patiently---Mikey would NOT let anyone else talk and Kendall just kept saying, "Make him be quiet so I talk" about everyone who had the phone. those little boys are so proud of you and want so much to be like you; it's awesome! Hearing your voice made it real for them--even if they DID keep repeating everything. Your Carly misses you like crazy and would love to have you all to herself; hearing your voice makes us all homesick for you. Probably shouldn't tell you those things, but sometimes we just need to be real and not pollyanna positive all the time? We miss you---that's pretty real right now. But we're so glad you are happy and well---that companion of yours is bound to figure out what an amazing Elder he's got with him and stave off the 'motivational speeches' ---we'll put both your names in the temple again this week when I go. Everytime I am there, your name is too. And lots of my friends...: )

We're headed to Districts Tennis at sun Valley tomorrow; Tanner is coming--Carly's wanting to have this one year to herself, but he's been so great he deserves a break too. He and I will go off and do so she can have her space: ) Hope she does well so she can go to State; she wants so much to make you proud of her. She's going to play singles. We're having spaghetti dinner again; it has become the tradition: ) Tracie will come up and play with the littleboys while we're gone; hope they all three have fun.

I went shopping today to collect girls' camp equipment; camp is in June. did I tell you I'm the camp director? that, and they released me from gospel doctrine last week adn I'm now the Laurel advisor---hope it's not all too much 'mom time' for Carly. I think she's okay with it....just probably not the little brothers that will sometimes have to be with me. Should be a fun couple months---busy, since we have to buy and figure out all new equipment, but hey! at least we get some and I don't have to round up borrowed stuff!

gotta run grade papers and get my lesson planned for next week. I'm going to have my kids do a service learning project with the JCC boys again next week; we're headed out to eh Livestock center west of town; we're going to clear a fence line of big boulders that are knocking it down, clean up the run-off sludge from another section of fence line from the ice in the river this winter and then roast hot dogs and have dutch oven cobbler and s'mores. should be a fun evening with the boys from up north...hope it all goes smoothly. My kids are excited, which makes me happy because they have been so mellow to date i was afraid they weren't really alive and breathing: ) I'll let you know.....: )

Love you son! so proud of you!
finally have all pieces of package gathered, should be in the mail the end of this week!

XOXOXO, Momma Bear

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 May 2010 15:34:19 +0900
Subject: Re: Hey Momma!!!!!!
From: charles.grant@myldsmail.net
To: tetonwildflower@msn.com

Okay I will do! I'll see what I can do about the tennis shoes over here, finding ones my size is a little bit rough but I should be able to do it. Today we hit up a great sale where I picked up some good shirts for 9 bucks a pop and got some free ties. I pulled out 100 dollars and hopefully that will get me shoes and the stuff I bought today, we'll see what i can find. On the shorts I think carly may have them as last year in the MTC I got a pic. and she was wearing them!Lol
Love ya,

Greggors--letters to Momma and back

2010-05-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

Re: Greggors‏
From: Charles Greg Grant (charles.grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent: Thu 5/06/10 12:57 AM
To: Susan Grant (tetonwildflower@msn.com)

Hey Momma Bear,
SO this last week has been a good one if not one of the busiest I have had on the mission. Been feeling a little down and out with some kind of nug lately and having a few killer headaches but as of today i am feeling somewhat better. Glad to hear that you and tammi and the boys are having so much fun. I can;t wait to get home and get in on some of that mountain outing and horsebak riding stuff! It really is fun doing the lords work but at times you just wish you could have a day to relax and have some fun.
Sounds as though they finally figured the deal with carly out huh? How long has that nasty stuff been around bugging her? This week is mothers day again, already? Holy cow does time flie by quickly or what? When I call on sunday it should be early on in the evening though I am not sure exactly what time I will be calling or where from yet. When I call if you could have things like how much is in my account, and yeah thats it for prep stuff, ready to tell me I would love you to death, but wait, I already do love you too death! I hope you always remember that momma bear, I love ya!
Love,
Greg
P.s. anything i can do for you over here? I have emailed uncle joe a few times, he's got a great heart you know it!

On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 1:09 PM, Susan Grant wrote:

Hey Cute Elder!

Man do we love to hear from you! Does my heart good to know you're 'alive' and well' : ) Thanks for being so good about checking in all the time; I know your hours must be so limited now--leadership has a way of sucking out all the extra minutes in life, but the blessings are given back in such magnitude I know it's worth it in the long run. We pray for you daily in your new responsibilities.

Pretty cool you have found a 'special spirit' there that reminds you of our Kenny---he's had a few of his own special moments this week: ) He has been home sick from school all week so Dad and I took he and Mikey to McDonald's for a 'hamburger and fries' and to play on the toys. I made them pinky-promise in the car that they would get out of the toys and come with me when it was time to go. I had to get Carly and Kenny to Idaho Falls that afternoon for an orthodontist appointment and we were in a little bit of a hurry...well, long story short, I was half an hour late picking up Tanner to watch Michael because Kendall would NOT get out of the toys. Your he-man dad climbed up those toys and hauled him down just a-fussing. So, moral of the story--don't take your investigator to mcD's for a respite break! Sheesh....we laughed, but shook our heads at the same time. No wonder we haven't been to McDonald's for years...really. We never go. And now....it'll be awhile before we go again: )

Only one more phone call then home! May 2010

2010-05-26T19:59:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone living back home in the chilly and very dry state of Idaho. I think it is safe to say that it has officially become summer in korea and boy is it hot and muggy. I can do hot but I sure don’t like the muggy!

So just an update on the life of a zone leader, it’s a busy one. This last week since Sunday today is the first day I have had in my own area, I have been on exchanges all the other days and we have another one planned for tomorrow and then after we make phone calls on Monday in order to help with the combining of the mission’s in two months we will go on exchanges for two days with a couple of the zone leaders from seoul mission. I am feeling so hectic right now that my head is liable to pop right off! Lol It’s tons of fun though, I feel like I just stood up from emailing you last week and sat right back down to email you again.

So I will expound on my adventures here in bang wha today. Mainly the fact that in the last three weeks I have gotten to play tennis twice!!!!!!!!!! I may not be as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was!!!!!!!(Name that country song!!) So I don’t have the skills I had back when I was a senior in high school when it comes to match play but I can stroke back and forth for fun with the best of them on the Korean courts! So we have an investigator who is way into tennis and has even gone to America to play at the USTA tournaments in vegas. She loves the fact that I can play and has invited me on p-day a couple of times, I am loving it. We’ve played a couple of doubles matches and its fun, won some and lost some that just drove me up a wall but overall just getting to play is good. I am able to hit better than I thought I would be able to though.

SO this last week we had jo seew cha get baptized on Sunday, not a very well planned out baptismal service on our wards part and so didn’t have the spirit like we wished it would have had but hey, what can you do, next time we will just get er’ done ourselves. We see miracles everyday as we are on exchanges with the elders, though at times I feel that our own area is kind of suffering for the lack of time that we have to spend in it. We need your prayers more than ever now, we don’t have a single investigator who is meeting us regularly though we do have some part member families we are working with really closely and my companion gave some good insight on that this morning. He told me that it isn’t those people who we find and teach that get baptized most often, it’s the people who are already in the ward who are part of less active families, part member families, and looking back at the last few months I can’t help but think that it is so true! Can’t wait to talk to you on Monday here and Sunday there, I’ll probably be calling around five or six o’clock your time so have the phone ready and a good list of questions so we don’t have akward silence!Lol

Love you all,

Elder Grant

A week in the life of Elder Grant April 29, 1020

2010-05-26T19:58:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone and welcome from the big old Korea!

So this last week has been yet another crazy week and it all started on Sunday where we say miracles! So in order to hit the standards or goals of our mission we had to have a new investigator and 4 lessons with a member present on Sunday, we knew we could do it. So we started out after church with our lady who is going to get baptized this Sunday who is 70 years old and basically a self referral. We got done with her and then we went out to hit the streets with our recent convert here in bangwha! Sidenote- this recent convert is actually mentally handicapped he is named jeoung joong min, he is 17 and absolutely hilarious. I absolutely love working with him because he reminds me so much of Kendall. Anyway back to the miracle I will write about him to you in a snail mail when I have time one of these days mom. So we went streetboarding with him and got all the lessons with a member that we needed but we still hadn’t found our new investigator and both Elder Tucker and I were really starting to worry but we still new it could be done just that we had to do everything in our power to get it done. At that point we had a dinner appointment with a member and our schedule after that for the night was to visit a sister who’s’ daughter has yet to be baptized and then we had an appointment with a less active family. We got out of dinner late so by this point we were really thinking because the plan was to use public transportation to get to this ladies house so we could talk to people on the way but in order to follow all of our plans we would have to take a taxi and go from one appt. to the next really fast. We decided that since the night before we had planned in faith that we would follow our plans instead of just going to street contact until the next appt. so we hopped in the cab and we had decided to talk to everyone in our path, the cabbie was the first target, he didn’t accept. As we were walking to the house we talked with everyone, the student, the smoking guy on break, and we had nearly arrived to visit this member when a guy came walking up from behind me and I stopped turned around and said hi, this led to that and we will meet him this Saturday, tight huh? It was a great testimony to me of how goals set with the lords’ help are fulfilled through that same help! This week started with my first training of other missionaries, we prepared Monday and did it Sunday and then went on splits with the AP’s, talk about crazy. The minute we get in the car I realize that the day would not be normal as we are headed out to another area to pick up an elder who is headed home. On our way there, we get in a car crash! Don’t think that that is bad because all it was was like driving bumper cars at about 2 miles an hour. We were pulling into a gas station and this lady nudged up against our side, the start of a great exchange. We saw miracles on the exchange as well! So that is the week up to date and we start the busy cycle of training and helping our zone on Friday with our
first of 7 planned exchanges and lots of surprise visits! Yahoo

Played Basketball today for p-day so that was pretty fun, can’t wait to hear from you all.

Love

Elder Greg Grant.

Zone leader learning curve April 21, 2010

2010-05-26T19:57:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

This last week has been an absolutely crazy one and life looks to just get busier than ever. Being a Zone Leader is not all it is cracked up to be. The truth is you get the title but no one really knows what being a zone leader means until you get here and it is definatley not a place people should aspire to be. It involves long days with a lot of hard work and less missionary work than you would like. However we are starting to have some great success in our zone. We have 1 invetigator here in baangwha and no potentials as of right now. It seems like it always happens this way. I build up another area with my comp. to having plenty of investigators to meet and getting ready to see tons of miracles and all the sudden I get transferred into a new area. Sheesh, but hey, I will go where the lord wants me to go. Not much has happened this week. One of the big reasons we were so busy is that all Koreans are required to go for a mandatory military training after they finish their two years(All are Required to serve)once a year. An Elder in our zones companion had to go this week and so fro the last four days we have been covering our area and his and have mostly been down in his which is a good 45 minute bus ride away. I love this work and I know that Christ loves each and every one of us.

Love,

Elder Greg Grant

Holy cow, but I am still a youngster in the mission may 2010

2010-05-26T19:56:00.000-07:00

Hey ya’ll there in the snowy world of Rexburg, Guess what, it snowed some here to! Man has it gone back to being cold lately, we don’t like it to very much! So as of last week I told you that transfers would happen today, well happen they did and it surprised me more than you will ever know. So Tuesday night we got a call, I answered our cell phone and whose voice should I hear but for President Burtons, at this point I was thinking, ahh… Elder Lee is going to be training because I had to be the one leaving the area as I had been there for four and president only calls to new trainers, Zone leaders, and A.P. ‘s. So as we greeted each other I was walking over to give the phone to elder lee in our apartment and President said, well elder I suppose you know something big is happening. At this point I was thinking yes siree, my comp. is a stud! However the next words out of president’s mouth were, Elder I would like to call you to serve as a zone leader in the kangso stake. Good thing I was close to a chair cause I immediately sat down and as president explained for about two minutes what that would entail, I don’t think I heard a word and I most definitely wasn’t saying anything either. Came as a shock to me as I have yet to train and I wasn’t a district leader yet either. Elder Grant just became the youngest Zone leader in the seoul west mission, and he isn’t going to lie is fairly nervous about the whole situation. I am going to be leading others who are way older than me in the mission, and I am expected to know the answers to questions instead of being the one asking the questions, ahhh! I am serving in an area called bangwhaa now and am with an elder from Seattle, Elder Tucker, who loves sports, I think we will get along just great!

