30 Aug 11

So whats up!!  We had transfer calls last night and I'm still staying in my Greenie area with Elder Dooley. I thought for sure I was gone but I guess I lucked out!!! I'm glad i'm staying here. This week has been pretty good.  On monday we went to a place called 이태원 (Itaewon). It's an area in seoul where a ton of foreigners live. I saw more black and white people than I have my entire mission!!! Oh and I ate at Taco Bell!!! It was great. Actually, no. Tacobell was pretty gross and super greasy. So anyways, on tuesday we went and visited an "investigator" I'm not sure if i've talked about her before but her name is Jacy Boo... She lived in america for a long time and so she speaks english fluently. So anyways, this lady is pretty wack. when we visited her she showed us a book she had written, It's called "guess who i am" and it's basically a book to try and destroy christianity. She said that her book will "sell more than the Bible" She also told us that "sitting meditation and marijuana can solve the world's problems" hahaha Yah, she'strange, but it's always an adventure when we visit her so we still keep her on the radar. Oh man, it was soo hard not to bust out laughing when she spoke. So, wednesday we met a new investigator who wants us to teach him english so he can pass a test for his work. He wants to learn english in like 2 months, I'm not sure how he's going to do that... We also met another new investigator and we played ping pong with him. He is a super awesome guy but unfortunately I dont think he has much gospel interest. We met him again on saturday and we climbed a mountain and taught him the first lesson. It was soo much fun but like i said, I'm not sure how much interest he has in learning about hte gospel. He listens well but he's not really down for acting on our commitments. We'll keep teaching him for a while and see if his heart changes. So the other night we were walking back to our appartment when we saw a guy walking around with his shirt half-off... Well, he came up to us and started talking in english to us. He kept saying "I'm a cyborg!" or "My name is John Connor, I'm Super man" then he got up on a step and did this weird dance thing and pretended that he was a super hero. It was the funniest thing I have ever seen. Drunk people are great. I think this guy was probably from china.

So in our apartment we have some old pass-along cards that have our phone number on it and they have an old phone number on it from when there were two sets of missionaries in our area. Well my companion decided to call the old number and guess who answered!?!?! Sister Oaks!!!! It was the craziest thing ever!! 

Well, that's pretty much all that happened this week, It was a pretty good week. Well I gotta run, I love my savior and I am super happy to be a missionary. It's hard but it's worth it. Hope youall are doing well!

Elder Oaks

8 Aug 2011

Family what's up?!?!

 

So mom asked me how my korean is going... well, all i can say is that my new companion has been helping me a lot to get better at korean. I can understand quite a bit of what is going on (sometimes) but I have a hard time actually speaking and making sense... It's weird, in english if you say "dog ran my away" most people will be able to understand that you meant "my dog ran away" but in korean if you misplace one little thing, people freak out and have no idea what you are saying. It doesn't make any sense to me.

 

So this week, well it wansn't great Honestly, I dont think I worked as hard as I should have. At the time, it felt like we were working hard but as I look back I see goals that I didn't accomplish and time that I should have used more wisely. This next week we are going  to make sure we are teaching more lessons and visiting more members. It's hard to visit members because most people work until late at night. My companion and i have still been using basketball as a way  to find investigators and teach lessons. we have one investigator who we play with every saturday, his name is James and he's a really neat kid but unfortunately I don't see much potential in him however, he always brings new friends. On saturday he told us to skip going to church and come play basketball with him and his friends... (Don't worry, we didn't!)  This week we met with our investigator Jim and we tried to set a baptismal date with him but he needs more time to find out that this church is true. Next time we are going to follow up on his prayers and Book of Mormon reading. This week we had to refer one of our investigators to another area because the investigator was released out of the hospital and moved back to his home. It was kinda a bummer because I really liked meeting him and his son but at least they will still be hearing the gospel from the missionaries. So this week I bought peanut butter from costco and guess how much it was?!?!? 16 dollars!!! Peanut butter is soo expensive here but I really just love eating peanut butter sandwiches. Don't get me wrong, Korean food is good and all but I don't know how to cook it and I don't like eating out so Peanut Butter is the best choice. How much do the two jars of skippy peanut butter from costco cost in america?? Oh this week was my companion's birthday and his parents sent him a big box of straight american candy, I never realized how much I like salty/sour/sweet foods. Koreans hate all 3 of those. Oh on friday we had a mission conference at 서울 숲 (seoul forest) and it was a lot of fun, we did a lot of team building-like activities and had a testimony meeting at the end. The weather was really nice for us. Pretty much i just hung out with elder Dorrough (my mtc companion) the whole time. Um well yeshhh, I think that's all that really happened this week, it was kinda slow but this next week is going to be soooo much better!! Hope you all are doing well and Im soo happy being here doing missionary work!! Love you all!

 

Elder Oaks 

 

P.S. can you believe that tomorrow is my 6 month mark?? 1/4 done with my mission! Where has the time gone!?!?

15 May 2011

My dearest family

Well this week has been soo long, Im pretty sure every appointment we made cancelled on us!! It's really frustrating but life goes on. Wait, we did get to teach one lesson this week to one of our investigators. Every saturday we just show up at her house and teach her about the gospel. Each week we commit her to read from the book of mormon daily and pray about it but she never keeps the commitment, so this week we decided to read 1 Nephi with her, hoping that as we read and discussed together she would understand how important the scriptures are. We have been sending her a text each night reminding her to read and pray. Hopefully she has been doing it, I guess we'll find out this week!

 

So the other day I was walking on the street with my companion and a drunk man calls us over to him (this happens pretty regularly) and he started talking to us in english (the only words he really knew were "man" "every curse word in the english language" and ke kept calling me "handsome") Finally when we were about to walk away he gave me a hug and ke kissed me on the neck!!!! That was probably the grossest thing that has ever happened to me!! I don't ever want to experience that again!

 

Oh so good news! Our investigator 최승규 came to church this week and he stayed all 3 hours of church and then for lunch afterwards (the ward has a big lunch each week after church). It was the first time he's actually stayed for the whole thing! It's been funny, a couple of our ward members have talked with him about baptism and yesterday one of the ward members committed him to being baptized next month! We haven't even set a date or anything with him yet! Infact, we haven't really even talked too much about baptism with him, we just haven't had a chance to do that yet. The ward members are one step ahead of us!

 

Well that's pretty much all I have to say this week, It's been a long, slow, hard week but this next week hopefully we'll be able to meet with all the investigators who we wanted to last week! Well I love you all!

 

Elder Oaks

23 May 2011

사랑한 가족!!! 

