Happy 4th of July!

Wow, once again another holiday I'll be missing. That's okay though. My companion Sister Chao and I are planning on doing something to celebrate. We aren't sure exactly what, but we plan on doing something. Might just end up listening to the Star Spangled Banner song by Voice Male that Michelle put on my ipod. I'm annoyed by that song now, but it's for the 4th of July! I have to be patriotic some how. The days seemed to go by a lot slower this week. It probably had a lot to do with how many times we were being rejected. We had the awesome opportunity again to go to the Seoul temple. I'm starting to think that's my favorite time of each transfer. It's such a blessing having a temple close by. Not all missionaries are able to go like us. After the temple we went to a really cool buffet with a bunch of other missionaries in our mission. It was nice being able to see familiar faces from my district or zone in the MTC. I didn't see all of them, but of the few I saw they sure seemed to be doing great. This week started out really hard, but towards the end of the week, things started to pick up. We first went back to Homeplus to visit this girl who we met who works in the make up department. She is moving and so we had been going there every week trying to talk to her before she left. It wasn't until Friday that we finally saw her. Like always, we had the best conversation with her. Seriously, I feel like I'd be friends with her even off my mission. Our goal was to ask her to hang out outside of her work before she moved, but she once again rejected us. and throughout the conversation we reassured her we just wanted to visit with her not preach to her. But yeah we left after being rejected 4 different times in 4 different ways. She is just so cool and nice, it's sad that she is so against anything relating to church. She told us today is her last day of work so we may or may not go visit her. So after visiting her, we went home feeling depressed. It was just a bad day. I remember praying that night after daily planning for us to just be able to meet the people the Lord has prepared. To be able to see some sort of miracle or progression in our work. That next morning we received an answer to that prayer. We got a random text from a referral we had contacted that never answered. It was just so out of the blue. She had told us to call her at 2pm which we planned on doing but around 12 we received a call from our district leader saying she was there at the church looking for us. Turns out she and her family wanted to come to church the next day. Crazy right? And they want to learn more about the Book of Mormon and also learn English. It was a miracle!! That changed our mood completely. We left our apartment that day just ready to share our beliefs to everyone. It was awesome. Sunday then came and we witnessed another miracle. The family came. It was a woman about 60 and her husband, their daughter and her two little cute sons. We greeted them happily and helped them go to their classes since our sacrament meeting is at the end of church (so weird to me). It just happened to be that the lesson in relief society that day was about Joseph Smith's life. Which then turned into all the women helping to explain the Book of Mormon and who Joseph smith was. It was amazing!! Then in Sunday school the ward members continued to be such good missionaries and it was just a miracle witnessing it all. I felt the spirit so strong. It was great to see the whole ward working together to help our investigators. I know that the Lord has truly prepared this family. I can't wait to continue to teach them more this coming Thursday. Yesterday we also received another referral, so we are just on a spiritual high right now. I know the Lord is blessing our efforts. It's definitely reassuring to me when I recognized that.

Also yesterday I had another spiritual experience I'd like to share. I have to type fast because I'm running out of time, but we went with a member to go visit her old sick mother. When we got there I was surprised to see this old fragile grandma laying on a yo on the floor. She could barely talk it was so sad to see. But we began to sing hymns for her. And even though we don't sing very well, I felt this overwhelming familiar feeling of peace. I knew grandma and grandpa were there. Maybe all our relatives but the whole experienced reminded me of when grandpa was getting old and I remember before he passed away all us grandchildren said goodbye to him and his last words to us were so precious to him that he decided to share the most important thing to him and I've never forgotten it. It was his testimony of Joseph smith and of the Book of Mormon. I remember him telling me to never fall away and to always remember my testimony. So feeling their presence was very dear to me and it's definitely been the support I needed. After singing with her, we just sat and told her random things. I told her all about my family and random things I could think of. I hope she wasn't weirded out when I began to cry. I just couldn't help but start to think about one day having to take care of my own parents. It's sad to think about so I won't talk any further about it, but this.. I know I love you both so dearly and I will gladly take care of you. It was seriously beautiful seeing the daughter and her brother take care of their mother like that. I definitely plan on visiting her again.

Anyways, time is up and I must get off. I love you all and wish you all a happy fourth of July!
Love,
켈리리 자매매

It's Getting Hotter!