So from that exciting news to news on the sheheoung front which I just left today. So last week we established a baptismal date with a lady who’s family is all members but less active except for the grandma. This woman was really hesitant to accept the commitment last week but accept she did, for this Sunday. The only problem being that that didn’t leave much time to get the rest of the lessons in, and she has to work almost everyday. The whole ward was excited especially the Grandma but everyone was worried to. We had yet to teach her the commandments and all the sudden everyone is telling us that she has a word of wisdom issue on two counts and that living the law of tithing would be hard for her. These things are true for everyone but we were already thinking that they would be slightly harder for her. Last night in one of the most spiritual and amazing lessons I have had on the mission this lady agreed to live according to all of the commandments of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We prepared half an hour before hand with our ward mission leader and then went in thinking we would have a hard time of it and that she might drop the baptismal date(Which is also her wedding anniversary by the way). As we taught I was praying that she would accept them all, and no lie, as I prayed the most overwhelming sense of peace came over me and the thought all will be well came into my mind. All indeed was well and we called the district leader on the spot to set up an interview for tonight because that is the only time that she has open, Crazy Huh? I got transferred but I Became zone leader in my own zone so hopefully I can go up and see the baptism on Sunday. The amazing part was, and the part that truly saved this woman was that the grandma had gone through and explained a little about each one to her beforehand so that none of them came as a shock to her. This lady truly is a prepared child of god, and there is a reason preach my gospel says to teach with members!

Sure love you all a heck of a lot, know your in my prayers, hope you’ll pray for me with this new assignment.

Love Elder Greg Grant

Ready to get Kicked out to another place!‏

2010-05-26T19:55:00.000-07:00

Family and dear Friends,

It is now springtime here in the beautiful land of Korea, and is it starting to become amazingly gorgeous here in this small land. When I say small land I mean that in more than just the way of Korea’s land mass, I mean that in the way that I love sheheung but I am ready to move, the small area we proselyte in has seemed to be getting smaller and smaller each passing day! Lol 6 months in this area is a long time to go, most people only go for and the longest is 5 so who knows about elder Grant right now, next week when the call comes he could go or he could stay though I am definitely expecting to go since I have been with Elder 이 for two transfers already!

So this last week has been a fun one with the weather starting to unfold as is directly translated over from Korean! This last Sunday we had two baptisms of a two little boys who are twelve and thirteen years old. We have been working with them for a long time. They started coming to English class almost two years ago but noone ever picked them up as investigators. Elder Mills and I started meeting them because of grace, her target is this family and still is as the mom and dad aren’t members yet! It was a great day. We had the senior couple up to see it as we had taken them to their home for dinner and a lesson one time. The mom had them get baptized because she wants to send them to BYU so it isn’t true conversion for her yet obviously, however the boys are amazing and we love to be with them. My recent convert from that group of students is still pulling off the miracles and referring his friends up a storm though many of them don’t want anything to do with the church they all come to play ping-pong and we pull out the ones with interest to teach them a short lesson. Teaching these 14 year old kids American age (15 korean), has helped me realize how you really have to change to meet peoples needs. With them we can’t just sit down and go half an hour straight, we have to do it in lots of brief lessons so that they focus and can learn something.

Hmm, funny story from this last week? To tell the truth I haven’t had any funny happenings in the last little while. We had a member call us up from another ward and I had no clue he was a member so we set up a time to meet like he was an investigator. He was talking very bad English on the phone so I figured he was an English suck who only wants to meet to learn English, come to find out he is a less active who really was an English suck at one time but somehow ended up getting baptized and going less active right after the fact. He wanted to meet us because he heard that my name was grant and he knew that there was a church prophet named grant and a U.S. president. Which reminds me, How are we related to both of those people? Maybe grandma or granpa grant can answer that one.

Nothing else has been happening too much this week, missionary work is the same ole’same ole’.

Love you all,

Elder Greg Grant

Thanks for the scriptures April 1, 2010

2010-05-26T19:54:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone it is Good to here from you this week! Thanks so much for sending me all of your favorite scriptures! I loved Hearing from you and Can"t tell you how much I love all of you! Not much time this week as we are at the senior couples home with our zone having a party because they are going home in a couple of weeks. We watched the movie ever strong which has now soared to the tope of my movie list, of course it is still under remember the titans but those sports movies are so inspiring. When someone works hard to reach a goal in life and accomplishes it it is always moving. Not going to have time to shoot anyone individual emails so I am sorry but I love you all and know that the Gospel is the biggest help that anyone could ever ask for in their lives, I have seen it truly change people for the better. Missionary work is the lords work and even though at times it is hard it truly is changing me into a better person and hopefully I am helping some people in the process. One of the big things I learned this week is that change is hard, we talked alittle bit about spiritually purifying ourselves in zone conference and my first thought was of all the things I could change and the second thing I thought was how hard it would be and that I didn;t want to do it. However, once you decide to change your life and ask for the lords help he truly will mold you in his hands as I am already starting to see as I seek to change! I am still in shiheung with Elder Lee and loving it, starting to feel like I know the place "Really well" if you know what I mean. 4 transfers in dongjak and four here now the feeling is starting to be that of" Wanting a new place" But I will go where the lord wants me to go or stay where he wants me to stay!
Love you all,
Greg

Miracles in the snow march 24, 2010

2010-05-26T19:53:00.000-07:00

Hey Ya’ll and welcome to the land of insane and crazy changing weather. One day it will be bright and sunny and I am thinking alleluia summer is finally here for godd, the next day it drops three inches of snow on us, and the next day its raining! Dang it seems a little to much like Idaho weather! Lol They say that they haven’t had snow this many time in years!Lol Talk about crazy Global Warming.

This last week has been a good one full of Miracles and finding a couple of good students who seem to be all that exist out here in the countryside because everyone else is either women or old men. Can’t talk to the women and the old men just say, “됬어요” or in other words, “BUG OFF, will you pup, you don’t know anything!” That describes the mindset of 90% of the old people here! However I don’t mind meeting students. Our group from before has all but disappeared except for our baptisms who apparently got baptized because they knew it was true and not for their friends to be awed. So the story comes out now. This Tuesday we had a great district meeting and we went out to get to work. Lately we haven’t been going out to find with very much faith and we both agreed that it was having an effect on the work and decided to change. You would think that we went out and tore the streets up and that everyone wanted to come back and get baptized right then, Right? Come on doesn’t the lord just give us stuff when we decide we want to change? As we all know we must first endure to see the final blessing. We went through the whole day and taught a couple of members and a couple of people on the street but couldn’t seem to find the one. However that night we had a meal with the second counselor in the bishopric planned and our new convert, so we made our way to the church at 7 to pick him up and walk to the house. As happens a lot he wasn’t there. We waited for twenty minutes and figured he just wasn’t going to come and of the billions of kids here he is one of the few without a cell phone and he wasn;t at home. SO we head to our members apt. and when we are basically on the front step he calls, “I still want to come, I am sorry, can I still to come?” Of course we answer! “Can I bring my two friends?” OF COURSE we answer again. He reffered two of his friends to us at the meal and we have met twice since and they are doing great. Since he has been baptized, this little boy has reffered 4 people without even realizing it and they all have good potential! Amazing huh!

This week has been great and next week looks to be even better!

Love you all,

Elder Greg Grant

It was the worst of times, and the best of times March 17, 2010

2010-05-26T19:48:00.000-07:00

It was the worst of times, and it was the best of times.‏

Hellllooooo,
So I couldn't think of anything else to put into my subject box so i threw that one in, first thing that popped to my mind cause that is what elder lee said this morning! His english isn't to good so when he threw that one out there I burst out laughing, he was talking about having to proselyte so much on a mission!Lol
So this last week has been a good one, our little boy who was refusing to get the holy ghost and also refusing to talk to us is really staring to come back around, it seems like he doesn;t like the idea of all the other kids having fun and him not. In interviewds with President Burton yesterday i asked him about it and I recieved specific instructions to call my bishop and get his approval to give him the holy ghost and then the next time I see him to clap my hands on his head and confirm him a member of the church of jesus christ of latter day saints! He's been baptized but if he isn't confirmed its kinda like michael running around with only a shirt on and no pants or underwear on. He's wearing clothes but not the part that does the most amount of good!Lol Amazing story of the week. So I have been wondering lately how we can help people to progress better in the gospel, well i found my answer. The commitment section of preach my gospel is absolutley amazing. A commitment given in the spirit can do wonders but if you do like preach my gopsel says and follow up on that commitment it can do miracles. I have a story I want to share about that. So I have been here in shiheoung for almost six months now, long time- I know, and the whole time I have been working with a man who is 38 years old and less active because he has to work on sundays, however he is an amazing man, but he will not read the scriptures. I have commited him over and over again to read, pray, talk to his boss but he never seems to do any of it, however on monday before we went on exchanges with the zone leader we had an hour to work and I had just read about following up. We commited this man hard, we threw the beast mode at him last saturday and now I knew it was time to follow up, we threw aside the plan to print english flyers and went and visited this man. Needless to say we followed up, and he hadn't done it like usual, however, he came to know that we cared. The next day i texted him and asked him if he had done it and he said that he was doing it right then and had commited himself to read the book of mormon for twenty minutes a day no matter what. Oh, what great blessings this man will recieve for following the word of god and his servants! SO we have gon from lots of investigators to about three but those three are progressing well and two of them have baptismal dates set for the first sunday in april. These two are two little 12 and 13 year old boys and hopefully there parents will be soon to follow! Gotta love misionary work!
Love you all,
Elder Greg Grant

New email address

2010-05-26T19:46:00.000-07:00

Hey Ya'll, This is Elder Grant speaking from the new email address which he was so kindly "Assigned" by the church!Lol Oh well not like my old one was much better. This week has sure been a hectic one but as usual it is fun and it is missionary work and I am starrting to realize what i have to do to get things done the way the lord wants them done not the was that elder grant wants to do them!
Question. Do boys fight like girls? Do boys have the ability in them to catfight? No need to answer that one becuause I have seen the cat circle go full round with a group of boys. Those 1 year old boys we have been meeting are now turning into a nightmare of problems. One of the two that has been baptized apparently does not like us any more. he wasn't able to come to church sunday and then the next day we get a text after we met them at the church saying he was done coming to the church. Apparently amidst our dozens of boys someone has offended him. We've been working for most of the week on trying to iron things out but it just doesn't seem to be happening. The sad thing is that he has yet to recieve the holy ghost and he is taking about three other of the closest to getting baptised boys with him, keep mr. lee jeoung hyoon in your prayers please! We have also seen many many miracles this week. One happened on monday right after we got the text from this boy. We had been proselyting all day and it seemed like it was one of those days where just everyone is rejecting you, which happens a lot more when you are with a korean, needless to say we were both starting to feel down and like we couldn't proselyte anymore and this call came to make things worse. We were headed to proselyte in a local park and we had just gotten there when this text arrived. It made me slightly sad but more than that it made me mad that satan was winning and after a few seconds of depression the thought popped into my mind, well he one that round but we'll win the fight, go find someone else. Apparently the lord needed us both good and humble that day as after thinking that I went and sat down next to an old man and started talking to him which we normally don;t do because they won't listen but I was up for anything after all the rejection. The lord humbled us and we taught this man for almaost an hour on a bench next to a tennis court(Can you say distracting!Lol) Life is good here in the mission i\even if it is a little bit dramatic right about now! Can't wait to here from you next week!
Love you all,
Greg
P.S. as the guy on the game cube snowboarding game says, "Wheres the Love Man?"

