Monday, November 30, 2015

Watching the World Burn From the 16th Floor


If only you could see the world from a missionary's perspective. We only get updates on what is happening in the world once a week, but from what I can see... The Second Coming is on its way. All this stuff happening with ISIS and whatnot... and then you add in the amount of people doing drugs, alcohol, breaking the law of chastity, getting addicted to things they shouldn't, the family being destroyed.... The world is burning. And we are watching it burn from the 16th floor of our apartment building in Incheon, South Korea. I am not exaggerating when I say that it is important, now more than ever before, to be a strong member of God's army. And that doesn't just mean me as a missionary, that means you as members of the church as well.

Okay, now that the intense stuff is over, I will lighten the mood up. ;)

Yesterday I got to accompany the primary kids for the primary program! :) It was SO FUN. Korean kids are the cutest. Maybe I am biased. But they are seriously adorable.

This week was another one of those weeks where I honestly don't remember what happened. My mind is mush. But I can say one thing that I have realized recently. I LOVE KOREAN. I love speaking it. I don't know why it feels so natural to speak Korean, but it does. I am not fluent. I still don't know what people are saying half the time. But I understand and speak enough to hold a conversation. I have been in Korea for about 11 months now, and while I don't think I will ever get fluent on my mission, I finally feel EFFECTIVE. It is the best feeling ever and I am so thankful for the opportunity to speak Korean.

Okay so another random thing... I have to give a shout out to the Nashville Tribute Band. We have been addicted to the album, "Redeemer" this last week. Every time we listen to it we end up in this long conversation about Jesus Christ and how it would be like to live during the time He was here on the earth. Every moment we are home... lunch... dinner... after planning at night... we turn it on. The music does exactly what it should for missionaries, it turns our thoughts to Christ. :) Shout out to Grandma Stucki for sending it to me for my birthday.

That leads me to my next topic. Since I literally cannot remember what we did this week, I just want to bear you my testimony about Christ. Since Christmas is on its way, we have been refocusing our thoughts on Christ and His life on the earth. He died for each and every one of us. He suffered endless pain so that we could be happy on earth, and live with our Father in Heaven again. I have never had such a great appreciation for Christ as I do now. After almost 13 months of wearing the name "Jesus Christ" on my shoulder, every single day, I have learned to appreciate Him so much. Every single day we have to think and act as Christ would. It is SO hard. He was so perfect. And we are so imperfect. But I have felt His love for others, and I have seen His work moving along. Every time I meet with an investigator, my heart swells with love for them. And the amount of love I have for them is not my love alone, but the love of Christ. I didn't know it was possible to love someone so much, to want to give them everything, like I do now. All I want is for each of the people I meet with to have the opportunity to live with God again. And when they reject the opportunity, my heart breaks. I imagine this is just a taste of what Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ feel when His children reject the gospel. But I am so thankful for the opportunity to serve as a missionary and I am so happy to be serving in Korea at this time. :)

I love you all and miss you so much! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We ended up going to a buffet with the sisters that we live with. :) Super fun! Anyway, have a great week!

Love, Sister Maughan

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The view from our window on the 16th floor.

Our Christmas tree!

THANKSGIVING!!!!

Went on exchanges with Sister Johnson this week! She is the other softball player who got scholarships to pretty much everywhere and had a chance to almost play on team USA....pretty cool!

We found Christmas lights! and it's freezing again by the way.....we be bundling up!

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

One Small Step For Man....

One leap for Sister Maughan! I GOT TO SEE THE OCEAN. Kind of. Okay, I got to see an inlet of the ocean. But I got to see the water and the wet sand and smell the fishes... I got to hear the seagulls and watch them dive into the water. I still haven't gotten to see the ocean ocean yet... but this was the closest I have ever gotten to seeing the ocean. So I am content. Not satisfied, but content. :)