So last Monday we didn't end up surprising Sister Johnson and her companion. Turns out I had another "Amanda moment." I emailed Sister Johnson my weekly email and she read it. How dumb can I be! Hahah at least I can laugh about it though. We had a fun time seeing their area and their cute little apartment that makes our seem like a mansion. Haha (We love our mansion now) We also went to a meat buffet and a cafe with them. Lots of fun! :D
On Tuesday we met with our usual investigator like normal.. Not keeping her commitments but we talked about faith so it was still a good lesson with her. We also met with a recent convert in our ward who is music producer. She owns a music studio and said she will let us see it. She's hilarious and just so awesome. Her daughter is going to U of U. So she showed us lots of pictures. So when we come over to teach her English I'm sure our visits will always be fun :)
On Wednesday we had district meeting and English class like usual. The teenagers still always make me laugh. One time we tried teaching them how to say the word sheet, and well we had a lot of laughter Sister Chao and I... we've learned that Koreans can't pronounce E's with T's. It always came out as the bad word. We tried our best but eventually had to just let it be. So English class will always be fun I think.
I don't really remember Thursday and Friday for some reason..but on Saturday with the ward we did a deep cleaning of the church building. And while cleaning it just started pouring harder than ever!! Last time when I said it rained hard.. this time was even more hard! It was like rain drops the size of CHINA! So much! So it was funny to see the 1st counselor pruning the trees/bushes and having the ward clerk hold the umbrella. All the little kids loved being able to go outside in the rain too. After cleaning we had a big dinner together. It looks disgusting but it actually reminded me of the meal that mom cooks with the chicken legs and rice.. Do you know which one I mean mom? This was just a little bit more soggy is all. As for the other foods I took pictures of.. I got away with not eating those.. It was all gone before I even finished my main dish haha. I didn't even get my kimchi for the day haha. That's okay though. Sister Chao and I have had lots of American food it seems like but at the same time the ward members have been feeding us a ton! Both of us noticed that we have rice face now from how much rice we've had. My face is forming a really ugly dubble chin it's gross! So exercise will be much needed haha. Thankfully I haven't gained any weight.

On Sunday I saw a miracle happen so I'd love to share it with all of you. So every Sunday before church starts and people are arriving us missionaries and the bishop greet people when they walk in. While we did that I constantly was saying a prayer in my mind that our two young investigators would come to church. We hadn't seen them in 3 weeks! So we were planning on just randomly going to their house later that day, but they came!!! It was the greatest thing ever!! I love witnessing that the Lord has answered my prayers. So since Hiyoung came we wanted to get her to go to young womens. Sister Chao went to primary and released that was sadly an environment where we knew that she wouldn't ever feel the spirit. The kids are so crazy and loud and wild. I love them all so much, but there just aren't enough teachers to help control them all. It's just the primary presidency that's it. I also noticed they only sing like 2 songs. One that they let the children choose (Follow the Prophet of course because they wanted to learn it again in English) and then one that goes along with the topic of the lesson. So that day it was the song The Priesthood is Restored. What a bad song! It was super hard to sing, even in English. I don't like it. So it made me sad when I realized that primary was always so fun for me when I was little and that they just don't have enough help to make it the same in this ward.
Because we took Hiyoung to young womens. The primary president came up to us later to tell us she can't go there.. so it made us feel guilty and bad, but we had permission from the young womens president so we thought it was fine. After going to ward council we asked the young women's president to talk to the primary president for us. Only to find out that she went and talked to her right then and there! So awkward and scary!! We didn't want to offend her :( But anyway everything is good now. They both said it's okay. So yay!! Prayer once again works! haha
I am sorry for emailing later than usual today. We had interviews with our lovely mission president, President Morrise. He's amazing! I'm glad he's the mission president. He always leaves us with such good things or scriptures to ponder on. I love it. As for later today we will be delivering invitations to the young single adult girls in our ward. I bought some cute paper and ribbons and made them :) Very cute. Our first activity was a fail, but this time we are going to be going bowling and having pizza so hopefully more people will go. It's this Saturday so cross your fingers that people show up. Otherwise I wasted money on making those invitations haha. Just kidding it's all worth it!
I love you all and sounds like everyone is just doing great. You're all amazing!
xoxo,
Sister Kelly

Happy Father's Day!

