11-23-14

Dear everyone, Super great week this week!

Wednesday while street proselyting the spirit led us up a certain hill that we hadn't gone before. It was somewhere I had wanted to try and go but I forgot that I did and the Spirit helped me to remember. We met this married couple exercising and they were super nice as we talked to them. We were going and the road forked and a trail started and they were like, will you keep going on the road and keep talking to us? (They did really say it but that was just what the situation was like). We continued with them and kept talking and were going on this little trail a little up a mountain. We rested with them and they shared an orange with us and we sat and talked. Religion came up and we had the opportunity to teach about the restoration with them and eternal families. They had many questions because they knew some things about different religions so they wondered differences and things like that. We had the opportunity to share our testimony and give them a Book of Mormon and invite them to read it. We were able to feel the spirit so I hope they did too. We walked down the hill mountain with them and invited them to learn more and also to English class (they spoke English pretty well because they had no kids so they could travel a lot). They were from Seoul, in Busan for vacation, and would go back in a month or less so they didn't want to meet really. That is okay because maybe someday in Seoul they will meet missionaries and accept the gospel and live happily ever after! I'm just glad that we followed the spirit when it guided us up a big hill!

So today is a big day too! Today is the day that I throw away my first pair of socks because they formed holes! Haha

Because Elder Peck is district leader, the zone leaders do companion exchanges with us so I went to their area with one of them. It is actually a four man area and the other team is Elder Pickard! My MTC companion so I got to spend a night talking to him. The exchange was good, we talked to a lot of people and gave out 2 Books of Mormon. The elder I was with somehow got everyone to like him with a time of like 10 seconds. It was amazing. Then again, the people in this area are super nice and willing to talk to people. On the subway ride back (it was about 1 hour subway ride) I talked to this college student the whole time. He lived in the area I went to and went to college in my area so we rode together the whole time. I was able to talk about prayer with him and share my testimony how prayer helps me in my life. I can ask questions and receive answers. He asked me if he could ask in prayer for God to help him get a girlfriend.

So Saturday was super good because I saw two of my favorite people from Geumjeong! I met Roger again after not talking to him or seeing him for over 6 months. We came down to my area and we got lunch and hot chocolate together. It was super nice to see him again. Also when we were walking on the street a car drove by with a lady waving to us and it was one of the geumjeong English class members that I really liked! She was waving because we were missionaries then she realized it was me and she said hi and waved more and she seemed surprised. It all happened within like 3 seconds. Ah it was really good to see them!

The most exciting news is that Brother Kim Kyeonghwan from my last area Kyeognsan got baptized!!!! Just as cool is that Elder Pickard and I went on temporary exchanges to go up to the area and see him be baptized. I had replaced Elder Pickard in that area when I went so we both had taught him and we got to go together. It was very tight schedule to meet and catch subways and trains and still go to our sacrament meeting before meeting. We trained up to Daegu from Busan and got to see the whole branch and Brother Kim! It felt like home, kind of sad that I only got one transfer there. I saw a bunch of people that I missed. Elder Brower (my companion when I was there) baptized him. President Barrow and his family were there, including their daughter that just finished her mission in England on like last Wednesday! Brother Kim gave his testimony and talked about how he came a long way and gave up smoking and how he knows the church is true. He talked about the 2 sister missionaries that knocked on his door like 5 months ago that seemed like angels when he opens the door. He is pretty crazy and funny, I got to translate for the Barrows so I was saying some pretty funny stuff to them. The Barrows gave us a ride back so we didn't have to pay for a train and could get there quick. Such a good day!

I know this church and the gospel is true!!!

I hope you have a good one this week!  

Love, Elder Frampton

9-30-13

Well my family, guess what!

I get to go to Busan tonight again!!! Tomorrow (Tuesday) there is a training meeting for all missionaries being trained and training. Unfortunately Elder Yun has been to 3 training meetings in the past and president doesn't feel like spending the money to fly him there and back so I will be going solo....that’s a whole 1.5 hours that I will be away from a companion! Scary! I'm super excited though because I get to see the rest of the missionaries that came out with me!

