After study one day, we went home and I made cookies for some members. It was a little strange because their vanilla is a powder, they don't have chocolate chips (I had to chop up chocolate bars) and the butter is made from sunflower oil and comes in a tub. It was fun!!
The pizza here is thin and has really cool flavors, but there is something about American pizza being deep, saucy, thick and salty that is sooo good! In Korea, so far, I really like the sweet potato pizza. The American pizzas are $30-$50 dollars here at Pizza Hut and Dominos. Too expensive!!!
I went for the first time to the public spa. (I was told before my mission that this would happen.) You get completely naked and get in the community sauna and hot tub (separate from the women). It was peaceful, quiet and relaxing. It was hard mentally at first because I have never gotten naked in front of others or been around other naked guys. You get over it. It kept me warm all day and I felt as if I were walking on clouds afterward. So nice!
We went to the church for district meeting and just before starting, Sister Petry was playing the piano! The piano always brings the Spirit strongly to me. She began to play a song that I knew, "Savior, Redeemer of My Soul" by Rob Gardner. My heart stopped! I got up, went to the piano and was able to sing it! The Spirit was so strong. It hadn't been that strong or rather I hadn't had that particular feeling since I sang with MCO this last summer in Utah. The song was also in Korean! So we did it again, this time in Korean. After singing, I asked if we could sing it on a Sunday or something and she agreed! Let's do it!
This last week we were still trying to reach for the mission Standards of Excellence. And, as we have been doing so, we have been able push ourselves to talk to more people and to become more effective in getting interest on their part.
Recently we decided that we need to bare testimony of at least one principle of the Gospel to everyone we can get a conversation with and ask for people in their lives that they know that would benefit from a special message that brings hope and lasting happiness through the Restored Gospel, and to share our purpose of being in Korea. As well, as getting their #s first before we hand out any flyers or cards of any sort.
We set these as new goals, because we were able to reach for higher # in contacts this last week, but we wanted to start reaching the goals the mission set of having more appointments and getting new Investigators. And, it gets me fired up, trying new methods to achieve our goals.
Also, on top of making our contacting more effective and personal, we are also going to be working more with members and past investigators in order to find the people that the Lord has prepared for us to teach. It is exciting!
My companion, Elder Lowe always wants to be achieving more and so he pushes be to be more and more obedient, not that I have been being disobedient, but just trying to be more obedient so that we can be confident and successful missionaries. And, I believe it!! Love him!
Elder Lowe, and I this last week have been more open and communicating our feelings. We did this because we wanted to be more unified and be closer so that we can run faster and harder for the Spirit, and putting in equal and powerful force in trying to achieve what the Lord wants us to achieve. We weren't in bad condition before, things were going great, but I believe that Elder Lowe and I had this breakthrough because we want to become more. It is fantastic!!! And we change and push harder All for 교문 !!! 사랑합니다!!!!!!! (LOVE IT!!!!!!)
For Thanksgiving, Elders Lowe, Hipps, Remington and I went to an English buffet. They had mac & cheese! And passion fruit is delicious! We went around saying what we are grateful for and then shared the things we are grateful for about each other. It meant a lot to me.
Love you all!!!
Elder Alger
Sorry about not having captions for all the pics. I just don't have enough time. The hiking pictures from the previous post are actually from two different hikes. Some of you were asking what mountains we were hiking.
The first was 천마산 (Cheonmasan). The mountain was fairly steep, and covered in beautiful trees with colorful leaves and asian pines. The best part of hiking was right before we hit the summit and then suddenly you are there! I could see all of my area, my playground! It is cool how tall the buildings are on average and how they creeped a little bit up the mountain. We got some great companion pics on the mountain and it was a lot of fun. Once Elder Remington was done playing the recorder at the top, we ran down the mountain!!!!
The food is AMAZING here!!!
Yum!
It was good to be in the temple again. The Lord really does answer our questions when we are in His house prepared and listening.
Pictures from our trip to the temple!!
CBRE!! It's the company my Dad works for.
I'm glad I brought the warm onesie pajamas my mom made for me!
Keeping things fresh
It was the first time in my life to see snow fall!!! It was really weird, surreal and magical at the same time. It was just a little snow, but it was cool! Now that it's colder, it's harder to find people out to talk with. We are having to get creative.
I still love plants!
This is a video of a potential investigator named, 총산용 (Chongsan-Yong) . He is so friendly and was eager to show us his awards for working with America and showed us pics of his family.
He graced us with this!!! Such a fun 80 year old guy!!! Very good at conversing in English.
