1-26-15

Hello familia,

I am good, how are you?

So today was transfer day but it is the same here. I am still in the same area with Elder Suttner :D 

This last week flew by. Maybe only a few exciting things happened this week. 

The bulk of this week was going through records calling phone numbers. I probably called close to 200 phone numbers. Maybe 30 or 35 of those picked up. 30 being the wrong number and 5 the right number. The other 165ish were all no longer existing phone numbers or they didn't pick up. Takes a long time to call people because you have to wait a while for it to ring before giving up because people often don't answer the phone until 25 seconds of ringing and it can probably ring for a good minute or so before saying no one picks up. Don't want to be ending the call so quick just in case someone might pick up. 1 of the inactive members said he would be willing to meet this week so he told us to call this week. We'll see what happens. Another old English class member ended up coming to English class because we called. So at least there are some little fruits coming from these calls.

This week we also went and met a guy from 2 weeks ago that we met. He was an older man that owned a dry cleaners and likes English. We took our white shirts to get dry cleaned there. We were trying to find the place so we called and he told us where it was and we eventually found it. Super small cramped little place. Super nice guy, we talked with him for a little and then left. That was Wednesday. We then went again Friday to pick up our stuff and talk to him. As we were talking he said he wants to learn English again :D well practice more at least (he knows a lot and understands a lot) so we took that opportunity to jump in by explaining our English program. 30 minutes English, 30 minutes gospel. He said it sounds great but the only problem is he is really busy.(as we were talking like 4 people came to his shop in the 10 minutes we were there) We said that we can come and talk and he can just take care of things as they come. He told us to stop by anytime so this week we will surely stop by! :D

This Sunday we went with Branch president's son to take the sacrament to the two old ladies in their respective hospitals. It was our first week taking it to the one lady and having to get there by ourselves by bus. We almost got lost because I found the wrong thing on the map but luckily it was actually just a street over from where I had thought. 

This past week we were trying to work on listening to the spirit more and there were a few times that we felt to do something and nothing really came from it. I just think that we were being tested. Whether or not we would listen. I don't really know but we hope to be able to more readily heed the promptings of the spirit when most needed. :)

I hope you all have a wonderful week and may the Lord bless you with more happiness in your life! 

Love,

Elder Frampton

1-19-15

Hello,

So the beginning of the week was kind of busy then we slowed down later on in the week.  So on Wednesday we were pretty busy. Had interviews with President Barrow in the morning and then later in the day we had 2 appointments with member that we had set up. The first one was with a single guy and we just met him at the church. When we called to confirm that morning we realized that the number we had for him was no longer an existing number so we didn't have any way to confirm, but luckily he stilled showed up. We just talked, found out more about him, his conversion story. We then just talked about the Book of Mormon with him. 

The other appointment was a couple for dinner. We went to their house which turned out to be super nice. They don't have any children so they had a pretty nice place. Super delicious dinner, some meat and some fried shrimp/sweet potato/squid, and kimchi and of course rice. The meat was super good! They also put some figs in with the meat sauce. Figs are super delicious, they had bought them from Iran I think. We shared a message about testimony and ways to build and share. We think it went pretty well. They also had chickens that they raised. We didn't see them but they said they were on the roof of their apartment building. They gave us each one of the eggs from the chickens and we ate them (they were hard boiled). Pretty delicious.

Later that night when we had finished planning and were getting ready for bed the lights and all electronics suddenly went off in our apartment. The whole buildings electricity had gone out. Luckily we found this little flash light in our house that worked so at least we could see. That was probably around 9:35. They eventually got whatever was broken fixed and got the power back on around 10:10.

This Sunday we started to take the sacrament to an old lady in a different hospital than the other lady that we take the sacrament to. Our Sundays are pretty full. Church, lunch at church, then 2 people to take the sacrament to. Then missionary correlation meeting and another different planning meeting, then visits with the branch president and then dinner then done. It passes by quick.

So this past week we spent a lot of time at home cleaning up old records. Organizing and calling all the old numbers of investigators. The phone numbers changed a few years back, but there was some way to call that number if I had a conversion formula. For example the old number was 019-345-5678 and the new number is 010-2334-5678.   So after thinking about how I could figure out the formula I figured that the phone stores would probably have a list for the conversions. So I went to the phone store, asked, and got the list. So now we will be able to contact past investigators that I thought we might not be able to contact because the old number "did not exist". Also going through the list of members that we have and calling all the record's phone numbers and trying to visit the houses. While doing these things we hope to be able to find old or even maybe new people to teach.