So I will tell you about the trip to Busan last week.....quite the adventure. It is about 1 hour total of travel time to Busan, counting take-off and landing, 35 minutes of flight time. We flew to Busan and the office Elders picked us up and we went to the mission office. We stayed the night there, and let me tell you, I didn’t sleep very well. In Busan it is a lot cooler than Jeju, so at night we had air conditioning and because we weren’t used to that when sleeping or anything, I frozzzzze at night! The next day we drove an hour to Ulsan which is where the meeting was being held. I got to see my zone (because it was zone conference)! At the beginning of the meeting Sister Gilbert made some announcements including one about a 24 hour bug going around......when she made this announcement I think I missed it. During the second session of conference (we had 2 sessions, 2 hours, 1 hour lunch, and then another 2 hours.) I started to feel sick in the stomach, headache, and bad chills. I talked to Sister Gilbert and she had said I caught the bug! This just goes to show that being isolated on an island can have some effects on you, or protects you;) I was pretty miserable on the flight back (which was 3 hours after the conference ended) and then also that night and the next morning. I was all better by the next night.

 

So pretty miraculous thing happened this week! Saturdays at 5 we have English class. We usually meet up with the sisters an hour before to prepare for it. This past Saturday we were busy setting up for English class when I heard a noise from the hallway. When I went out to look to see what it was, it was some random guy! He came to our church wondering who we were and what we were all about. We then taught him for about 40 minutes a little introduction to the church, gave him a Book of Mormon and some pamphlets and the he left. One thing we talked about was the Sabbath day, he asked us what we believe about it and Elder Yun was able to answer because we discussed it that morning! Let me tell you more about that, Elder Yun and I were discussing it a few days before and we stopped after we couldn’t find out more about why we have the Sabbath on Sunday. Well Saturday morning we were studying and I was looking up something in the bible dictionary and I randomly remembered about how we were talking about the Sabbath. I looked it up and found an answer. I'm sure it was the spirit that reminded me about it because the Lord knew that guy would come today and ask about it........................--------because the conversation was all in Korean and I still don’t understand a lot, Elder Yun told me about his background that he found out. The guy said he is from the mainland and is moving to Jeju sometime soon. He was in Jeju right now looking around for a place to move into (hopefully he moves to somewhere around Jeju city rather than Seogwipo so we can teach him if that time comes anytime soon;) ). But that day, Saturday, he was at a park that is on the opposite side of the street from our church and he was walking on the trail thing that is there. He said as he was walking he saw our church and was interested to find out about it because he never saw our church before. So he grabbed his things and walked over and wandered in, which was when I saw him in the hall. If anything results from this experience I will be sure to tell you how it goes!

Last thing, pday today! I owe it to the Brain for the idea. drumroll please-------------------------------------we went to the Ripley's Museum!!!!!!! It was super awesome, way better than the one we went to in Williamsburg or wherever that was. Apparently there are 32 in the world and it is number 32, aka the newest one. It was pretty big and they had a lot of cool things. I will send 3 pictures again of it. (I only ever send 3 because that’s all that fits in an email and I don’t know how to make them smaller file size)

That's all for this week!

Love,

Elder Frampton

 

9-23-13

Hello Familia!
 
Well this week was an interesting week.....on Wednesday **Thursday** and Friday, Korea celebrated "Choo Seok" (saying Korean things in English romanization just looks and sounds weird because I can’t convey the same words and pronunciations....). Well this holiday which takes place on Thursday is like the Korean Thanksgiving where they perform rituals for their ancestors and eat a lot. Pretty much everyone had off of work and school for the 3 days though. Because of this, not many people were really on the streets and we weren’t supposed to make appointments with people. Because of this reason, we did many things as a district. On Wednesday, we had district meeting and then went to lunch, and then we went back to the church for district "study time". We studied and shared what we learned. After that we had a dinner appointment at a member’s house (they invited the whole district even though the Seogwipo Elders aren’t in our branch.) More details on the ritual that is performed by people here (at least this is how I understand it.) The week before this they go and fix up the grave site. They then like prepare lots of fruits and food and leave it out for the spirits......they first leave it out and then they like say a prayer or take a moment of silence or just chill around so the spirits can eat the prepared food....after that whatever the spirits don’t eat, they feast upon.....most members don’t really do that, and if they do, they only do it to remember their ancestors, not because they believe spirits eat food...

