7-26-13

Last email before Korea my family!

Hmm, what to tell you.

This week we finished teaching our investigators. For one of them I didn't think about the little Korean I know and I didn't think about my Korean skills or doubt them, when I went in to teach. I was able to teach most of what I wanted to teach and say a lot of the things I wanted to say. I cannot believe how far I have come and how much the Lord has helped me! 

Class the past week has been crazy. We will learn a new grammar form or something and then just do personal study for like an hour and a half. When we do personal study, whoever is teaching at that time, does exit interviews with each individual. So we have had a lot of study time which is hard to focus during because we are so excited to go to Korea in less than a week.

Yesterday we had in-field orientation that spanned an 8 hour period with a few breaks here and there and then an hour for lunch. So we spent probably 6.5 hours sitting a listening and practicing street contacting and stuff like that. We learned about working with members, planning, goals, and other things. It was pretty interesting. I definitely thought I would fall asleep a lot because it’s a lot of sitting and I’m just so tired, but I only slept for around 15 minutes. I'm so proud of myself. But then we had class afterwards for 3 hours after dinner.....it was so hard because our brains were fried!!!

Let’s see what else.....umm, oh packing today is so much fun....not! there’s so many things I still need to use over the next few days...clothes, books, etc. which means I cannot pack those things yet. So I need to pretty much wait until Sunday night to finish packing everything.

Oh I saw Brian Anderson like 3 times over the past 9 weeks. Cool.

Lately I’ve been trying to memorized doctrine and covenants section 4 in Korean. It’s pretty long and kind of difficult but I have gotten the first 4 verses in like 3 days.

Love,

Elder Frampton

The haircut lady gave me a really short haircut.......oh well

Elder Kang, he is going to the Morristown, New Jersey mission Korean speaking.

 Elder Yang, he is going to Korean speaking San Fernando, California mission

my Korean name tag!!!!! 

my name is pronounced puh rem puh tun.... 

that second part is "elder" it is pronounced jang no

(yes, it is read left to right)

7-19-13

Hello family!

I got my travel plans today! Happy day!

Us Busan goers are very very lucky compared to the Taejon and Seoul people! Seoul people leave early to get a 6am flight to Dallas Texas, then they fly to Seoul. The Taejon people have to wake up earlier to catch a 535am flight to San Francisco then to Seoul............AND US BUSAN people get to leave at like 800am to catch a 11:22am flight to San Francisco. We then get to go to the Tokyo Narita, Japan airport! It’s a lot more fun when you have layovers in a place like that. Elder Luke, in my district, is half Japanese and pretty much fluent in Japanese so he is really excited about that. We then fly into the Busan international airport at like 9:00 pm the next day...  

We also got a letter from the mission president earlier in the week. It talked about how when we got there we would have a 2 day orientation at the mission home before we would go to our assigned areas. It’s really exciting and now I just have to wait 10 days! From what I hear, President Gilbert, my mission president, is the most amazing person ever so I can’t wait to be out there.

So this week was pretty interesting for class. Brother Sung a few weeks ago got promoted to a zone coordinator. He is still our teacher but this week he had to go and teach other classes in our zone so we got to have that other class's teacher for 3 hours. We as a district are really blessed to have the opportunity to learn from 4 other different teachers. We got to learn things that out teachers weren’t able to explain and stuff like that.

Richard G. Hinckley, Emeritus General Authority gave our devotional on Tuesday. It was a very good devotional, he was very chill. Right afterwards we took an MTC group picture right there in the Marriott center. Apparently it is the 3rd time they have ever done that, and of course we were the biggest group yet. One sister in my district, Sister Pope, has been keeping track of how many times they use the word "historic" to describe things that have gone on while we were here. She said that the photo was the 5th time they used historic while we were here. This really is an amazing time to be in the match.

I don’t really have much else to say....so until next week

Love,

Elder Frampton

7-12-13

Hello family,

So thinking about my past week one thing I just noticed is the blessings of fasting. This past Sunday I fasted and prayed that I would have an easier time with Korean. Looking back on the week I realize my greater success than normal has come from that as well as my extra effort. Also I just want to testify that the gift of tongues is a real thing. Many people believe it to be some miraculous thing where out of nowhere you can speak the language perfectly, but I have seen it in my life as being able to learn Korean at this fast pace as well being able to have a strong spirit when teaching even though the language we use is not 100 percent correct. God does love us and he supports me every single day.

Along with that, we are supposed to "SYL", or speak your language, every day as much as possible. Brother Sung, my teacher, explained that SYL was an act of faith and our way of showing Heavenly Father that we honor and have faith that we will help. I have been striving to do this a lot lately and it really is the thing the shows how much I have progressed. I can't believe how much I can say after 6.5 weeks as well as how much I can’t say. So it really shows what I need to improve on. 

My week has been a pretty average week otherwise. One group of like 5 missionaries left on Tuesday morning for Korea Seoul south mission. Then on Wednesday a group of 21 missionaries came into the MTC. So we are now the oldest group! I feel so old compared to them. Some of the new people sound nice, but some of them seem very cocky, but they will be forced to be humble once they get into the language more....

There really isn't much more to tell this week, but I’ll go and answer the other emails you guys sent me.

Love and miss you,

Elder Frampton

7-5-13

Hello Familia!

First I want to impress you with part of the first vision that I have memorized so here it goes (Korean characters did not come through)    wow that took 5 minutes to type......

Let’s see where to start now.

Our lessons with our investigators have been going alright, one of them we do really well with but the other I never do well with. I usually feel pretty discouraged after a bad lesson. I've been trying to be more organized and prepared by scheduling and planning better. Overall I think I’ve gotten more done this week than most others because I planned more.

On Monday I thought it was the 31st of June because my watch said so......I was disappointed to find out that it was July 1, I really was excited though because that means 1 day less that I have to be in the MTC. The MTC is great and all, but after 5 weeks of being in here I get tired of the same old cafeteria food that doesn’t sit well with my stomach as well as not clean bathrooms that I can use....I have to search for a good one. 

  

So the Temple starting July 1, closed so I don’t get to go to the temple anymore. We get 3 more hours of personal time though so I think I will use it to maybe take a nap, or write letters, plan lessons, or study.

So not a lot to say this week but I will tell you about yesterday July 4! It started off as a normal day, except we were early to the first study time we have in the class room rather than our usual lateness or on timeness. So we usually have class twice a day for 3 hours each. We had the first class, but the second one we only had an hour of. We were supposed to teach the investigator according to the schedule, but since we didn’t have time we didn’t do that. We got out 2 hours early to get to the Independence Day "program."

Elder Pickard and I usually avoid the hustle and bustle and craziness of getting into the main building for devotional that are here at the MTC rather than at the Marriott, so we went straight to the overflows that just have a video feed. The program consisted of a few musical numbers, some singing, and like one little talk that really wasn’t a talk. We then got to watch 17 Miracles. It was weird watching a "real" movie. Now here’s the weirder part of the day. usually we are done class 930 and go to our residence and lights out at 1030........yesterday the movie ended at 1015, and then we were allowed to go outside and watch the fireworks that are done for the stadium of fire show. It was hard to see because of all the trees around the MTC but we got a decent view of them. By the time I got to bed it was 11:15! CRAZY!!!!!! It was even worse because on Pday (today) we have to get up at 5:50 to be at our service assignment at 6:05, so I only got 6.5 hours of sleep compared to my usual 7.2! It was worth it because overall it was a good experience and now I can say that I’ve spent the 4th of July in the MTC.

That’s it for this week

Love,

Elder Frampton