Another funny story. On the January 1st I was on exchanges in a different area but on that day we get a text to our phone from a guy saying he wanted to eat dinner with us. We didn't have the number in our phone so we had no idea who it was. So we couldn’t (my companion and other missionary) meet him because they were busy so they said maybe another time. So we texted that person this past week again (thinking that it might be some new investigator), we asked them to meet. They sent another text saying "did you mean to send this to me?" and we said 'yea'. Then right after we sent that that person calls us, after talking a little on the phone we find out that he was the Bishop of another area! He had texted us the other week because he thought we were the missionaries in his area so he was super confused why we were asking to meet. Super funny and kind of disappointing because we thought he was a new investigator!

Friday we went looking for a less active member in one part of town. While looking through records we found an old record of his with a map to his house so we took the map and nothing else to go find the house. We found the area and tried to follow the map. The map wasn't drawn very precisely (13 year old map), so we couldn't find where the house was. After looking around for about an hour or so we finally found it. (It was next to a restaurant that sold dog soup)(lots of dogs in the 'yard') well we realized that he probably doesn't live there anymore because someone else seemed to live there based on what was written on the door. So we left. Actually 30 minutes into looking for the house we asked our branch president through text if he knew if the guy had moved or something. About an hour after we left he texted us back telling us that the guy had passed away. We had no idea that he had passed away because it did not say anything in our records at all! Interesting experience.

Yea, I love missionary work! It is the best!

Well sorry it was kind ended with a kind of sad story...but I hope you have a good week!

Love,

Elder Frampton

1-12-15

Hello,

So this was a good week, went by very fast!

I'll start with church yesterday. We had 11 visitors, 3 different families. The good part about yesterday church was that 5 less actives were there! It was great! One young man was ordained a teacher last week and we are trying to get him to help with sacrament stuff. It'll take a while to get him to though because he is kind of really shy so we are encouraging him little by little. At night we went to a member's house for dinner. We were able to find out a lot about them. The lady is from China but is Korean. Back in the day a little part above North Korea (currently china) was part of Korea but when Korea got split that part became China. Anyhow she is from there and can speak Chinese too. The husband is Korean but got baptized in Tokyo, Japan. Really nice family.

So this week we spent a lot of time looking for less active members. We were able to meet a few and give them some banana bread we made. We did lots of walking. Especially we went to the south part of our area and there are lots of hills in that part. Elder Suttner's leg got hurt somehow. Just strained something he thinks. It's been hurting to walk for him. We went there on Wednesday so it has been hurting for a while. 2 of the kids we visited that day came with their Mom on Sunday so that was great! 

In English class we had 4 different people than usual there. 1 lady was someone that stopped Elder Suttner and I on the street wondering if we taught English. Super good that she actually came! Seems like she will continue to come! The other 3 people were people that used to attend back in the day. 2 of them texted us and asked if we still had English class. The other person was someone that we just called in our phone and told them about English class and they came again.

Yesterday in church we were able to get appointments to either visit members or just to meet at the church. It was super good! We will be a little busy this week then!

We also decided to make some English class flyers with tear-off numbers and we are putting them on the free announcement boards throughout the city as we pass by. We've passed by a few for a second time and nobody has taken any yet but maybe soon! I think something will come from it!

Last Monday we gave some banana bread to our one neighbor. They are a young family so we wanted to do something for them. Start softening their heart so they will accept our message someday;)

Have a wonderful 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  

12-29-14

Hello,

Merry Christmas!

Happy New Year!

So on Tuesday we had our mission Christmas party. It was in Geumjeong, the area I had spent 6 months in, so it was weird going back. Good party, had a spiritual meeting first and some musical performances. One of the Barrows visiting sons played the harmonica...weird because that is the second time I had heard someone play harmonica as part of a meeting in that ward building...over 9 months ago an old guy played the harmonic in a testimony meeting while I was serving there. After the meeting we had some delicious American like chicken and salads and stuff that Sister Barrow and a bunch of others helped prepare. Then we watched clips from Remember the Titans (movie) because President Barrow was relating it to stuff. Then we ate some delicious cookies and snacks that Sister Barrow made while we watched Ephraim's rescue. Great day! 

When we left, we left with our zone to go Christmas caroling back at a busy shopping place. We gave out a lot of our He is the Gift cards that we have been using. My voice was very tired by the end of the night!

Wednesday morning, we went and did some service with the sisters. We went to Kindergarten/day care centers, wearing Santa hats/dressing up as Santa and then giving gifts to the kids. There were lots of little kids that cried. We went to two different places in 2 different cities. It was cool because later that night we saw a kid and said hello and merry Christmas to him and he was like "hey aren't you Santa??' pretty cool that he recognized us and our voices.

