Earring in My Ramen

So in an effort to save time last week, Sister Capener and I brought Ramen to the church to cook for lunch. Well, we couldn't find a pot to boil the water in. So we tried to make it in the microwave. First of all, Ramen takes a lot longer to make in the microwave. Don't do it. We tried to boil the water in the microwave and then put the noodles in... yeah complete fail. ;) It took about 10 minutes of microwave use to warm up and cook one packet of noodles. We learned our lesson. Anyway, after making the Ramen, we sat down to eat it. Except we didn't sit down because there was no chairs. So we squatted next to the table. As I was eatting my Ramen, I picked up some noodles right as my earring plopped down into the cloudy pepper red soup. I am sure there was an easier way, but I grabbed my chopsticks and started chasing the earring around in my Ramen, unable to pick it up. After about 5 minutes of laughing with Sister Capener and trying to grab an earring with chopsticks, I finally gained enough dexterity to pick up the earring. You know you are in Korea when you find yourself eating Ramen, and using chopsticks to get your earring out of your Ramen. I don't really know why I told you that story haha. Hope you laughed. :)

Okay, now on to the spiritual stuff. We have seen so many miracles lately, I can't even tell you all of them in one email. But I will do my best to point out the main ones.

So within the last 2 months, we have fasted multiple times to find new investigators. We are striving to get new investigators. Two weeks ago, some sisters from another area called us with a referral from a member. We contacted that person, and we are meeting her next week! She wants to learn English, but also has gospel interest.

Yesterday, we stepped out of our house and at one of the intersections, there was only one lady standing there. So of course, we talked to her. She ended up telling us that she had a lot of interest in learning English, but would be willing to learn the gospel. As we were talking to her, another man came up to the intersection. He looked at me and asked "Do you speak English?" in English. So I told him I did, and we started talking. Sister Capener talked to the lady, and I talked to the man. And then the lady started talking to the man in Korean, telling him about the program that we had just told her about. Our street contact helped us find another street contact! Anyway, we ended up getting both of their numbers. So cool!

And then this morning, some random lady called us. She said, in Korean, "Are you a foreigner?" So I responded yes, and she told me that she wanted to meet with us. I was thinking she was English interest, because why else would she ask if I was a foreigner? But then she said "I want to learn about your church." Miracle. Rarely do people start out with gospel interest. It is usually English interest that turns into gospel interest. We have an appointment with this lady on Friday. :)

And then on my way to emailing today, we got another call from a random number. I answered and talked to the man. He was a member from Daejon. At first I was thinking, Oh man, we are nowhere near Daejon, he has the wrong missionaries. But then he went on to say that a recent convert from his ward was moving up to our ward, and that we needed to meet with her for the recent convert lessons. He sent her number to us. Another miracle! She may not be an investigator but she is just as precious and important.

There are so many more miracles I could tell you about, all ranging from less actives coming back to church, to miracle conversations on the street. Being a missionary is the best, and I absolutely love it. I can't believe that as of tomorrow, I will have been in Korea for an entire year. But I love this country, and I love the culture, and I love the people. I can't imagine serving anywhere else. I know this gospel is true, and I can feel Heavenly Father's love for the Korean people.

Love and miss you all!

Love, Sister Maughan

Happy New Year!

So you may want to know what we do here in Korea to celebrate Christmas. Well, for Koreans Christmas is a date holiday. It is like Valentines Day. If you don't have a date, you don't celebrate. Haha. Some Koreans do celebrate it with their family, but especially those among the younger generation treat is as a date holiday. So on Christmas, there were a LOT of couples out. And Korean couples are so cheesy. It is super funny.

