1-20-14

Hello! 

Pretty much time is moving so fast! Another week gone by and this month more than halfway over already! Holy cow

So this week was pretty good. Pretty normal week. We are trying to find new people to teach because we are really lacking in those and I need more experiences to teach because my skills are really lacking there. It's pretty stressful actually, not being able to find people as well as not being able to speak. We are focusing on sharing the book of Mormon this week with as many people possible as well as trying to find a family and be able to do the family English program with them.

We dropped that guy I talked about last week, the one that owns the fruit truck. He is pretty much a member of New World church (Korean 'Shinchunji') This church focuses on the book of revelations in the bible....they also have the option to take a 6 month bible course that he is considering doing. He is too obsessed sort of with that and just fighting us with the bible and not really caring about what we have to say. We told him to read the Book of Mormon and call us in a week. It's sad because he is a good nice person that is just really confused and blinded.

This week we were able to meet with a less active member that we have been visiting over the past few months. We were able to teach some English to member's children and it seems she is starting to trust us. 

So while trying to talk to people on the street last night we met this guy that wanted to share a message about Jesus with us... a little random. He was a very calm and quiet man and we told him that we know about Jesus too and that we share a special message about Jesus. So maybe that'll go somewhere. I consider it just a little miracle this week.

I was able to get oatmeal from Costco through one of our devoted English class members! It means I will be happy when I eat breakfast for the next 52 days (assuming I can control myself and eat just one a day).

Saturday was awesome too. All week we were planning to try and make an appointment with this one member and then suddenly the member called us an invited us for lunch with the sisters! It was truly a miracle, when the member called she said 'so you are coming over for lunch today right?' and we told her that they never invited us, and then they told us to come over at 1. Good lunch!

We have a Korean holiday on the 31^st and will not be going out.  We get to clean our apartment pretty much for 6 hours on that day....super deep clean. We have a washing machine in our apartment; everything is air dry though.

That’s it for this week!

Love,

Elder Frampton

1-6-14

Hello family and all!

So my leg just seriously got the worst cramp ever while typing this email...ouch! I got the scriptures and the cards from you and Margo and Grandma Healy but none others yet.

So this week was nothing really special. Especially slow for us. Wednesday morning we didn’t hike a mountain but we went on a really high parking lot at a college and watched the first sunrise of the New Year with our ward and then did a ward prayer thing after and went to the church and ate some delicious soup! Haha it was really awesome to be able to do that with our ward. Apparently it’s like a tradition in Korea! Super good tradition. The sun seemed especially bright and warming that day too!

On Thursday we went on a scavenger hunt for a key to the baptismal font...another 8 year old was getting baptized and we needed to clean the font and turn on the water and then we find out there was no key around.....we had to contact the bishop and then track him down to get the key. He said he was at his teaching academy and then when we got there he said he went to teach his one class at Busan national university and then his phone died or didn’t work very well so we waited like 15 minutes for him to come when he eventually got our text ..So after 2 subway rides, a taxi ride and finding our way through a college campus we got the key and eventually cleaned the font and turned on the water.

Transfer calls are this week, either me or Elder Moon could go, probably not both and we doubt both we will stay. But we will see what happens on the Thursday! It should be a busy week though, we have lots of member visits scheduled and hopefully are able to meet some new people to teach. We will see how it goes. I’m really trying hard to not have fear and replace it with faith. It’s hard to make initial conversation though.

That’s it for this week! Sorry it’s short.

Love,

Elder Frampton

12-30-13

Hello everyone!

I hope you had a good Christmas! Also I hope the wedding went well too! Christmas didn't really feel like Christmas here. It was weird! I got grandma's letter that day when we went to the headquarters. No more packages yet or letters so I think that/hope that I get them this week at district meeting.

So this week Brother K. received the Holy Ghost at church! Awesome right! Also we got to meet his father at their house after church ended. I don't think they are really anything alike. But he was super nice to us and seemed happy that his son is happy. We also met the grandmother and aunt too.