Wednesday night we had our branch Christmas party. It was super good, lots of food and little performances. The missionaries just did a little dumb singing act thing. I played my little tin whistle thingy. haha. Really good because lots of less actives showed up!

Thursday, Christmas. Just another normal day, sort of. 7:30am calling you family! It was not working out very well...then the phone call ended suddenly right at when I ran out of time to talk, didn't even get to say goodbye! Love you! Then we went to the Branch President's house where the others were skyping and we just played a card game with the kids. It was a miracle because usually the bus to branch president's house comes once every 35ish minutes and in order to make it on time we had to catch the bus quick! and it did come quick! It was awesome!!! So we had lunch at the Branch president's house and then left. We went caroling again with our zone in the same place as before. Place called Nampo. Then later that night we met an investigator that Elder Suttner had taught in his first area and is on school break so he came home to our area.

Saturday we were finally able to meet a former investigator that we had been trying to meet. He is willing to keep meeting but he goes to military service starting January 11. Ate with him then went to the church and played Ping-Pong and shared a lesson.

So one thing we started praying for this week was that somewhat would contact us because of the Christmas card thingies that we had been giving out. Our prayers were answered with 3 people texting. Nothing really more came from it, but it was a prayer answered because we hadn't got any texts until then...and we had given out lots of cards before then.

That was my week! Hope you all had a great Christmas and have a great new years!!!!

Love,

Elder Frampton

12-22-14

So seeing as I am calling this week I'll just keep this short.

Mainly the only thing I wanted to tell you all about was the baptism we had on Saturday in our Branch! So it was the sister's investigator, the mother of a branch member. The Sister is 90 or 91 years old, born in 1924. I had the privilege of baptizing her! Very scary because she is so old. Cold weather was a worry so we had to have the water very warm. Great experience, just a cute old lady. President Barrow and Sister Barrow and their 2 children came to the baptism too. Spirit was very strong throughout the meeting!

That is really it...Have a merry Christmas !

Love,

Elder Frampton

12-15-14

Hello!

So transfers were this week! That is the biggest change. I'm of course staying in my area and my new companion is Elder Suttner. He is in his 3rd transfer just finished being trained. Only been here for 3 months.

It seems like we will get along great. He is very diligent and wanting to do lots of work. On the subway ride back to our area we talked like 3 different people about the church. Even pretty much taught the message of the restoration to one person. It was pretty awesome. He is pretty good at Korean and he isn't afraid to talk to people so it went great. I expect big miracles this transfer!

Wednesday I was on exchanges and we spent 4.5 hours with the "Daeshin Grandmother." just a really old lady in the area I went to that is pretty famous and also crazy. Anyhow, the elders in that area usually take her to the hospital so I went this past week and we just helped her around and just listened to her talk and talk and talk. It was Elder Kim's last week there and she really like Elder Kim (the elder serving there) and he gave her a picture of them together and she cried. Just an interesting experience that I don't even know how to explain. It was fun though being able to serve. I was also in that area the night before and we went to visit another member in the hospital to give a blessing. It was great to have the opportunity to exercise the priesthood in the service of others.

On Friday we went to the church and there was this couple in our parking lot feeding the cats. There are lots and lots of cats that just roam the streets and they brought some food and maybe 7 or 8 cats were eating the food. It was kind of weird and makes me wonder if they do that often.

Saturday we were able to go and visit a less active member that can't really leave the house because he has to take care of his bedridden wife. It was really good because we were able to share a good message and pray with them and feel the spirit. They looked happy that we came and visited. After that we went and visited another member and shared a quick message outside her door. She is super generous and gave us lots of food to take home!

Yesterday we just had some awkward visits after our missionary correlation meeting. The 4 missionaries and branch president, 1^st counselor and branch clerk all visited a less active lady....it was nice but awkward. After that we went with the clerk and 1st counselor to visit a member and his family. We originally had an appointment but we had ended up canceling and then the counselor and clerk thought we still had it so we went to visit and the counselor called the member and said that we were all together and they would pray and leave and we would stay. Pretty much long story short we visited a member that we had an appointment but canceled then went with the counselor who thought we still had the appointment and it was awkward because we didn't really know how to communicate the right things beforehand.....yea, just awkward. Sorry if that doesn't make sense.

Anyhow the members we visited were fine and were nice and we had a good little visit.

So last year I met a guy in Geumjeong and then ended up referring him to this area because he lives here. Long story short I always imagined me just running into him on the street and that happened for real yesterday! He said he remembered me from way back when. He had met the missionaries here once. We will try to meet him again!

K that's it! Have a good week!

Love Elder Frampton