Dongdaemun Week 14

Dear Family and Friends,

So this week has been pretty awesome with teaching two Chinese investigators.  We taught one who also came to church on Sunday and he seems really prepared.  He is 32 years old and had tons of great questions when we taught him with the second counselor on Sunday.  We watched the restoration video in Chinese and I felt like I was a new missionary again not understanding anything that was going on.  Even though he had another appointment to go to, he took the time to ask questions because he wondered so much about what we were teaching.  Its so amazing how a questioning soul really leads people to find the truth they have been seeking.

We have been having lots of success with the members this past transfer.  We have received two referrals that have both turned into investigators with baptismal dates.  It just goes to show that the key to missionary work has and always will be the members.  The older man that got referred to us is doing really well.  He is reading the Book of Mormon and praying which is the key to conversion.  It's amazing how prepared an investigator can get for baptism by just keeping the small commitments like reading the Book of Mormon and praying.  Brother Jo hopefully will be baptized next week.

This week we also had the opportunity to teach English class.  Our English class this week reached eight people which is a huge improvement from when I was first here.  Since English class leads to a lot of success with investigators, we have been working on the teaching and flyering mostly to get it rolling.  After teaching English for so long, Elder Ashby and I have actually started to get pretty good at it.  I'm in no way a perfect teacher of anything yet, of course.  But it's so cool to see the progess of students and especially their joy when they understand a concept.  Teaching the gospel is so similar.  Understanding is so vital.

Sorry I couldn't get a longer email off.  I had a lot written until the entire email got deleted, oh well haha.

Thanks for all the love and support!

Your favorite missionary,

Elder Wheeler

Dongdaemun Week 13

Dear Family and Friends, 

So I'll start off with an experience I had this week which is one of the craziest experiences that I've had on my mission.  We had just gotten off a bus after a proselyting activity in another area when we started to introduce ourselves to the first person we saw.  Well, he wasn't very interested, but the kid who ran up asking, "Are you the mormons?" was pretty interested.  Now here's where it gets a little crazy. I asked him "how do you know who we are?" He goes on to tell me how he met this missionary in Nokbeon area during a street boarding activity who called him three or four times before the calls stopped.  As we are talking, we both realize that we met each other in January, called each other 3 or four times, and then because I got transfered and because he got a new phone, all contact stopped.  What's even crazier is that he is currently living in the Dongdaemoon area!  He's just one year younger than I am, and he remembered my age because I look super old to Koreans and he couldn't believe that I was 19.  Well we're meeting with him this week because he's looking for something to rely on and he wants to be different from his parents who are Christian and Buddhist, although we are a Christian church.  Anyways, I was just stunned that God planned it so perfectly and that this kid who was waiting for my call for 3 months just happened to meet up with us again.  This gospel is awesome.

This week also included my birthday which was well spent.  We started off by playing soccer in the morning and hanging out with our investigator who loves soccer.  We did some studies, headed over to the church to teach.  English class, which was fun, and afterwards all the Elders went out to a buffet for dinner which was delicious.  We also visited one of the college students in our ward who is currently serving as the ward clerk.  He's doing well and it was amazing to see his testimony of the Book of Mormon.  He's read it from the time he was 14 everyday and says that he can't start his day without it.  It just goes to show that the Book of Mormon is the foundation of testimony.  Then at about 9:30, the other Elders brought in two cakes that had been dropped off during the day, one of them by the bishop.  All in all, we ate quite a bit of cake.

This week we also had our weekly meeting with Brother Jo who was referred by a member in another ward.  He's in his mid 70's and he loves what we teach, but he also talks a lot.  The lesson went a little over, but he is preparing well for baptism and showed up for church on Sunday.  Plus, we got an emeritus member of the 70 helping us with the lessons, so its a blast.

Thanks for all the love and the birthday wishes!

Your Favorite Missionary,

Elder Wheeler

Elder Wheeler and Elder Ashby with their street boarding sign

A pig's head at a meat market

Chase at the pork stand

Elder Ashby at the pork stand

Chase, Elder Ridge and Elder Green with Chase's 20th birthday cakes

Elder Wheeler and Elder Green with cupcakes they  made for a young girl in the ward

Former Elder Mattingly with Elder

Wheeler and Elder Ashby.  They

look like three angels!