So on Christmas we just met at headquarters, Oncheon ward building, and other people from the zones in Busan came and hung out. We played board games and Ping-Pong. Super relaxed day and fun.

On Thursday we went with an investigator to climb Geumjeong Mountain! It was super tiring because he moved so fast. I was the slowest one! We went with him and the other team in Geumjeong. The top was super awesome we could see the city down below. There will be pictures on my card when I send it home this week...we also went again today just us, the other team, and another set of elders from our district! It was much sunnier and more clear today so we could see the city better, it was a nice hike since we didn’t go at a billion miles an hour up the mountain haha. Super fun!

That's all I have for this week really..

Love,

Elder Frampton

12-23-13

Dear Familia,

I just wanted to write something quick this week since I will be talking to you soon! 

So this week on Wednesday we had the mission Christmas meeting at our ward in Geumjeong! It was super awesome! There were a lot of missionaries there! So every year the Gilberts pick a movie to watch that can be related to the gospel somehow and this year we got to watch the chronicles of Narnia - the lion the witch and the wardrobe! It was fun and weird to watch a movie! I've seen that movie so many times before but I never really realized how cheesy the jokes and how not very good the acting is in that movie...haha 

This Saturday was the ward Christmas party and that was pretty fun too! We were practicing for our skit that we would perform and an unfortunate event happened. One of the sister missionaries tripped on the electric piano chord and broke it. The power chord wouldn’t plug in meaning we couldn’t turn it on. We were all really scared we would get in trouble so we spent a bunch of time trying to find a place that could fix it.....long story short is that nothing was open on Saturday we realized miraculously that the piano took batteries and the night was saved.....bad news is that we still have to spend the time to get it fixed for real and probably have to pay too. But that shouldn’t be too expensive since we will split the cost 6 ways. The skit turned out awesome at night! I was the 'main actor' and I got lots of good jobs lol. It was just a narrated story so I didn’t do any talking;)

Love Elder Frampton

12-2-13

Hello all!

So great to hear about your Thanksgiving and week! So I have so much to tell about Thanksgiving but first I just wanted to say that my companion and I are both staying in our area. The other person in our house, Elder Baldwin, who was being trained, is leaving. We actually got his MTC companion Elder Wunderli to replace him. I don't know how he will be yet but I will find out this week!

So Thanksgiving was super fun! So I am in the district that the mission home is in so on Tuesday we found out that Sister Gilbert invited our district to her house on Thanksgiving! We went after district meeting on Thursday and she had a bunch of food prepared. Turkey, stuffing, rolls, jello, carrots, green beans, mash potatoes, gravy. AHHH it was so delicious!!! It tasted like home. She kept telling us to eat and eat because she didn’t want leftovers....so I did. I was literally so full after that. Then we find out that there’s dessert (we forgot because usually in Korea they have fruit for dessert and not pies!) She had bought apple and pumpkin pies from Costco and made homemade whipped cream! Also the one senior couple that was there brought a homemade apple pie........it was soooooo good! I ate a piece of that and a small piece of pumpkin pie. I was so full that it hurt.

Here’s the worst part, we also had a dinner appointment that day 2 hours later with a member that we set up the week before. When we went there I got even more full to the point that it my pants hurt my stomach because they were so tight. It looked like I had swallowed a ball.... Then even worse we went to help a member with home teaching that night and the people we visited gave us lots of fruit to eat. Let's just say I haven’t eaten very much since then.

Korean is hard.

So lately we have been going to this big park place called spo1 to proselyte. It is about a 30 minute walk there and on Saturdays and Sundays there are lots of families around which makes good potential conversations and chance to share the gospel. We actually found out this week that there are lots of people there on those days so we will be making it a normal plan to go there.

