Jellyfish Tentacle Salad

Jordan and Elder Harrison

Itaewon is great, but we don't do a whole lot of missionary work there. If someone wants to meet there, we can, but we usually work in other places. It's a portion of the mission that has been 'closed' for a few years.Of course we can use our Korean around town, but sometimes you say 'anyeounghasaeyo' and the guy looks at you like you're crazy and says, 'I'm from Boston.'

I'll give you the highlights for the week:  We met a guy who was Korean, but adopted to America when he was born. He's from California (I think), and said, 'Hey, you're Mormon, right?' and then proceeded to pull back his collar to show us a black, blue, purple, and green neck. He broke his collar bone the night before and was doped up until Monday morning, when he'll get surgery. He was really drugged up but he was coherent enough to talk.  Evidently he met missionaries in another area and was currently meeting with them, and one of the missionaries just moved in with us, so he'll start teaching him!

Jellyfish Salad

Our 85 year old investigator took us to his friend's son's wedding. Upon arrival the groom approached us and said, 'You guys aren't Mormons right?' and I smiled big and said, 'Why yes we are!' which actually sounded like 'nay kuh roocho!' He thought this old fogie brought us to his wedding to crash it and convert everyone there. But there was raw beef, sushi, and jellyfish tentacle salad, so we stayed around long enough to chow down before booking it out of there. Our guy is so old and he's the world champion of broken English. He's mastered broken English so well you can't teach him proper English. He thinks it's wrong. He'll just spit out a few words and expect you to understand. 

Namsan Tower

On the other hand, we met a 90 year old Chinese guy that speaks even less English. I thought we met the world champion, but he just got dethroned. This guy speaks Chinese and some Korean, but insists on saying the only 12 words he knows in English to us. He's an oriental medicine doctor, so he's pretty healthy and will be alive for a while. We brought a senior missionary who's 70, Elder Ulvestad, and they bonded so well. ...After he harped on Elder Ulvestad for not learning Korean. He's trying so hard, but he's only been here for a few months. This old guy started talking very loudly, 'You Korea, you learn Korea. you old man. I old man.' *Beams brightly* what a wonderful old man. He asked me what my name was and I said Franchina, and he goes, 'No, no, pust name.' Oh, it's Jordan.

He now calls me Jordan, and when he first said my name, he resembled my grandfather on my dad's side. Don't know why, but if my grandpa was Asian, it would probably be this guy. I like him a lot.

Namsan  Tower

We live right at the base of the Namsan tower, which is Korea's version of the space needle in Seattle.  It's really cool and right outside of our window - we can see it lit up at night. I like this area, we will be meeting a lot of cool people.

The important thing I am learning is just to be other people's friend. More than anything, just be a friend. So this week, reach out to someone and be a friend.

Elder Franchina

(Jellyfish Salad photo courtesy of http://maggie-edwards.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html)

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Over the weekend we received the following e-mail from someone who is vacationing in Korea and met Jordan.

We are visiting Seoul for spring break and spent our Sunday meetings with Elder Franchina. He was a great translator and he made sure we were well taken care of. He even made sure we found out where to fill our water bottles! He is doing great but what you really want to know is that he seems happy. Thanks for sharing your son with us.

Moved, but not transferred

Itaewon

This week didn't have much, we were really busy with moving. We moved out of our house into a house actually in our area. That was nice. It's right next to Itaewon, the foreigner capital of Korea. There are so many foreigners, and we live right next to the army base, which is nice. It's weird, being able to speak a lot of English, or to hear other people's conversations and actually understand. Or having people understand what you say ㅋㅋ Living here will be nice, we've already met a few people on the street who seem interested, but we hope to still meet Koreans so we can continue to learn more Korean. 

 

Itaewon from Jordan's apartment

Speaking of learning Korean, my new trainee, Elder Harrison, is amazing. He studied French for 5 years, a little Russian, and is going into linguistics at BYU. He hasn't studied Korean before, but he's picking it up faster than anyone I've ever seen. He's awesome. It's my fourth time training, and I feel like I'm learning so much from these new missionaries. They have such a huge desire to work hard and they have the greatest spirit with them. 

One miracle we've seen this week is the less active we've been working with for the past month or two is now coming to church regularly, but also expressing an interest in getting the Melchizedek priesthood and going to the temple! He wants to do temple work for his mom, and so he's been asking for interviews with the bishop to go to the temple. It's so amazing to see a less active not only come back to activity in the church, but to begin progressing, to receive all the ordinances he can. It's so fulfilling to see that.