For Christmas as missionaries, our zone met together and caroled in front of one of the big department stores in our area. We sang all sorts of Christmas songs in Korean and English. So many people took people selfies with us. I mean a group of  American missionaries singing Christmas carols in the busy and freezing streets of Korea looks very... well the Koreans would use the word 신기하다. It means interesting. But yeah... It was way fun! :) We gave out a lot of "A Savior is Born" proselyting cards and ended up in a lot of pictures. It was freezing... but it was fun. :)

On Christmas Eve, we had a lot of fun adventures. We made cookies with one of our investigators! :) A week before she had handed me her phone and had told me to look up an American cookie recipe. I didn't know where to look, so I made her download Pinterest. That's where we found an easy snowball cookie recipe. We got most of the ingredients (some were lacking as we are in Korea) and used her small toaster oven to make them (Koreans don't have ovens most of the time).  They ended up being super delicious though! We enjoyed eating cookies together and shared the two church Christmas videos: He is the Gift, and A Savior is Born. She really enjoyed them. It was SO fun and made Christmas Eve feel like Christmas Eve, and not just a normal missionary day. :) Then the night of Christmas Eve, our ward combined with another ward and had a Christmas party. And it was CRAZY. Right before the party began, one of the members ran up to me and asked if I could accompany basically the whole program. The pianist that was planning on coming fell through. So up until the performance part of the night, I was running around rehearsing numbers with different groups and doing my best to help every one that I could. I felt a little bit like I was being yanked around, but I was happy to serve and I love playing the piano, so I had no complaints. :)  I am just thankful that I can understand enough Korean to accompany people now. :)

On Saturday we had quite the lesson with a less active, recent convert, and investigator. Somehow we ended up teaching all of them together, all at the same time. They all came to English class, became friends, and met with us afterwards for more English help and to hear the gospel. So cool! And the even crazier thing was, the recent convert is Chinese, the investigator is Japanese, and the less active is Korean. And we are of course American. Only one of us was speaking our native language (Korean), the rest of use were speaking in Korean, which was our second language. It was super cool! :) Unfortunately we found out that the investigator lives in the Daejon Mission, so we will have to refer her. But it was a super good lesson, and she accepted a soft baptismal commitment and prayed for the first time. :)

Well I can't believe Christmas is over, but I guess it is time to welcome in the new year. I have to admit that I hate January, but I will make the best of it. I don't like the cold but hey, when filled with a testimony it can become a warm fire right? Or so we hope. Haha.

Anyway my New Years resolution is to read the Book of Mormon all the way through again before I finish my mission. I have five months so I have plenty of time. :)

It was SO good skyping with everyone on Christmas Eve. Love and miss you all!

Love, Sister Maughan

The cookies we made! :)

Cookie selfie cuz why not? :) (they were supposed to be snowballs but the lack of powdered sugar made them look not like snowballs and just like brownie balls haha.)

cookies selfie. :)

Christmas morning before the presents were unwrapped. Charlie brown Christmas tree. :)

this was my Christmas lunch. (Kimbab).

LOOK ~ LEXIE, HAILEE AND LYDIA! :)

Sister Missionaries! :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I hope that all of you have an amazing Christmas this week! I wish that Christmas were as big of a thing in Korea as it is in America. But it is still gonna be fun. :) We are going to do a zone proselyting activity on Christmas. We will probably wrap up Book of Mormons and give them away as gifts, carol, street contact etc. It should be fun! :)

This week we had zone Christmas Conference and it was SO GOOD. President and Sister Morrise are so amazing. After some training, we went up to the mission home with our zone. Since our zone only has 18 missionaries, it was pretty easy to fit us all up in the Morrise's house. We sung Christmas songs together as we read the Christmas story, and ended by sharing testimonies in the low lights of the Christmas tree.

So Sunday we had a miracle! A recent convert/less active came to church! She was baptized about 2 years ago, but hasn't been to church since she was baptized. Sister Capener and I called her one night and set up an appointment to meet. She doesn't really have a testimony, but we were able to build a relationship with her and start teaching her again. Sunday, she texted us halfway through the first hour asking us where she should go. My mouth dropped and we booked it out of Young Women's to meet her at the door.