Well here there again! So Taco Bell was amazing! I had the best birthday. We spent our p-day in Gangnam. So the pics I sent home are of us in Gangnam mostly or on the bus haha. When we first got to Gangnam we weren't that hungry but when we saw a Burger King we couldn't help ourselves. Boy! it was so delicious! So much better than McDonalds! haha Then later after going shopping and walking around in Gangnam we went and at the amazing Taco Bell. That was the fanciest taco bell ever! I loved it. Then afterwards we went back to beautiful Anyang and hung out with our investigator 오해 진. We went to a park and I just had to take pics because at pretty much every park you can find this silly exercise things. And people actually use them. but they have seriously no weights so it's not going to help at all, but we had fun trying them out haha.
I finally got my packages. All 3 came on the same day!! Thank you so much!! I loved all of it! I will forever make these worth the money spent on sending them. Kara and mom you're the best!! <3
We also love our ward members because they give us lots of food. We have loads and loads of watermelon now. I'm thankful that's a type of melon I don't mind eating. Otherwise Sister Chao would hate me haha.
So we never ended up having a lesson with 오해 진 because she ended up wanting to go on a man hunt. Yup, she asked the elders all for their phone numbers and they politely declined and tried to explain why they can't give it to her. Then we figured ok she's fine, let's head on over to the church for a lesson with her. On our way there we decided she wanted to go to the 7 eleven and so yup.. she starts wanting our help and we had a struggle with her trying to explain we aren't allowed to help her do that and told her we'd have to go. And she was being so stubborn and I was getting annoyed so I just began whining to her, stomping my feet. EXCEPT ALL IN KOREAN! haha Sister Chao could not take me seriously and kept laughing haha. I laughed a little too but it was working.. until she saw another cute guy and said no to go to the church. haha So that was that. We decided we had to let her go and we would do something else. Ever since then she's still wanted to find a boyfriend, she's so innocent and cute. I'd love for her to find one, but we can't help her with that :( So now whenever we see the elders while with her we pretty much have to distract her so she doesn't ask them again for a date or their phone numbers. It's amazing how bold and courageous she is.
On Tuesday we met with our same investigator. And we actually taught her the first lesson about the restoration of the gospel. It was hard at first, because she asks lots of questions and she wants to know everything right now. Talking about the apostasy and the restoration was rough because I struggle with keeping it simple, but as soon as we began talking about Joseph smith and the story of the 1st vision, I tried my best to help her and it really seemed like she was able to relate to Joseph smith so that was great. I felt the spirit so strong when I bore my testimony to her of the book of mormon and of this church. I really hope she did too. We invited her to read the Book of Mormon and to pray about it, but she said she first wants to research about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints first. So we told her to go to mormon.org and lds.org. We're hoping she did it because I can truly see that she has a desire to know the truth and receive the fullness of the gospel into her life.
The rest of our week was filled with meeting with members to practice teaching. Where they also fed us so that's great. We love the members, everyone is so funny and so nice. I can tell they like us as well and really want to see our missionary work succeed.
On Saturday we had our first Young single adult activity and it went terrible. No one showed up except a recent convert. A boy of coarse so that meant we weren't allowed to stay since there wasn't an adult female present. So yeah we plan on making the activity on the 28th be sooo much better. The elders have somewhat gotten on our nerves lately. They are so bad at planning, but we don't mind taking charge. What are sister missionaries for right? lol
Since we left early we just ended up going to Emart to print some pics because we didn't have much time to really meet with anyone. So while there we saw they were selling Korea world cup shirts so my last pics is me wearing the shirt. I did buy one for Steven or Ryan.. I seriously don't know if it'll fit them though. I got the largest size and it's iffy still.. haha I'm sorry dad couldn't get one. I bet it'll fit Ryan and not Steven so Ryan's it is!! haha I won't be sending that yet. I want to wait till I have more to send first so it's worth sending.. no what I mean?

Anyway, today Sister Chao and I are planning on going to 안 상. I think that's what it's called.. but yeah we are going to surprise Sister Johnson and Sister 김 윤 하. The live in more country side sooo there might not be much to do there but it's ok. We don't mind just playing a card game or something with them haha.
I love you all so much! I pray for all of you every day!! Thanks for the support. Write you next week!
xoxo,
켈리 자매

Burger King

Red Carpet visit to Taco Bell

Random exercise equipment in the park

Packages from home!

World Cup T-shirt

It's My Birthday!

