Serving The Lord With Heart and Seoul: 크게 기뻐하십시오!

크게 기뻐하십시오! Rejoice greatly! For you have found the true gospel and thus, you have found eternal happiness. :)

This is the message we have been asked to share with our members.

Life isn't easy here in Korea. As if normal school wasn't enough to give you a headache each day, you are also expected to attend academy after academy each day until 10:00 at night. Then you do homework, go to bed, and get up the next day, bright and early, to start the process over again. If you are an adult, you work. You work what the American would call "overtime" every day. And that is just normal. If you are a member of The Church, your co workers will still expect you to stay out late drinking with them every night. If you don't, you could potentially lose your job.

If you are a Korean living in Korea, it is easy to forget the joy of the gospel. It can get lost in the business of daily life.

But that is what we are for! :) Missionaries are messengers of joy!

We have asked 5 members the last week when they felt the most joy in their life. 3 out of the 5 of them said, "There hasn't been joy in my life." You can imagine how we felt when we heard this. So we prepared a message about joy to share with all of our members. The message began with the question, "When have you felt joy in your life?" Then we share Alma 26:16.

16 Therefore, let us glory, yea, we will glory in the Lord; yea, we will rejoice, for our joy is full; yea, we will praise our God forever. Behold, who can glory too much in the Lord? Yea, who can say too much of his great power, and of his mercy, and of his long-suffering towards the children of men? Behold, I say unto you, I cannot say the smallest part which I feel.

This is Alma talking, rejoicing in the Savior. Because of the Savior, we can do all things! We can be happy and feel of His love. He gave up everything for us. We must rejoice! After we share this message, we challenge the members to remember all the blessings that they have received. We give them a commitment to write down a blessing every night on a pretty piece of paper we give them. (This idea came from my aunt Mandy... I don't know if she remembers but she gave a similar commitment to me my senior year of high school). It easy to forget the joy of the gospel in daily life. But we have literally found the TRUTH. What else do we need? We have the truth, and we can rejoice in the gospel.

To make our message even more memorable, we have been giving the members pictures of Sister Capener and I holding up a yellow sign that says "JOY!" in Korean. We tape this photo on a yellow sun because what else screams joy more than a couple of sister missionaries in a picture taped to a yellow sun, holding up the word joy? In fact, I think I will send the picture as part of this email. :) Because pictures speak louder than words.

This is the Korean word for Joy!

Anyway, we have to remember that this gospel really is something to rejoice in! There are so many churches out there, and the world will always try and trick us to believe in other things. But we are so lucky, because we have found the truth, and we have found the keys to TRUE happiness. The world says happiness comes from other things; alcohol, parties, breaking the law of chastity, staying up late and rejecting your family. But that's not the TRUTH. We know the TRUTH. If there is one thing that other people see when they see Mormons, it should be HAPPINESS. We must rejoice in our Savior, rejoice in the truth, and show the world what it is to be truly happy. :) REJOICE! 크게 기뻐하십시오!

Also, no worries my friends, the bomb that North Korea threw over the border was just a wimpy little thing. The South Koreans didn't even seem to flinch. And we didn't even really know about it until an American member told us on Sunday. Oh North Korea.... ;)

Love and miss you all!

Love, Sister Maughan