Dongdaemun Week 12

Dear Family and Friends,

This week was great and enjoyable.  The best part of the week was, of course, conference weekend where we had the opportunity to hear from President Thomas S. Monson, who is absolutely amazing.  I really enjoyed his short but powerful speach! I just wanted to share a quick part that I liked, "It has been said that the door of history turns on small hinges, and so do people’s lives. The choices we make determine our destiny."  Deciding to come on a mission has been one of those monumental choices in my life so far, but the change that has occured has come from the small choices I've made daily to follow Christ.  Although I haven't been perfect at those choices, I can definitely witness to the fact that righteous decsicions affect our happiness.

This week I spent sometime on exchanges in Hwayang with the district leader out there, Elder Day.  We taught English class, met with his investigator and did some street boarding.  By the way, we just made a new streetboard for people to put stickers on that just says, "Happy/Sad."  They just stick a sticker on how they're feeling and then we talk to them about it.  Suprisingly, it works pretty well.  Getting back to Elder Day, we talked a lot with the ward mission leader who helped us teach.  He has lots of good ideas and really cares.  He even helped us out with our Zone training this past week.  Our month's focus is on "Passion for Finding," so for Zone training, we invited 4 members and did role plays with them.  It went super well and gave the missionaries a good opportunity to get some good feedback on how they're doing.

This week for investigators, we found a new investigator who agreed on a baptismal date! His name is Jang Choon, and he works as an apartment guard.  He works for 24 hrs and then rests for 24 hrs in that pattern continually, so he can only come to church every other week.  But he has attended lots of other churches and really enjoyed ours.  He watched conference and really seems to be looking for the truth.  We also had our 2nd visit with an older man and his wife at their house.  He is a very smart man who orginially let us in to his house because he was impressed with the way we were dressed and conducted ourselves.  We originally got in after Elder Ashby randomly (actually prompted by the spirit), rung this doorbell as we were walking down the street.  After I asked for a tour of his house (again prompted by the spirit), he was eager to let us in.  It was awesome.

I'm so grateful for the opportunity to serve as a missionary here in Korea where the food is spectacular and the people are so kind and considerate. Thanks for all the support.

Your Favorite Missionary,

Elder Wheeler

Time for a haircut!

Watching Conference

Whose face is that in shadow?

Dongdaemun Week 11

Dear Family and Friends,

This week was awesome to say the least.  This Tuesday we had the great opportunity to go to the Temple.  It was a great time and afterwards we went with the Elders in the Zone to a sweet mountain and a cool Buddhist temple.  It was a pretty great Preparation day.  The next day, on Wednesday, we started an exchange with one of the Elders in Imun, named Elder Wyckoff.  He came to Korea at the same time as I did, and he has changed a lot.  It was a really enjoyable exchange.  We taught a new investigator at the church and visited this one guy's shop.  After teaching the guy in the shop, we gathered the other two people in the store and said a prayer together.  It was pretty epic.

Thursday was a great learning experience because we had a skills workshop at the church next to President's house.  All the missionaries in our stake and 10 members from the various wards came and we did role plays together for a couple of hours.  We mainly practiced inviting investigators to church and to get baptized.  

This week we had the opportunity to meet with two less-active members of our congregation.  One of them is my same age, and he's making a living by teaching kids how to create music using computer programs.  He's also released a few tracks.  His plan is to become a famous DJ in America.  His mom is Bolivian, so he also speaks fluent Spanish and pretty good English.  We met him at the church and showed him the restoration video which went well.  He committed to be more diligent in his scripture study which should really help him.  There's just a special spirit about the Joseph Smith story that blows my mind.  For some reason, I never get tired of sharing it.  

On Saturday, we had a ward barbecue in the backyard of the church.  We all ate so much meat and two of our investigators came.  Luckily, our bishop is a grill master, so it was pretty darn delicious.  The real miracle came the next day during church, though.  One of the referrals we received from a member in our Stake came to church and loved it.  He's about 76 years old and is so prepared.  We met him with one of the old area seventies that is currently in our ward, and we had a great lesson.  We set a baptismal date for the 30th of April.  Since it was fast Sunday, I also had the chance to bear my testimony during church which went well.  It stills amazes me how far I've come in my language skills; truly a blessing from God.  

Thanks so much for all the love and support!

Your Favorite Missionary,

Elder Wheeler

Elder Ashby "arm wrestling proselyting!"