Well this week was pretty fun! On  wednesday and Thursday I was on splits with an elder named Elder bacarro, he's from the philippines. I think he was in Sister Oaks' MTC class. So I was able to go around and contact people with him, it was a lot of fun because he's very energetic and he was always so  happy to talk to people. We've had a bunch of appointments cancelled this week but we were able to meet with one man and we talked to him about keeping the sabbath day Holy and coming to church. Unfortunately he wasn't able to come to church this week because he had a test to take but hopefully next week he'll be able to go! He's a really nice young man and he seems to understand everything we taught him. We brought a member along with us and the member pretty much talked the whole time but I feel like it went pretty well. Yesterday we were able to do a service project and so we went to a lady's new house to help her move in. At first the movers wouldn't let us come in because they were busy bringing stuff into the house but finally we were allowed to come in and start putting stuff away. It ended up taking about 8 hours all together but it was definitely worth it to get some physical labor in and she fed us Chinese food!! Chinese food in korea is much different than it is in the United states but it's very good!! So guess what we did today?!?! We went to the Temple!! It was soo good and I've forgotten how good it feels to walk into that building since we went every week in the MTC! I can't belive I've already been here for almost a whole month! Each day seems to last forever but the weeks seem to go by soo fast!! Well I think that's all that has really happened this week, nothing too exciting but it's been a good week. We spend most of our time trying to find new investigators because our old investigators don't  seem to want to meet with us anymore :( Oh well, I guess that's just a part of missionary work! Well I hope you all are doing well. I'm doing awesome out here serving in korea, It's soo hard work and I sometimes feel like quitting when I can't  understand what the people are saying to me, or when our investigators don't show up to our meeting, but it's the lord's work and he's definitely making it possible for me! I love you all and I am so grateful that you raised me in this wonderful church! Well yeh, that's about it for now bye!

사랑해

옥스 장로

Elder Ryan Oaks

29 May 2011

Family!!!
So this week something really cool happened, we made plans to visit a less active member yesterday and guess what!?!?! She was actualy home and her husband was home with the door wide open so we were able to get inside and talk with her about church. She said that she has been busy with work and when she moved to this area a couple years ago she didn't know anyone in the ward and so she just never came to church. Well we talked with her a little bit about a bunch of stuff (most of it i couldnt' understand) and we shared a message about god's love for all of his children. I bore my testimony about how I know god loves us and  because he loves us he has given us so many things. I think that our short message really kinda sparked an interest in her and I could see in her eyes that she knew what we were saying was true. She told us that she wants us to send some sister missionaries to her because she feels more comfortable with them rather than the elders but I really hope we can bring her back to church. It's so sad to see people who  have stopped coming to church just because they didn't know anyone in the ward and so they didn't feel comfortable going. As we were leaving she gave us each two oranges!!! It was pretty much the best day of my life because oranges (and all fruits) are soo expensive here. Infact, A regular sized watermelon here will cost anywhere between 10-25 dollars!!!!! So fruit is a treat to us. The other day I was on splits with our zone leader and He was such an amazing missionary, he speaks korean very well and he made sure that I talked to just as many people as he did so we both did a lot of contacting. While I was with him we met a man who was really interested in the book and so we gave him a copy along with our phone number. He told us he would meet when he had time so hopefully we will be able to meet with him soon!! We also met a student who said he had no religion because he doesn't understand why all the religions oppose and fight against each other. We explained a little bit about what our church believes and he was interested so we set up an appointment to meet with him next week!!! Hopefully he is one of the people who the lord has prepared for us to find and teach!!
Well that's pretty much all that went on this week, I love this gospel, I love missionary work and I'm so glad that I can be a missionary right now! It's hard when people don't really want to talk to you but I know that my message is true and the lord wouldn't send me all the way to korea to fail. I cannot fail with the Lord on my side. I love you all and I hope you are all doing well!!
Love,
Elder Oaks

6 Jun 2011

Hello Family!!!!

 

Oh boy, so i feel like so many different things have happened in this past week! First off I went on splits on wednesday with a really awesome elder. When we got to his area we had an appointment with one of his investigators (who two weeks before was about to be dropped) and we decided to talk to him about families. We talked a bit about how much families make us happy and that through this gospel we can live with our families forever. When we were done with families, out of nowhere he asked "what is our purpose on earth" This was coming from a guy who two weeks ago had no gospel interest and now he was asking us what our purpose on life was!!! It was soo awesome!!! We answered his question by talking about how our Heavenly father wants us to be happy just like he is and he wants us to return to live with him. It was a really awesome!!! The next day I got back with my companion and we had a lesson with a lady who goes to another church but she's still searching for the truth. She brought along her friend who is a missionary from another church and he was actually really interested in our church also. Normally the 전도사's (missionaries) just try to argue with us and tell us why our church is wrong but this man didn't, he was really interested in the book of mormon and he asked us a bunch of questions why we need the book of mormon and things like that. It was a really neat experience. We brought a member with us who speaks english and korean with us, i was really glad we did becasue even my companion coudln't understand many things the lady said to us. She studied theology in college and so many of the words she used were far out of our vocabulary. One thing the lady really liked about our church was that we dont smoke, drink alcohol, or drink tea/coffee!! She said that our bodies are precious and we need to take care of them, it was soo awesome!!! We are going to meet them again this thursday and hopefully we can start the restoration!!! Later thursday night We had another appointment with a lady who had received one of our english fliers and she decided to look up mormons she also found about how we dont drink/smoke and she said that she hates smoking and drinking! She was really interested in both learning english and about our gospel. We are going to be meeting her again tonight! It's going to be soo good!!! On Saturday we finally got an english class started and it was a lot of fun, It was the first time I have really had any interaction with the youth and they are soo nice and way funny. One of the young men is very outspoken and even though his english isn't great, he tries so hard and he's very amusing. I hope we can help the youth prepare for their english tests in school. So on sunday night we got permission to go "camping" with our ward.(camping in korean means that we stayed in a building right outside of Seoul). At first I felt really ackward because i wasn't used to being able to sit around and do nothing for hours at a time but on monday I just kinda hung out with two of the young men and it was really fun. I just wish I could talk in korean with them because their english isn't grreat, but it's a lot better than my korean!!! It ended up being a really fun/relaxing campout.Well that's about all that has happened this week. We had transfers on monday night and our companionship is staying the same. My companion thought for sure that he was leaving but I guess the lord had other plans for him. Well I love you all and I'm so happy here in korea where I have the chance to serve a mission. I love you all and Hope you are doing well.

 

Love you bye,

Elder Oaks

14 Jun 2011

Hmmm, It's kinda hard to remember what went down this week.