This last week we put up the Christmas tree! We bought a five dollar Charlie Brown Christmas tree. It is only like a foot and a half tall, but we covered it in lights and mini ornaments. We made a tree skirt out of a scarf, and put a bow on top of the tree. We did it all while listening to Christmas music. :) We also bought a bunch of Christmas lights and covered our apartment in them. Our apartment looks so good right now! Especially because a couple of weeks ago, we dragged a huge couch out of the trash and put in in our apartment. That sounds gross... but trash here works so differently. If you wanna throw something large away, you just put it outside in front of your apartment complex and put a sticker on it signifying that it is garbage. Missionaries are professional dumpster divers. Really. Except we don't have to get in the dumpster. If there is a couch on the side of the street that looks pretty nice, we just drag it up to our apartment and clean it. And that is exactly what we did. :)

So we have given each of our current 5 investigators a baptismal commitment. 4 of the 5 accepted a soft baptismal commitment. The one who didn't is a completely English interest investigator. A few weeks ago we got a new investigator who started out as English interest expressed sincere gospel interest last week because her father is sick and she is worried about him passing away. She said she doesn't know where he will go after that. She kept saying "I won't get to see him again, right?" Well, that is the beauty of the gospel. We WILL get to see our families again. I took the opportunity to testify that we can live with God again, and we can see our families again. The spirit was so strong. It is so amazing that we as missionaries get the opportunity to promise others that there is a greater and more beautiful plan. God's plan is beautiful, and I am so thankful for it.

This last Sunday, we decided to attend Young Women's instead of Relief Society. What we saw there in Young Women's broke my heart. None of the young women wanted to be there. Half of them were sleeping. The other half were doing homework. No one was listening to their leaders. When the leaders announced that there would be an activity this week, the young women all groaned. Satan has his grip on them SO strong. I know that when you are in high school, it can be hard to want to go to church. It can be hard to want to attend church activities. But it shouldn't be THIS hard. They didn't even stand to say the Young Women's Theme. We now know what our next project in the ward will be. If there is any one who needs strengthening right now, it is the young women. I am not sure how exactly to get them excited about church, but we will keep praying about how to help them. Satan is stronger than we realize, and he will take advantage of us if we let him. We have to be strong. These young women have to be strong. And we are here to save them from the power of Satan. :) Sometimes missionaries have to be superheroes too. ;)

Well Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I hope you get to eat lots of yummy food, and remember to thank the Lord for all He has given you! Say a prayer of thanks each night, and I know that you will feel His love stronger than ever. I will be spending Thanksgiving at a buffet with our district! It should be fun. :)

Love and miss you all!

Love, Sister Maughan
by the ocean inlet.

I had to fight a giant crab to get to the ocean inlet haha.

I saw part of the ocean! kind of! :) yes that is a boat.

on exchanges with Sister Sutton! ( I have lived with here for 6 months now.)

Monday, November 16, 2015

Gangnam Style

So this week we got to go to the temple on Thursday! I seriously love the temple, and I can't imagine serving as a missionary without the opportunity to attend the temple every transfer. After the temple we went to GANGNAM. In case you didn't really know what Gangnam is... it is a city. A super rich city. It is part of Seoul but it has some great shopping! :) We did some Christmas shopping there, so it was pretty fun. I got some good pictures too! :)

So I don't really remember what happened this last week, I am gonna be honest. This happens sometimes, though I don't really know why. But I will tell you a funny story to keep this entertaining.

