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

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

9-2-13

Well you are probably wondering why I am writing this email so late today....well probably not because you always get it in the morning anyways...today and the next 2 days will be pretty hectic. 

So Elder Yun has his military reserve exercise thingy; he had it today and the next 2 days. Today I stayed with a member that just got back from his mission 2 months ago, I chilled in his house all day with him and his parents. I made a cover for my planner; it’s pretty cool, its Mickey and Minnie Mouse. I also drew a little, slept a little. That was about 6 hours of my day. Then me and the recently returned missionary (brother "Lee") went to a Korean market, this is like the traditional Korean thing. Not like the lotte mart or emart that they have here (like Wal-Mart things). This market is open every 5 days, and Elder Yun said I was lucky to go because it’s like never open on Pday! Well this market was awesome! It was huge!!!!! There were lots of different things being sold. Lots of fruit, vegetables, animals, clothes, trinkets, gardening stuff, etc.. I have some pictures if I have time I will attach. Otherwise it’ll have to wait till next week. I mainly took picture of the cute animals that they sold there....ha-ha. 

We have to go to Seogwipo tonight because I will be doing missionary work with the elders there for the next 2 days while Elder Yun goes to his military thing. It should be fun, different but fun. Apparently they’re doing service tomorrow in one of the members orange orchard.

So this past week went by really fast. We had like 5 dinners/lunch with members this past week which was awesome. The members are getting better at feeding us;) we just need them to do missionary work now...actually one young family (the brother born in Korea raised in America and now living in Korea with his Korean wife, he speaks like only English and very broken Korean) they gave us a referral and we were able to contact that referral and meet with him! We think he might be a new investigator! He seemed interested in what we have to teach. We also met with another guy that Elder Yun met last transfer before I came. He’s like 80 years old and is a North Korean that was put in a war prison during the Korean war or something and has been in South Korea ever since. Well when we met with him we brought book of Mormons in English and Japanese because he can speak English and Japanese (we didn’t give him a Korean one because he can read Japanese just fine....he said he didn’t want it..ha-ha) but he seemed very interested in it, and was pretty accepting to it being another testament of Jesus Christ! We will meet with him again later this week so hopefully the Spirit can really work on his heart.

I didn’t have time to grab my journal before coming here from the member’s house so I don’t remember much from the rest of my week. One thing happened yesterday that I do remember. We were eating dinner at the branch president’s house and.......he let me play his trumpet!!!!!!!! It's been 3 months since I have played, and that was terrible. I sounded so bad. ha-ha but he was really impressed. He let me take the trumpet with me so I could bring it to the church and leave it at the church so if I wanted I could play on Pdays. That’s exciting!

Korean is getting better little by little, I understand a tiny bit more every day. I'm trying to talk more and more every day and I actually like talking. It's still hard to talk to other people because I don’t have much conversation skills and vocabulary and because I don’t understand. But its soo fun! I can’t wait till I can speak and understand better! It’s amazing how far I’ve come in the past 3 months, and I know that if it weren’t for the Lord, I would still be pretty much nowhere. I owe it all to Him. Always turn to the Lord and he will provide.

Sorry it’s so short this week; don’t have too much fun without me ;) 

Love,

Elder Frampton