 

Well yesterday we had a lesson with one of our investigators (sister lee). She has been to a lot of different churches and she's still searching for truth, hopefully she will realize that it's sitting right in front of her face, in the book of mormon!! But anyways we brought a member with us (brother Park) and he pretty much taught the first lesson, the restoration to her. Brother Park is really loud and powerful when he speaks, unfortunately sister lee didnt' realy like him, but then randomly another ward member showed up (Brother kim) and switched places with brother park. Brother kim is much friendlier and related with sister lee much better than brother park did. Sister lee had brought a friend with her and her friend kept asking for proof of the book of mormon and she just wanted to argue the whole time so finally brother kim stood up and walked out. (this all happened in korean and I had no idea what was going on) So pretty much it was a  horrible lesson. Fortunately we were able to talk with sister lee and she still wants to meet with us next week. I hope that all made sense to you, because at the time it happened, it didn't make any sense to me!!! My korean is getting better though, I can sometimes understand what people are saying to me for example, when they tell me they are too busy to talk to me (when they are clearly standing there smoking a cigarette) Or when they tell me they're going home, Other than those couple phrases, I usually have no idea what they are talking about and so I just tell them about the gospel, whether or not they want to hear it, it's great!!!  Well that's all that really happened, Im not really sure where the time went this week, it flew by so fast!! I hope all is going well with you!!! Well I gotta go, Love you all and I love being in korea talking to the people here!! I just wish I could slap them awake so they would realize the truth in the book i'm trying to tell them about!!! Well okay, Loveyoubye!!

 

Elder Oaks

19 Jun 2011

Whats up my family!!

So this week we were able to meet with two new investigators!!! One man is probably in his 50's and he is really awesome! He randomly called us the other day and wanted to meet with us, apparently he lives behind our church and walks by it often so one day he just decided to call us and meet!! He was super nice and is really good at english because he lived in the U.S. for a couple years. He seemed really interested in both learning english and learning about the gospel so it's really exciting for us! I think we are going to try and meet with him again this week. Yesterday at church we also met another investigator who is 19 and he speaks fluent english because he goes to school in Wisconsin! Before he went to school he had no religious background. During spring break he went to visit a friend in california and he went to church with that family and found peace going to church. When he went back to school, he was having a hard time trying to get good grades and so he started praying, he said that he really felt like God was carrying him through such a hard time. When he came back to Korea, he didn't know what church to go to but the missionaries found him on the subway and referred him to us!! On sunday when he came to church, we just talked with him during sunday school and he asked us how to pay tithing!! He said he just wants to show his devotion to God!! How awesome is that!!! Oh man, he's just great.  Well that's pretty much our week, Ithink I told you last week that we went to the temple on tuesday and it was sooo awesome!! I always love going to the temple. Oh so mom, that aloe drink that you bought and said that you didn't really like that much, well I'm pretty sure that's my favorite drink in korea!! It is soo good and refreshing!!! I dont know how you didn't like it!! It's pretty popular here, at least, all the stores carry it. There's another drink that you should buy if they have it at the korean market, it's called Milkis, its good. Well I think that's about all for this week. It's been a long week but it was really rewarding when we picked up two new investigators!! Well I have a testimony of my savior and I know he loves all of us soo much, I hope you are all doing well and i'll talk to you later!!

Loveyouall!

Elder Oaks

26 Jul 2011

Family!!!

Oh my goodness, so this week it has been nonstop rain for like 5 days!!!!!!!!! ahhhgggghhhhh It get so frustrating because NOBODY wants to talk to you in the rain. Pretty much we either try going from door to door or we hop on a subway and ride the subway back and forth, trying to talk to as many people as we can. The only problem with riding the subway is hat it can get pretty expensive so we can't do it all the time. I think we are going to try and figure out new ways to contact people this week because it hasn't been very effective so far. Hopefully we will be able to figure out better ways!! Oh well we did have one really awesome contact in the rain this week, we started talking to a man at a crosswalk and he spoke to us for a while and my companion started telling him about modern day prophets and the man was really interested and wanted to learn more about Thomas S. Monson, how cool is that??!?! Unfortunately he doesn't live in our area so we had to refer him to some other missionaries :( But as long as he gets to hear the gospel, I guess it doesn't really matter who teaches him right? Oh so this week we had our english class, (it's just for high school students) and it's always a ton of fun, mainly because there is this one boy to tries so hard to talk to us but ends us just acting out what he is trying to say because he cant figure out the words to say, it's always super funny!! On monday i got to go and hang out with my Aunti Heather and she took us to this awesome restraunt and spent WAYYYY too much but it was soo good. It was awesome to see her!! No, mom I haven't bought a watermelon yet, I am still deciding what to do witht he money she gave me, I think i might buy a fan but If the weather keeps staying cold like it is, then i wont... (i'm pretty  sure it wont stay cold). Yep well that's pretty much all that has happened... It's been a pretty rough week, but we're trying to keep our spirits strong!! I love you all, and hope you are having a good time!! 

Elder Oaks!

4 Jul 2011

So it's kinda been raining on/off all week. One day it's nice sunny and humid, the next it's POURING rain. The weather gets pretty intense. I'm going to for sure have to get a new umbrella, I want to get a GIGANTIC one, so maybe i will be able to stay somewhat dry... On Sunday we had made plans to go and visit some less active members and while we were out walking the rain started coming down soo hard that it was coming right through my umbrella!!! It was pretty crazy. Luckily I was able to find a lady who gave me a plastic bag so i could put my camera and Book of Mormon in because they would for sure have been ruined. I was the wettest i have Ever been in my whole life!!! And unfortunately... none of the members were even home. We took a subway back. I'm just glad I have two pairs of shoes because my companion's shoes are still wet from that experience. Okay so guess what! On Tuesday we took a trip to visit a member who owns a sandwich shop and we went there to visit with her and buy some cookies and as we were there, a lady from Utah stopped by and she brought cheese and tortillas (I have no idea where she found tortillas. They do not exist in Korea. Believe me, I've looked) and she made us Quesadillas!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my goodness, they were SOOOO good!!! I think that was the first time I've had cheese since I've been here. it was delicious!!! We were able to meet with two of our investigators this week, one of them had actually done his Book of Mormon reading!!!!!!!!!!!!!FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now, we need to get him to start praying... Our other investigator, Mae... well, to put it plainly. She has no desire. Her husband is a member but she doesn't want to leave her own faith because she's afraid what her parents will think of her. She fears man more than God. We talked about eternal families with her and then i tried to commit her to baptism but she said she doesn't want to get baptized. She's been meeting with missionaries for over 8 months now and she had a baptism date a while back  but she bailed. We decided that it was best to take a break from teaching her so unfortunately, we had to drop her :( Hopefully her husband will just continue being a good example for her and later in the future she will have a desire to follow Christ. So yesterday it was the fourth of July (as I'm sure you know) and the Korean people were going CRAZY light off fireworks and having fun.NOT.It's an American holiday. So, a bunch of missionaries in our zone got together and had our own BBQ (at a meat buffet) and pretended to light off fireworks because we're not really allowed to :( Well yep, that's about all that went down this week. Love you all. It's tough, but I do love being a missionary in Korea. I love this gospel and i know it's true. Peace.

