February!

This last week was.. really fantastic! One of my favorite weeks on the mission so far! My new companion sister Park is so incredible and I am truly so blessed to be companions with her at this time! I am supposed to be follow up training her but seriously I feel she is training me!! I have never been so happy as a missionay. We are both young and wanting to work really hard! Sister Park has an older sister and a younger sister. Her family is all members but her older sister is less active. During part of high school she lived in Indonesia and then after high school she attended BYU Hawaii for 3 years! Although she speaks English fluently she knows that I want to improve my korean so she speaks Korean to me and I love it so much!

Things here in Jinju and Sacheon are busier than they have ever been (I think I mentioned that last week...) It's sad because we don't have enough time to do all that we want to do to help this area.

Also last Sunday an american showed up at church (that wasn't a missionary)! He was from Arizona and was on a trip for work. When he saw me, he said he recognized me from my blog! haha. It was so strange yet so funny at the same time. He said he wanted to find out more about the church in Jinju and ended up finding my blog!

A little about the people we are working with!

We taught sister Kwon (our investigator who found the church website and requested a BOM and a pamplet) this last we the Gospel of Jesus Christ and invited her to be baptized in 3 weeks and she said YES! So we have a lot of work to do to help prepare her for baptism. She used to have a big problem with the word of wisdom but she has progressed so much and she loves calling to tell us the she hasn't had any coffee that day! She is continuing to pray and receive answers to her prayers. She used to have nightmares every night but as we and her have been praying that she can sleep peacefully her prayers have been answered! I told her how when I was younger I used to have nightmares too but every night I prayed before going to bed that I wouldn't have nightmares, I didn't have nightmares! that was one of my first real experiences with prayer when I was younger and it was fun to be reminded of that. Sister Kwon is also continuing to love the BOM. She continues to have a desire to change her life and I love watching her progress and become the person that God knows she can become!

We also taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ to our investigator family this past week. The one with the cutest 10 year old daughters in the world. When we invited the mother to be baptized she said she would need to think a little more about it. She said she loves out messages, especially when we taught the plan of salvation. she loves learning about our church need to work harder to help her have a firmer testimony of the BOM because right now she said she wants a church with more members for her kids....But in Sacheon our church only has about 14 active members... and only 2 primary kids... so it's tough... but we will continue to do our best!

The Less active member we have been working with for the past few months came to our English class and had a great time! Said she had a great time and that she wants to come back! But when we ask her to come to church she says if we can make her sons come to church then she will go with them...but her sons have absolutly no desire to come to church... so sad... but we continue to meet her each week. she absolutely loves the missionaries and loves our messages. She actively listens and asks questions! I know she will come back to church some day!

YAYY MISSIONARY WORK AND YAY KOREA<3 The work here is hard.... like I'm sure it is everywhere but I know it's worth it. Even just changing a few lives for the better is worth it.

Fun facts about Korea:

If you eat a lot of food at a meal it's a really good thing and the members like you more. people ask "did you eat a lot?" as a common question everyday... I was reminded the other day that if you eat a lot in America you are kinda considered a pig. haha. well I'm happy that for a year and a half I can eat as much as I want and get praised for it:) hehe

Scripture of the day is the scripture I shared with our little branch in Sacheon during fast and testimony meeting. Ether 12:6. because we don't receive a witness until after the trial of our faith... if life was easy it would be easy to have faith all the time but it's through the hard times that as we exercise our faith we truly see God's hand working in our lives.

Sister Hurley