That's about all we have to report for this week, but we'll go out and make miracles for next week's report.

What can we offer to the Lord?

This week I've been thinking a lot about service and sacrifice. What do you really have to offer the Lord, that already isn't his? He created us, gave us our families, blessed us with our jobs, our talents, our skills, and everything else. What can we give him that he doesn't already have? There's only one thing I can think of: our will. We can turn over our will to God, and serve his children, or we can take our will elsewhere. It's funny, though, sacrificing your will to do God's actually frees you, and gives you more opportunities. 

 

I can promise you with the confidence  that only comes from experience that His way is the happiest way. It's the most successful way. And it's the way to eternal blessings.

May you find a way to sacrifice something in your life that may be good, for something better. Turn your will over to the lord. Serve Him and his children.

Transfer calls were this weekend, and Elder Bybee will be moving to another area, and I will be training again. #4 baby! I'm excited. It's a different kind of thrill, not knowing who your companion will be until the day of transfers. I hope he's Korean, that would be fun.

 

We had dinner with an American family this last week, the same family I ate thanksgiving with last year. They had their Filipino maid there like last time, and she had a lot of questions about the church. We decided to bag our spiritual message and just teach her. It was weird that everything she asked about were things we had just studied that day or the day before. It just goes to show that personal study is so important, whether you're a missionary or not. You never know when you'll be asked that question.

Love you all, and until next week, 안녕히 계세요

Elder Franchina

By the way, I met two of Mack Wilberg's companions this week. Did you know he served here in Korea? Elder Bunts and Gunther, I think. They spent a good portion of their mission touring around and playing music. What a blessing, so many people joined the church because of their music.

Temple with Mr. Oung

Our week was alright, kind of slow, but we wrapped up the weekend up with miracles.

 

I got to see our recent convert from my last area! On Saturday he went to the temple for the first time to do baptisms for the dead, and I got to go with him! It was such a wonderful experience to see him. I miss him so much.

 

Then on Sunday, we had Elder Nash, the church historian speak to the Seoul South mission, but they told us if we have someone to bring, we could come. We brought YSG, the guy we met the other week in the morning. He loved it. On the way there we followed up with the baptismal commitment we gave him and he said he'd have to think about it, but during the meeting they talked a little about baptism and the spirit was really strong, and so after the meeting I pulled him aside and asked him to set a date for April 13, and he agreed! We're so happy for him.

 

Besides these few things, nothing much is happening. We have our temple trip tomorrow, so that should be fun, then this Saturday is transfer calls! I really have no idea if I'll get another companion or not. I've never had a companion for

longer than 2 transfers (maybe that's a hint at something>>>), but we're not sure what's going to happen this time.

 

Love you all!

Remember to show your love for someone else today!

There are miracles everywhere you go

This week was pretty good, I just wanted to highlight one miracle we
saw. President has been talking to us a lot about going out in the
morning then studying in the afternoon, so we tried that on Thursday.
We went out at 9 and walked to 신용산, the electrics market capital
of Korea where we like to do some contacting.

We got some good contacts on the way, then as soon as we got to the intersection that we were going to, we met this guy, YSG. Humble, nice, and it was his one day off in a few weeks, so we went right into Lotteria and taught the first lesson! He's great. Just about the only thing he knows about church and God is that 'I love Jesus.' He doesn't know a lot, but he recognizes that a belief is good for him. So we'll meet him again when he has a day off.

He's one of those guys that
looks through the newspapers for jobs the next day, so if he doesn't
find something, he doesn't work. But he says he keeps pretty busy.
Hopefully he can meet us next week, I get the feeling that if he
doesn't work that day, he won't eat the next, but he's able to keep a
pretty steady income. I think he'll make time for us though, he was
all smiles when we were talking to him. I feel like he's really
prepared to receive the gospel, based on the background of his life he
gave. He's such a great guy. 

Just goes to show that there are miracles everywhere you go.

I know that god lives, and that god is a God of miracles. I know that
he loves me, and that each person is uniquely loved and divine in
God's eyes. This gospel is the greatest blessing in our lives, because
it opens our eyes and helps us see more of what we have and what our
potential is.

Have a great week and remember to serve someone this week, especially
when it's inconvenient for you.

Elder Franchina