4-6-15

Hello, Happy Easters! 

I actually forgot until half way until church when I just read a little note on the bulletin board...It was not mentioned at all during church.

This week was good. I'll start with Sunday. Back story. When we were ending companion exchanges on Friday we walked into the bus terminal and a guy said hello to meet. We talked and talked about church and stuff and I invited him to church. We exchanged numbers and he said he would be there. After confirming on Saturday night if he could come, he showed up Sunday to church. We have sacrament meeting last so we had priesthood and talked a lot about Joseph Smith and even read from Joseph Smith history during the lesson. It was super good, he even took notes. We had gospel doctrines and the lesson was about God. Then sacrament meeting, he fell asleep halfway through but he made it that far which is impressive. Lastly after church there was a baptism. A different branch in another area came to our building for the baptism since they don't have a font. The guy attended that too! It was just a great day since he really likes church and the people and missionaries too. He likes English. Anyhow during church he mentioned a few times about when we met. He said that he was always praying, especially recently, for God to send someone to him. That day when he saw us missionaries, especially because we were foreigners, he couldn't pass up the opportunity. He said that when I turned towards him that my eyes had a bright light radiating from them. It was a big testimony builder to me to know that I could reflect that light of Jesus Christ.

Today we hiked Geumo Mountain. It was very hard and tiring actually. It was easy most of the way until the last part. Last 3rd actually. 2 Km of just awfulness. It was rainy today too and when we got to the top we couldn't see anything but the sight was cool. Just mist everywhere and being up in the clouds was awesome. Took 3 hours up, 1 down.

On Saturday we went fishing and played a game called Jokgu which is just volleyball with your feet. Fishing, no one really caught anything. Oh we went with the men from the ward, not just by ourselves;) Anyhow, one guy caught 8 fish and that was it, no one caught anything else. It was perfect weather, started to rain as we left. I got sunburn. I think we really improved our relationship with the ward this week.

Wednesday we cleaned the carpets in the church and did some garden work around the church.

Some of Wednesday, Thursday, and some of Friday I did companion exchanges with a Korean. I had to speak Korean the whole time. I got a bad headache by the end. I think that is why I never had any other Korean companions after the first 5 transfers. Anyhow, we had 2 opportunities to give priesthood blessings! It was such a blessing to us and especially to my companion. He is in his first transfer so newly ordained to the priesthood as well so he got his first experience giving a blessing this week.

Went and met a less active that owns an English academy. He was very nice and wants to start meeting with us regularly and coming back to church! It seems that he just needs lots of love from us and the ward. Been less active for 20 years but still believes the church to be true! What a miracle. He was supposed to come to church but an urgent thing came up so next week he said he will come!

I am so grateful for all the miracles I have seen this week and all the miracles I will see next week! I love this work and this gospel!

Have a good week!

Love, Elder Frampton

1-4-15

Hello everybody! 

So last week on P-day we went ice skating, I totally forgot to mention it in my email last week. We went as a zone and we went to the world's biggest department store. The store had a small ice rink in it. It was pretty fun. There were so many tiny kids there....weren't allowed to go fast or backwards or anything but it was still very fun! 

On Monday night we decided to knock doors for 3 hours...we ended up in this little area, super dark, felt like we had gone back in time like 40 years. That's the kind of doors we were knocking on..No luck. We went back down this little tiny road above a house and my companion turned a corner and then a dog started barking and we turned and booked it back.  That is the closest to a good dog story that I have so far.

The last door of the night was a house. Houses in Korea are usually surrounded by a big fence and you have to ring in and they open the gate door. We ringed and they let us in....big surprise, we were caught off guard. We knocked on the door and the lady that answered was confused, she probably thought we were there kid coming home from school or something...so she said she was busy and sent us on our way. We were smart and left a plan of salvation pamphlet and testified about eternal families and then left. Not bad. 