Our one young investigator wants to be baptized so we are just waiting to meet with his father to talk about it. That should happen within the next 2 weeks or so and we are praying it will turn out well. We are also worried  because he is attending another church still and he really likes that one because he has his friends there and he’s been going there for 5 years. We aren’t really sure what to do so we have been praying about that as well.

Nothing really more happened this week so that’s it.

Love, Elder Frampton

11-25-13

Hello from the land of Korea!

Last week of the transfer this week, transfer calls come on Thursday but I doubt I will leave. Time is seriously flying, this Friday is my 6 month mark! It's hard to believe I've been a missionary for 6 months, it feels like yesterday I entered the MTC.

So this week was pretty normal but fun. Last Monday we were out looking for people to talk to and we went down into the subway station and decided to talk to two police officers! Weird right? It was pretty awesome though, the one I talked to knew pretty good English so he talked to me in English and I talked to him in Korean. Korean police stuff is interesting the guy I talked to said his name was Woong probably like 26 or 25. He’s a 'freshman' police guy first year. he only uses a cell phone once a week on his day off (I don’t know if it’s a freshman police rule or he’s just really focused) but he emails every day so he gave me his email address so I can email him in English and keep in touch. I emailed him today in hope that we can meet and do the 30/30 program (30 minutes English 30 gospel). He is super nice! I will let you know if anything comes from that.

Tuesday we had an appointment that we made with a sister in the ward. Her husband wasn’t going to be home when we visited to we were going to do a quick door visit...but on the way there we got a call saying the husband would be home so we could go in. We get there and she had a whole meal prepared.....we ate before we visited and then had to eat again!!! My stomach was about to explode after that. Especially when she just kept cutting more and more fruit after the main meal. They were super nice though and patient with my lack of Korean skills. Unlike other members they liked to ask me questions to get me to talk.

Also we had interviews with President Gilbert Tuesday morning. I love interviews because when we aren't in the interview Sister Gilbert leads a discussion in another room. It’s fun and I learned a lot! I never really have anything to talk to president about so he just ends up talking to me about his experiences and recent life stories.

Wednesday we met with this new really old guy (80 years old) and he wants to learn English so he can get a job, we are going to do the 30/30 program with him. He is willing to do it but not really any interest in the gospel, but that’s okay, that’s what the spirit is for! We will try to meet him this week again.

So also Brother Baktejun, the one 26 year old from maybe 4 weeks ago that came to church and English class....we met with him again for the first time since 4 weeks ago and we did the 30/30 program with him and taught the restoration and about the book of Mormon. Before we even started talking about the gospel 30 minutes he had a question about the Book of Mormon and what it was! Elder Moon and I were both really nervous. He did a lot of rambling and I stumbled through Korean but the great part was that the spirit was still present! I love the spirit! He says he wants to keep meeting so that is really good! He wants to learn English because he wants to go to 'grad school' just more school, so he can go to America and be a chef/restaurant manager type person. Super awesome guy! I can't wait to see where things go with him.

Last thing I wanted to talk about is about Saturday. I had exchanges with Elder Quist, the other Elder in our apartment who is the district leader. He just came over to my side of the apartment for exchanges. Odd exchange but I learned a lot from him when we went out. He really taught me to follow the spirit when out looking for people. We planned to go to this one bus station to look for people but he had a prompting to go down the other road instead. We talked to this one old guy who we thought was the reason we were prompted down that road, but then we also talked to another guy for 15 minutes about English class and what we do as missionaries. This guy was actually working on the other side of a fence doing gardening. Super interesting because we talked through the fence and were 15 feet away from him! But we were able to get his number so we can invite him to English class! The spirit is awesome! Also later that day we were around Busan Nat’l university and I saw a guy that needed help pushing a cart, we tried to help but he said he was fine but we helped him anyways and then Elder Quist shared a book of Mormon with him and it turns out that the guy likes to study the bible! Cool stuff right??!

Well my hand hurts now so I’m gonna stop there. Have a good week and Thanksgiving! Eat lots of food for me!

Love,

Elder Frampton