More sightseeing, Elder Holland and loving this place

More sightseeing with our investigator and his son

Not too much to report this week, just work as usual.

This week Elder Holland came to Korea. He only went to Seoul since Elder Bednar came to Busan last time, so we watched the live broadcast. On Friday he gave a talk along with his wife, Elder Choi, and Elder Whiting. On Saturday night they did a Q & A for the single adults and it was really good.

Elder Holland spoke about how he was invited to speak at a Catholic university in Seoul last week. He said to them, "I'm not telling you that you have to believe what I am saying, but you BETTER believe that I believe what I'm saying." After, Elder Holland explained our church and bore his testimony at the university, the professor jumped up out of his chair and said, 'you guys all better listen to this man, this is very important'.

His talk on Friday was all about how you cannot deny the evidence. He shared the story of Peter healing the man on the temple steps. After Elder Choi gave his talk Elder Holland got up and said, "I'm gonna let you guys in on a little secret; this is one of the speakers in the upcoming general conference, right after President Monson, right before President Uchtdorf, the big three.' Then he said, 'don't tell President Monson I told you or he is going to assign me to Kiribati."

I learned so much from Elder Bednar and he kept saying how amazing the Korean latter day saints are and I get to see that everyday. I am so grateful to be serving in such an amazing place and doing the Lord's work.

Love all you guys and have a great week.
Elder Mica Matua

Overlooking the city

This place is amazing

Pretty crazy

Food is amazing too

Praying for Korea

Transfers, Investigators and fun with friends

Another great week in Busan.

We got transfer calls on Saturday both me and my companion are staying. Which is great because I love Busan. A few elders from our district are transferring out so we had a big get together at the bathhouse this morning.

This week we got a call from an unknown number and when we answered he we could barely understand what he was saying but we picked up that he wanted to meet us at the church. When we got there, there was a little guy standing out front of the church. His name is Souerk Bonang. He is from Cambodia and doesn't know any English and very little Korean. We found out that is the little brother of a man named Annam, who is a member in the ward but hasn't been to church for years because of his job. Souerk Bonang was really fun to teach and he wants to meet us again, so we went and picked up a bunch of Cambodian pamphlets and a Cambodian Book of Mormon.

On Wednesday we got another random call from a guy wanting to meet us. We met up with him a subway station and he took us to his office building. He took us up to the 20th floor and brought us into his office room. There was two ladies and another guy sitting there waiting for us. They sat us down and we started talking. They immediately started talking about their business which was like a foreigner protecting program. Then we realized that they wanted to meet with us so that we can promote their business while we were proselyting and they tried to give us a bunch of material to hand out. We told them more about what we are doing as missionaries and how we couldn't promote for them which got us into a discussion about our church. Three of them were already Christians and one of the ladies is Buddhist. They got really interested in our church and restoration and how we are different from other missionaries. The Buddhist lady was probably the most interested and she kept asking all these questions about Joseph Smith. We gave them all Books of Mormon and they gave us all of their cell phone numbers and told us they want to meet again.

Even though we struggle to find people to teach here in Korea, the Lord keeps putting people in our path in different ways. Everything is going great here in Korea and the work is moving forward. Hope you guys all have a great week.


Elder Mica Matua

Beautiful Busan, Korea

Sushi conveyor belt

Sushi with the homies

Our Investigator and his son took us to the beach

More of Steve's inspiring (strange) lessons

Enjoying the beach

The craziness lives on

Exchanges and Investigators

Not too busy this week. A lot of proselyting, but still great. On Tuesday I went on exchanges with our zone leader Elder Labrum over in Gupo. It was really fun and a good exercise because every single road there is a steep hill. and all we did was proselyte. We actually met a lot of people and got a lot of contacts. While we were walking around, Elder Labrum wanted to take me to the dog market. I wasn't really sure what a dog market was but now I definitely do. Its just like a normal street market but instead of tables lined with fish and fruits, there were huge red cages packed full of these big dogs. Also there were tables lined with skinned dogs ready to purchase.