Tuesday we were waiting to go to our service project and were walking around for a while and met this 20 year old girl on the street that was fluent in English. She lived in South Africa for most of her life and could speak English, Korean, Afrikaans, and a little German too. The rest she was fluent in. She could do a bunch of English accents too, American, British, New Zealand, Australian. It was really surprising. Super weird experience though because her sister that was there was recording us the whole time on the phone. Just talked about church and school and stuff. Pretty much she remembered that she heard our church was a cult and we left.

Later that day we went to visit a less active member that we never had met. He was baptized like 1.5 years ago and I had only seen a picture of him before. Pretty much we found the house, which was a store, and saw the active wife. There was this old guy leaving when we were going into the store, little did we know that it was him...he looked different compared to the picture I saw. 

Wednesday we met the investigator that is going into the military this week. It was good. Talked about the Book of Mormon and prayer. Felt the spirit the whole time while teaching so even though our Korean isn't the best I know that the spirit makes up for the rest. 

Thursday morning was hard. Got up at 4:30 to go watch the sunrise...little did we know it didn't rise until 7:30....our branch was meeting at 6 for some reason. It was suppppper cold. First day I have worn my winter coat since 2013 December. It was great, we got our other investigator to come with us and we had a good time with him being really cold ;) Ate some delicious soup. Oh we went to this beach near our area and there were lots of people that went there actually. Sunrise was so beautiful! Prayed together as a branch and sang a hymn then watched the sunrise and left. Wasn't too tired the rest of the day. 

Sunday was a good Sunday. Got one of the young men, well no longer a young man because of the New Year, to come with us to give the sacrament to the sister in the hospital that we visit every week. He also received the calling of young men's president yesterday as well since we didn't have one. Good experience. 

Things have been going a lot better here I would say. Time actually moving kind of slow! Weird since usually it moves so fast! 

That's it for this week! Don't forget to pray! 

Love, Elder Frampton  

9-15-14

Hello!

So this past week was a pretty good week.

Last Tuesday, we took our investigator Brother Kim to family home evening in a members.  It was good. We just played a Korean traditional game and ate some delicious food. So brother Kim, because of the holiday was unable to keep to the schedule that we had made for him to quit smoking. We will work with him more closely to help him! So this week we taught about priesthood. When we taught that it was by the priesthood all the apostles in the scriptures performed miracles and that we had the priesthood too, he asked us to perform a miracle right there and then. To explain how it works we showed a Mormon message about a football kid getting struck by lightning and a new priesthood holder giving a blessing and that he turned out alright. Anyways media is such a good way to teach...luckily we had a computer in the church we could show it on. He also came to stake conference on Sunday and liked it. After there was a baptismal service that we took him too! It was a really good experience that we got really lucky with.

On Wednesday we got together with our missionary district and did a proselyting activity and a riverside park. Some people could play the ukulele and guitar so they played primary songs together and we talked to people. I talked to a lot of people, especially to old guys. I love talking to old guys. A lot easier than younger people...

On Friday Elder Aoyagi of the area presidency came to our Zone as part of mission tour. His wife gave her talk all in English, mainly just reading from her paper that maybe someone else translated to English for her. I don't know but it was fun, she said the purpose of her speaking was to keep us awake. She even had us do a little dance to put your shoulder to the wheel. So odd but so fun! For lunch they had some sandwiches that were egg sandwiches and jelly put together...sounds weird but super delicious!

Saturday's session of stake conference I tried translating to English for Elder Fairhurst, the elder of the couple that works with the military branch, the one that took us to go bowling. Anyways I didn't do a very good job. First of all it is super hard to understand Korean over loudspeaker because everything slurs together, two because they speak really fast/read really fast, three Korea is hard. But it was fun, he was only there to see how the translator (that would translate his talk the next day) how well he would do. That night the translator was translating President Barrows talk. 

Today we are going to "E-world" an amusement park place, it should be fun!

That is it! Have a good 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

2-3-14

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