SPring or winter?>

2010-05-26T19:33:00.000-07:00

Family and Friends in the very blessed Nation of America!> > > Hello from shiheoung yes you guessed it, that means I am staying here for my fourth transfer and to see many more miracles! This place is great but I am also A little bit surprised that I stayed as it is really small and president usually sends people elsewhere after three here! I think I will be gone for sure next transfer though, the brain and body are just ready for a new place and fresh start to missionary life! However, we will work hard this next transfer and we (Elder lee and I) will see tons of miracles, starting with our group of 15 year old students!> > > So the miracle of this last week was that we had two baptisms! We are meeting a group of about 15 students and out of them two got permission to be baptized, these guys are just great and so much fun to be around! Lee jeoung hyoon and park jeoung hyoon got baptized Sunday! We have had lots of parental opposition amongst these boys so it was truly a miracle. In fact after he got baptized we got a call from lee jeoung hyoon and he was crying and said his mother had forbidden him from attending church. He could come and “Hang out” with us during the weekdays but couldn’t come Saturday or Sunday. We were stunned Elder Lee talked with his mom and we planned to meet her the next day and explain our church a little better. The reason she changed her minds is because some friend told her that our church was a cult of some sort, and that we didn’t believe in the bible or Jesus Christ, talk about misinformed and not trying to learn for yourself, I hate that, always make decisions based on information you have learned yourself not from the rumor mill! Monday she called us up and said she couldn’t come because she had to go to work and that maybe next week we could meet. That night we met with our boys and gave her son a proclamation on the family to show to his mom, miracle, he showed it to her and her thought pattern did a complete 360! We have been writing letters to our other boys parents and the hearts and doors are slowly starting to open making for what looks to be a fun next transfer!> > > Life is great here in Korea even if the lack of sports and the coming of spring yet continuance of winter-rain season is about to kill me! In just want to get outside and do some real exercise, guess I will have to wait ti’ll next year! Not much going on besides missionary work and all the other usual stuff!> > > Love you all,> > > Elder Greg Grant

Great pix of Greg and Elder lee February 2010

2010-05-26T19:23:00.000-07:00

Dear Grants and Elder Lee's brother,We just visited two great missionaries. Hard working, baptizing, happy, and they keep a clean apartment. Thought you'd enjoy the attached photo of them.Love,Elder and Sister Knudsen-- http://kurtknudsen.blogspot.com

Sprint or Winter?? Rainy, wet, cold still... 3-3-10

2010-03-03T20:47:00.001-08:00

SPring or winter?‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 3/03/10 8:38 PM

Family and Friends in the very blessed Nation of America!Hello from shiheoung yes you guessed it, that means I am staying here for my fourth transfer and to see many more miracles! This place is great but I am also A little bit surprised that I stayed as it is really small and president usually sends people elsewhere after three here! I think I will be gone for sure next transfer though, the brain and body are just ready for a new place and fresh start to missionary life! However, we will work hard this next transfer and we (Elder lee and I) will see tons of miracles, starting with our group of 15 year old students!So the miracle of this last week was that we had two baptisms! We are meeting a group of about 15 students and out of them two got permission to be baptized, these guys are just great and so much fun to be around! Lee jeoung hyoon and park jeoung hyoon got baptized Sunday! We have had lots of parental opposition amongst these boys so it was truly a miracle. In fact after he got baptized we got a call from lee jeoung hyoon and he was crying and said his mother had forbidden him from attending church. He could come and “Hang out” with us during the weekdays but couldn’t come Saturday or Sunday. We were stunned Elder Lee talked with his mom and we planned to meet her the next day and explain our church a little better. The reason she changed her minds is because some friend told her that our church was a cult of some sort, and that we didn’t believe in the bible or Jesus Christ, talk about misinformed and not trying to learn for yourself, I hate that, always make decisions based on information you have learned yourself not from the rumor mill! Monday she called us up and said she couldn’t come because she had to go to work and that maybe next week we could meet. That night we met with our boys and gave her son a proclamation on the family to show to his mom, miracle, he showed it to her and her thought pattern did a complete 360! We have been writing letters to our other boys parents and the hearts and doors are slowly starting to open making for what looks to be a fun next transfer!Life is great here in Korea even if the lack of sports and the coming of spring yet continuance of winter-rain season is about to kill me! In just want to get outside and do some real exercise, guess I will have to wait ti’ll next year! Not much going on besides missionary work and all the other usual stuff!Love you all,Elder Greg Grant

It's Hump Day--one year 2-25-10

2010-03-02T20:00:00.000-08:00

Its hump day!‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 2/24/10 9:03 PM
To:
tricialou@gmail.com; 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; caludy@burgoyne.com
One year, a whole year since I was last in the confines of the amazingly wonderful state of idaho! That’s a little bit weird to be able to say here in this small but very populated state of Korea! Hello everyone and welcome to the day of the hump! Haha so these last few days the weather has been absolutely amazing and we were planning on going and having some fun at the local park today but the weather called for a monsoon and soon it did, right now the rain is pouring down in torrential sheets and Elders grant and lee are looking at yet another p-day filled with nothing of good report but sleep and maybe watching legacy in the local church!:( In Korean they would say 나븐기쁨 or in other words I’m not in the best of moods! Lol However look at the bright side, at least today is P-day so that I don’t have to be out proselyte in the rain!I can’t wait for spring. That mood that always hits when tennis season is around the corner is here and boy do I ever want to play tennis or at least get out and do some sports! I am longing for the open fields of grass to play in and the cement of a good court beneath my feet, however I will have to wait for both of those another year as neither are to be had in Korea, I think I will go lie in the first field of green grass I see when I get home! America is so beautiful! Not that Korea isn’t it is just a very different kind, its own kind of beautiful!Lol SO this coming week we have two baptisms scheduled to happen, two kids who are tanners age! Tanner if you want to send them a letter I will translate it into Korean for them! Right now we are really seeing miracles here, we having been meeting this group od students every day since elder lee got here and we have gone from 5 to fifteen and we are looking at tons of potential baptisms as of next month, it should be fun! Not sure I will be here to see it though, we get transfer calls on Tuesday and I have been here for three so you never know where I could end u[ going!I love you all and hope you all have a great week!Love,Elder Grant

Weird American can't talk--has a cold 2-17-10

2010-03-02T19:53:00.000-08:00

HEllo, I can;t talk!‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 2/17/10 10:27 PM
People on the street are thinking I am a fairly weird american about now!Lol I have had a cold since monday and myvoice is basically completley gone! AHHHHHHH. SO today for p-day we came into the mission home and did our pass off program, I passed off the second part, haeleluia, I only have one more part to go and most people don;t finish that before they go home, yikes, talk about a mountain to climb. From the emails it sounds like you heard about our missions combining so my goal is to finish pass off before we combine in the beggining of July, I have to read the whole BofM in Korean, I am only in mosiah, talk about hard! Not much time this week as we hafve to head home but I want you all to now that I love you and that in Christ we can do all things!Love,Elder Grant

Killer Combination Companions

2010-03-02T19:48:00.000-08:00

Hey ya'll‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Fri 2/12/10 3:23 AM
To:

Hello Everyone!So lets start out by making a clarification on when our baptisms will be happening as my district leader thought he would do for us between him receiving them and the APs. Our baptisms are all set for between the 27-28 of February because we only have one normal Sunday here this month so it has been hard to get people to church. Elder Mills my last companion moved just one area over and became district leader and last week apparently thought he knew more than I had told him about our baptismal plans because we had spoken with him about our investigators who they were, when they could get a date, he reported that and more to the Ap’s making for us receiving a lot of phone calls from them. We all had a good laugh about it in the end because they had like three names of people we had never even heard of and yet were supposed to be baptizing!Lol However we do have a lot of people looking up for the end of this month and the first week of next! I love working with Elder Lee and we are seeing miracles everyday! As a member who went to Korea put it today as we pulled a student in off of the street to meet with him after having an investigator call and cancel, “ You two are a what they call “Killer Combination!” I laughed right out loud cause he said that in english, but it is way fun! We of course have our ups and downs and two days ago was one of the downs but we still see bright spots. With the holiday many people are leaving town, and that day we had a full day planned with an appointment every hour but all ended up calling and canceling! Talk about a long day of street contacting!!!!!!!!!! However in the moment where I thought I could do no more we said a prayer and were blessed to actually be able to take someone to our church with us and teach them! Tender Mercies of the Lord!So I am sorry I didn’t write yesterday but with the crazy holiday weekend we are supposed to have p-day Saturday. We were supposed to write yesterday but we wanted to get everyone met at least once this week so we had appointments every hour plus we went to the temple, full day! Oh, yeah, I got the new camera to! Thanks mom and dad! I got a Blue waterproof shock proof 10 mega pixel camera! Its way nice and I can;t wait to use it in the mountains of Good old Idaho! It was just what i was looking for because I wanted something that could take the outdoor activities! The temple was great, always is! I went yesterday wanting to learn about the atonement some more and other things, In focusing on the atonement I learned so much, many things I hadn’t even heard while at the temple before! Its amazing what a little bit of preparation can do for and experience! This week is a Korean holiday called solar or something like that in English, it should be fun! Right now we have no appts. And are instructed to clean our houses and update record books! Yuck… I hate days spent in the house! However we can do it and be happier for the clean aspect! Not gonna lie but I am ready for Summer to be hear, I am sick of cold and overcast skies, we had sunshine about a week ago and it just makes my soul yearn for more! I love you all and hope you have a great week!Love,Elder Greg Grant

Once a big brother, always one

2010-03-02T19:32:00.000-08:00

Thanks momma bear, and tell mikey that thats my name for you and that youre my mommy not his! Well alright, since I am supposed to be learning charity I guess we can share! Not gonna lie I miss the joking that comes when you have an american companion, Koreans don't understand sarcasm a whit, and you know our family! Rolling eyeballs!I'll keep you all in my prayers!LoveGreg

Re: This is Grace

2010-03-02T19:29:00.000-08:00

Hi Susan,

Thank you so much for your warm reply.
How happy to confirm your email...!
Thank you ,Thank you...^&^

Lunar Holiday is the biggest Holiday in Korea.
It is smilar to your New Year Holiday.
During this Holiday, our family gather and have Korean traditional food
as like rice cake soup(떡국,ddeog gug),barbequed beef(불고기,bulgogi) and many kinds of fried food(전,jeon).
Ah,,,! The Yu Goa that I sent to you is one of them.
It is made of rice and honey...
It is sweet and smells a spicy fragrance.
We bow to our family who is older than us saying "새해 복 많이 받으세요(Best Wishes in New Year)"
This traditional customs means we repect our family who is older than us.
After having delicious meals, we play 윷놀이(yuk nol ri).
I think Elder Grant explain to you much better than me.
He had experience to play it with us in New Year of the solar calendar.
I hope you understand about the meaning of Lunar Holiday through my bad English...*&*

We have Valentine's Day coming up in the 14th of February,too.
We send cards to one another expressing their love and care for each other.
Some people send flowers or chocolate in Korea...
Not ballons and stuffed animals.
Yes, I agree with you on that it seems like the shop keepers benefit the most...^&^
But as you said, it's the great day to tell people they are loved as a neat reminder .

I already knew when Elder Grant's birthday is.
Sometimes I cannot believe that I have two daughters who they are 20 & 18 years old..^&^

We all love you.
PLS give my regards to your family.

Take care
With Love

Your Korean Friend Grace

Ouch! 2-3-10

2010-03-02T19:21:00.000-08:00

OUCH‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 2/03/10 8:46 PM
To:

Hello one and all and it is once again cold in the far reaches of south korea, I love the cold, I love the cold; at least I am trying to love it! This week has gone by in a whirlwind and I really don’t know what has happened to it. It seems the further along you get in the mission the faster time flies! We have four baptismal dates for the 20th of February so hopefully we can pull them all through without satan working his force upon them. It really is sad how people can be so close to the truth and just end up getting swept away in the little things of life and not commit to coming all the way unto the savior.So today is one of those p-days that I am really not looking forward to. Last Saturday we were playing basketball with one of our investigators and my foot got stepped on and it ripped my toenail all the way down. In short it caused an in-grown toenail which is something I can handle but I thought I finally had it fixed only to realize I wansn;t even close to getting it in the right place(cotton swab) The toenail split way down deep and that is where it is causing me all of the grief. I’ve been trying to fix it on my own cause I would rather die than go to the doctor in America let alone in Korea, however after not being able to sleep cause it hurt so much last night I called up to sister burton and it looks like I have to go have it cut out, YUCKK! NOT Happy BOB! That’s the biggest news of this week but there is even bigger news coming for next week okay its this Sunday I guess but I have no sense of time out here. Elder Oaks is coming to speak to our stake, and we all get to go. Everyone is really excited for it because he is here and there is really no purpose for him to be here so they all think that some big announcement is coming. I think I will wait to here what he says before I start to speculate!Lol No other big news this week, we were supposed to go to the temple today but that got canceled because they are calling a whole mission conference for tomorrow, wonder who will come?:) I love you all and just a little hint of what makes the best package ever here in Korea, mom stumbled on it the last one! PRE-PACKAGED OATMEAL! Did I just say oatmeal, elder Grant is starting to develop tastes for everything he did not like before, onions, pickles, saur kraut, however I stand firm against the tomatoes!lolLove you all,Elder Greg Grant

Oatmeal is where it's at 1/27/10

2010-03-02T19:16:00.000-08:00

I love Oatmeal!!!!!!!‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 1/27/10 8:51 PM

