3-17-14

Hello!

So this week was a little less exciting than the week before. It rained for 2 or 3 days so it was really gloomy outside and not many people wanted to talk..

So last p-day was good, we played sports at the church most of the day for like 3 hours or so. We played catch with a football, soccer, basketball, pingpong, badminton. It was nice to play sports again after not playing for a while. Today we are going to play soccer on the beach again! The last time I did that was my second week serving in this area back in October. The beach is in another area and zone so it takes around 40 minutes to get there by subway. It should be fun because it is an amazing day, it is somewhat hot outside.

So this week also we ended up having a few appointments cancel that we had set up. They were referrals from other areas and people that we had found on the street. They said they were 'busy' and couldn't meet and would be 'busy' for the rest of the week. Usually when that happens that means they don't want to meet so that's too bad! One of the referrals from another area was busy, but we think his excuse was legitimate, so we will try again this week to set up an appointment. 

So we met with our investigator again twice this week. We teach him in English because he doesn't really know Korean anymore. He is slowly progressing, we are continually trying to help him find faith in God and to find that he exists. He has a hard time accepting it because he has such a firm belief in science and just thinks that science explains it all. He kind of thinks that when we attribute good things and feelings to be from God, we are kind of just making excuses and being somewhat weak because we don't want to truly figure it out through science. He is really open though and he is willing to pray. We are constantly helping him know what to pray for and how he will receive an answer. He wants to believe but it is just a little hard, so right now we are just relying on him praying and receiving an answer and recognizing that it is from God. We only have 2 more weeks of meeting him so we really hope we can help him find for himself that God exists and loves him!

On the rainy days we spent a lot of time finding less actives through records and then going and trying to find them at their houses. There are so many and our records are out of date so sometimes I feel hopeless that we will ever find any! The ward has their 'focus' less actives but those are dead ends too or the sister missionaries are working with them already. We will continue to try to find them and invite them to church.

This week after sacrament meeting our 'investigator' came to church. He actually showed up to church randomly at the beginning of December when I was with Elder Moon. Last time he came to church we met with a member and the member and him instantly became friends. I had texted to Brother Lee and invited him to church on Saturday and when he came yesterday I was very happy! I was even more happy when I found out that his member friend had called him and invited out to church in the morning!! Woo! 

We were able to meet during church and teach him a little. He likes to talk to we didn’t teach much. He is very open and wants a church and when we taught him prayer we invited him to pray to close the lesson and he said an awesome prayer! When we asked if he would pray every night, he said something like "for sure! I will pray from here on out everyday!" He is super sweet! 

Now that the weather is starting to be warmer and more like spring I have a feeling my allergies are coming. Lately my eyes have been really dry and itchy so I started taking my allergy pills. I thought I had finally escaped my allergies! Wrong :( oh well, missionary work is getting fun and our area is getting much more exciting. All the missionaries in our area have investigators now and are seeing so many miracles! We are getting super excited. We are sad though because our ward mission leader has to enter his military service now (today actually) so we will be getting a new one :( He was super awesome. We don't know the new one yet so we will most likely find out on Sunday. We still have super awesome ward missionaries though! I also thought that that calling (ward missionary) was so lame, but it is super important and awesome! haha

That's it for this week!

Love,

Elder Frampton

3-10-14

Hello!

So this week was an awesome week!

So much happened this week. Lots of miracles and lots of just events.  

So last Monday, right when we finished p-day we went out to street contact and I had an impression to just go down some road probably in the first 5 minutes that we had left the house. We went down the road and turned a few times and we were on the way to the main road when we passed a little cafe. As we passed we looked in and saw a lady motioning to us to come in. So we came in and she gave us free smoothies because she was the owner! When we asked why she was doing that, she just said that she didn't really have a reason, we just looked like nice people. When we asked if she had seen missionaries before or heard of our church she said no. So that was a miracle! She was a very nice lady and we are planning this week to take a little present back to thank her and also we will try to share the gospel with her!

It was interesting that when we went there we didn't really get to talk to her because there were two college freshmen there that we talked to. The one lived in New Zealand for 6 years so was super good at English, we talked with him and found out that he doesn't really care for religion (or politics). In New Zealand missionaries came to his door and when he said he wasn't interested he was closing the door and the one missionary stuck his foot in the door so he couldn't close it. His view of missionaries and the church isn't that great, but we hope someday we will be able to meet him again and naturally just share the message of the gospel with him and he will feel god's love and see that it is more of a way to be happy than just a religion. We couldn't get his number because someone stole his wallet and phone but we did get the friends number. 