Elder Oaks

11 Jul 2011

So guess what happened this week?!?! We actually had an investigator come to church!!! His name is Jay and he's come once before. He was a referral from another companionship who found him on a subway. He really wants to learn more about God but he's not sure what church he should go to. I think he's gotten a little bit of disapproval from some of his friends because our church is a little "different" but he thinks it might have been a sign from God that the missionaries started talking to him on the subway. I really hope that we can meet with him soon and share our message with him. He is really busy with an internship during the week and then he always schedules something with his friends right after sacrament meeting so we never have much time with him. I'll try next week to get him to church a little earlier so we can talk with him more. But yeah, he's awesome. So we've been trying really hard to do a bunch of streetboarding this week (where you have a big board that talks about the gospel and you use it to draw people in to you) and we've had quite a bit of success with it. Our mission president told us to start streetboarding more. He said that if we streetboard we will be able to find more investigators. So anyways the other day as we were streetboarding, a lady came up to us and wanted us to follow her to try a drink. She said that a lot of foreigners like the drink and it was created by some people out in Utah. We told her no, that we were missionaries and we were busy but she was really persistent and she wouldn't leave us alone so finally we went with her. Well we get to her office and we drank this superfood drink stuff, it had acai berries, pomegranite, blueberries and all sorts of other things in it. While we were drinking the stuff, another lady came over and started talking to us and apparently she wanted us to give her all of our contact information and our BANK NUMBER!! so that while we were talking to people about the gospel we could also tell the people about this juice stuff and we could make money by selling the product (dont worry, i didnt give it to them). Basically it's a pyramid scam... Well yeah, so we left and hopefully we will never see thos people again because they still think we are interested. I guess i learned my lesson about giving in to peer pressure. I also learned that i need to be more persistent as i am sharing the gospel because the Mona Vie (the juice company) lady was a lot more persistent than I usually am!! Oh! so yesterday we were visiting some less actives and while we were out walking, we met one man on the street who was drunk and really dirty but he wasnted to meet and he gave us his home address!! we have an appointment with him today!!! Hopefully we can pick him up as a new investigator because our message will really help him turn his life around and give him a new start! Well that's about all that has happened this week. Loveyall and hope you are doing!!

 

Love

Elder Oaks

17 Jul 2011

Soo this week the monsoon season pretty much ended which means it's going to get really hot. Im not gonna lie, I'm not super excited for the heat!! Either i get soaking wet from the rain or i get soaking wet from my own sweat, i'm not really sure which one i like better... We are supposed to get another typhoon in the next week though. So this week I was able to go on splits with my district leader and he is just super awesome! His name is elder ishino and he's a super hard working missionary!! the day i was on splits with him we didn't have any teaching appointments so we contacted all day and we were able to talk to 65 people! That's a lot of people. We even got a couple phone numbers with some people who were legitimately interested in learning about Jesus Christ!!! Hopefully we can meet with them sometime soon. The most important thing that i learned while i was on splits was that even though we were working hard we were able to talk and have fun. As we were having a good time, i think it really showed on our faces that we were happy because more people started talking to us. It was probably the most fun i've had during my mission experience so far. Oh so the other day i was at E-Mart (comparable to walmart) and i saw something really interesting....you know how they have free samples right? well they were giving out free samples of BEER!! It was really strange. They were handing out like full glasses of beer for ANYONE to try. Just a small difference i saw between the US and Korea... So yesterday we went to church and while we were at church we got two dinner appointments for this week!!! It is going to be AWESOME! Dinner appointments are very rare for the missionaries here and so having two in one week is pretty sweet. Also we went streetboarding yesterday and guess what?! we set up two appointments!!! One is with another missionary from another church who probably just wants to "tell us the truth" but the other one is with a lady who 1. speaks fluent english 2. wants us to save her. I taught her about Joseph Smith on the street and she really wanted to meet again and learn more about how she can be saved so i think i'll teach her about how through Jesus Christ's Atonement we can be forgiven of our sins and return to live with our Heavenly Father again. She's awesome and this gospel will for sure bless her life. Well that's all that happened this week, Love this gospel, love being a missionary and i'm lovin life. "I'm lovin' it".

 

Loveyoubye!

Elder Oaks

24 July 2011

FAMILY!!

 

So this week has pretty much been super awesome!!!!! I got a new companion and his name is elder dooley he's a super sweet guy and we've been working super hard. Elder dooley likes to do missionary work a lot different than my old companion. Rather than just going around and telling people about the gospel and giving them a card, telling them to call if they have interest; elder Dooley likes to go around and find young people to talk to and actually have conversations with people about their life and then get into the gospel, It has been working really well because we have been getting a lot of lessons on the street!!! On wednesday we had a lesson with a new investigator! Her name is Jacy Boo and she lived in America for a while so she speaks english. I'm going to be honest, this lady is crazy. At first she seemed like a golden investigator because she asked me to "save" her but after we met her again on friday, we realized how weird she actually is. Dont' get me wrong, she's great and all but she's writing a book to "destroy christianity" and she thinks that her book is going to sell more than the bible. She also seems to think that my comp and I are "brainwashed" haha yeah she's hilarious. She took us out to eat the other day and she brought along her pet rabbit and her dog which she let sit on her lap as she fed them. the restraunt owner didn't really seem to like that very much... So we did a new type of finding people activity that was soo much fun!!! We went to a basketball court and asked two young men if we could play with them, they said that we could and then we told them if we beat them they had to let us teach them a lesson (the restoration but if we lost we had to buy them ice cream. Well...we won! Luckily my companion is really good at basketball. So yesterday after church we were trying another new type of contacting this included going into the huge park in our area and sitting on benches with people (in the shade) and talking to them, it was really relaxing and honestly we were feeling a little bit lazy but it seems that the Lord had a different plan for us because we had a young man come up to us and ask us (in english) if he could learn more about our church. Of course we said yes and we took him to the church where we taught him the first lesson and gave him a soft baptismal commitment!!!!!!!! He agreed and we're meeting again next week when we are going to set a baptismal date with him!!!! Ohh it was soo cool!! This week has been super awesome, we've been teaching so many people on the street and making a ton of appointments to play soccer/basketball with people so that we can make friends with them and then invite them to church. It's so much fun. I can honestly say this week has been one of the best weeks of my life. Oh another awesome thing  has happened, we got fed 3 different times during the week by members and 2times by investigators, This has never happened before!!! We're usually lucky if we get fed once every 3 weeks. Ohkay so callie and morgan should probably not read this... So we went to a meeting on saturday with our bishop and ward mission leader so they could meet the new missionary and after the meeting they wanted to feed us. They wanted to go to 보신탕 which is dog soup... we went and it was not good. It made me feel soo sick while i was eating it and i felt really sick the rest of the day. It was gross, dont eat it. Yeah it tasted like REALLY fatty bad, disgusting meat. Yeah, that about describes it. Well that's all that happened it was a very eventful week. I am loving it here, I'm so glad i have this opportunity to find the prepared (and some not so prepared) and teach them about this gospel, it's an amazing thing. Love you all!!!

