May 21, 2012 Iksan Korea

Hey Family,


Family, so this week has been a roller coaster. ya ugh Where to
start. Oh the city i am in is Iksan. You can drive ascoss it in 30 min
on a bus. We take a bus everywhere or walk only options. There are
about 300,000 people. Our ward has only about 20 active members. Super
small like ya the primary has 5 kids. So we bless and pass the
Sacrament here. Sadly the less active member side is much larger than
active, also a lot of people move our of here to bigger cities because
this is like a small city, I guess. There not like big facrtories or
anything. So ya It wasn't hard to bear testimony in front of 20 people.
The bishop is the ward mission leader and everything. He is really nice and
cool. He sometimes speaks English to me because he speaks Korean and I
just look confused. The people in the ward are very nice. They smile and
greet you. The little kids love the missionaries they say things. I
just laugh and say yes because I don't speak their language yet haha.


So we teach a professor at the college here. He asked me if i had TMJ
as soon as we walked in... Weird right? No.  He says they cure it there.
What? Awesome! We talked to him. I didn't know what to teach. He won't
keep commitments. So, I said faith is like the scientific method. We
have a hypothesis, or a simple belief. Then we test it. I said prayer
is the test. If you want to know something you gotta pray. And then the
result? You will get your answer and it becomes faith. He still
refused to pray , but I texted him a scripture about prayer and I hope
he does. 


We have an investigator getting baptized this Sunday. Yay!
This ward hasn't had a baptism in 1.5 years. He is awesome! He is
deacon age (12-14) too, so that's awesome. I don't feel like I did much. Like, all
the real work was done before I got here. I just tried to help teach
lesson 3 and 4. And i helped him with English. idk. I am excited,
though. He came to church yesterday and made some good friends, and the
primary teacher taught him the exact things he needed to hear so ya.


We are meeting a new investigator. She is interested in English  but
we teach English 40 min and Gospel 20 min, so I hope she starts to want to
learn more about the gospel. I am nervous because I don't know how
to teach English and I have to, all on my own, because my companion
doesn't speak much English. Super scary. Pray for me please.


I had a good week. I learned a lot, and messed up a lot. My companion
is always correcting me. It's difficult though like ya, but I need to
trust in the Lord because He sent me here because He knew I can do it
so i need to give it my all.


We had mission tour last Friday with Elder Clark of the Seventy.  Like
Elder Holland says, "...enough fire to toast your eyebrows a litle."
We got toasted. He isn't happy with the amount of members attending
church. He asked other missionaries how many attend and they said 50. He said that's
not a ward. (I'm glad he didnt ask us) and he said we need to raise our
baptisms from 10s to thousands. It really motivated me. After that, I made a
list of things I need to improve. It was very long, haha. Most
important, I need to forget myself. I have not focused very much but i
need to be ultra focused in order to do good here. I also need to
talk to everyone. It's hard but I'm trying. It was cool...I was smiling
and talking to everyone I saw and [well every man. Its like against
culture to talk to women on the street... (jessica probably likes that)]
but ya and more people would talk to us, and one food delivery driver
like pulled over on his scooter and talked to us, and I explained what
we do here. It was cool. And a man talked to us about what we were
doing. Yay its awesome. If we work hard the lord blesses us. 


Sister Furniss (mission president's wife)at the mission tour gave a great talk. She said 2 things that
really hit me.
1 "I'm a little pencil in the Lord's hands. Often He needs to sharpen me.
But, if I'm willing to let him, I can be a great tool in his hand."


2 (this is paraphrased)  We have to climb a steep hill. The Lord will
not do it for us because we need to climb in order to grow and be
strong.  But he is with us every step of the way.


These things I really liked. Also I just remembered a talk by Elder Holland.
In it he said a poem that i love:


  ' "Come to the edge," he said.
      "No we will fall."
   "Come to the edge," he said!
      No we will fall."
   "Come to the edge!!!" he said.
    They came to the edge, he pushed them,
        and they flew.'


We need to put all trust in the Lord and He can make us fly. I need to
come to the edge... I have been staying in my safe comfy zone, thinking
of how long I'm here and about home. I can't. I need to give it
everything and trust in the lord that if I do what he says, I can fly.


I'm going to try to be more focused this week . Like Elder Holland
says,  "Be the missioary your mother thinks you are." I haven't, but I
will work as hard as i can to be that.


I love you all. I will try to send more piccs next week. Please be safe.
You're all in my prayers. Remember the Lord loves ALL his children.
Also Elder Clark asked me how many of my friends I referred to the
missionaries, i sadly replied "none." That is something I regret not
doing, so please make sure you refer friends to the missionaries. They
need people to teach and member's friends already have a friend so they
can stay in the church so much better.


Love you all! 


Love Elder Rice,


Oh fun fact, Mcdonalds here delivers! Like you can sit at home and eat
cheeseburgers all day .


BTW I have had kimchi, its pretty good and i have had kimchi soup
which is also delicious. Kimchi isn't what I thought it would be. Its
like sour cabbage with lots of red pepper, yum haha.
I really like this food called, bok em bop. I'll make it for yall some
day, also be beem bop and kimchi bop very delicious.I think I
answered your questions. Your emails were awesome. I loved them.They
were exactly what I need to hear... thank you.
love you all love elder rice