Dongdaemun Week 4

Dear Family and Friends,

This week was pretty special in Dongdaemun.  One of the biggest miracles that we were able to see was working with a friend of one of the young men in our ward.  One of the two young men in our ward is a recent convert, and he is super good at missionary work.  This Saturday morning, after joining the young men and the young men's leader in basketball and ping-pong, we sat down and watched the church made movie, "Meet the Mormons."  The non-member friend named Hyeon-seung said he felt something special while we were watching it.  He ended up telling us that he is interested and willing to learn about our church for three reasons: 1. Church Soccer Tournaments 2. Girls 3. Something to rely on.   Although it's only number 3, its definitely something to build on.  He was even willing to come to church until his mom told him "Don't go because that church is a cult."  That was pretty disappointing, but its sort of expected because that's the general opinion floating around currently because people have never been and don't really know much about our church.

This week we also met with a less-active member of our congregation who I called off church records.  He got baptized about 15 years ago and hasn't talked with missionaries since he left the church.  He originally joined because he played basketball with the missionaries and didn't mind church, but because of the intense pressures from work and his parents, he stopped coming.  We met him and he bought us some delicious food as we talked about his experiences with the church.  It looks like we'll be meeting more in the future.  He wasn't the only person to feed us this week.  We had a record setting 6 meals with members, investigators, and less-active members.  Two of them were buffets and the other ones sure felt like buffets.  I felt really fat this week to say the least.  It's hard to not eat a ton because its considered rude if you don't eat very much or leave food on your plate...

This week we enjoyed cleaning our house like crazy.  This missionary house has been around for about 50 years.  It is so old that our previous Mission President was trained in the very house. It was definitely a long, hard job.  Plus we had a long awaited conference with the AP's and President.  We talked more about preparing and Sister Sonksen gave a great training on forgiveness.

Brother Byeon is doing well, but this week when we met him at church he seemed pretty discouraged with keeping the word of wisdom and instead suggested just attending church without actually getting baptized.  He is such a good guy and the members really like him too which helps a lot.  It might take some time for him to be baptized, but he is definitely a really strong investigator. As for other things we did this week, we stopped by Costco with some other missionaries because they needed some supplies for an activity in their branch.  We also ended the week making Hot Chocolate out of a rice cooker for people on the street.  That was pretty fun.

Thanks for all the love and support.

Your Favorite Missionary,

Elder Wheeler

P.S. Korea is awesome

Making Dumplings with a Mongolian family

Sometimes, you heed the call to the mother ship!