Thursday we went to Seogwipo and went and saw some waterfalls as a district then we went to a dinner appointment/service appointment at a member’s hotel thing....this member rents the whole hotel for a year then runs it. I helped cut grass, it was an electric mower and I just held the cord and pulled the cord around so it wouldn’t get cut or ruined. I got the most mosquito bites there than since I got here. It got really big and there was like a red ring around it....maybe I will die or something, who knows. After that the member cooked us a barbecue meal outside! I smelled like smoke afterwards and on the bus ride home. It was delicious though, we had some meat and ramen, and I didn’t each much ramen because I don’t like it. It was super delicious.

Friday we went to another member’s house and they prepared a whole bunch of food! More meat and vegetables and some cold noodles. The meats at meals usually are in spicyish sauce with vegies and such. There were potatoes, and when eaten in the sauce, they are delicious!!! I ate many of them.

Missionary work is somewhat slow. We have no one to teach, and not many people on the streets want to listen, and even less want to learn more. Elder Yun and I are going to try making more effort to talk to more people, thus giving more people the opportunity to listen, and for us to open our mouths. Opening my mouth is always an act of faith for me since I don't know the language very well. I always have to trust the Lord to help me out, and I learn more about that every day when I am able to have simple conversations with people

 

So in our branch there is a 20 year old guy that is amazing at piano. He has an audition to get into the university in Seoul this Friday and he has been preparing for it for like all his life. He literally comes to the church every day and practices all day. He used to come at like 10 in the morning and stay till like 3 in the morning the next day but he can’t do that anymore because the churches neighbors complained. Now he comes at like 8 I think and probably stays till like 12 at night. for the past 8 weeks I’ve been here I’ve just heard him play his one song so much, whenever we email I hear, whenever we have English class, etc. the point of all this is that the song is always stuck in my head! I literally feel like I hear it everywhere I go, even though he’s not playing. It’s so weird.

No today I am writing my email later than usual, at 5:00 rather than at like 12....that is because we went to the teddy bear museum!!! We found free tickets awhile back and decided to go today! It was super super cool, they had so many cool displays. Even though it is a teddy bear museum there were a lot of other kinds of stuffed animals as well. Super cool. They had a safari exhibit, fish exhibit, painting exhibit (they took famous paintings and kind of made them into ones with bears in it rather than the normal person.)

2 more things.

Today I got my first haircut in Korea! They did a good job. It took like 25 minutes though, but they washed my hair too! Pretty good deal for 10,000 won ('10 dollars') I thought I would have a weird haircut like Korean people get, but they did just fine and how I wanted it.

Last thing, Wednesday we have zone conference in Busan and we get to go to it! We fly out on Tuesday night, spend the night at the mission home, then go to it on Wednesday and fly back Wednesday night. I'm so excited! Leaving this island should be fun.

Hope your week will be good!

Love,

Elder Frampton

9-9-13 (1st transfer date)

Okie dokie. So nothing to exciting this week, just my last week of my first transfer! done! Today starts the new transfer! Luckily I'm staying here in Jeju! Haha only two people from my district got transferred. One sister that had been here for her first 3 transfers and then 1 Elder in Seogwipo that was here for 6 months. The new missionaries fly in in a few hours so we get to go and meet them at the airport. Oh also Elder Yun is the new district leader this transfer since the missionary that left was the district leader.
 

So like I said last week Elder Yun had his military thing so I went to Seogwipo. On Tuesday we spent like 3 hours doing service for one of their investigators. We were pulling the vine weeds off of mandarin orange trees in one of his orchards. To make it even more fun it was raining a little! ahaha. It was actually pretty fun.

 

I went back to Jeju city, my area, on Wednesday night. It was nice to finally be back at "home" sleeping on my own yo! Um Thursday was our last district meeting: (it was sad since we knew people would be leaving (at this point we didn’t know who was leaving yet because calls came that night). We went to this one place afterwards for lunch and it was like all you can eat meat, but I got really full really quick so I didn’t even eat that much. Later that night we cleaned our apartment for 2 hours which was actually fun. I like cleaning!

 

So Thursday, Friday, and Saturday it rained a lot! The most since I had come here! It just rained and rained and rained.

 

So lessons are getting better. We have a few more people that we are going to meet for the first time and teach. It is a miracle and such a blessing that we are finding people. We aren’t really even finding. Most of them were put in our path and all we had to do was talk to them! We hope that they will show up to appointments that we make with them and that the spirit will touch their heart. I know through fasting, prayer, and faith all things are possible, and I have come to learn that so much more while here serving. I am trying my best to serve the Lord the best I can.

That’s it for this week.

 

Love,

Elder Frampton