Yup, so it's still my birthday back in America so my companion and I are still celebrating. Thank you all for your wonderful emails. I feel bad not being able to reply to each and everyone of them, but I loved reading them! I promise I will write those of you I mentioned some personal hand written letters to make up for it :)
So first let me tell you about this past weeks adventures. My week was pretty awesome. We went to a popular park here to try finding people. And I noticed these two little kids playing and their mom just sitting on the bench watching. I felt a little like I should go talk to her so I just walked over and sat down and started talking to the woman. I just started by introducing myself and asking about her little kids. She then just asked why I'm in Korea. So I told her we share the gospel, but I also mentioned we teach free English because usually people are more inclined to talk to me when I say that. She immediately told me to teach her. It caught me off guard when I learned that she meant the gospel. So yeah I had my very first street lesson. It was half in English though because she spoke English well. So whenever I didn't know how to say it in Korean I said it in English. I remember I shared my testimony of families and of the book of Mormon a lot. I tried to give her a copy of the book of Mormon, but all she was willing to take was the restoration pamphlet. I also gave her our number and told her we'd love to teach her more... soo far.. nothing. No calls or texts. So that bums me out. It's frustrating to have this awesome spiritual experience happen but then nothing. So I've been praying a lot hoping that she'll call or we will at least see her again.
Other than that, my week has just been the same as every other week. My investigators are progressing very very slowly, but it's still progression. That's all that matters. Last p day we went and spent the day with Sister Johnson and her companion. We had a blast because we really don't see them that often cause they live so far from us. I took some pictures of the food we ate that day. Then, on Tuesday it was a rainy day. A really really rainy day. I don't think I've ever seen it rain so hard or for so long before. We had our little cheap daiso(dollar store) umbrellas, but our feet were soaked! So soaked that my feet turned blue from the black material. Also.. you can see my nasty flat iron blister in the picture I sent lol. So, I will be in need of buying some new shoes because all my shoes aren't rainy weather appropriate. All are cotton, and leather.. so either send me my boots or I will be buying some shoes here that will be good in the rain. Sister Chao is thinking of doing the same. Seriously there were puddles everywhere!! Then I also sent you pictures of our investigator and us at a restaurant that's right down the street of the church. So we tend to go there a lot. It has the best 김 밥 (kimbop) so good! Then I also sent pictures of Sister Chao's and my adventure yesterday. Since it was my birthday we figured we should take some pictures. We both look hideous so I apologize haha.

On Thursday we had Zone training. We followed up about our past goal of trying to be more consecrated missionaries. I wish I could say I succeeded at telling you all about that, but I will tell you now  about our new goal. After Elder Cook's visit, President Morrise is now saying that we can work with the wards more. So that's fantastic! Because we've been trying to do that. We still will have investigators and do the normal finding and teaching, but it's also important to help the ward members and support them. So Sister Chao and I plan on visiting the members more now. This week we already have 3 meetings set up with members. So that's awesome! Our other goal is to share our testimonies every time we talk to people. We want to leave people feeling the spirit when we talk to them, so we want to do our best to find ways to share our testimony every chance we get. Elder Cook taught us that WE ARE THE MESSAGE. Every time people see us they see that we are missionaries. LDS missionaries are well known all over the world. I used to think they were only know in America, but even here in Korea people all know who we are and spread rumors about what we do and believe. So we are striving to be as Christ-like as we can be so that when people come in contact with us they don't just see us.. they see Christ through us. If there's anything I really want to do, it's that. I want to be able to talk to people and have them feel God's love through me. I'm going to study Preach My Gospel Ch. 6 because it's all about Christlike attributes. I know the more diligent I am at trying to be like the Savior, the better my mission experiences will be.

On Saturday night we had transfer calls... and they forgot to call us :( so we ended up having to call them Sunday morning to ask them about it. I'm still staying in Anyang with Sister Chao. Expect one elder in my district (Elder Campbell) is leaving :( so that's a bummer. He made me some cute little muffins for my birthday though and the rest of the elders surprised me by bringing candles and candy and everyone sang happy birthday to me. We also had a stake representative come and speak at church so that meant yay!! lunch party!! Yup, the relief society women brought food and everyone ate together after church. It was secretly my birthday party though ;) haha Then Sister Chao and I visited less actives and members and brought them some delicious banana bread that we made together. (seriously it's so good. I can't stop eating it haha)
At the last member's house that we visited she gave us her homemade drink. it has lek and the Korean famous little yogurt drinks. It is supposedly really good for your health. I was hesitant to drink it but it actually wasn't too bad. EXCEPT she gave us more and we ended up going home with some pretty smelly breath haha.
When I got home I received a couple phone calls from other missionaries saying happy birthday. But here's the best part.. I decided to shower because I felt gross from being outside all day, and while shampooing my hair, Sister Chao just starts yelling through the door (over my church music that i have playing) telling me I have to get out right away. So in like less than one minute I quickly got out, and turned out to be a call from President Morrise wishing me a happy birthday. So that's a memory I will never forget. I talked to my mission president on my birthday in a towel. At least he couldn't see me hahah that would have been a worse experience. hahah
As for today, Sister Chao and I are going to being celebrating my birthday by going to TACO BELL. YAY!!! I am so excited!! I'll make sure to take pictures of that very memorable moment. I mean who else can say they ate Taco bell in Korea.. Not you haha.