 

Elder Oaks! 

<3

July 31, 2011

Okay so guess what?! this week we have found 5 new investigators!!! It's been so much fun!!! I think last week I told you about Jim who came up and talked to us, well we met him again and finished teaching him about the restoration. He is really excited to meet with us but this past week he has been super busy because he's been studying for the TOEIC? It's a hard english test that koreans have to take if they want to get a good job working for companies such as samsung or korean air.  Jim told us that he doesn't sleep most days because he spends all day/night studying. I'm really impressed that he still wanted to meet with us even though he's so busy!! Since he's done with that test, we should be able to meet him a couple times a week!!! Next time we meet we're going to give him a solid baptismal date!! I'm super excited!! We met an old man randomly called us and wanted to meet, unfortunately our meeting didn't last very long because he couldn't understand our korean... He still wants to meet again though and next time we're going to bring a member along with us to help clarify. We also met with a family that has english/gospel interest. For the first 30 minutes we taught english to the daughter and son who are both really good at english. I'd say the son is pretty much fluent at english for his age, he's 5. When we asked him how he learned english he said "by myself". His dad told us that he learned english by watching power rangers in english. It's amazing that he could learn english just by watching a show. The thing that i dont understand is how he learned to read.... How do you learn to read without ever being taught how??? He's a super funny kid and his name is Myan. He and his dad actually showed up to church unexpectedly on sunday and they stayed for the whole 4 hours (including the meal at the end)!!!! It was super awesome. So besides meeting with these investigators we have played a lot of basketball this week and through the basketball we have been able to teach a lot of lessons. We were invited by a kid and his friend (new investigator) to go play som basketball and so we did and while we were playing we got a lot of contacts and so hopefully we will be able to meet with some of those people soon. It's been soo much fun!!!  So yeah, it's been raining a ton here and there have been a bunch of deaths because of landslides and stuff. Unfortunately we didn't have any bad flooding in our area :( I really wanted to walk through water that went over my head!!! Ha But there was a lot of flooding in the area next to ours. It's been pretty crazy. In some places there was water up to the stop signs, that's' a lot of water. We did get a bunch of water in the basement of our church but i think that they took care of that. Even with the rain, we were able to have a pretty successful week. This week i learned something that i hadn't ever thought about before. Even thought we don't talk to as many people as some missionaries do, we are still having success because contacts dont get baptisms, lessons get baptisms. When we have fun with these people, they see that we're normal and they see how happy we are. They want to have some of that happiness for themselves so they actually listen to us when we share our message with them. This work has been so much fun, I'm so happy to be here serving my savior!! I love this Gospel and I have found out for myself that it is true. I'm here to invite others to find out for themselves, so they can gain their own testimony of their Lord and Savior. I hope you all are doing well!!!

 

Loveyoubye!!

 

Elder Oaks

August 15, 2011

FAMILY!!!!!!!

 

Hey so this week has been pretty exciting, well... the last half of the week was exciting! So the other night we met with one of our investigators who I thought we had referred to another area but it turns out that he still wants to meet with us, i'm not sure the whole story. But we met with him and while my companion was keeping his kid busy I taught him about having faith in Jesus Christ and that through a sincere desire we can gain faith. He told me that he wants to have faith and I committed him to pray every day with his son and to read alma 32 about how to gain faith. He is really good at keeping our commitments and so I hope that he has been praying. It was really hard to teach the lesson all by myself  and my investigator slapped me when I accidentally used the lowest form of speech to him but he's really patient with me and knows that I am trying really hard to speak korean. Then on saturday we met two new investigators, they're two girls and we taught them the first lesson. On sunday we were walking to church when a man asked us where we were going, we told him that we were going to church and he just started walking with us. When we asked him where he was going he said that he was going to church with us. We later found out that he was actually a member and had been baptized when he was in middle school but I dont think he had been since then. I'm not sure why all the sudden he decided to come to church with us or how he knew we would be walking by that spot but i'm really glad that he did. I sat by him during sacrament meeting and he kept showing me things out of his wallet. He even gave me a pair of headphones and a picture of himself haha!!  I got his address and phone number so Elder Dooley and I can go and visit him later in the week!!! It's so awesome when you see people coming back to church, since I've been in this ward i've seen a couple people begin to come back to chruch and it's always soo awesome!! So remember those two girls that I told you that we had taught the first lesson to?? Well they showed up to church and they stayed the whole time!! We didn't think that they would actually show up but I think they actually really liked it, I just wish we had some ward members their age who could fellowship them and so that way we dont have to meet them with old people like the bishop. We are going to meet them again next week. Okay so yesterday we were behind on the number of people we had talked to during the week and we really wanted to hit the "standard of excellence" and so we went to knock doors at a big appartment. We had been knocking for quite a while and we hadn't had much success except for one kid answered the door who was from america and that was super weird talking to someone who says "dawg", "trippin", or "sick" every other word. But anyways, so we were about done and we came to a door that was open and we knocked on the door and a lady answered, she told us that she already had a church but then she ran inside to her husband and he came out and they let us in. We sat down on the floor and she came out with some watermelon for us and we started talking with them. The husband could sorta speak english and he wanted some english practice but we were able to share the restoration lesson with them and they really liked what they heard. The lady told us that she really liked how sure we were about what we were telling them, she said that at  her church the pastor just yells at them and tells them to believe. She really liked how we were inviting them to read the book of mormon and pray about it, we're not trying to force people to believe what we're teaching them. So anyways, we visited with this family for a while and when we were about to leave they told us that we were welcome back anytime and that they really wanted us to come back next week, I'm super excited to come and visit them again!!! This week was filled with miracles that I can't explain, I dont know why that man decided to follow us to church, or why two girls decided to take 4 hours out of their weekend to come to church or why a lady who was about to shut the door on us suddenly decided to let us in but I am positive that it had nothing to do with me or my abilities as a missionary. I know that it was the Lord's hand and he has blessed us more than we deserve. I definitely have gained a stronger testimony of God's power and blessings this week. I love this work and I am having so much fun spreading this gospel. I know this work is the Lord's work and he is behind it all.