Elders  Ryu, Green, Seely, Ridge, Judd

and Day holding Elder Wheeler

Elder Green, Elder Wheeler and Elder Ridge

Elder Wheeler, Elder Green and Elder Ridge

Elder Wheeler, Elder Green and Elder Ridge

Elder Wheeler photo bombing Elder Green and Elder Ridge's selfie

Elder Ridge, Elder Ashby, Elder Green and Elder Wheeler

Elders Wyckoff, Skinner, Seely, Judd, Ashby, Green, Ridge and Wheeler

Elder Ashby is on top of the world!

Buddhist Temple

Elder Ashby at his desk

Elder Wheeler and Elder Green in front of the cherry blossoms

Dongdaemun Week 10

Dear Family and Friends,

So it looks like the little bit of Chinese that I learned paid off this week! We are now teaching two new Chinese investigators who are really awesome.  The first one is a woman named Constance who has two daughters.  She speaks English pretty well and she just started to learn Korean.  Her husband is Korean and they communicate in English.  We met her on the street while English flyering, and she wanted to come learn English with us, so we met her at the church with one of our members.  She said that she is usually quite uneasy inside church buildings, but she immediately stated that our building felt really comfortable.  It looks like shes going to come with her daughter to church this Sunday which should be awesome!  The second Chinese investigator's name is Jack and he is a student at Korea University.  English and Korean are both a little rough, so teaching him is interesting, but hopefully we'll be able to get a person who speaks Chinese in for our next lesson.  

This week we also planned and executed a big Zone activity out in the Hwayang missionaries' area.  We decided to do cookie frosting on the street with people for Easter and it went super well.  People loved coming up and making cookies, but it did take quite a while to pump out 200 sugar cookies at the house.  Thankfully, my Christmas cookie making experience came in handy.  We got lots of people to refer over to the Hwayang Elders, so that was good.  We had so many cookies left over that we moved areas and did the activity in Imun.  Over there, we also had a ton of success and one of the college students we met went to church the next Sunday in that area.  To end the Easter holiday on Sunday, we had a big music night put on by our mission which went super well.  I was the mic guy for all the singers and violin players.  It was super nerve racking in front of 200+ people, especially because everyone hates the kid who messes up.  Well lucky for me, it went flawlessly.  The music of Jesus Christ's resurrection definitely was very powerful and left lots of people in tears.  

This week Elder Ashby and I went on exchanges in Imun area, and I had the privilege to go with Elder Judd.  He is a solid young missionary.  While on exchanges we taught a great English Bible class to two newcomers who were both foreigners (Mongolian, Vietnamese).  It continues to amaze me how many foreigners are living in our area.  Plus, I successfully learned how to tell people we are missionaries in Mongolian this week!

As for last P-day, we went up to Korean University and balled with a bunch of ginormous Chinese people.  Luckily, we had Elder Green on our team, who can dunk.  We ended up winning in the end, and it was just super fun.  Plus, we got one kid to commit to come to church this upcoming Sunday.  

Thanks for all the love and support!

Your Favorite Missionary,

Elder Wheeler

Easter cookie activity



Elder Wheeler, Constance, Elder Ashby

Dongdaemun Week 9

Dear Family and Friends,

This week was really exciting and enjoyable.  For last week's P-Day, we started off with a big basketball game with a bunch of Elders from various Zones. It was pretty enjoyable meeting at the biggest church building in our mission and playing B-ball together.  We also spent quite a bit of time this week proselyting in another area in our Zone, trying to help them jump-start their area.  We  street boarded there on Tuesday and spent some time on Saturday teaching their English class with them.  

This Sunday we had a pretty cool miracle at church.  So believe it or not, there are quite a few Mongolian members at our church and at one point the missionaries were baptizing so many Mongolians, they had plans to open up a Mongolian branch, but it never got that far.  The missionaries haven't had Mongolian investigators for quite awhile, until one of the Mongolian sisters, attending college here, brought her boyfriend to church yesterday.  We actually had a lesson with him and he committed to come to church next week and take the next lesson.  It was a really cool miracle.  Along with that, Brother Khosobayer (another Mongolian member) was called as our new ward mission leader.  Luckily, he's really good at Korean so it's easy to communicate.  Unfortunately, I don't speak enough Mongolian to communicate fully with our investigator though.  Along with Mongolians, there are also lots of Chinese people in our area.  Elder Ashby and I are starting to study Chinese during our lunch times and we've actually started to get pretty good.  Since we meet so many Chinese people on the street, we've got down phrases to use such as "hello, I'm an American, We are missionaries, Are you a Chinese person?, Do you believe in the existence of God?, nice to meet you, I like church and Jesus Christ." Not bad for a week, but my pronunciation is terrible to say the least.  