Hey momma,Great to hear from you and all of the news from home!I got the package you sent yesterday, did you use enough tape? I was trying to get the shoes out cause my other ones are painful to walk in now and all I had was a key, I sat on the bus ride home for thirty minutes working that tape with a key only to finally have a man hand me a pocket knife from behind, though that did spark a discussion about the gospel so maybe it was fate!Lol all the stuff in there is awesome, the oatmeal is perfect and if you sent those and only those in every package I would be more than thrilled! I never thought I would love oatmeal, but lunch today was amazing! The shoes are great! Thanks for getting those and sending them to me! The camera thing I will start looking for and hopefully I can get one fairly cheap! I’ll start on that today probably and get one next week at the big electronics mall on our way home from the temple! I have no idea what happened to the other card, I probably have it but I can’t find it worth a dang thing!Lol This week we have once again seen miracles and I am not going to lie, I love serving with elder lee, I am already starting to thing in Korean!LolGrace wanted me to write you about her brother and his son. I need to start with background first though. When grace got baptized her two younger brothers were furious that she and her parents were joinig what they thought was, I think the word is kind of like a cult when you translate it to English, so a cult. Her youngest brother whom she live with at the time came whom furious one day and ripped a book of mormon in half and she had the choice for her and her family to continue living there or join the church she chose the latter obviously and moved in with her parents. Grace got endowed last week as you know and she told me a story about when she went into the celestial room, she was the first in and all alone for about 3 or 5 minutes- lucky duck!- but she was thinking and praying and she prayed for her brothers hearts to be softened. This isn’t all the story but part and the next day her brother called and said he needed help. This is where you may come in if you can help, I don’t know she just asked me to ask you and she said she would contact you to, but I will write this part latter. So that brother called and her other brother called about an hour latter and his business had gone bankrupt and he was aking her since he knew she believed in god to pray for him and the business to be blessed and she basically got to teach him the gospel and he is supposed to come out to church cometime soon. Okay back tot eh first phone call he called her and he has a child with special needs, I don’t know what, I just know he isn’t mentally able enough to go to school with normal kids and not disabled enough to go to another school so here in Korea there is no place in the educational system for him. This brother called her up and said he knew that she had contact with Americans in the church would he please talk to us. She knew about Kenny and so told him about me and our family and also about the gospel as well and he is supposed to come to church, however he wants to move his family to America next year to better his sons life, I don’t know what you can do but I did as told by grace so, all is well in zion!Lol Just contact her about it and maybe point her in the right direction or something!Incredible story hugh? I couldn’t believe it when she told me, she has wanted her brothers to simply learn about the church forever! Amazing! Amazing- in memory of hearing oh…beautiful evry time we were on top of a mountain!I love you tons moma bear!Love Greg

Hey y'all January 27, 2010

2010-03-02T19:14:00.000-08:00

Hey ya'll‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 1/27/10 8:30 PM

Hello everyone,Can I just say I am happy or can I just say I am happy! The weather is still cold but it rained yesterday and got rid of all the snow and it is bright and sunny out today! It feels like a day in which I should be out playing tennis but I guess we will have to settke for ping pong! Which by the way Elder lee is amazingly good at, however, the only two times he beat me was when I was stuck using the Korean style ping pong paddle, other than that I am safe! I am currently reigning champion of the ward her in sheheoung but I have yet to play bishop and he is renowned for being very good!LolThis week has been great, we are still seeing miracles in our area and it is amazing to both of us! For the last three weeks straight we have picked up 7 or more investigators each week which is way good considering the standard is only about three or less! We are looking at two baptisms on the 6th and maybe one on the seventh, we will decide that on tonight but I will keep you updated! Working with elder lee is great, I finally have a companion who wants to work his rear end off and get the job right, the members see us working and you can already tell we are changing their mind set about the missionaries, we are just seeing amazing miracles together!One tender mercy of the lord we got to be apart of yesterday came in an appointment with one of the recent converts in our ward named 이화정 I wont even try to spell that in English. We were teaching her to pray in English because she is going to BYU in a little bit and also she will pray at our English class party-story day! We taught her and the other member we were with to pray and then we read in enos about prayer faith and desire. I have a huge testimony that prayer really does help us and we shared about that and that she could be blessed and receive guidance simply by praying. It was a really spiritual lesson and at the end she told us she hadn’t been praying lately and that she felt that the lesson was perfect for her and that she saw why she needs to pray. Unbeknownst to her the night before while we were planning we had something else planned to do but it just didn’t feel right so we decided to talk about prayer, I read enos that morning in preparation for the discussion and we decided to use the whole chapter. The lord guided us in what she needed! Just a tender mercy of the lord and one of those missionary miracles which lets you know that you are working by faith!This week has been a blast and we are looking forward to the next week as well. We plan to keep seeing the miracle of the lords hand in his work here by continually working hard! I love you all!Elder Greg Grant

Transfers Janary 2010

2010-03-02T19:12:00.000-08:00

Transfers!!!!1‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 1/20/10 8:18 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; caludy@burgoyne.com; joeadairrealtor@aol.com
안녕하세요,SO this week has been absolutely a whirlwind of a week. This week was the week of transfers and the weather actually starting to warm up even if just a little bit! The last two weeks have been absolutely amazing and it just keep as astounding me. We have gone from teaching no one to not having much time to contact on the street because we are always teaching, not gonna lie, I love it!This last weeks miracles are just amazing so I want to tell two of them. The first happened last Friday. We took an investigator who has been meeting with us for four weeks to our senior couples home and had dinner and taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We went with Grace and for any of you that have heard graces story she is amazing. Between grace, the senior couple, the spirit and our attempts this man will be baptized next month on the sixth. To tell the truth as we taught that lesson I can honestly say that I haven’t felt a spirit like I did in there very often. All present felt it and all present came to realize what it was. We extended the date for the 30th but it was a little fat for him, however so long as he gets baptized and stays true we could care less. The second Miracle came in the form of Grace. She is a recent convert of just over a year know and if you want to know about here ask my mom!Lol Her year anniversary for baptism was on Sunday so yesterday we went to the temple with her to see her get endowed. Never have I understood my purpose so clearly. You looked at her and you could see the light of the spirit radiating straight from the core. This woman is a daughter of God and she knows what her baptismal and temple covenants are and she is keeping them. I hope we can all have that same light and keep our covenants by inviting others to Christ through baptism but also as I came to understand my purpose more clearly, we have to realize baptism is only the first step and the true process we have to help in is getting everyone an eternal family, everyone must be worthy of that temple and being close to our father in his house.Alright so the other big and a little bit frightening news of the week is that ( No Mom I did not get transferred- I’m still with Grace) Elder Mills got transferred and I have been made a senior companion, however I am scared to death. I am senior companion with a junior missionary who has only been out for three months, and guess what- he’s Korean! I am with a Korean companion and I have never had such a stinking big headache, I am hearing Korean twenty four seven with very little English. This is going to shoot my Korean ability to the stars if I continue studying hard and we are willing to help each other in both languages! I am way excited. Elder Lee J. meen is how you pronounce it, is from an area down south and is the only member in his family, he is twenty four, has been to army service and back and is ready to get the work done, I can’t wait! SO this week has been way exciting!I love you all,Elder Greg Grant

Be Spiritually Prepared January 13, 2010

2010-01-13T21:18:00.001-08:00

be spiritually Prepared‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 1/13/10 9:37 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,So last week it was the most snow in thirty years and this week is the coldest in a long time! The last two days have been hovering around a balmy 5 degrees Fahrenheit and isn’t looking to get any warmer much soon! Can you say freezing your buns right off? We have been proselyting or street contacting I don’t know what it is called in English just that it is 전도, in Korean, a heck of an awful lot and it is bitter cold!Lol However when you suffer for the work the blessings come pouring in.As you all well know the last transfer and a half we have had basically 0 new investigators to show for the work we put in. Last week that all changed as we found 7 investigators and they are all really good! We got one referral which rarely happens in Korea, we found 4 old investigators from like 6 years ago who just got busy so couldn’t meet anymore and we picked up two others off of the street who seem to be very interested! The ward work here is going amazing and we are just having an absolute blast! This week it looks to be another miracle week as if all goes as planned tonight we will have met the standards three days early which never happens! I LOVE KOREA! Alright so miracle story of the week. SO this last week we were coming back from district meeting and elder mills was sprinting to the house for lunch(about the only time he ever sprints! Lol) and I stopped to talk to one more guy before we went in to the house to eat and our house is maybe 50 feet from the church so I asked him if he had ten minutes in which we could go into our church and talk, the guy said yes, When someone will do that, that is a miracle in and of itself but the better part was as we spoke about the restoration. I taught basically the whole thing as we didn’t have much time but both elder Mills and I felt the spirit in what we thought was the most power either of us had felt in a lesson as we were discussing afterward. So we taught, I saw that this kid had been affected by something and he was feeling the spirit so it was time to commit. “No I don’t have time to meet with you again, no I don’t want your book, no I will not give you my phone number.” I was torn as to how this kid could have felt what I had felt and respond in such a matter. So I asked, “Did you feel something different while we were talking, did you feel warm and at peace?” he responded with “ yes, it was something I have never felt before, it felt amazing.” “What you felt is Gods spirit testifying to you of the truths of what we just taught you.” The kid believed the spirit that bore witness to him but in the end he just excepted a book of mormon and the commitment to read it and call us when he wants to learn more. Never have I felt so spiritually high, and yet never have not understood this thing called the holy ghost more. Why don’t all lessons have that spirit, why don’t people act after feeling that spirit? I asked myself these and many other questions, I didn’t know. I asled president Burton about it in interviews and he responded with a, “You were spiritually prepared and he was prepared but only to a certain extent!” I know we can all feel this spirit but we have to be spiritually ready. I challenge all of you my friends and family to be spiritually ready for when the time comes. When the time comes that you need the lords help, or that the lord needs to make you his means of work here on this earth! I love missionary work, I know this gospel is true, even if it is cold and blizzarding I will Go and do!Love you all, have a great week,Elder Greg Grant

Short, sweet, and very white!

2010-01-11T14:28:00.001-08:00

Short but sweet and vwery white‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 1/06/10 8:37 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
So all the old men say that it hasn’t snowed this much in forty years but the news says that it is just thirty, but hey, 8 and a half inches of snow in one night in a country with no snow removal equipment is a ton od snow no matter how you look at it!Lol Hello everyon and welcome from the snowy and rather wet, freezing reaches of Korea! So Sunday night we went to bed and we woke up to 5inches of snow and in the next hour it put down another 2 and never quit snowing the whole day!Lol It made for quite the day as we were scheduled to go on exchanges. We have a 30 minute busride to a big city then we transfer for an hour long busride to where we normally switch companions! However, after 2 and a half hours on the first leg of the trip with the bus starting and stopping and getting stuck we just got off and walked for another hour to get to the bus station, from there it took us another 2, we left at nine and got the exchange done at around 3 o’clock! Crazy stuff huh? It was lots easier going back as we didn’t have to drive through a whole nights worth of snow. Normally Korea gets about an inch 4 or 5 times a year, but it dumped this time!It may have snowed a lot but we got a lot done on that exchange and actually found two new investigators however the one punked us and hasn’t answered his phone yet but hopefully he will in the future! Not much time to write today but now that I love you all and that the work is going great!love,Elder Grant

Happy New Year

2010-01-11T14:16:00.000-08:00

새해복많이받아세요Happy new Year‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 12/30/09 8:44 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 from the cold reaches of South Korea!When I say cold I mean it is bitter cold here right now and it isn’t supposed to let up any time soon!BRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!! So since Christmas day we have gotten what for Korea is an unusual amount of snow- a whole two inches!Lol it snowed just enough Christmas to make everything white and to be qualified as a white Christmas, very fun!So Christmas day was a great day, president just changed our p-day so that it was on Christmas but it was spent all day with our ward anyway!I love our ward! We called our families and had a great talk then went over tot eh ward party. Our ward party was definatley something that you would not find on Christmas day in America! The party started at five and didn’t end until around 5 o’clock, sheesh was that a long day! It was a good one though- I think that the ward members are starting to realize that we truly do love them as people and not just as a means of upping our numbers. This ward is absolutely amazing, I have said it once and I will say it many times again but they have the spirit of Missionary work they just need to be taught how to do it!So in my last letter I wrote I spoke of our baptismal covenants, this week we started teaching a little bit about those to members and about why it is important to keep them, We especially like pointing out that through loving others and through sharing the gospel we can keep our baptismal covenants and also do missionary work! One thing I have also realized this week which is really rather sad is that most people don’t even realize that they have made a covenant when they are baptized, they don’t realize that they have covenanted with God to do something. This week we have taught several members who were surprised to learn that they had promised that. One man imparticular, he was baptized almost ten years ago and we met with him and we were speaking of the covenants we made at baptism and he said, Covenants, what covenants? I have come to realize that people learn their covenants when they are baptized but then forget them just as quick as they are dry. This Christmas and New Years season I urge everyone to remember your covenants and help others fulfill theirs!Hmmm… Any other fun or interesting news? Tomorrow for the new year we get to wake up at five a.m. and go “Mountain” A.K.A. “hill” climbing to see the sunrise with our ward- its apparently a Korean tradition, gotta say I love the hiking and being with the ward part but I think of how cold it is at night and I am having second thoughts about doing it when I could be asleep in a warm YO for another hour and a half! I will let you know how it goes!I love you all!Happy New Year,Elder Greg GRant