 

I love you all,

사랑해

 

Elder Oaks

옥스 장로

May 8th, 2011

Well Korea has been super awesome this week!!! We've had a couple appointments with investigators and one of our investigators 최승규 (choi sung gu) has come to church!!! He came yesterday and then we went and talked to him for about an hour with our ward mission leader. I'm not sure all they talked about but i know they talked about baptism a bit. I think that if we continue to meet with him and help him to progress, he will have a desire to be baptized. He mentioned yesterday that he wants a change in his life, and that he's been really stressed lately. I know that the gospel will help him put his life back in order and help him deal with that stress. Well we've had a lot of appointments planned this last week but unfortunately many of them cancelled :( The people in korea are always soo busy and it's hard to set up an apointment that will work for both of us! We even had an appointment to play basketball with a man but he never showed up!!! Usually when our investigators cancel on us we go out and just talk to the people on the streets. The other day when we were out, a drunk man came up to us and just started talking about the church with us. It was really neat and fun to talk to him, he even gave me a pencil haha!! we then gave him a card and he told us that he would call us but he never did :( Then two days ago we were coming out of a store and a college aged kid came up to us and started talking to us. He knew who we were and had talked to missionaries before. He told us to show him where our church was and so we took him to our church and we sat down with him and taught him a little bit about the book of Mormon and about our church. I think he mainly just wants to learn English (he had a huge textbook that he wanted us to help him translate to korean!) but when we talked to him about the book of mormon he really seemed interested in it. I think we are going to meet with him again and hopefully we can bring him to the knowledge about the gospel! It seems like a lot of people here just want help with learning english or they want foreigner friends (I've noticed that there aren't very many white people here compared to koreans ;) It's pretty humorous when we're walking down a street and see a group of high school aged girls just staring at us. When we say hi to them they always freak out and just giggle a bunch haha! It's great! Sometimes if they're gutsy enough, theyll tell us that we are "handsome". Well I think that's about all that has happened this week, it's been a pretty good week! altough it can be frustrating when all of our appointments cancel and we pretty much have to start from scratch. It's definitely worth it though when we get into someone's house and teach them a good lesson and eat some good food!!  Well I'm loving the work here in korea and i absolutely love the gospel! It's made me realize how special each of us are, that our Heavenly Father sent us to this earth so that we can become just like he is, and that if we excercise our agency righteously, we will be able to live with him and our families once again!! Well I hope you are all doing well, It was great to talk to you today!!

 

Love ya

Elder Oaks

 

옥스 장로

May 16th, 2011

My dearest family

Well this week has been soo long, Im pretty sure every appointment we made cancelled on us!! It's really frustrating but life goes on. Wait, we did get to teach one lesson this week to one of our investigators. Every saturday we just show up at her house and teach her about the gospel. Each week we commit her to read from the book of mormon daily and pray about it but she never keeps the commitment, so this week we decided to read 1 Nephi with her, hoping that as we read and discussed together she would understand how important the scriptures are. We have been sending her a text each night reminding her to read and pray. Hopefully she has been doing it, I guess we'll find out this week!

 

So the other day I was walking on the street with my companion and a drunk man calls us over to him (this happens pretty regularly) and he started talking to us in english (the only words he really knew were "man" "every curse word in the english language" and ke kept calling me "handsome") Finally when we were about to walk away he gave me a hug and ke kissed me on the neck!!!! That was probably the grossest thing that has ever happened to me!! I don't ever want to experience that again!

 

Oh so good news! Our investigator 최승규 came to church this week and he stayed all 3 hours of church and then for lunch afterwards (the ward has a big lunch each week after church). It was the first time he's actually stayed for the whole thing! It's been funny, a couple of our ward members have talked with him about baptism and yesterday one of the ward members committed him to being baptized next month! We haven't even set a date or anything with him yet! Infact, we haven't really even talked too much about baptism with him, we just haven't had a chance to do that yet. The ward members are one step ahead of us!

 

Well that's pretty much all I have to say this week, It's been a long, slow, hard week but this next week hopefully we'll be able to meet with all the investigators who we wanted to last week! Well I love you all!

 

Elder Oaks

May 16th, 2011

May 2, 2011

Hey so guess what!! I'm in Korea and it's soo crazy!!!

 

Everything is so big here!!! well except for the people, but they're not even that small usually! Anyways, I got to korea on tuesday night (at like 6 in the morning USA time) and a couple of missionaries came and greeted us. We took a subway back to the mission home. Before we got on the subway the missionaries gave each of us a book of mormon and we had to make a goal as to how many people we were going to contact!! It was probably the scariest moment of my life!!! The missionary I was assigned to go with made me start talking to people and go as far as I could, then he would translate the responses of the people and I had to try to talk to them as much as I could, it was really really really hard but it was such good practice!!! I even handed out a book of mormon and I got a couple of phone numbers!!! Well we went to the mission president's house, ate dinner and stayed the night. The next morning we ate breakfast, had interveiws and then went to missionary training where we were assigned our trainers. My companion is named Elder Parkllan. He's really nice but he's super shy and so he doesn't really like to talk to people that much.... This makes it pretty difficult for me because I want to talk to everyone but I just have no clue what they are saying!!!! It feels like  many times we walk to a member's home for like a half hour and we don't talk to anyone that passes us!! I'm gonna have to learn a bunch of korean so i can talk to people!!! I asked him to speak korean to me but he seems to have forgotten, i'll remind him today!!

 

Well we have a couple of investigators and I pretty much can't remember any of their names because they're all korean names!!! haha i'm sure i'll get them down though!! A couple of them speak pretty good english and our lessons are a mixture of english/korean (meaning that we try to teach in english but if they don't understand we teach it in korean) One of the investigators want's to learn english and so we teach him english for a half hour and then we switch and teach gospel for the other half hour, it's so much fun teaching lessons!!! Another one of our investigators is actually from the philippines and she's doesn't speak korean so we teach her in english. Her name is Mae and her husband is a member but she's not. I think they just recently got married. She comes to church pretty much every week with her husband and his parents. I have faith that she will eventually be baptized, but I dont know when that will be. Hopefully soon!!! She seems like she understands and believes everything we say, I just need to make sure that we are commiting her to keep commitments, otherwise she won't progress.