Anyway, this less active met our other recent convert. This recent convert is Chinese and is the most solid recent convert I have ever met. But lets just say, they became friends. Really fast. They exchanged numbers and started texting back and forth during church. (I don't support texting during church... but I do support making friends ;) ) Anyway, it turns out that our less active sister wants to learn Chinese, and our recent convert is Chinese, so they are going to study together. It was such a miracle. It is so much easier to come to church if you have a friend, and I have faith that we will reactive this less active while strengthening our recent convert. And really, they are both recent converts. So they can strengthen each other together. :)

So since it is Christmas this week, I want to leave you with my testimony of Christ. I have been reading in Luke about Christ's life, and I am amazed at the grace and power of our Savior. He literally helped every one that He could. He blessed everyone that He could. He spread the gospel to everyone that He could. Jesus Christ did everything for everyone. He did everything for me, and He did everything for you. He was born, lived, and returned to His father. He suffered pain and temptations just like us. But He endured perfectly to the end, so that when we slip up, we can start over again, and we too, can return to our Father in Heaven. Because of Jesus Christ, we can overcome all things, and we can live with God again. I know that He loves us, and I love Him more now than I ever have before.

예수 그리스도는 살아계십니다. 그분은 우리 구주 이십니다. 그분은 우리를 사랑하십니다.

Well I can't wait to Skype the family this week! Love and miss you all so much!

메리 크리스마스! Merry Christmas! :)

Love, Sister Maughan

We found some Angel wings. :)

The district.

Star wars is big in Korea too. :)

Filled with Love

So this last week Sister Capener and I managed to run into like every bible basher or 전도사 (jeondo-sa) that we possibly could. 전도사 means "gospel preaching person" and there are a lot of them on the streets. We share the street with a ton of other churches, and for some reason they really like to pick on the Mormons. The funny thing is, I don't know why they like picking on us. As soon as they start trying to fight with us, my Korean flies out the door. Mostly because well, I don't wanna fight. And I can pull the "I am a foreigner and can't speak Korean" card if I have to. Anyway, they like to talk to us and try to fight with us, even though it is pretty clear we are not Korean and can't understand half of what they say. But the first time we were attacked this week, I was just super kind to them. I answered all their questions that included things like "Where are you from? Where do you live now? How long have you been in Korea?" They tried to get me to come into their church house but I kindly told them we had to go. I apologized for having to leave quickly but told them thank you for talking to us and to have a good day. The funny thing is, while we were trapped by 전도사s there were a lot of people watching us, and I think they were impressed at how we handled it. Rather than fighting, we chose to be kind. I mean Jesus wouldn't choose to fight, so why should we?

The second encounter we had with a 전도사 was with our investigator. This 전도사 was a Jehovah's Witness who literally popped out of now where. We were outside playing with our investigator's dog at a playground when this lady just came up to us. She asked us where we were from and handed us an English pamphlet. I read the name of the church and sighed a bit. There are Jehovah's Witnesses every where in Korea I swear. I thought to myself, "no.. not in front of our investigator." For some reason though, I had an idea. Why not just try and relate to this lady? So I asked her how it was talking to people on the streets, if it was hard or not. I told her it is hard for us too and that we get rejected a lot. I told her that all we are trying to do was share Christ's love. She went with it really well for a while, and the spirit was strong. I then brought up Christmas and the lady decided that that was the turning point. She freaked out and said that Christmas wasn't Christ's actual birthday and that we shouldn't celebrate it. I told her that it was just a special time to remember Christ. This is when the miracle happened. Our investigator came up to us and looked at the lady. She said "I am not Mormon. But I believe in the same Christ that these two girls do. And we all know that Christ wasn't actually born on December 25th. But that is an unimportant detail, and Christmas is just a special time to remember Him." She then went on to testify about her beliefs and defend our own. She was INCREDIBLE. I was so proud of her! The Jehovah's Witness lady walked away after that. And I said a prayer for her in my heart. I knew that she was just trying to share her beliefs as we are, but it is hard to go up against the truth of the gospel.

After this encounter, we sat down on a bench with our investigator. We had been teaching her about the Holy Ghost these past few weeks, and she had a moment of revelation. I asked her if what the lady had said did anything to change what she believed. She said "No, words can't change what I believe. I believe what I believe because of what I feel." Then she realized that that feeling was the Holy Ghost, and that only God, through the Holy Ghost, can change what she believes. We had a super deep talk about the Holy Ghost and about Christ and His love for everyone.