Amazing

2010-01-11T14:15:00.000-08:00

AMAZING‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 12/23/09 9:15 PM

Hey family, I just want to let you in on what has been going on in Korea over Christmas and say MERRY Christmas.So here it goes, This Christmas season has been a great one for me here in the mission field. To tell the truth I wouldn’t rather be anywhere but here, even if I miss the fam., I have learned so much and seen so many miracles in the last two weeks that I never would have known otherwise! Yesterday for example, we got home with only 45 minutes left and so we dropped of our packages and grabbed the cookies we had made to deliver to a less actives in our wards mother(We are doing Christmas배달) and we stopped in the shoe pit to do the right start. We had three lessons planned as our goal for the night. We only lnew that one of them would come from this sweet old woman, the others we had no idea where they would come from, but we prayed and went out in faith and full of the spirit of Christmas, we met a 고3 on the street and he listened to us for ten minutes and agreed to come to our Christmas party tomorrow, we then went to this womans house, the son wanted to be there when we did it but because of his work and how our schedules differed he told us to just do it. Keep in mind we have been to his home and visited several times and every time this woman has turned a very cold shoulder to us not wanting to see or even hear about our glorious message. We knocked that door and both of us wondered, “What if she won’t open it?” We hear a gruff, 누구세요? And we respond that its us the missionaries and it goes silent…will she open it???? After about three minutes she came to the door and we broke out in a rather bad chorus of hark the herald angels sing, but as we sang it amazed me to watch the spirit work upon her. It was almost as if I could physically see her heart being warmed to the point of knowing that we came with a special message. She allowed us to share a brief Christmas message and then we left. I don’t believe I will ever forget that feeling walking out of that apartment building or the sight of a womans heart being aoftened before my eyes, all done by one thing, Love, she felt the love we had for her son and the savior and then through that felt the love the savior has for her. Simply put it amazes me!The best part of these last few weeks has been the insight I’ve been gaining into the gospel. I have been focusing on the love of the savior and also upon baptismal covenants and it has been fun to watch as doors have opened up to us just so long as we now take what we have learned and act with it. In studying these two topics I have come to a greater understanding of the saviors love for me and of how I can learn my baptismal covenants and show my love to others by helping them keep theirs. Last week I thought ward missionary work was all about the 소개s but in reality it is about me keeping my baptismal covenants and help the members keep theirs or in other words showing the love of Christ to everyone, becoming everyone of the christlike attributes that are in preach my gospel, together. I want to share the love I have for this work with the ward, I want them to feel the love and spirit of Christ which I felt last night, its hard to put into words what is going through my head but simply put, once I fully keep my covenants by helping them keep theirs the endless circle of love begins and everyone see’s that the love of Christ is what truly changes lives.Now it is just time to act on what I learned right? Haha I encourage all of you this Christmas season to share christs love with others, not simply because it’s a commandment or that you have made a covenant to do so, but because of your love for chrsit and all of our brothers and sisters!Love,Elder Greg GrantP.S. Merry christmas and happy birthday grandpa grant, kendall and joseph smith!

Amiracle, miracle! Beautiful, beautiful!

2009-12-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone!So these last two weeks have been fairly exciting, tough ones for me but different from the normal. As you know last week was choosok or the Korean equivalent of thanksgiving so our whole weekend was shot to pieces though we did get to meet one of our investigators and set a baptismal date for the 1st of November! Long time away but with conference and him traveling for work that is the soonest we could have him out to church twice by! Sounds like conference went amazingly well and that everyone was spiritually edified. Elder 최 of the seventy spoke, that’s awesome-I shoke his hand about 3 months ago! lol This next week we get to hear General Conference for the first time because of the delay- I can’t wait. We get to listen to it in English because it is hard for even elders who are just getting ready to go home to understand it in Korean, heck Koreans even have a hard time with it.Anyway onto the happenings of this last week, these last couple of weeks have been tough ones on me but I am back to my good ole’ happy self. Last week it seems like all we did was sit around because of choosok doing records and things like that- really not very fun but when we got out it was a relief. We had a sports conference with our zone on Saturday and my goodness I believe every person was sore from that for about three days. We played dodge ball and those are not muscles you use much in missionary work or even think about exercising in the morning- maybe we will all think about that some more! We went and got to see a traditional Korean music and dance show with our members, it was way cool, once I get my other memory stick I’ll send the videos back to you of it! This last weeks miracles…I have to think… we have lots of miracles here in dong jak but when everyone disappears its kind of hard to find them! lol No joke, one day you are surrounded by 2 billion people and the next-it’s a stinking ghost town, it was a bit weird to walk out and be the only ones on the street! Anyway we did see a miracle on Sunday night, we went out to proselyte on the street to the few people who were there and we did all according to our training from president burton and we went out and found an amazingly prepared man, we are supposed to meet him again tomorrow so hopefully it happens! A Miracle, Miracle-not quite the same as beautiful huh Mom?Anyway this week was good- I love you all.Elder Greg GrantP.S. Tell uncle trent to get back on his feet and that he may have to prosecute himself if he keeps beating the neighbors!

Brr...mmmm...kimchi

2009-12-16T03:34:00.001-08:00

Brrr....mmm...kimchi‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 11/11/09 9:27 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
Hey so all everyone gets is a paragraph this week, I only got 45 minutes because that is all the library here is allowing. Ghetto huh!So I hope everyone is well and fine having a grand old time in the snowy reaches of the north. The weather here in Korea has taken a shift to the colder side of things but you know how much I love the cold, though I think that is because I am normally playing when I am out in it not walking all day! So any suggestions for how to work in an area with less people are greatly appreciated as it is rather difficult to find in this new area! We got to join in the kimchi making process this last Tuesday and it was an absolute blast, rubbing hot sauce type stuff all over cabbage leaves for three and a half hours what could be more fun? It was really fun though, we had all these old grandmas we were working with and they were shoving rice cakes and kimchi down our throats for us as we had our hands full of cabage, I don’t think I need to ever see kimchi again! Not gonna lie though, I have grown kind of fond for having it at every meal, including breakfast! People may start to think I am a Korean!Lol Hope everyones week has been good and wish you the best up ahead. I will be going to the mission home next Thursday so if you send letters tomorrow I should be able to get them by then f the time schedule Is the same as usual!Love,Greg

Snow

2009-12-16T03:33:00.001-08:00

Snow‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 11/18/09 9:53 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 all of my family in the snowy, cold, far reaches of the united states of America!So today we woke up and my fetish for exercise has us outside every morning exercising by running around the church parking lot and basketball court(Dirt), and what do you know but the snow started to fall straight down from the sky, okay maybe it was just a few flakes but it has officially(unofficially if you look at it from idahos viewpoint) snowed for the first time. The Weather has gotten significantly cold here and is making it hard to get people to want to talk with you on the street but hey that is just how life goes!LolSo this last week has been a good one. Generally the life in siheoung is much slower compared to the one I had been living in dong jak, less people, less everything is what it seems like but we do have a baptism lined up for next week though we haven’t been able to get back into contact with him after he took the equivalent of the ACT last week. Pray for us and for him so that we can all know what is right concerning his baptism! The work in shiheoung is good if not slow at some points, many a time you find yourself walking and just not very many people being in existence around you, sounds like Idaho!Lol My thinking is that it is time to get to work and shut up those many souls who say that our area has no people, the Zone leaders, our district leader and basically every other missionary who has ever heard of our area. This next week my goal is to be “The Intense One”, we will hit every standard and then some and just work hard, I like the sound of that idea but that’s what we do every week!Lol Just waiting to see some results come. I got transferred in here right after they had a month with seven baptisms from refferals so we are now building our investigator pool back up!SO the funny thought or story of the week, this last Saturday we had an appointment at our church at eight o’clock the only problem being that we were looking at our watches and it was five to eight and we were a good twenty minutes walk from the church. “Lets take a Taxi,” sounds in unison as we both know we need to get there fast. Well we get into a taxi and tell him where we want to go and he starts speaking to us and says basically he is from an area about two hours away but will get us there by using his navigator. We were headed to an area which was only five minutes away but he headed in the totally wrong direction, after about three minutes of driving we both tell him he must have put in the wrong direction but he wouldn’t listen; “No, I used my GPS we will have no problems!” Uhh… but what I am telling you mister is that we are already having a problem, we wanted to get to a place in the city we were in and now we are on the highway!:) We went for ten minutes like this and he said you don’t know because you are foreigners! Finally I busted out some very stern word usage in Korean and he was like, oh, your serious, you mean you don’t want to go here. We then had to travel for another twenty minutes to turn around. In all it took like and hour and fifteen minutes to go a five minute cab ride away. Ughh, good thing he only charged us for the first five minutes!Annoying, moral of the story is do not use out of town cabbies. This week has been slow but you know missionary work is always good!Love,Elder Greg Grant

Mmmm...American Food--thanksgiving

2009-12-16T03:30:00.000-08:00

Mmm...American fOOD?‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Thu 11/26/09 1:15 AM
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
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! SO I don't have much time today as we have already been to one of the senior couples homes to have thanksgiving dinner. We went to a couple from Idaho Falls home cnamed the pickets(He knows you Grandpa GRant, what A coincidence I still here about you half-way across the world!HAha). It was us and one other companionship as most went across the river to members on the army bases homes. It was delicious and we enjoyed a good couple of hours together discussing our blessings and just eating. Whew, I haven't had American food in a long time, it is both very salty and very sweet but is still my main mantra!Lol This week has been a rather long one we have been stuck in the house a bit as both my companion and I have been sick, I seem to have gotten it pretty bad and was laid up with a 102 degree fever but am much better now. We did recieve a rather good scolding from sister Burton for going out yesterday to do all our appointments but you have to figure the lord will bless you if you are willing to serve hard! She said yeah he will but he also gave you heads for a reason!lOL gOTTA LOVE SISTER BURTON. I love you all and hope you have a great weekend.Ps. Mom in the next package if you could restock my cold medicine supply that would be great, not quite sure what to trust here!(No one is!)Love you all,Elder Greg GRant

Miracles are preceeded by faith...pulled a member in

2009-12-16T03:27:00.000-08:00

Miracles are preceeded by faith!!!‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 12/02/09 9:50 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
Hey everyone, so this week has been a fairly busy one but also a fairly good one. We had zone conference on monday and had to make the three hour trip into the mission home again for the second time in as many weeks, that makes for a long day on the bus, yuck. This last week the mission took a real dive so we got a little bit of a chewing out from president but we are back on our feet and running strong with a strong knowledge of our purpose as a missionary here in Korea after zone conference. After the training we all went up into the birtons home and ate lunch and then had a testimony meeting up there. The spirit is always felt so strongly by everyone present in mission testimony meetings. Just hearing others testiomonies makes mine stronger. I nknow christ lives and i know his atonement is meant for all if the will only access it! Let us all remember the life of chrsit during this christmas season, i know I will even though christmas is non-existant here in Korea!Lol So what else went on this week, miracles, So i just want to tell of one last night. Last night I just got back into our area after being on splits with the zone leaders, Side note. So we went on splits tuesday and I got to go with elder eem a korean, what I would not kill to have the opportunity to have a native companion, we had so much fun together! So back to the miracle. The zone leader and elder mills had planned for two lessons(Set a goal ) with a member but elder mills had only set up one and we had another APPOINTMENT but it was with a kid they had met on the street the day before and it was very iffy so we usually wouldn't get a member. At this point I put my trust in the lord and said well if thats the goal you set we have to get it so I scheduled a member to help us at the church at 8:15 after we picked this kid up at the nearest intersection. SO 8:05 came and the kid had punked us just like most students in Korea and I Said, "Elder Mills, its time to pray, we set this goal and we have a member lets pull someone into the church with us and get this lesson as our member is probably there waiting for us." We proselyted back to the church and I could see our member in front of the church gate waiting and we had two sets of people in front of us, a student and also a family, I was going for the family when i felt like I should talk to the student and so i stopped dead in my tracks and shouted out, "아,학생" or thge equivalent of hey you student directly translated. I asked him where he was going and his name and age which is the norm in korea and he told me he was late for academy which all students attend here. I said well I know you are late but do you have five minutes we could talk to you in our church right over there. He said yes, never does a student late to academy say yes to something like that, it was a miracle and we will meet him again sunday night. It was great as we taught him with a preparing missionary who just got his call 2 days ago to daejun korea, he thought it was an amazing miracle, which it was! I love missionary work! Have a good week. SO this week has been a good one, know I love you all and wish you the best!Love, Elder Greg GrantP.S. Thanks for the package grandma, i am loving the jam and the big cookies are always my fav!