 

In korea all the men work all day long and the kids have school and academy after school (basically more school) and so it's hard for us to get appointments during the weekdays. Usually our saturday and sundays are filled up with appointments but we don't usually have anthing to do during the day except proscelyte ( I'm not sure if that's how you spell it). Proscelyting is pretty hard here because everyone is walking somewhere and they don't ever have time to talk to you (or at least they say that they dont). Sometimes we'll try and talk to someone and they'll tell us that they are busy even though they are just standing there doing nothing... haha it can be pretty frustrating!! When we go door to door the people don't actually come and answer the door, they just yell from behind it (who is it?) and when they hear the word 선교사 (missionary) they just tell us that they already have a religion or just to go away!! It's hard but it can also be very rewarding. Yesterday, we were walking around talking to people and I saw a man who was walking and we decided to talk to him. He actually talked to us and we sat down at a table and taught him a little bit about our church!!! It was so much fun because our hard work had actually paid off!!! he told us that he wanted to meet again and so we're going to meet him on saturday to teach him the first lesson!!! I'm so exited!!!

 

So today is P-Day and we are going shopping!!! I just want to buy some sweet ties to send to people and just kinda look around at what types of things they sell in korea!! I'm super excited!!!

Well i've gotta get going! I love you all so much and I'm so glad that I can be in korea!! It's hard already and It probably won't get any easier but It's definitely worth it! I love this gospel and I want to share it with everyone around me! I want all of the angry koreans to be happy like I am!!! I always try to go around smiling at everyone because I want to show them how this gospel can bless their lives!!! Well I gotta go but I hope you are all doing well and having a good time!!

 

Love ya!

Elder Oaks

 

옥스 장로!!

April 19, 2011

Well so I only have 6 days left in the MTC. I'M SOOOOO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't really know how to speak korean at all but I'm still ready to go!!!
Oh before I forget, I've met two people in the MTC that apparently know our family or something, one is a Sister Lethco i think, she lived in texas when we were there. The other is Elder Laud, loud, (I dont know how to spell it) and he said his parents know my parents, i think i've heard that last name before..
Anyways, I am soo excited, but not ready to leave!! I can't wait to eat some real food, except I'm not gonna lie, Kimchi is not my favorite food.... but i can down it.
We have our last TRC appointment this week. After this Saturday, all of our appointments are real and I probably won't have any idea what is going on!!! I really hope that I get a good trainer who doesn't speak any english to me and makes me teach half of the lessons, that way I'll have to pay close attention to what is going on and i'll hopefully pick up korean much faster than if he were to just teach the whole lesson all by himself. It would be really hard not to hear any english, but it would be really good for me because if i'm speaking english, it means i'm not speaking/learning korean!!
Well I don't really have anything else to write about, this week has been pretty dull except for the fact that we're almost leaving!!!!
Well I love you all and I love this gospel, it makes me really happy!! and I can't wait to get to korea to teach it to everyone I see!!!
Love you bye!!
Elder Oaks
P.S. our district goal is to baptize someone on the airplane to korea... just kiddin!!! But we are going to hand out some pass-along cards!!!

4/5/2011

Hey What's up how's everything going?!!?!

Well last week went really well, general conference was soooooo good!! After the first session, i turned to my companion and asked "why did that go so much faster than it usually does?" I think I was so into it that the time just flew by!! It was great! but what was with all the talks being about getting married?!?! Im not gonna lie, I wasn't a super huge fan listening to talks about getting married!! oh well, they were good talks anyhow and I learned a lot.
So yesterday we got a couple of native korean missionaries and we have more coming in today!! It's gonna be awesome having our own koreans that we get to leave back to korea with!! I really hope they are as awesome as the ones we had when the older districts left!! The two that we met yesterday were really nice but they couldn't speak much english!! They helped correct us on our korean and we helped them with their english!! One of them is actually going to california on his mission and is speaking english! I can't imagine how hard it would be to learn english because of all the sound changes/ exceptions we have. In korean, there are only a couple of sound changes and there usually aren't really any exceptions.
So on friday we had our TRC teaching appointment but we did with other korean missionaries because the TRC was closed since General conference. On thursday we kinda practiced and we realized that the sentences we were trying to say were waayyyy too complex and it just wasn't working out. We decided that during the actual appointment we were going to just make up sentences on the fly and hope that it goes well. It did. We were able to ask a lot of questions about the investigator and so we got to know them better than we usually do. I think we're starting to get a hang of this whole teaching thing finally!!!
Well that's about all that has gone on this week! I love you all and I know that what i'm doing is what the Lord wants me to do, even though it can be tough to leave all my family, friends and school. I  know that I am being blessed!
Well, I gotta go, Loveyoubye!

Elder Oaks

 

MTC 3/29/11

My dear family
So this week has had a lot of ups and downs but the highest high we've had is knowing that we only have 4 more weeks left!!!!! I'm soo excited to be able to get out of here and go to korea!!! It's gonna be awesome!! Even though I can't really speak the language, I'm still overly excited to go!! I need to brush up on my chopstick skills before i go... My companion Elder Dorrough is sick again and he's been throwing up the past few days but the doctors aren't really sure why he's throwing up because he doesn't have a fever or any signs of the flu or anything. They said it might be a stomach ulcer and they made him go to a therapist yesterday and he had to fill out a survey and talk to a lady for a while. He's definitely not stressed and so the survey was just really funny because it asked about how many times he's had thoughts of killing himself in the past week and stuff like that. It's sad that they actually have to give a survey like that in the MTC. I think he's going back to the therapist on wednesday.
So the weather here has been really weird, some days it seems like it is going to warm up but then it snows!!! I like the snow but i'm definitely ready for some warmth so we can finally go outside and play soccer on the fields!!! I can't wait any longer!!
On saturday we had our second 'korean only' TRC teaching appointment. It didn't go very well. First of all, we walk into the room and there are two korean girls and two white guys and we were supposed to be walking into a store to buy some clothes. Well every time we said anything, the people would just laugh at us and talk to each other in korean. We didn't really know what to say and we didn't know what they were saying. The same thing pretty much happened during the lesson, they didn't really listen to us and so every time we asked a question they wouldn't really answer. I guess some people just dont get it. Hopefully this week when we teach the plan of salvation we will have better investigators. I know that when we're in the field we wont always have the perfect investigator but hopefully they would at least listen to what we have to say.
So i've been studying vocab with one of the elders in our district and we've been able to study over 20 words each day and we have actually memorized them!! Many times when I study vocab I will memorize them but I forget the words quickly. I haven't been forgetting these words because we have been coming up with different prases to memorize the words!!!
Well that's pretty much all that has gone down this week, know that I love you all and I know that even though serving a mission can be hard, it can also be fun and because of my trials I am being blessed and I will continue to be blessed as long as I endure them well. I have a testimony of this gospel and it makes me soo happy to know that I can live with my family forever.
Love ya
Elder Oaks

MTC week 6

Hey Family!