Which leads me to why I named this email, "Filled with Love." Both times we encountered people fighting against us, I felt a huge amount of love for these people. Because of that love, I didn't fight with them, but was rather kind to them. I didn't want them to walk away feeling like they had won, or that we had won, but rather wanted them to walk away and say, "Wow, those Mormons were so nice." I never thought I would love someone who wanted to fight against me. But I have felt it. And that is why and how Heavenly Father loves all His children. I imagine this is how He feels towards those who rebel against Him. Heavenly Father loves even those who rebel.

That being said, we still shouldn't rebel against Him. Haha. Anyway, love you all and miss you always! I am excited to skype with you next week! :)

Love, Sister Maughan

Christmas Hope

Christmas is coming SO FAST. I can't believe I am going on round two of the holidays on my mission. But I am so honored to be a missionary during the holidays. It is so special to celebrate Christ's birth while representing Him here in Korea. The stores here have started playing Christmas music... in ENGLISH. I mean a few are in Korean but since Christmas isn't really a big Korean holiday, most of the Christmas music is in English. A few places have put up Christmas trees and Christmas lights. It is definitely nothing compared to Christmas in America, but the little hints of the season that we see and hear here and there and well appreciated. :)

If you haven't seen the new Christmas initiative the church is putting out this year... go look it up. It is super good, and it has helped us in our proselyting. We have cute little cards that we can give to people with the website on it, in Korean. :) The website, in English, is: https://www.mormon.org/christmas
I super suggest watching the video. :)

So this week I had to give a zone training, and it was an adventure as always. I am always nervous before zone trainings. During personal study on Wednesday, I sat there and looked at my notes from Mission Leadership Council meeting and looked at the page full of the missionaries' pictures in our zone. I was trying to get inspiration for what exactly needed to be shared. I thought about each missionary and how I could help them. I was legitimately at a loss for what to share.

Thursday rolled around (the very day of zone training) and I started planning for it that morning. Finally I knew what I was going to share. I can testify that if we open our mouth, it will be filled, and that God will give us what we need to say, in the hour that we will say it. I ended up sharing about hope and about being positive. I kind of ran out of time because my training was at the end of zone training, but I ended by talking about Christ being the ultimate example of hope, and then I shared the Christmas video (the one with the url above). Most of the missionaries hadn't seen it yet. After the video, I got up and basically told the zone that I was going to sit down for the rest of my training, and that it would be a testimony meeting for 20 minutes. I bore my testimony on hope and Christ and sat down. After I sat down, so many good things happened.

So many missionaries got up and said that zone training... everything from what the Zone Leaders trained on to what I trained on... was exactly what they needed.

And the funny thing was... my training was exactly what I needed as well. I had been a little bit down because two weeks ago, we had seven investigators. This week, we have three. Four of our investigators either got too busy to meet, or just weren't progressing so we had to drop them. Two of them had accepted baptismal invitations but just got too busy to meet us, and dropped us. I needed the hope talk too. And from the testimonies of other missionaries, I learned that I had not been the only one feeling a little down. Almost every missionary that stood up had been feeling the same way, and needed that zone training just as much as I did.

I know that the Lord is allowing us to lose investigators to make space for new ones. And I also know that Satan was trying to get all of us missionaries down because we have been trying so hard to have faith. Like I have said, the more faith we have, the harder Satan works on us. But we just have to turn to our faith and remember to hope for good things to happen. If our faith and hope is in the Lord we will not fail. Sometimes we do have to lift each other up, and I am so thankful that I got to be a part of that zone training on Thursday. But when we rely on the Lord, we will not fail.

I love you and miss you all! You should go watch that video now if you haven't seen it yet. ;)

Love, Sister Maughan

This is Korea from the 30th floor.

Christmas tree at the Church house.

Our district with our Ward Mission leader and a recent convert.

us with a little girl in our ward. :)

it's us again!

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!

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.)