Christmas here and everywhere

2009-12-16T03:03:00.000-08:00

(No Subject)‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 12/09/09 8:47 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
Hey everyone in the snowy reaches of the united states, this is Elder grant here reporting in from the rather wind bitting South Korea! They say Idaho and Korea are on the same parallel but I am not quite sure that I can believe that as it gets cold here for about a day and freezes everything and then goes back to raining and just driving the humidity straight through any coat you have on and into your body, sounds fun right?LolSo today was transfers, can’t believe it has already been six weeks! The big news is…….I am staying here in 시흥 with Elder Mills. Hopefully it is a great next transfer as this last one has been a little bit labor intensive with very few results. We are looking into going into this next transfer with a total of maybe three investigators, two who we have just found in the last week and one that has been meeting with missionaries for six months and her two little boys are baptized. She is a great woman and says she will be baptized but she has a word of wisdom problem with coffee and with alcohol because of work and she doesn’t want her boys to see her break the commandments after she is baptized. We have tried to get her to work on it and she is but the economy is so bad she says she has to drink to stay up in the real estate business here. Maybe grandpa adair if you could send me a letter for her about mainting integrity in the business and also something “American style- real estaty” that would be awesome, I have talked with her about you and that has been my way into her hard shell. I am one of the first missionaries she has really opened up to ever about her problems so hopefully we can get her to baptism this transfer. Other than those three who only meet once a week a piece we have no one, so it looks like it will be a building transfers full of miracles, and we will see baptisms, I promise!So this weeks funny story comes from our crazy member, litteraly he has lost his mind. He thinks that the missionaries have an inside contact with the u.s. embassy and government and that we can get him into a meeting with the president to talk about the trade market and getting Blackhawk choppers into Korea, weird. SO this week he has been calling us more than normal, about twice a day, drive me nuts. He is the sweetest man but when he calls after I have fallen asleep three nights in a row it really makes me kind of crazy to!Lol But last night we were waiting for transfer calls and elder Mills was a little anxious and he called and elder mills was sitting there waiting to see if he got a call and he thought he was leaving shiheoung, but he’s staying, just a funny moment in the week! SO its Christmas here and everywhere I hope everyone has a great holiday month! I know I will, and it will be full of the Saviors work and name! I hope you all keep him in your thoughts all the time this time of the year and the whole year for that matter!With love,

...New Area...like NO people here..just 400,000

2009-11-05T22:28:00.000-08:00

hey Family, Good to here from all of you and it sounds aas though everyone is doing well! So this has been my first week in the area of 시흥, quite the trip going from the dead center of seoul to one of the largest least populated areas in our mission, there are like no people here!Lol I say that but there really are tons compared to Idaho, I just cant stick my hand out and start talking to someone else after I have finished with a different person. So Elder Mills is from hailey, Utah and graduated in 2007. He will go home in may. He had some troubles in the first part of his mission mainly with confidence but they lead to several other things. He’s rather a shy Chap and really has no interest in sports or the outdoors whatsoever! he isn’t too bad actually, at least he is willing to go outside and exercise every morning! The big thing he likes top do is sing and act, not so much the acting part but more directing. We have a lot in common on that side of things but other than that we really don’t have much going for us and I think I have heard about every play he has been in twice over!Lol With not very many people in siiheoung there leaves a lot of time for talking as youre walkin!Lol So apparently I am an intense missionary! Lol I have now been told by my last two companions that exact thing! However it also feels like I got trained and had to make the Jump up to senior companion immediately! It just amazes me how some people can come out here and not have much of an initiative to do the work or that they are just plain to scared to spread the gospel! Elder Mills is great and we get along well, but he is as big of a pushover, sloth that there is!Lol the pushover part is good because I can get him out working and doing it the right way! He really is good if just slightly odd!JSO this weeks gospel message comes from the war chapters in Alma! I have been reading over them this last week and I realized that you can learn out of them principles which apply to daily life! I want to take the principle of preparation today! So the Lamanites are getting ready to come to war right? What does Helamen do? Theres a three step process after he realizes they must prepare-one, turn your hearts to god, two, ask him what to do, and three do it! The big part I got was that through this preparation he established defenses for his people. He had so many barriers to protect his people that the lamanites couldn’t get in. The same goes for us in life, we need many barriers of protection. Satan is attacking us from all sides so we must turn to god, ask what to do and do it. The do it part in our case is to make ourselves a fortress. We start with our morales, we must define them now and what we will and will not do. The next step is throwing up the walls and spike and defenses- this would be our friends family prayer(Sorry for the bad typing I have to hurry_) scripture reading. After we set these up and if we defend ourselves in the right way we are impenetrable. However we must establish good friends in the beginning as satan will work to our weaknesses. Satan got to adam through eve, we cannot let ourselves be gotten to by satan through others!( Realized that in the temple today!) I am loving life and all that is in it!

Love,Elder Greg GrantP.S. we just set a baptismal date for the 14th-pray for kim duck goon.

Last week in dong jak

2009-10-28T21:28:00.000-07:00

Brrr. I love Idaho weather‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 10/21/09 10:44 PM

Hey everyone there in good old Rexburg and all around in the U.S. of A. My Favorite time of the year has officially arrived here in Korea, it is fall and the leaves are turning and falling all over the place and the little old grandma’s the city employs are always scrambling to pick them up the moment that they fall! Its funny, they walk the streets all day looking for even a single leaf on the ground. I realized when I was watching them do that yesterday that Korea is really extremely clean for how many people live in it, something else to be grateful for!

So lets start off with a funny story from this week. SO in Korea the lives of every man and many women evolve around two things, sadly things which are against the commandments, Beer and Cigarettes. So every weekend all the men go out and get drunk and there are always the few who start the weekend early, like Monday morning at twelve o one. Okay maybe its just always the weekend for them. Anyway elder skousen and I ran into just such a guy! This man walked up to us his face beet read and swollen up a bit because of having had so much of the local brew from here in dong-jak. He shook my hand and he says, “Oh, your hands are cold, the weather is getting really cold huh? You will catch a cold if your hands are cold. Let me help!” He promptly shoves my hand into his armpit and here I am left just thinking-“Uhhh….Okay..this would be totally akward in America!” After I finally got my hand away and refused allowing him to warm my other hand up elder skousen and I turned to walk away and both just stated howling with laughter, it must have been quit the site to see this little Korean man trying to warm up this amercan but it was even more weird being the American he was doint it to! Drunk Men and there antics, sheesh! I have been kissed on the hand, up the arm, had my hands warmed up, several other things which I will not mention but are to be avoided in the future. Whats next, a smacker on the lips? I actually know an elder who had a drunk guy do that to him, not me man, you’ll be nursing a bloody nose before you get that close to me! 

This week has been a good one, rather slow with everyone getting used to the cold weather again. I love it though! I do feel colder than I ever did in America early in the mornings, maybe cause I am not always playing tennis no matter how cold it is!LolI

love Korea and can’t wait for the snow to stat falling! The next transfer comes on this next p-day and I will probably be moving but you never know what will happen!I love you all, have a great week!

Love,Elder Grant그랜트 장로

New Transfer to She Hung--the countryside of Korea

2009-10-28T21:00:00.000-07:00

Subject: Transfered!>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:06:50 +0000> >

SO I finally got the call to kmove up to the big place, well, at least the hills are a little bit bigger and the cities a little more spaced out but there aren;t that many people, I mean come on, there is only 400,000 poeple living here in 시흥(SHe hung), compared to well over 2 million in my last area which is roughly 1/4 the size of this area!Lol Korea certainly loves to stck people on top of people! The new companions name, drum roll please............Elder Mills.

Elder Mills is from about 15 minutes outside of Roy, Utah. He loves computer games, and more importantly acting! We should be able to have a great transfer together this next transfer, they really have seen miracles here in the past so we will look to throw some more into the frying pan!>

This last week was a great one in dong jak, I just love that place and I hope I get to serve there again before I go home, the ward is amazing and it will always be special because it is my first are and I saw tons of miracles there! This last week we really rocked ther socks off of the are absolutley destroying the standards and pulling person after person in off of the street, it truly was miraculous and the work there is booming. My last day there we set two baptismal dates and it looks like in two weeks time we will have six people enter the waters of baptism, absolutley amazing to bad I had to move on, I am excited though! We will work those same miracles here in she hung!>

Sorry to hear that everyone is catching that nasty flu, try and stay healthy for me will ya'll! Yes the same flu bug has started to hit here. President Burton and Sister Burton are really worried about it but tell us to be smart about hygeine and the Lord will do the rest!> We don;t have much time today cause we are on one computer but know that I am alive and well! I love you all and pray for you always!>
Love,>
Elder Greg Grant>

P-day October 7, 2009

2009-10-07T23:01:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!So these last two weeks have been fairly exciting, tough ones for me but different from the normal. As you know last week was choosok or the Korean equivalent of thanksgiving so our whole weekend was shot to pieces though we did get to meet one of our investigators and set a baptismal date for the 1st of November! Long time away but with conference and him traveling for work that is the soonest we could have him out to church twice by!

Sounds like conference went amazingly well and that everyone was spiritually edified. Elder 최 of the seventy spoke, that’s awesome-I shoke his hand about 3 months ago! lol This next week we get to hear General Conference for the first time because of the delay- I can’t wait. We get to listen to it in English because it is hard for even elders who are just getting ready to go home to understand it in Korean, heck Koreans even have a hard time with it.

Anyway onto the happenings of this last week, these last couple of weeks have been tough ones on me but I am back to my good ole’ happy self. Last week it seems like all we did was sit around because of choosok doing records and things like that- really not very fun but when we got out it was a relief. We had a sports conference with our zone on Saturday and my goodness I believe every person was sore from that for about three days. We played dodge ball and those are not muscles you use much in missionary work or even think about exercising in the morning- maybe we will all think about that some more!

We went and got to see a traditional Korean music and dance show with our members, it was way cool, once I get my other memory stick I’ll send the videos back to you of it! This last weeks miracles…I have to think… we have lots of miracles here in dong jak but when everyone disappears its kind of hard to find them! lol

No joke, one day you are surrounded by 2 billion people and the next-it’s a stinking ghost town, it was a bit weird to walk out and be the only ones on the street! Anyway we did see a miracle on Sunday night, we went out to proselyte on the street to the few people who were there and we did all according to our training from president burton and we went out and found an amazingly prepared man, we are supposed to meet him again tomorrow so hopefully it happens!

A Miracle, Miracle-not quite the same as beautiful huh Mom?Anyway this week was good-

I love you all.
Elder Greg Grant

P.S. Tell uncle trent to get back on his feet and that he may have to prosecute himself if he keeps beating the neighbors!

P-day September 30, 2009

2009-10-01T05:57:00.000-07:00

Hello‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 9/30/09 11:09 PM

Hey everyone,This week is a weird week here in Korea, its what is known as choo-sook. Basically it is the equivalent of our thanksgiving back in the united states but they go out and “Worship” their ancestors per say and then come home and feast. The big main day is on Sunday this year but its basically like a week long holiday where everyone disappears from seoul out to their hometowns. Today is an email only p-day so we can get some work done this week. Our real p-day will be on Saturday when we shall have a sports conference with our zones. Fun stuff but really not much has been going on with the missionary work.

We just set a baptismal date with a guy before we came here to email. I will probably be gone when it happens on nov. 1 though. We had to push it so far back because this week is a holiday, next week is general conference here(They have to have time to translate), and the next he will be in china, so he has to come to church at least those two times. If he keeps reading the book of Mormon he will be just fine though!

Ahh…any big happenings going on this week? Not really, two days ago I went on exchanges with the zone leaders. I went with Elder Lealuai who just happens to be the elder that Nathan dalling trained when he was here in country!lol It was fun, I learned a lot and it was good to have a change from dong jak for a day! One of the cool things I learned while I was on exchanges came from the first ever patriarch here in Korea.

He spoke of nephi and his brothers and how when nephi was told by the lord to go and make a boat he didn’t just ask the lord for a boat, he asked where is the material so I can make the tools so I can make the boat. That is what we have to do in life. We cannot just expect the lord to give us things, it doesn’t work that way. We have to ask the lord to open our eyes so that we can see what we must do to be able to do things the way he wants them done. It really was an eye opener for me in missionary work.

The last while we have been struggling to find investigators and this patriarch said, “ We can’t just ask the lord to give us prepared people, we must ask him what we must do in order to find these prepared people.” Or in other words we must first have all of our tools and then ask the lord if our plans are according to his desires and then and only then will we be able to do things the way the lord truly wants.This last week has been a slow one and kind of hard but missionary work truly does teach you lots about life and how you have to live it!

I love you all,Elder Greg Grant

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

2009-09-16T20:26:00.000-07:00

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"

2009-09-16T20:00:00.000-07:00

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!

Nothing funny happens here! September 2, 2009

2009-09-13T15:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-13T15:32:00.000-07:00

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

P-Day August 12, 2009

2009-08-12T22:10:00.000-07:00

Hello- its Hot!Lol‏

Wed 8/12/09 10:49 PM

Hey Everyone… this is Elder Grant typing from Lucky don-jak. That’s what they have on all of the street signs here in dong-jak. It’s a great area and I am excited to get to serve here for another transfer, there is great work still to be done! This last week we have had a little rain though the major stuff is about three hours south of us. Tuesday and Wednesday it poured cats and dogs, it was insane.