This week we also met with one of our super awesome investigators, Dongwon.  He is the 31yr-old cryptography major college student I talked about.  Anyways, we're teaching English along with the gospel as part of the English Program that we offer to people on the street.  He is pretty good at English and is accepting the gospel part really well.  The only problem he has is waking up for church.  After our lesson with him on Saturday, we ate with the stake as part of the night held for the anniversary of the Relief Society, which was conducted at our building.  He definitely enjoyed the food and the atmosphere.

As for another sweet miracle, I went on exchanges with Elder Green, a missionary from Mesa and a district leader in our Zone.  Well, during our exchange, we met this 75yr-old guy who committed to come to church.  Well (here's the miracle part), he actually showed up to church and when the other Elders, along with the gospel principles teacher, told him about prophets, he exclaimed that "this has to be the true church because it has prophets!" He also committed to a baptismal date for next month.  Basically lots of unexpected things happened this week that were totally awesome.

Thanks for all the love and support.

Your Favorite Missionary,

Elder Wheeler

Eddy with Elder Ashby and Elder Wheeler

Dongdaemun Week 8

Dear Family and Friends,

This week started with a great training with President about the Easter initiative and how we're going to apply it.  We saw the wonderful new Easter video made by the church and learned a lot about the importance of the Resurrection.  (Here's a link if you want to watch it - it's 2 minutes long):  #Hallelujah Video—Find New Life 

				#Hallelujah Video—Find New Life Though Jesus Christ was crucified, He rose from the dead. This Easter, find out how, through Jesus Christ, we too can find new life. Watch this video to learn more.
				View on www.mormon.org	Preview by Yahoo

After our monthly Zone Training meeting on Wednesday, I started exchanges with a younger Korean missionary named Elder Ryu who is serving in Hwayang.  They just white-washed that area (both missionaries are new to and opening the area so there are no previous contacts)  so they currently don't have a lot going on right now, so we were able to spend a lot of time talking about finding new investigators!  During the exchange, we also helped the Relief Society President basically rearrange everything in her house.  That was super fun, but a lot more than we expected. We ended up bringing desks and big wardrobes down the staircase from the second story.  Also this week, we attended soccer with our investigators and youth in another area in our stake.  We had a blast again, and when we finished we headed right to the Elder's house in that area to shower before we left for a baptism in ShinChon.  Well we couldn't find the other Elder's house and they didn't pick up their phone, so we ended up changing in the subway station bathroom before we hopped on the subway for ShinChon. We searched for this place for ever and by the time we took the bus to the Subway station and hopped on the train, we were projected to arrive about 20 or 30 minutes late.  Two of Elder Ashby's investigators were getting baptized, so we had to be there, and we ended up arriving right before the actual performance of the baptism.  That was definitely one experience that I will never forget because we got there on time miraculously for the baptism.

This week for our investigators, unfortunately, no one showed up to church, but we found a super sweet new investigator.  He is about 30 years old and is a couple inches taller than me.  He asked some amazing questions about our church and right now is finishing graduate school in the field of cryptography.  Both of his parents were divorced when he was a kid, and he seems to really be looking for something more in his life.  As for our other investigators, most of them were too busy to meet this week with Korean school starting up and all.  However our investigator who is a senior in high school is doing well and we have an appointment with him tonight.  

This past P-Day was also probably one of the most fun P-days ever.  We went to the wax museum and back which was thoroughly enjoyable.  I'm so grateful for the opportunity to work with so many great members in this ward too.  This past Sunday we visited another less active member with the first counselor and he agreed to come out this next Sunday to church.  We ended Sunday night by eating dinner with the Bishop and his family who are amazing.  

Thanks so much for all the love and support.

Your Favorite Missionary,

Elder Wheeler

Chase ran into all sorts of famous people this week!

Bruce Lee

Al Pacino

Robert De Niro

Steven Spielberg and ET

Albert Einstein

Gandhi

President Obama who even let the missionaries climb aboard

Air Force One

Tom Cruise

Tiger Woods

Elder Ashby relaxing at his desk

A Korean woman playing a cool instrument