The street has a big red tent cover over the top which makes it look really sketchy. I guess what they do there is illegal, so when me and Elder Labrum were walking in, this old lady jumped up and ran down the street yelling to the other market people to warn them that we were coming. They get really scared when they see two foreigners in suits randomly walk through. And if they even see a camera they freak out so I couldn't get any pictures. but we did get some pictures with the puppies that they were selling for ten dollars out front.

Yesterday our investigator came to church again. He really seems to love the ward and after church he told us that it was the best time he has ever had at church, he has been to very many different churches.

Yesterday after church while we were doing language study, we got a call from an unknown number. It was from a man we met on the street that we gave a contact card to, so we were really surprised when he actually called. He took us to his house and we taught him a lot about our church. We found out that he is part of a different religion that believes God came to Korea in 1870 and gave them a bible. When we gave him a book of Mormon and gave him a chapter to read he gave us one of those bibles and gave us a chapter to read. We left and went back to the church and were thinking of how we are going to help this guy since he is already so strong in his religion. Then last night we found out that our second counselor in the bishopric used to be a part of that same religion and he said he will come with us next time to help teach him.

Korea is a really hard place to find prepared people but I know that God continues to put people in our path. I know this church is true and I am thankful to be a part of Gods work.

I love you guys and hope you have a great week!
Elder Mica Matua

Investigators, Area Leaders and a Beach

A little P-Day action

Another great week in Busan!

This week we were able to meet with a lot of our investigators. On Wednesday we met with a kid named Kim JongChan. He has been taught all of the lessons but he cannot get baptized or come to church because of his parents but he still wants to meet with us and learn more about our church.

On Saturday we met with a man named Jang HanKir, in Korean his name means "one path", or "one way" so I call him One Direction. He wanted to meet with us to learn English and he is actually really good. We met him in a cafe and started our 30/30 program, which is: we teach English for 30 minutes and then about our church for 30 minutes. I showed him my family pictures and he said," Wow your mother is beautiful, and your father he looks like Martin Luther King." hahaha! But the lesson went really good. Turns out, he already had a Book of Mormon from a long time ago and he said it teaches him good life lessons. When we handed him a pamphlet he said,"Okay I will memorize this tonight." We were like, okay great.

Then yesterday we had two of our investigators show up to Sacrament meeting randomly on their own. One of them showed up a few minutes after sacrament and I motioned for him to come sit next to me. He was drinking a cup of coffee the whole sacrament and left for a little while for a smoke break. We definitely need to teach the Word of Wisdom before next Sunday.

Our other investigator showed up while people were bearing their testimonies so my companion, who was playing the piano, went and sat by him. Then a few minutes later I see him walk up to the pulpit. This was his first time ever being at church so I was really surprised. He didn't really bear testimony but he gave a great talk. He talked about how he met the missionaries and how he loves when we come to teach his family. He said, "Elder Johnstun and Elder Matua gave me a present for new years," then he held up his Book of Mormon. He was really proud of it.

Our English class is going really well and we teach a group of crazy old people on Thursdays and Fridays. On Friday we had mission tour with Elder Choi, one of the Asia North area authorities. He was really funny and told us that he was trained to kill someone with one finger in the military so feel free to fall asleep. Him, Elder Whiting, and The Japanese guy, I forgot his name, are over Asia North which includes North Korea. He said Elder Whiting visits North Korea but Elder Choi can't because he is Korean. Elder Choi's advice to us was, "If you don't like it, then just like it." So that is the motto for this transfer.

Hope YoReBoon have a great week.


Love you guys,
Elder Mica Matua

Like most things in Korea, I have no clue what is happening here

 

This is a typical meat buffet

One of our Ward members

Gwangon Beach for P-Day

Playing soccer - Gwangon Beach

Some of our Zone at Gwangon - Bannibals fo lyfe

We visited Costco!

Oh yeah!

Two updates and a lil Steve for your week

We are terrible parents who get so excited to hear from our Elder, we forget to update his blog. Sorry for the delay...