We were teaching a lesson outside on Sunday night to one of our baptismal dates named david and it was all sunny and all the sudden it just started dumping, we were getting a little wet but we were sitting under a sun shade umbrella however….The rains came down and the streams came up and up an up. The drain we were sitting next to wasn’t draining, so all the sudden we all looked down and we were sitting in three inches of water! It was hilarious so we all stood up on our chairs and had to jump from chair to chair to get out of the puddle. We took some funny pictures of it. In the end I ended up getting soaked through to the bone all over and it was right before we had dinner at a members house! lol Very funny and a choice experience, we actually taught our lesson standing up and the spirit was still felt by all of us.I love this work, being with Elder Skousen has been different for both of us but we get along fairly well. The thing I forgot to tell you last week was that Elder Rowe is now in shiliim and so we are living in the same house…….AGAIN. ........

This last week I have really seen a jump in my Korean ability-I’m loving it. With Elder Haviland being gone I speak more than ever now and all it does for me is push up my language ability. I can’t express how grateful I am for the Lords help because I have seen people who have been trying to learn Korean for three years who don’t now as much as new elders from the MTC, it’s amazing what the Lord does to progress his work. Korean is still hard obviously but I Love the challenge it presents. I can’t wait to learn other languages when I get home, languages open so many doors!

Hmmm… Spiritual story for the week??????? I have so many every week it is hard to pick just one. But, Monday night we were supposed to have a ward family home evening but no one showed up cause there is a big youth meeting here this weekend(Elder Cook is coming), so we went out tracting. We trtacted into this man who has walked the same road as us every night for the last three years and has never seen us, he walked fifteen minutes back to the church with us and we taught him about Joseph Smith. The spirit as we taught was simply amazing! This man wants to know the truths and happiness that the lord has to offer him! Hopefully we can bring him to those things. He promised to come to church this Sunday but was leaving on a work related trip the next morning! Its amazing.

Hey, congrats on the mission call Dylan that’s awesome! Funny thing, my trainers little brother(Elder Haviland’s) got his call about a month ago, you two are going to the same mission and enter the MTC on the same date! So look for a Haviland when you get there, his big bro. Was my trainer. (Okay Dylan, fill the rest of us in on your whereabouts?!? Greg's Mom)

I love you all, have a great week!
Elder Greg Grant

Transfers---New Companion, same area

2009-08-06T10:40:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone!!!

SO this week was transfers! What was going to happen we had no clue, but last Thursday we got a call from President Burton and he wanted to meet with us. We met and he called my trainer to pull the position of A.P. It was quite funny as he sat there stunned and the first thing he says to me after president leaves, “Elder, I have to get new clothes.” We have been making fun of his clothing’s sad state for the last three months- all holy and torn! Lol

SO what is going on with me, I am staying here in dong jak and my new companion is elder skousen. He is actually already living with us as he is or was serving in shileem the area we live with in our house. He is the short one in the pictures of us hiking. He has been in country for just under a year and coming over with me he just barely went senior so it should be fun.Hmm… what went on this week, not much. Because elder haviland went A.P. I have ben in a threesome with my new comp. And his old one for the past three days. I have to say that that was just kind of weird, I think I prefer where there is only two of you cause you can speak with people a lot easier!

Sorry this one is short but I don’t have much time today! I love hearing from everyone so keep the emails coming.

Love ya’llElder Grant

P-Day Post July 22, 2009

2009-08-02T21:20:00.000-07:00

Apparently "I'm a Fighter not a Lover!"‏
From:
Charles Grant (greg_grant@myldsmail.net)
Sent:
Wed 7/22/09 8:49 PM

Hey dear Family and friends!So we are now officially half way through rainy season! Actually it isn’t that bad, apparently this year they are experiencing a drought so it only rains about one day in three!Lol I hope it is the same next year so that I get away from the crazy rain! It may not be raining much but the humidity is an absolute killer! The other day we walked outside and were soaked to the bone in just about 5 minutes! It was crazy.

So this last week we had four baptisms, a family and a guy about dads age except he looks like he is seventy, he’s the sweetest man that I have ever met. Miracles abound every day here, many are experiencing a lack of baptisms and having trouble finding new people to teach but here in 동 작 we are being blessed. Just the other day we picked up another baptismal date for the second of august. We met him the first time and he said to us, “when can I get baptized?” He’s a refferal from the son in the family that we baptized, his best friend. He has been to church three times now and wants his friend to baptize him! Its awesome how the Lord helps the work if you are working your hearts out! This week has been tough but I have learned lots of important life principles.

One of the favorite things I heard this week was at district meeting an Elder was talking about Elder Bednars talks when he was here. Elder Bednar was speaking of faith and the process by which we obtain faith. There is us and a pillar of light with a mist of pure blackness before us. When we DESIRE to have greater faith we touch the midst then we eventually leave the light and walk into the darkness and the light will follow us and this is the basic process. I didn’t get the full story obviously but I felt as though this was the perfect description of getting faith only that the light rarely immediately follows. I felt that God leaves you in the darkness for a few days. Funny thing was we were talking about this during comp. Study a few days later and I said that and Elder Haviland told me that that was exactly what Elder Bednar had said when he talked with all of them. Coming to have faith is tough, and at times it feels as though you are alone but its amazing what you gain when after the right amount of time the Lord allows that light beam to shine on you again.

Funny story for the week- involving sports and once again the Grant competitive spirit coming to surface. We were playing basketball for exercise time the other day and we were playing twenty-one. Keep in mind I hate to lose. I had won the first two games but in the third elder haviland was ahead of me 16-11, the other two elders don’t matter as they can’t ever get past ten, anyway, I was getting a little competitive and decided I would put some pressure up top on elder haviladn, long story short I frustrated the heck out of him!Lol However as our competitive juices kept building we started playing harder and I took elder Havilands head to my nose. Blood starting gushing everywhere. Don’t worry mom, I said funny story not E.R. type story. I then went into the bathroom and plugged my nose up but blood was coming from somewhere else and it turned out to be a little maybe 1/4 inch long cut on my nose, I cleaned it off and could see down to the bone! J Long story short it kept bleeding(Slightly) all through study and it wasn’t big so I just tossed a butterfly band-aid on and called it good. Boy did I get stares all day long, everyone was wondering if I was a fighter and such. Apparently I resemble a famous fighter over here. Good or bad I don’t know but apparently He won several world titles! Lol No worries, we took a couple pictures!

Hope you are having fun in Oregon, wish I could be there with you! Can’t wait to get some beautiful pics.Love you all,Elder Greg Grant

P-day, June 15, 2009

2009-07-15T22:48:00.000-07:00

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

P-day post June 9, 2009

2009-07-09T06:22:00.000-07:00

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

June 30, 2009 P-Day

2009-07-01T22:49:00.000-07:00

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

June 24, 2009--Hebert's miracle and silk worm larvae

2009-06-30T19:18:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,How is life going this week?

My life is the same Ole’ except with New Miracles popping up all over the place! That’s the way missionary work should be! Lol, so chalk it up to the weirdest food I have eaten in country- lets go for more of the silk worm larvae! Haha it was delicious…… not! Anyway it tastes a lot like dirt! No worries when I come home I will bring some for you to try!Awesome to hear that the knudsens emailed you! They’re a great couple! We went to their house for dinner with our recent baptism and a guy who’s in Korea from Columbia! This guy has an amazing life story.

I won’t do it justice in here but he spent an hour telling us about his life. He was born out of wedlock in drug infested Columbia his mom was only seventeen and his dad left when he wasn’t quite one year old yet. This was such a traumatic experience that even though he was so young he remembers what his dad was wearing and that his mom was crying like crazy. Throughout his life his mom abused him physically, emotionally, and mentally. Then, at the age of fourteen she took him to meet his father to see what kind of man he was. His father was living with a women and had 13 children of which he all abused- he chased them off at the point of a machete. Throughout the rest of his teen years he moved away from home as he couldn’t stand living with his mother. He is amazingly brilliant and scored well on the test they take there that is similar to the ACT and got into the top school for psychology in the country. Because of complications(Depression) from his childhood he was kicked out and had to get treatment. Two years latter he was accepted into the 2nd best school but the same thing happened. In short he had a terrible life and came to Korea to escape it. He is fluent in English as in he sounds like we do when we are talking with friends and he taught himself all he knows about it in the two years he has been here in Korea. This Guy Hebert is absolutely amazing, from his life you would think he would be a hardened, tough luck kind of guy; but he has a special spirit about him. He’s got many fears right now because of what happened when he was younger- but it was ll to prepare him for the gospel. He is ready for it and I have no reserve in saying that the Lord has something special reserved for him here in this earth in the gospel!

The other miracle was 김 성 호, he was baptized! I got to baptize him this Sunday and he just came up beaming! Miracle.

Alright, funny story time! So there was a little boy baptized by the other elders in our house this weekend and he was nervous, more so about the water than anything else! They got him in to do it the first time and he bolted out of the font screaming and crying that the water was to cold(FYI it was freezing-I would know!lLol) After about twenty minutes his mom talked him into getting into the font again and as he was whimpering he was………….baptized…………and when he came up……….he was…………….Screaming Bloody murder!!!!!!!!! It was so funny to watch! We all felt bad for him though and wished that it could have been an incredible experience for him… at least he wont forget it! Hopefully his confirmation is better!So the rains have yet to hit- its just hot and muggy all over the place!

And no Carly event though I bought sparkly ties I did not pick myself up a manbag- Oh… wait… I do carry around something very similar to a purse! Lol I have to admit the idea of a purse when I get home is very appealing! It just holds so much stuff! I’ll stick with just the wallet though! Well, everything is good! Language is slow but it is coming!
Love you all,Elder Greg Grant

p.s. I'm staying in the same area for this next transfer!

P-Day June 17, 2009

2009-06-18T16:44:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody, so the humidity has arrived and it is kicking my rear end! Haha, rainy season supposedly starts in less than a week and so you can definatley feel the humidity starting to build up in the air. Its gotten really hot this last week- hot enough that even I am down to sleeping without my sheet! I hate sleeping without some sort of weight on top of me! Ugh

So this week has been one full of miracles! We started meeting a guy named 김 성 호 about two weeks ago and he is getting baptized this Sunday! He was so prepared from the minute that we met him! He loves the gospel and also loves helping me with my Korean! Lol in the last three meetings with him he has taught me a ton, to bad its all slang and can’t be heard coming from the mouth of a missionary! He’s amazing though- when we taught him the commandments he accepted all of them without a second thought! We taught him tithing was only ten percent and he said, “What, That’s all it is?” It was a testimony builder to me on tithing! Many times we think it is a burden to pay it, but it isn’t that much. Many people here pay their church over 50% of their incomes just so they get in good standing with their preachers! Its insane……. Preachers also sell there congregations to other preachers!Lol its quite the business, religion is, here in Korea.

Any way, what is the funny story for the week… So We were in a restraurant with the above mentioned baptismal date and he was teaching me how to say the word for chopsticks and I couldn’t get it right so I was working off of the"If you fail, try and try again" principle, and I couldn’t understand why people were looking at me funny and why our investigator was rolling on the ground with laughter. Come to find out I was saying it slightly wrong and I was saying the equivalent of the F word several times over in Korean! “Hey I didn’t know any better!” Lol It was quite a good laugh for me when I finally realized what was going on, and I did finally get the word for chopsticks down, it is a U sound not an O sound!Lol

Many miracles were seen this week as we are teaching tons of people, and upping our member taught lessons- its amazing how many people just appeared out of nowhere wanting to be baptized- currently we have 5 potential baptisms on the docket for the next three weeks four of which are almost certain to get baptized! I love this place- its got so much culture and just amazing people. I’m in Dong Jak for those who were wondering- its in the middle of Seoul, and its just like a county name in Seoul.