Last Sunday, Sister Capener and I had to take on the responsibility of copying around 200 papers for our member record book. The elders had taken all the records and updated them, organized them, and alphabetized them. But we needed to copy everything to make our book all pretty, too. So we copied all 200 exactly in the same order that theirs was. We made sure to put their book back together and keep it organized as we copied. We kept all our copies in order, we just didn't have sheet protectors to put them in yet, so we kept them in a stack in our binder. It took us around 3 hours, but we completed the task. :) We stepped outside of the church to walk home, and the cross walk light turned green. By the time we got to the crosswalk, we had 10 seconds to get across the intersection, so we started running. Halfway through the intersection... it happened. Papers... 200 freshly copied, freshly organized member records, whipped up into the air in the middle of a busy intersection. It looked like a snow ball had exploded. And not to mention the fact that there was 5 seconds left for us to cross the street, and Korean drivers don't yield to pedestrians. And we are foreigners, so all the cars in the intersection were already filled with people watching us. I looked at Sister Capener with big eyes, and we both knew what we had to do. We started laughing hysterically as we ran around the road, picking up the pieces of paper. Why were we laughing? I don't really know. There were cars honking, people swerving around us... but somehow we knew we were protected. We should have probably been crying, but for some reason we both displayed our fear in laughter. As if we didn't look strange enough--two white girls running around in the middle of an intersection gathering up papers with huge smiles on their faces--Sister Capener was carrying a pink plastic hammer that a member had given to us (we don't really know why ).  So she had a pink toy hammer in one hand, and was picking up papers with the other.  Just imagine that picture. :) Luckily,  we gathered up all the papers in a big bundle and ran off to the side of the road.  We made it safely to the sidewalk and sunk into Kimchi Squat position (the squat that Koreans all do), and laughed our heads off.

Okay, so it was probably funnier to us. But still... it was an adventure. :)

This last week we had a miracle. This lady called us asking for the Bupyeong city missionaries. We said we were the ones she was looking for, and soon we had a time set up to meet. She was originally English interest, but when we taught the gospel section of the meeting, she lit up with interest. She wants to know about God because she has never attended any church of any kind. She is a nurse, so we get along quite well. ;) We asked her if she would be baptized in the first lesson... a step of major faith for us... and she said yes! She said that if she comes to know the gospel is true, she will be baptized. We are still shooting for a white Christmas! :)

Anyway, love you all and miss you always!
We are gangstas!

Seoul Temple

Korea is getting pretty!

This is the longest my hair has ever been!

Me and my beautiful Companion.

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Monday, November 9, 2015

12 Months Down!

Well... I don't know how that happened. Where did the last 12 months of my life go? I have decided that when you are a missionary, you step up to a higher plane that is closer to heaven, and time runs a bit more like God's time does. And by that, I mean time flies. Have you ever heard that 1000 years on earth is 2 hours in heaven? I heard that in seminary at one point. I can't promise you it is exact doctrine, but I feel like as a missionary, our time changes too. 12 months as a missionary feels like 6 months as a normal person. I don't understand.  But I am sure my family appreciates the passing time, though I think it feels faster for me than for them. ;) We went to an American buffet to celebrate my year mark, and one of our investigators gave us a chocolate cake to congratulate me. ;) So 잘 목었습니다! We ate well. :)

Okay so this week I gave my first zone training. It was a bit scary, I am not going to lie. But it ended up being okay, I think. I mean there were a lot of people participating and commenting, and I saw a lot of missionaries taking notes, so I think it was good. :)

Do you remember when I sent my email about faith? Well, we have continued putting our faith to the test. And Sister Capener and I have seen miracle after miracle. We have two investigators who have agreed to be baptized, they just don't have a date yet. We handed out 5 Book of Mormons last week which is super rare for Korea. We also got 4 numbers from people off the street and taught a street lesson which ended in a prayer. We pray so much more during the day, and we have realized that if we promise God that we are going to, for instance, give out a Book of Mormon. He won't let us get home until we give one out. As in, God keeps people on the streets for us to talk to until we find the one to give the Book of Mormon to. It is the coolest thing. :)

Our 4 sister house is doing this thing to celebrate the holidays missionary style. We have a big window in the back of our main room, and we are going to decorate it in snow flakes. We only get to put a snow flake up if we hand out a Book of Mormon though. For each Book of Mormon we hand out, we get to put a snow flake up. Also, we are making a Christmas tree, and for each name card or pamphlet we give out, we get to put ornaments on the tree. And to top it all off, we are shooting for a White Christmas. What color do people wear when they are baptized? WHITE! :) So we want a white Christmas. Our goal is to have an investigator baptized by Christmas. We know we can do it, because it has been promised to us by an apostle that even in Korea, we can baptize someone every month. There are enough prepared people here. :) Plus, what better Christmas gift can we give to the Savior than to bring one of Heavenly Father's children unto Him? :)

Well this week is temple week, so we get to go to the temple on Thursday. I am SO EXCITED. I love the temple so much. :)

Also, I know its kind of weird we are already decorating our house for Christmas... but considering how fast time goes on a mission, Christmas will be here in no time. What feels like the amount of time from December 1st to December 25th in the normal world, is the same amount of time it feels from now to December 25th as a missionary. Does that make sense?... if not... haha my English skills have plummeted anyway so it doesn't surprise me. Haha. Okay enough rambling.