UPDATE #1
It was a good week in Busan. Its been really hard lately to find anyone and also to meet our investigators but when we get the chance it always goes really good.

Last night we got a call from our district leader telling us that he got us an appointment, for today. All he said was that it was with a less active who hasn't been to church for like ten years and that he wanted to play board games with us, then told us which stop to get off, and thats all the information he gave us. So we woke up this morning went to the bathhouse, came home and got ready, and then got on the subway. Turns out he lives an hour away in a different city, we had to take like five different trains. When we got to the station we walked out and a really nice black sports car pulled up and a guy got out of the passenger seat and said,"Elders, my friends car," then motioned for us to get in. His English name was Stacy and his friend who picked us up was a young man who's English name was brad. He took us to his house. Stacy teaches english and brad is one of his students and is a non-member. His daughter sally was also there. He brought us into a room with a white board and said."okay we will now play jeopardy." We played jeopardy for about and hour but the whole time we were playing brad was asking us questions about our church. It was really cool because it turned into sort of an investigator lesson.

After we were done playing Jeopardy and Scrabble, Stacey told Brad to take us back to the station. He ended up giving us his business card and told us to call him. It was all a really random experience but we ended up finding an investigator from it.

We do have showers in our apartment but we go to the bathhouse every Monday morning. Its like the thing you do in Korea as a missionary. The one we go to is huge. It has got like 20 different pools. Hot pools, cold pools, lap pools, indoor pools, outdoor pools, champagne pools, red pools, sauna's, back massager things. But things are goin good still struggling with the language. That's crazy Terrence got called to Samoa. I thought for sure he would be serving in the Salt Lake Visitors Center LOL.

연 산 is really an amazing area. Even though its hard to see at times the work is moving forward. I'm so thankful to be in Korea serving the Lord right now. I hope everyone's doing well back home.

Miss you guys a lot. Love you.

UPDATE #2
This week was really hard to meet any investigators or even people in the street because was the biggest holiday in Korea, called 설날, like Lunar New Years or something. But we did have dinner at the bishops house which was really fun. He invited us and the sisters over on Saturday night. After we finished eating the Bishop found out my companion plays the piano, so he had us sing hymns for like an hour.

Yesterday, since it was Sunday and our apartment is really far away we had to cook dinner at our church. Is was 6 o'clock at night and we were the only ones in the chapel. Then this random guy walks past the kitchen, waves and goes and sits down in the dark chapel. We had no clue who he was. He started talking on the phone and after about 20-minutes he came up to us and said (in Korean), I have some friends who are interested in English and they will be here in about 30-minutes, can you talk with them? We said yes and he just went and sat back down. Then we went over and talked to him to see who he was. He was about 50 or 60 and we have no idea why he showed up. He didn't seem to know anything about our church or missionaries so we taught him about ourselves. then two ladies walked in (his friends) and we talked to them for a few minutes. They randomly started singing and playing the piano. Then they scheduled to meet with us every Thursday and Friday, gave us their names and numbers and then got up and left.

A few minutes after they left the Stake President walked upstairs to talk to us. He asked us who those people were and we just replied, we don't really know. Then he told us that that man is a member in the Soonjung Ward but no one has seen or heard of him in a long time. But somehow he showed up with his non-member friends and is going to meet with us weekly. We find investigators in the weirdest ways.

We also had mission broadcast and got a new schedule which is exciting. Besides that everything is going smooth here in Busan. The church is true.

Love you guys
Elder Mica Matua

This is a vending machine just on the street we always go to.
You put in coins and press one of the buttons and a
random drink comes out. Its different every time.

This is Steve. He is sooo funny. He loves talking to the missionaries and he takes us out to eat every week at McDonalds. Whenever he finds us at the church studying or something, he comes in and says,"I want to share spiritual message with you guys." Its not really a spiritual message but they are always so funny to listen to because they make no sense.

Steve and a "spiritual" message

The Plan of Steve-ation