Tuesday I went on exchanges with one of the zone leaders because they do companion exchanges with the district leader. I was with Elder Quist, the one that I lived with my first two transfers I was in Geumjeong. It was fun, he is always such a good example and just being a happy missionary that talks with everyone. We met a guy on the way back to Elder Quist's area and he completely loved us. He even video called his girlfriend to show us the 'two foreigners' that he met that are missionaries who will teach him English! It was sweet! I think that will turn out well for those missionaries. 

The house that these Elders have is a 4 man apartment but it's super new (more new than ours which is 6 months old) and it's big compared to mine...lol so sad;( 

Thursday we had mission tour and the Southeast Asia area president came and we got to hear him speak along with his wife who is actually Elder Nelson’s daughter, President Gilbert, and Sister Gilbert. It was very uplifting. He said that we will get iPad mini but it probably won't be for a while unfortunately. We could really use them!

One thing that President Ringwood (the Area President) talked about was agency. We must always remember that people have agency and good allows them that privilege. We may teach powerfully by the spirit, see miracles with them, but they still have that ability to choose whether to accept and act. There is nothing that you can do about their agency but you must do all you can to give them the best opportunity. Remember that when you share the gospel with your friends and family! They have their agency but we can give them a good opportunity! 

This week was stake conference and we attended the Saturday night session as well as Sunday morning. It was about hastening the work and trying to encourage all members to share the gospel. Not even share the gospel really but share the Love of God which comes from the gospel. It was a great meeting! 

The biggest miracle this week was that we found an investigator! He is a Chinese man. He is working on his master’s degree at Busan national university but right now he is working on some required experiments and not taking classes so is schedule is pretty flexible and we think we will be able to meet maybe 3 times a week. The only difficulty is that he is leaving to go to Japan at the beginning of next month for 5 months of school there....so we are trying to help him come closer to god until then. We think he might be able to be baptized eventually. He doesn't believe in God right now so we will teach him this week and hopefully help him find that god lives and loves him. He is a very logical thinker and right now finds it hard to believe in him but through preparation and the spirit we know he can change. 

The craziest part is that Elder Sperle already knows him! In his first area he taught him about 4 times over a year ago. Almost exactly a year ago! he had moved to Taejon mission then back to China and taught for a year then came back and had gotten our number around the end of January when I was with Elder Moon.....he didn't call us until Friday. Interesting that it took a month and a half to call, but a miracle! He asked us to get him another Book or Mormon because he lost the one he had before when he moved. 

That's it for this week!

Have a good week!

Love, Elder Frampton

3-3-14

Hello family!

Great week this week! Woo 

So this was pretty sweet, I really like my new companion Elder Sperle. Like I said before he is from Colorado and has been out a little over a year. His Korean is pretty good so it has been pretty fun with him so far. He graduated in 2012 and worked for a few months then came out on his mission. He was a super pro wrestler and a football player. He likes to exercise with me in the mornings; which is good. He also likes food like I do which is funny because we will talk about food sometimes. It seems that we will work together nicely over the next few weeks. 

This week we had some good times finding people on the streets. Definitely saw a lot of miracles. We met a few people on the street and started calling people on our phone. We have about 700 people we can call and we called about 65 of them already. We set up an appointment with one and a funny thing happened. When we talked on the phone we misheard him and we thought he said 'yangsan' which is in our area and when we got to meet and he doesn't show up we call him and he says come to his apartment. So we look for that but it turns out that he lives in 'yeonsan' that isn't in our area. So we referred them to the other elders in that area. 

We met a few people on the street by following the spirit and we were able to share 2 copies of the Book of Mormon! One had lots of interest but wouldn’t give us his number unfortunately, so we pray that he calls and wants to learn more! The other person said to call this week Wednesday to set up an appointment so hopefully he can meet! We are always looking for opportunities to share the Book of Mormon now, especially if the spirit prompts us. 

I know the Book of Mormon is God's word and gift to us! Through it people's questions can be answered, almost any question!

Yesterday during fast and testimony meeting there was a visitor old guy that bore his testimony and something super unexpected happened......all of a sudden he pulls out a harmonica and starts playing silent night on a harmonica! He was super good but it was

super weird!

Until next week!

Love, Elder Frampton

2-24-14

Hello Family,

I have more time this week to write so I am going to try to write a longer email today! 

