Onions On My Sneakers

Onions on my sneakers yiroboon! That's how we say hello.

What a week. It seems like time is just flying by, approaching my year mark.

My emails seem to be getting a bit routine, so I'll attempt to spice them up.

The biggest focus we have right now is DY, our investigator that will be baptized next month. He said, after meeting this week, that he's starting to recognize that this is a 'true thing', not just something that's good. He is repenting and changing his life, and is enjoying the blessings that come with it. He wasn't comfortable getting baptized this week, so he wanted to move it to November 3rd, just so he can have more time to prepare and pray more. He is an incredible guy and I love him. He's kind of quiet and shy, but then you get him talking about his bboy competitions and he'll whip out youtube and show you his dances. He's passionate about that. I can also see him developing a passion for church. He doesn't view it as something he has to do, but something he gets to do, and it's a good opportunity for him to learn more and to meet with us. After a few more meetings I'm sure he'll be ready to be baptized. I'm so proud of him and how he's doing.

SSS is doing alright, we have already taught him all of the lessons, so now when we meet it's kind of to resolve concerns and to address questions. I feel like we don't really get anywhere, and so we feel like we need to drop him. It's not something I want to do, but we can't really teach him any more. We have taught him all we can and showed him how to know for himself, but now the ball is in his court and he needs to act. That's the beauty of this message, is that you don't have to take our word for it, you can come to know through your own experiences, directly from God. And what better witness than from God? (see D&C 6:24). I hope not meeting him for a few weeks will show him the drastic change of the absence of the spirit from his life. He is really sincere and is concerned about things like blind faith and praying sincerely, so I know he really wants to know, and he cares about these things, but now it's up to him.

We have another investigator, SSS2, who is doing pretty good. It's different, teaching someone who has absolutely no knowledge of Christianity, but we're doing well with him. He's nice, and is willing to learn.

We met a new investigator on Saturday morning. Last week he stopped us and asked us for a Book of Mormon and other pamphlets we had, and we met him at a coffee shop later, and he came to our church on Saturday morning. He's baptist, and has really strong faith, but he said he's willing to learn more about Christ, if more information exists. He's really nice and very knowledgeable. Teaching him is fun, and he reads the scriptures insatiably. He's also really good at table tennis. I told him I played around in High School, and he wanted to play. He brought his $220 racket and destroyed me. The matches were around 11-5 every time. But at the end, I told him about my $20 paddle, and he said, 'Real sportsmen don't blame the tool.' So we switched paddles and I beat him 11-6. ㅋㅋ

We have a few college students that are investigating our church, one even lived in Provo for a few years when he attended high school as an exchange student. They're coming to church next week, so we're really excited.

We still meet with Pastor JJJ, and we met his boy, Peace, this week. We talked to Pastor JJJ about authority a little, and will continue to talk more about that later. As far as I know, Protestants don't believe that the Catholic church has the proper authority, and so that's what he likes about our church, that we and him see eye to eye on a few things. He said now he recognizes us as Christians.

We visited a few members, and I just have to say, we have some of the best members ever. One of our members, after watching conference, where they said, 'Until you know a missionary's face and name, and their investigators, the Lord can't help you know their heart', she made a list of all of the missionaries and our investigators in our ward, which is over 40 names, and prays for us specifically. She teaches with the missionaries more than 3 times a week, and helps us out so much. I am so grateful for members that help out the missionaries.

We met a member that went to America last year for an 8 month exchange program, and his host family brought him to church. He liked it, and after meeting with the missionaries for 2 months he was baptized! That was this Feb., and he came back to Korea a few months ago, and his parents are very against it. It's hard for him to come out to church because they won't let him, but he does all he can. He's an amazing guy. I love the members in our ward.

On Saturday a member in our ward had a wedding! The groom was baptized this February, so since his family aren't members of the church, they just had a normal wedding. I'm was excited to go to experience a Korean wedding. It was pretty modern, and there wasn't really a reception (as far as we know), so it was over pretty quick, but it was nice, our Stake President married them. It was neat to see it, and they looked so happy.

Nothing much else happened this week, the work is moving on, and we're staying busy!

Love you guys!

Elder Franchina