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

6-28-13

What an exciting week this was! So much to tell about so I hope I can remember everything.

Let’s see.....last Friday started the new mission presidents training on campus so they shut down the cafeteria and upped security around the main building where the mission presidents and general authorities would be. We ate meals in the gym from Friday night through Wednesday night. Since we ate in the gym that means we weren’t allowed to use the gym, so most people went to the field. I sometimes went to the field and sometimes went to the upper track in the gym to run because we could still use that. Saturday was a pretty much normal day.

Sunday was super crazy! Everything was different because of the broadcast that night. First we had a combined priesthood meeting in the gym, I fell asleep for 2 of the 3 talks. For sacrament meeting, there were two sessions of sacrament meeting. If we were in choir, which I was, we went to the 11:15 sacrament meeting. It was half the MTC! Both the bread and water took like 12 minutes each!!! There was probably like 32ish people passing the sacrament, surprisingly they got it to everyone the first try because no one raised their hands when the person conducting asked if everyone got it. After that we had a sack lunch outside. We then left for the Marriott center at 12:45 ish. Everyone was bunched around the gate so when they opened it they could get out. I went with another set of missionaries in my zone that sang tenors so I would have to someone to stick with since none of the people in my district sang tenor. we were pretty close to the front of the gate when they opened it.......but by the time we got to the Marriott, after waiting 30 minutes to get in....I was put to the sides because the middles were already filled up.........even though we were close to the front of the gate almost everyone ran/jogged over just so they could get a good seat....it was kind of rude and not missionary like of them to do. We started practicing around 1:45ish. Although dad you couldn’t find me, I was on the screen! It was about for 3 seconds on a somewhat zoomed out shot, but you can see me. It is at around 3:05 to 3:08, top right corner of the screen standing to the left of a tall elder. I’m in my glasses and light blue tie. I really liked the whole broadcast, overall I felt a very strong spirit the whole time. So you need to try to do more member missionary work!

Monday went by super quick, on Tuesday I woke up thinking it was Monday....Tuesday on the other hand was better.

In class now we are being taught a bunch of stuff that is very useful and I enjoy learning. Brother Sung, my teacher, says that we will be finishing up the whole "MTC curriculum" tomorrow, so we will be learning extra stuff that he thinks will be helpful. Teaching investigators is getting better because we can say non scripted stuff, and understand questions they ask and we can somewhat answer them.

Tuesday night devotional was awesome. First I will talk about choir......compared to the like 1400 people we had sing Sunday, only 500ish of those are devoted choir singers;) it was so little compared to Sundays. The speaker at the devotional was Janice Kapp Perry, she shared lots of awesome things and lots of awesome music. We sang a medley of primary missionary songs and she sang some stuff she wrote. It was so fun and awesome.

The past few days have been blazing hot, we would walk outside and it would just be like walking into an oven compared to the nice air conditioning we have in the buildings. Elder Pickard and another elder from our district went and did hosting for new missionaries so I went on an "exchange" with Elder Luke for a few hours. He is the district leader currently so I got to go pick up the mail with him. 

During the night session of class, our teacher’s Brother Sung and Brother Campbell team taught for an hour. It was the best thing ever because they are both such pro teachers, probably two of the best teachers out of all the districts in our zone. Brother Campbell has been off his mission for 6 months now. Brother Sung says his Korean is very very good.

Thursday was eventful because it was the first day we were back in the gym and the cafeteria.

That’s it for now

Love,

Elder Frampton

6-21-13

Hello from the MTC, home of the sick

I say home of the sick because we have preventative measures thing going on because there is a virus going around. (Our branch presidency said it was an intestinal virus but the MTC news stuff just says it’s a virus). No hand shaking or anything until further notice.  Hopefully I will not get it. This past week I just got over a really bad cough, so I’m finally feeling good again!

So over the next few days they are doing New Mission President training here at the MTC, so they pretty much closed off the main building, which includes the cafeteria, to all missionaries. For the next few days we will be eating sack lunches or something outside or in the gym. They haven’t explained it very well. Also they have all this electrical stuff in the one hall way so I think they are maybe closing it off to get ready for the broadcast. 

Well I’m excited for this Sunday regardless because I get to sing to all the apostles and first presidency during the broadcast. Much better than just being a normal missionary that is there;)

  

So for our lessons, we probably teach 2 times a week, 2 different investigators (our teachers act as the investigators). It is amazing how they act like totally different people and how believable they are. Well I’ve slowly been learning to listen to the spirit for things to say. Although we have a script that we follow, we know enough of the language to be able to just talk things that we want to say (only kind of, I can say that I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God, or if we pray with a sincere heart, we will receive answers) it’s a good thing the spirit helps us because without out it we sound like 3 year olds teaching the gospel. The hardest thing we have learned so far was the counting....they use both Chinese numbers and Korean numbers based on what the use of the numbers is, like Chinese is references like scriptures and minutes....while if you are counting or saying the hours as part of the time it is Korean.

Last Sunday’s devotional was very different but awesome. It was by Stephen B. Allen. He was the Tempe mission president at some point. He used to be a media person for the church, doing commercials and stuff so he taught in his devotional by using old church commercials and then would apply them to us.

The new missionaries going to Korea came Wednesday; there are 5 Sisters and 5 Elders all going to Seoul South Mission. Also in my hall there are 6 Elders out of a total of like 26 missionaries that are leaving Tuesday for...............PHILADELPHIA! Just thought I'd let you know.

  

Guess that’s it for this week. Until next week..

Love Elder Frampton

My District