So before I tell about last last week and this past week I will tell you new news! This past week was transfer call day and today was transfer day and no I didn't get transferred but I did get a new companion! It is my first American companion named Elder Sperle from Colorado! That's really all I know about him right now because I've only been with him for about an hour, but I am super excited to be serving with him in Geumjeong! I think the change of companions will really help us find new people and get things going here in Geumjeong. Well that's my hope. He has been in Korea for a little more than a year and he has pretty good Korean I think so I am excited! I think an American companion is just what I need to get my Korean better and working harder.

So back to 2 Saturdays ago. Our ward held a mini MTC for the youth and the ward and we were able to attend to watch and help a little. About 9 youth attended, which was pretty good. The young single adults in the ward ran the program and it was good to hear the different workshops and activities and to help a little with some of the activities. One really funny part was when they practiced simulating street contacting. They were just really funny. It was great to see the desire to serve missions in some of the youth.     -----Later that day the ward had a 'clean the church/barbecue' activity. We had English during that time but I did get to try clams for the first time! They were okay but they tasted a little funny, I didn't want to eat more than 2.

Not this Sunday but the Sunday before yesterday we went to a members house for a meal and she gave us spaghetti! It was pretty much the most American meal (Italian) meal that a member has ever made for us. Super delicious!

Last p-day we went to an art museum place that one of our members worked at. Actually at the museum there was a limited time LIFE magazine photo gallery (only there for like 4 months) that we went and saw. (I think it was time or life magazine). It had a bunch of photos and captions and stories and even little audio information that you can listen to. Super awesome. 

After that we went to the church and threw a mini birthday party for two missionaries (Elder Wunderli and Sister Oh) because it had been their birthdays either that day or the day before.

This week wasn't too eventful actually, the elder’s quorum had a barbecue and we went during our meal time and ate delicious meat! It was funny to watch a bunch of Koreans try to start a barbecue fire with coals. 

This week I learned how powerful simple testimony can be. Nothing special happened, just through experience and through district meeting the Spirit bore witness to me the power that even the simplest testimonies have. I just felt the spirit say to me 'yes, I will be here and put power to your words even if it is a simple testimony.' Even if it is not much, if you have the opportunity bear testimony simply and the spirit will always put power to your words.

That's it! I hope you all have a good week!

Love,

Elder Frampton

2-17-14

I have almost no time to write this but I will share a quick experience I had this week!

This past week we visited a member and talked for a while, well Elder Moon did most of the talking. We were talking just about how the gospel can play such an important role in our lives. Its main purpose is happiness, that's it! Through it we can be happy. Well the member asked me to share my testimony. I know I didn't speak well but the spirit was just so strong and I know the member could feel it, she was just paying close attention and even though I couldn’t speak too well I know the spirit conveyed my thoughts and feelings. Your testimony with the spirit can work miracles!

That’s it, sorry times up.

Love,

Elder Frampton

2-10-14

Hello, 

I'm super jealous because it's snowing so much at home!!!!!! That is just not fair! It's snowing right now since maybe 6am but it is not cold enough to stick so it's lame!

So this week was an awesome week compared to the past few weeks. First off, we helped the one less activity lady that we are working with move her event shop. Her husband was there and we met him for the first time. We found out that he actually got baptized a few years back and so he is not a nonmember like we thought he was! We were with him the whole time packing and driving and unpacking at the new location for the shop. We were able to form a good relationship with him and he is a super cool guy! They also bought us lunch which was super delicious! It was a meat, kimchi, stew thing that I can't explain, but it was delicious! haha

So another awesome thing/miracle was that English class, both days, Thursday and Saturday, were super awesome/exciting/fun. We had only 4 people at Thursdays and 7 people at Saturdays but it was especially awesome. There was one new person on Thursday and 2 on Saturday (the one came to Thursday). But we had most of our usual people come and they all just loved talking so it was good! We always want them to talk and a lot of the class consisted of them talking! Also on Saturday a member and her daughter came so the Sisters did a beginners children’s class, I don’t know if it went well but maybe that will become a usual thing and more members will come.