So I got the package from you Mom, thanks a ton- I loved all the pictures, and Dad were you really going to eat that Stone fly? Haha Wish I Could have been there to see that! Did you get the fish to rise for the stone fly hatch again then? That is one of my favorite memories of going to Yellowstone; that time we hit the hatch just right and spent like an hour throwing those suckers into the monster rainbows just sitting there waiting for us to feed them! Haha Haven’t got to watch the movie from home yet but I will get to it right after we go shopping, no worries! Lol we went to the temple here this morning and it was absolutely amazing. Its smaller than any temple I have ever seen before! Okay t-man I am sorry about your birthday but your present won’t be there for about three or four months because it is way expensive to air mail back to the states because of the exchange. It costs you about thirty and it costs me almost 100 so to slow boat it it is only twenty so that is how all packages will be coming! Lol P.s. your birthday is a Korean ping-Pong paddle, its sweet! Lol and I have yet to be beat here in country!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Glad to hear that missionary blessings go all around in ways of safety! Holy smokes that’s some crazy stuff when that happens. Glad you're all Okay! Now I will try to answer your questions since I just got your email. Normal day… there really aren’t;any normal days here in Korea, I have yet to go door knocking. It is the least a\effective way to contact people here in korea because they all live in high rise apartments and have cameras linked to their doorbells so they can see who is at the door, but we get a ton of investigators from the local universities chewn ang, and sum shirl colleges. Wow its akward to put those into English letters! Haha Glad to know everyone in the family is okay and that you took the white van and not the gray car! I love all of you tons! Love,Elder Greg Grant

June 10, 2009 Another P-Day

2009-06-10T21:33:00.000-07:00

Hey 여로분, hope this last week has been a great one for you! Its kinda of been a long one for me, but hey that’s part of a mission! Can’t tell you how crazed I was about hearing that federer finally won! Hey mom forward this to all my friends if you aren’t already will you! Thanks.

So not much went down in the last week, the young man I told about last week is not going to get baptized and it looks as though we are going to end up dropping him as he no longer returns calls or texts and will hardly speak to us. We went and met with him last night and we both had the distinct feeling that it wasn’t his mom putting pressure on him it was just that he doesn’t believe what we have been teaching him. Its to bad that we couldn’t help him to see the importance of this gospel. Its hard to let people go, especially when you know that they are your brothers and sisters in the gospel. Its so much easier to talk to people when you view them that way too. This last week I have been trying to view people as someone I had met before in heaven and been good friends with, its amazing how much it has changed my view as I have done so, it almost makes me scared for every person who walks past because they simply don’t know what they are missing! I can truly say that I love the Korean people!

This last week was a particularly tough one with the language, I feel as though I should be making leaps and bounds, but am not- I almost feel as though I am at the same place I was when I came into the country. Not going to lie, it ticks me off! Haha everything in school came easy- I could pull A’s and B’s without even studying and all of the sudden I am studying harder than ever before and getting what seems like less result for the work. Its so frustrating, but hopefully it will eventually come. SO the miracle of the week came in the form of a twenty two year old young man. He has been coming to the church on Thursdays the last couple of weeks to play basketball and one day we were teaching a lesson on the streets at about 8:45 and he stopped to say hi, we quickly pulled him aside and talked with him for ten minutes and set up an appt. to play B-ball with him that Saturday, I have never seen someone ask so many questions or one who is so prepared to hear the gospel! We meet him for a third time tonight! He’s truly a great guy- who claimed to have crazy ping-pong skills which I quickly disproved as I beat him 21-9! Lol we had fun playing though! I have played enough ping-pong with Koreans that I feel as though I could safely beat Brock! OLSO

This last Wednesday was zone conference, it was Olympics at the Seoul Olympic stadium! I was happy as I managed to run a 5K in just under 20 minutes I still have a little bit of my lungs from tennis and working out back home! ol We then held the Olympics in the big stadium there, it was way fun and then we went back to the mission home for a meeting at 2. It was a great meeting and we talked about always having our line in the water like the successful fisherman.
(PMG Pg. 152) Read it if you have time its what we need to do to succeed at all things in life! Tennis, we have to practice we can’t just go and aimlessly hit a ball for four hours and think it will make us better even if it is fun! Lol Love ya’ll, Elder Greg

Greg's contact information

2009-06-04T21:14:00.000-07:00

If you'd like to contact Greg!

Snail mail:

Costs about .98 cents for a one page, regular sized letter.

Elder charles Greg Grant
Korea Seoul West Mission
Songpa PO Box 31
Songpa-gu
Seoul-si 138-600
SOUTH KOREA

This is the address for the mission home; he gets his mail every couple weeks when he meets with the prez.

If you mail packages, send them to the following address, which is also to the mission home:

Elder Charles Greg Grant
Korea Seoul West Mission
24-1 Ogeum-dong
Songpa-gu
Seoul-si
Seoul-jikhalsi 138-130
SOUTH KOREA

Packages are a little spendy to send...anything over 4 lbs. is better to send in the International boxes that have a flat rate...you can stuff an anvil in there if it will fit and it will still cost you the flat rate: ) I have found so far, that it is cheaper to send small stuff in a shoe box from home...but he hasn't needed an anvil yet: ) Keep Smilin', Susan

For the hikers among us...they have mountains in Seoul

2009-06-03T22:35:00.000-07:00

Sampling Seoul
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Chasing Maple in the City
Seoul's Top 5 Hiking Spots

It's that time of year again when the autumn leaves start to show lovely shades of red, orange and gold. Koreans love this particular time, when they head to the mountains to look at the changing colors of the dan-pung, or maple leaves. We'll tell you where to go to see some of fall's fantastic foliage.

1) Gwanaksan Mountain
With a beautiful boulder stream and a wide climbing path, Gwanaksan offers the naturalist a taste of all that is lovely and good in Seoul. The varying trail and open spaces allow one to take in the romance of it all while hiking up an intermediate level mountain. For a little cultural edification along with your exercise, hike to the three-story stone pagoda (2.7 km up) or to the Portrait of Prince Pyoryeong (2.7 km up). Take Subway Line No. 4 to Gwacheon Central Government Complex Station, exit no. 10. Walk straight from the exit for about 15 minutes. Follow the road as it curves to the right, look for two spirit posts on your left to mark the entrance to Gwanak Mountain.

2) Cheonggyesan Mountain
Think of this mountain like a "Hiking 101" class and a good introduction to the whole Korean hiking thing. With gradual slopes, clearly marked trails through lots of "tree tunnels," and plenty of pretty wooded pavilions, you'll not lack for any colorful displays here, though your will probably thank you. From Sinsa Station, take Bus 8442 to the Cheonggyesan Mountain entrance stop. Cross under the bridge where the outdoor market is and walk up past the little diners to the clearly marked trails. Two main courses, about 2 hours and an hour and a half, respectively.

3) Suraksan Mountain
This mountain is by far the most fun to climb. While it starts out relatively slow with its moderate incline, sparse woods and dusty gravel path, a little more than halfway up, you get to scramble over enormous boulders and navigate granite inclines. The more experienced hikers casually walk down a 70-degree incline, their hiking boots magically sticking to the rock face. The views are well worth the hike as well, as Suraksan Mountain is surrounded by various peaks, providing optimal views of autumn's colors. Take Subway Line No. 7 to Suraksan Station, exit no. 2. Walk straight for less than five minutes and turn left when you see the silver clock fountain. Follow the trickling mountain water fountain until you hit the base of the mountain.

4) Dobongsan Mountain
Well known for its challenging hikes, the mountain itself looks rather intimidating. Located northeast of Bukhansan Mountain, Dobongsan is famous for its beautiful rock walls. The mountain has many beautiful peaks such as Jaunbong (the highest at 739.5 meters), and boasts picturesque mountain temples. Take Subway Line No. 1 to Dobongsan Station. Get on the National Road and walk for ten minutes. Another option is to take Bus No. 141, No. 142 at City Hall to U-I-dong for 50 minutes.

5) Bukhansan Mountain
Located just north of Seoul and visible from Gyeongbukgung Palace, Bukhansan Mountain offers towering granite peaks and a more adventurous hike for those who like to be challenged. Full of lush greenery-now a rainbow of autumnal hues - and a voluptuous mountain stream, Bukhansan is surely worth the effort. From City Hall, take Bus No. 704 or 8771 to its last stop. From there, board the mountain shuttle bus to the ticket booth and hike to your heart's content. Get there early - hikes usually last all day.

Check out at http//english.visitseoul.net

2009-06-03T22:28:00.000-07:00

Infinite Discoveries
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New Bridge Fountain Performs Water Dance in Central Seoul

Seoul’s latest urban redesign project is a high-profile new city landmark -- and a new entry in the Guinness Book of World Records. This month the Rainbow Bridge Fountain, the world's longest such fountain, opened on the Banpo crossing of the Han River in central Seoul. The fountain runs along both sides of the 570 meter-long bridge for a total length of 1140 meters. With the nozzles at rest pointing out and slightly downwards, the effect is of a waterfall coming off both sides of the bridge. But the water jets can also “dance” in time to lighting from under the bridge, creating undulating patterns of water and light. The effect is especially dramatic when seen at night from the Han River Park on the south bank, with the lights of downtown Seoul and Seoul Tower in the background. The bridge itself is a double-decker, with a lower deck view something like being inside a waterfall.With computer-controlled choreography, the bridge fountain can perform a variety of shows. Show times are daily at 2, 3, 4, 7:30 and 8:30 pm.
The Rainbow Bridge Fountain is part of a larger 30-year Han River Renaissance project began in 2007 to make better use of the Han River Park (Hangang Park) and surrounding areas as central urban space and to set the tone for Seoul as an attractive environment. The effect of the ambitious river renaissance project is already being seen, not just in high profile installations like the Banpo bridge fountain, but also in overall improvements in access to and landscaping of riverside parks along both banks.
Best way to get there is as a pedestrian or on bicycle from any nearby Han River Park access. From the south side (Banpo-dong) the nearest subway station is the Express Bus Terminal stop, line 3 or 7.
[Input: May.11, 2009, 18:28/Modified: May.11, 2009, 18:34] Source : Tourism Promotion Division, Seoul Metropolitan Government

June 3, 2009

2009-06-03T22:23:00.000-07:00

Hello and how the heck is everybody!So the computer is being really slow about opening up emails to read so I figured that I would get a jump start on writing this email! SO to make a long story short- what a crazy week! I feel as though last p-day was just yesterday. Which mom you will be happy to know that we went hiking on. (Yesss.......I KNEW it was in his blood...even in Korea: ) We went to the most famous hiking “Mountain” in Korea. It was more of a hill with a lot of rocks in the trail all the way to the top but it was just gorgeous the whole way up! We got up there and had an incredible view of the bigger part of Seoul, the pictures of it didn’t turn out to great because of the smog though.

So I just read dad’s email that says that NADAL LOST AT THE FRENCH!!!!!!!!!! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. SO pretty much this means that ROGER FEDERER is like the best player of all time as soon as he wins it on Sunday! SO glad to hear that! Last P-day as we were waiting for a bus back from the mountain there was a court right by the bus stop and there were some guys playing on it! I wanted to go down there and show them how its done but figured I better get on the bus! The play on dirt courts here in Korea, I can’t wait to try them out. Many areas have tennis courts next to the apartments which people play on for exercise in the mornings! Hope I get sent there one of these times!SO we had interviews yesterday and president told Elder Haviland and I that unless something drastic changed in the mission we would be together the next transfer. Elder Haviland will now have been in this area for six transfers! Lol He just loves it here, or so he says.

We went to dinner at a members house Monday night and there little boy was running around, reminded me of Michael cause he stripped his diaper off and was running around stark naked! Lol Embarrassed his Mom to death!

So we have an investigator whom I am way close to we are the same age here in Korea (Korean age I am 20) and it means alot to be the same age as someone, we had a baptismal date set for the 25 but his mom doesn’t want him to be baptized. As we have been teaching him we couldn’t tell whether or not he really wanted to be baptized or if he even believed what we were teaching but last night confirmed to us that he loves the gospel and wants to be baptized with all his heart, he let the two members we were teaching with leave the room then asked us to wait a moment and told us… he was in tears as he said he would have to push his baptismal date back so that he could talk it over with his mother. I love this kid to death, his name is Pock G Hong, he has an absolutely amazing spirit, please keep him in your prayers and pray that his Mom’s heart will be softened towards the church.Hmmm, I can’t really think of much else to write about.

We went on splits this last Monday and I was with Elder Rowes companion, hes so quiet just as is Elder Rowe and because of that when we were contacting I did lots of talking which was very good for my Korean it made me use it more than I have ever had to before and let me know that if I will just take a second to think I can say much more than I think I can.

I don’t care what kind of mail I get! The E-mails are quickest but i love both! Just keep sending them is all I can say! I got your snail mail letter yesterday at interviews so it has been fun to be able to read it. So I guess you also want to know a bit about the area I am in, it has two huge universities who’s names I am to lazy to try to translate over to english! Lol We do a lot of talking up there, most people are willing to listen, but being willing to learn is another story! Almost everyone we teach has a Word of Wisdom Concern, they all have to go into the army and in the initial hazing they get hooked on beer, and the army gives them all the cigarettes they want for free so most men smoke, and we aren’t allowed to contact or teach women because of the culture. I’ll try to send pics. And something for T-mans birthday within the next Week, by the way how much money is still on my debit after I bought my translator?Hope all is well and sunny at home!

Love you all,Elder Greg Grant