LOVE YOU ALL! MISS YOU ALWAYS!


My new beautiful model companion! :) Sister C

                                                                          Me and my C!!!!
Year mark! I also gave a training this day (45 minute talk).

I got a cake from our investigator for my one year mark! :)


Monday, November 2, 2015

Halloween?

I labeled this email as "Halloween" with a question mark because I am gonna be honest... I totally missed Halloween. I went to bed on Saturday night, and then I realized that the next day was November 1st. That led me to realize that I had let Halloween totally just blow by me. So... Happy late Halloween! :)

Transfers were this week, and I am now with Sister Capener. She is seriously adorable. Her faith is something that I haven't seen from many missionaries yet, and I won't let it dim even a little during our transfers together. I am going to let her fire spread to me, and hopefully to others as well. She is amazing and I have already learned so much from her. She is a fairly new missionary still, having only been in Korea for three months. She has still has greenie fire, and I am hoping to catch some of it. :)

So I got a bit of a surprise call from President Morrise this last week. Our sweet Sister Training Leader went home last week because of some unfortunate family occurrences, and that left Incheon Zone without a Sister Training Leader. During a family history meeting at our church, our phone started buzzing and I looked down to see President Morrise's name on the Caller ID. I tapped Sister Capener and we walked out into the hallway to answer it. During the phone call, President Morrise just asked me a few simple questions about my health, and said that he had been thinking about me. I politely thanked him and then we ended the phone call. "That was kinda weird," I thought to myself. Then ten minutes later, I get another call from President Morrise that began with him telling me in Korean that God wanted me to be the new Incheon Zone Sister Training Leader. My jaw dropped as my heart was beating a million miles an hour, and Sister Capener laughed at my reaction. He then told me all the details about it and everything, and I accepted the assignment. So yeah, I am the Sister Training Leader of our zone now, and I have to give a training in front of our zone on Thursday. I am kind of nervous, but excited too. Haha wish me luck. ;)

So this week we decided to put our faith to the test. We asked all three of the investigators we met with in they would be baptized. And one of them was a 100% English Interest only investigator that we were meeting with for the first time. Two of the three said that if they come to know that the gospel is true, they will get baptized. The English interest investigator said no, but was still willing to listen to our gospel message and help us with our Korean. She even thought we were kind of cute for trying so hard. But hey, none of the relationships with our investigators were ruined, and all three baptismal commitments ended in good things. God really does help us when we trust Him.:)

Also, since we have been trying to strengthen our faith, we have also been running into a lot of interesting situations on the streets. Satan knows what we are trying to do, and he is sending everyone he can send to stop us on our way. We ran into one lady who got literally an inch away from our faces and started yelling at us in very rude Korean about how "It's not the true gospel!" She wouldn't leave us, so we tried talking to some other people, but she kept following us. Kind of the creeps. I politely said "Go away" in Korean, and then said "Have a nice day." Finally she walked away, but she was the one defeated because I was nice to her even after she had yelled at us for five minutes. She turned around and glared at us, telling us once again that our gospel wasn't true, but we just smiled politely back. She muttered some more stuff and continued walking away. Then we ran into this guy who pointed to our church building (he didn't think we could speak Korean), so we nodded and said "yes, that is our church." He then waved his hand in our faces and said "No!" in English, then continued to repeat the Korean word for cult. I asked him why he thought that, but he just continued saying the words, "no" and "cult." We just let him go on his way. We know we are doing the right thing, because we have never experienced so much persecution. But hey, that's what happens when you act on your faith. :)

Love always, Sister Maughan