This week was a good one filled with TWO trips to Seoul. Which made the week both fly by and seem super long.
Tuesday was our Temple day and P-day, so we headed into Seoul on Monday night to sleep at the temple so we could be to the session on time in the morning. Sleeping at the temple is so awesome. Elder Jung and I had had a pretty crazy night on Monday night, so we didn't get to eat dinner at all. Somehow the security guard at the temple figured that out and bought us some food. It was really nice of him. The temple session was great. Before hand, all the missionaries in our zone and the other zone that went with us lined up on the road in front of the temple and waited for President Christensen to drive up. When him and Sister Christensen finally came, we all sang "I know that my Redeemer lives" because it's his favorite song and it was his birthday. Afterwards we got permission to head over to another area in the mission that has a store that sells custom made suits for really cheap. Elder Batschi, Elder West, and I all ordered one and they should be arriving at our house this weekend! Sweet. We ended up spending 5 hours on the subway that day, most of it standing.
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| After a long day of travel... |
Thursday night we went back up to Seoul to sleep at the Dongdaemun house (my old house!) in preparation for the mission tour that would be the next morning. That night Elder Jung finished up Pass-off with the assistants to the president. I'm sure I've talked about Pass-off before, but it's a program in our mission to help new missionaries improve in the language and improve their teaching skills. Koreans don't need any help language wise, so for Koreans the program mostly just helps them learn to be better teachers. Anyway, Elder Jung is all done with that! I'm proud of him. Then on Friday morning we started the mission tour with President Ringwood, who is the president of the Asia North Area. He gave a talk in General Conference just a few weeks ago... Do you remember? "Truly Good and Without Guile." He talked about Shiblon in the Book of Mormon and shared some of his experiences as a missionary in Korea. He is one of the nicest persons I've ever met. He held a question-answer session and gave a training on Moroni 10, focusing specifically on the eight exhortations that appear in that chapter. It was a really good training. He also memorized almost all of the missionaries names that were in that mission tour that day... there were probably at least 60 missionaries there, and he memorized most of our names in the short time that we were together. It was really impressive and kind of changed the mood of the meeting from some high up leader coming to train us to a man that really cares about us and is helping us to be better missionaries. It was a really good mission tour.
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| Elder Song and I at the mission tour. We were together for 2 transfers in the Dongdaemun house. |
We didn't get to teach Brother Yang, our delivery guy investigator, this week. In fact, we didn't get to teach a single lesson to an investigator this week. One, because we didn't have time, but Two, because we just don't really have anyone to teach right now. But we'll find some. Hopefully sooner than later. One thing that I forgot to say about our lesson with Brother Yang last week is that Elder Jung did a really good job. He was pretty direct with him and bore powerful testimony about the power and blessings of praying daily. Elder Jung has told me that he didn't really pray a whole lot before the mission and didn't even pray a lot at the beginning of his mission, but we've talked about it and the importance of sincere prayer, and Elder Jung has been doing really good with that while we've been together. So it was really cool to see him be able to bear powerful witness about the strength that comes from prayer because he personally felt and experienced it. Just like Alma talks about in Alma 5:45-46 and John 7:17, if we put in the work we can gain a testimony and surety of the truthfulness of these things.
At the last part of his training, President Ringwood talked a little about Moroni 10:30,32. It's the last exhortation of Moroni 10... Come unto Christ.
"Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God."
The wording here is pretty specific. Through his grace, we can become perfected. Christ became the example, he showed the way, and provided the means. It is because of his matchless Atonement that we obtain mercy and grace, and through that we can become perfected. It's something that definitely takes much longer than our time here on earth, but it is a truth that is real. While that truth may have been lost for a time and may not be believed by all churches, it is a truth that is made clear in the holy scriptures and modern revelation. We can, through our works and desires and efforts, become perfected in Christ. What a wonderful promise.
I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week!
Love, Elder Edwards
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