Maybe 2 weeks ago we met this 20 year old guy and I was talking to him and he was telling me about the stuff he likes to do and he gave me his business card (with his phone number on it). Well this week I called him (he probably wondered how we had his number, unless he remembered giving the card) and we were able to meet him for lunch! He is awesome, he has gone to America to do a study/training program for someplace in Silicon Valley. He is super good at drawing and photography and animation and stuff, he started go after his dream since he was like 14 or 15. We don't know what will happen from here, but when we met we told him our purpose as missionaries and he didn’t freak out or anything and looked kind of interested, so maybe something will come from it, who knows.

Last of all we met a guy yesterday.....we were walking buy a construction site's parking lot and we heard an instrument. Elder Moon thought it was a saxophone, but I thought for sure it was a trumpet, and it was! This guy was just practicing after work apparently in this parking lot while it was snowing a little. We went over and talked to him and he let me play his trumpet! I was so terrible but he liked it! I also showed him the pictures of marching band in my picture book. It was awesome. He said he'd love to play trumpet with me sometime so I just have to track down a trumpet. I might be able to do something similar to what we do for English which is 30 minutes English/30 gospel, but instead 30 trumpet / 30 gospel. But we would need special permission, I doubt it will happen getting a trumpet and permission but it was a cool experience! I really miss playing the trumpet! 

That’s it for this week!

Love,

Elder Frampton

2-3-14

Hello family, 

Thanks dad for sending me how to make emails exciting. I will try my best since I things are still slow. 

I'll start with Friday which was one of the 2 big Korean holidays. We had a normal start schedule that day but for lunch we received a meal invitation along with the 2 other teams. The member made delicious food! So usually meals in Korea consist of 2 things. Little side dishes and then the main dish and fruit for dessert. So 3 things. Well when we got there we waited about 15 minutes before we got to start eating, there were so many little side dishes on the table that there was barely enough room for the bowl for the main dish. So the most exciting part of the meal was the fruit. We had apples and tangerines but they decided to make a contest out of peeling the apples....the contest was to see who could create the longest peel by cutting it....I lost. Everyone finished peeling the entire apple but me! I barely cut around the apple 3 times before I messed up. But it was okay because I told everyone before we started that I was using that time to 'prepare to make a mistake.' The brother that invited was like, wow you stink! But the sister covered my back and said 'oh no worries he was preparing to make a mistake so it's exactly what he meant to do!' 

So the rest of the day after we went home we spent the entire day cleaning our house....it was torture! I spent 3 hours in the kitchen cleaning....I felt like I was in a little jail cell. Then because the other elder that cleaned the bathroom doesn’t quite know how to deep clean, I went to the bathroom and cleaned that for 2 hours with a toothbrush....also torture. I think I inhaled some fumes from the cleaning supplies because there is no ventilation in that bathroom...but it's okay I took a break once I realized that it wasn't good! 

Wednesday I went on companion exchanges with the district leader. His Korean isn’t too great, mine isn't either, but we did talk to a lot of people! Unfortunately we weren't able to get their contact to call and make an appointment later and a lot of the time they didn't want to keep talking to us, but we were able to talk to many people!

We were walking buy this drunk couple on the way home at the end of the day and they spoke some English to us. They were really drunk. The lady first said that her daughter was a missionary....but then after thinking and saying in Korean she went from daughter to thinking it was her father then to realizing that it was her son that wasn't a missionary but a student learning English. Super fun and we told them about English program that we do...let's just say that it probably won't lead to anything. 

Today for P-day we are going to go find a really good taco place we heard about and then later we planning on trying to make broccoli cream soup and baked potatoes at home! President Gilbert made that on Christmas when we went to headquarters and we asked for the recipe yesterday so hopefully it will turn out delicious. 

That’s it for this week! Love, Elder Frampton

1-27-14

Dear All,

This past week went by really quick but at the same time it felt so long. I really don't have much to say this week.

I do want to share a scripture that I came across this week that has really brought me to ponder.

Romans 8:25 "But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it." Faith, hope, and patience are the key to life. With these things come the blessings whether now or later we patiently wait for them and they will come.

As things have been really rough lately, we have been spending a lot of time on the streets with little success. I have realized though that when you rely on the Lord's spirit, it is there. He will testify of the truth of what you are saying and our words will have power. Whether or not they accept is their choice. We are really focusing sharing about the happiness and blessings that come from the gospel and bearing pure testimony for that is the strongest tool we have. In time it will bring results and I wait patiently for it. Patience is truly a virtue, by it we truly become more as the Savior!

That's really all I have this week.

Love,

Elder Frampton

Notice how not many people are walking.  Looks like most are all driving. Hard to talk to anyone when no one is around.