I love you all and wish you all a fabulous week!
xoxo,
Sister Kelly

Lunch with one of our investigators

Sister Kelly and Sister Chao

Birthday package with lots of Hot Cheetos.

Stepped on an iron and got a nice blister and blue feet from shoes getting wet in the rain.

It's Almost My Birthday!!

Wow! It's so weird that it's already June! Boy is it starting to get hot in Korea too. Thankfully, today we had some rain which I just loved! So very refreshing!
 On Saturday we had a joint mission conference with the other Seoul mission and Elder Quintin L. Cook came and he shook every single missionary's hand-mine included! It was awesome! He and his wife are hilarious and I was a cool experience. Not as cool as when I got to go to the Korea seoul temple this past Thursday though.It was exactly 1 month of being in Korea so it was honestly the best way to celebrate. It was also the day Kyle entered the MTC so I thought about him as I was at the temple. I sure hope he likes the MTC. I know he will be a great missionary.The Seoul temple is
super dooper small, but way pretty inside and out! It was definitely a spiritual boost I needed, because my companion and I had to drop our first investigator this week. It was super hard, but we had to. That lady is crazy! Every time we met with her I wish I could tell you all about it. She really wants to go back to America and always talks about Obama wanting her to come to the white house.I also had lots of dumb "Amanda moments." Man! I'm so embarrassing. My companion and I had always seen this flyer for a cat cafe near where we proselyte. So, on Monday I wanted to find it just to go check it out to see if they really did have a bunch of cats in the cafe. We struggled finding it on our own so we asked their mascot who passes out the flyers to show us. He ended up walking us all the way there. When we got there we felt bad and were kind of forced to go inside and pay. I paid for my companion and myself because it was my idea and I figured it'd be super cheap. BOY! was I wrong! It was $16 for both of us. And all they gave us was 2 small cokes! So yup I had a coke with a room full of old lazy cats.
 haha then on saturday my other dumb moment happened. I turned on my straightener and set it on the floor and I had the thought that "oh maybe i should move that so no one steps on it." but i didn't move it haha. Then later while I was getting dressed I stepped on my straightener with my bare foot. Man! It hurt so bad. So now I have a blister shaped like straightner on the bottom of my foot. I'm dumb right?
At English class this week we didn't teach the teenagers this time because we had a new visitor come and she was female so we had the resposibilty of teaching her and then the elders who normally teach basic english taught the teenagers. I got lots of compliments from her and other students who ended up coming saying that they love the way I teach. I don't do much other than talk slowly haha and read off the paper that has the words and have them repeat. Super easy but they seemed to really like me. Maybe I should be a teacher someday? We'll see about that haha. Also, the teenagers and little kids love my hand sanitizer i have it hanging on my bag so they see it and always want it. I don't know how to say hand sanitizer in korean so i nicknamed it magic soap. They love it. It's crazy that they are so impressed by it because it's really just hand sanitizer.. nothing special but yeah they sure like it. So thanks for sending me more! I will definitely put it to good use!

Also, on Saturday after conference sister Chao and a bunch of other missionaries and I went out to eat at a place called Ashley's. On our way there we discovered an H&M! So that was way cool! Nice cheap clothing to remember in the future to shop there whenever we need to. Then we also found a taco bell! That made me sooooo happy!! My companion said that when I'm good she will let me go there haha. I sound like a little kid but I so am going to be a good girl. I miss taco bell so much!! We don't have members feed us too much but they do give us food all the time. Just this morning a member gave us watermelon (about $11-15) and milk and meat and lots of Korean melons ($5 each) so we are so grateful when they give us food. They seem to love us. We haven't gone to McDonalds in a while. We did go to a little cafe. (I took pics and sent them to you) called Ann's Cafe. We want to go back there. It's a great place to go to weekly plan. Oh and this past Sunday we didn't have the chance to go to primary it made me sad but I will again hopefully this coming Sunday. We just had a surprise visit from our investigator and so we were with her in other classes. (she is in my pic i think that i sent. she's the mentally not all there one) We sing lots of primary songs with her so that's been nice. I've memorized I am a child of god in Korean now haha cause we sang it so much with her.
I love you all!! Thanks for the birthday wishes and for the birthday package! I appreciate it a ton!! I love you!! <3
Sister Kelly

Cafe for planning