 Oh so mom, yes I did get my camera thank you very much!! I've taken all sorts of wonderful pictures!

 And I also got the package Grandma and Grandpa Oaks sent to me, I think they're trying to get me fat!!

 So this week i'm pretty sure i've like doubled my Korean again! We've learned soo much and we can now form some complex-ish sentences. We can say things such as "through Joseph Smith, the Gospel was restored to the earth because he prayed to God" It's not bad. I've also gotten pretty good at memorizing things. I was able to memorize a big part of the first vision yesterday, I pretty much read it over and over, then I just read it from my mind (kinda like a photographic memory, but not quite that cool) (if that made any sense). Well last saturday was our last time teaching in English in the TRC, now we're only allowed to speak korean!!!! I'm not sure If I can speak that much korean but I know the Lord can. During the last TRC, we actually did pretty well. During the Korean portion I taught our 'investigator' how to pray and told her about my family. It took me a while to say what I wanted, but I think I said it correctly! While we were teaching our lesson in english, I spoke for a long time! It was awesome! It was hard because our investigator had one dad die from cancer then her next dad die from a plane crash, but it was a good way for us to bring the plan of salvation into her life. So yesterday all of the older districts left for korea! Im excited for them and I know they're going to be awesome missionaries but it was sad to see them go. I had gotten really close to some of them and we're going to hang out when we're all back home. Now there are only 13 korean missionaries in the MTC! but next wednesday we're going to be getting a bunch more, hopefully they'll be awesome. Our district has decided that when the new missionaries come, we're going to only speak korean to them, that way they can progress faster. We wish the missionaries had done that to us. Today we decided to wake up really early so that we could do our laundry before anyone else got up, it was a great idea. Usually when we do our laundry at our assigned time, there are a ton of other missionaries and we have to wait a long time to get a machine but not today! By doing this, I will have more time to relax and write letters/ take naps. So guess what! the missionary field is probably going to be open this next week! That means that we can go out and play soccer or frisbee or something! I'm super excited! Don't get me wrong, playing basketball is fun but it's not enough cardio for me. I've been trying to run on the track in the gym but it's SOOOO hot that it's just torture. Usually I get a mile done and that's all I can handle, so going outside in the fresh air will be super awesome! So i'm going to get some pictures developed today and was wondering if you wanted any prints or if you just wanted for me to wait until I get in the field where I can upload pictures to the computer and email them to you? I can do whichever you want. Well It sounds like you have all been having a fun time at home! Tell Chandler that it's awesome that he pole vaulted that, even if it wasn't what he wanted, he has plenty of time to progress. Just keep working at it! Tell Morgan that I'm going to probably play some soccer tomorrow! I'm really excited to play! She's probably way better than I am though! So I heard about BYU losing to SDSU, that's too bad but hopefully they'll make it to the final four this year. Oh guess what! so when my whole district studies in the classroom, nothing ever happens because we just talk and are distracted the whole time but the other day we went looking for a place to study where it was quiet and we found a place downstairs. It's in the offices where the teachers get ready and do whatever they do dowwn there, but we found three nice couches and we just sit there and study without any distractions, it's the best! Usually we're the only people in the whole bottom floor of the building and so it's super quiet! I've been able to get a ton more done! We're going to be going down there a lot since we've got a lot of korean to learn before saturday!

Well I'm so happy that you are doing well and I'm grateful for this opportunity that I have to serve my Lord. I know that he will help me as long as I'm doing what i'm supposed to and I've realized that it doesn't matter if I can speak korean well because that's not really what this mission is about, the spirit will still witness to the people even if i use simple phrases. I can't wait to get to Korea so that I can serve the people, find my friends and remind them that God lives and has a plan for them. That's what we're really doing, we're finding the people who we promised we would bring back into the light of Christ.

Well I Love you all and I'm doing just great here.

Love, Elder Oaks

Week 4

Hey so guess what! This week we have like doubled our korean, we can now use past tense, say 'if you do this... then this will happen..." and "I can do something..." (I hope that made sense). I also have learned how to teach someone to pray, it's super hard to remember all of the vocab that we have memorized, but i'm working on it! I think the thing that I have the hardest time with is creating sentences, I cant ever seem to be able to create a simple sentence using the vocab that we have! I always want to try and use words that i haven't learned. Okay so guess what, this week my companion's tonsils have been hurting him super bad and so he went to the doctors about it. they told him that his tonsils were swollen and they gave him some medicine that was supposed to help the swelling go down and make it less painful. Well the medicine they gave him was Codine syrup and it made him go crazy! He started acting super weird while he was on the meds and he doesn't remember most of the things he did. For example, yesterday he bought a bright purple scripture case and then today he saw the case and didn't know where it had come from! It was really funny but I feel bad for the elder. We went back to the doctors today and they gave him another drug that shouldn't make him so lupey.

 Well we had our third TRC teaching appointment on Saturday and it went okay. The korean portion of it went terrible actually. Since elder dorrough was on drugs, it was just elder doman and I and the lady that we were talking to was using all sorts of vocabulary that we weren't familiar with. When we would ask her a question she acted like she didn't know what we were saying (I know that our korean isn't that bad!! she could have figured it out!) but at least our actual teaching appointment went well. We had a byu student who was really easy to get along with but he asked a lot of hard questions such as "why should I get baptized? I was already baptized in my own church" and "are you saying that my priest doesn't have the proper authority?" so he made it really hard (just like a real investigator) but we were able to answer his questions. So ever morning we have personal study time for about 45 minutes and usually I will read my scriptures during that time. Well I have seen a tremendous difference in my own life as I have been reading from the Book of Mormon each morning. I have been able to focus on missionary work, study harder, and obey all the rules. I've also been able to read and understand so much more in the Book of Mormon than I ever had! It truly is an inspired book and through my daily reading I have been able to strengthen my testimony of its truth. So this next week the 'older' members of the zone are heading out to Korea! (they're not actually older than us, but they have been here longer) This means that we will be getting more korean missionaries and we will have to be the more experienced elders! It's a scary thought!

Okay so one more thought. The other night one of the native korean elders told his conversion story and it was truly inspiring. Basically his story went like this: when he was in elementary school his family was really rich but then the economy dropped and all the sudden they were really poor. When they became poor all of the teachers and students at school hated the elder (elder Choi) and they beat him (it's okay to beat students in korea). Well when the economy went back up Elder Choi's family was rich again and people started to like him because he was rich. One day Elder Choi's father disappeared and he found out that his dad was taken to prison because he had been selling fake merchandise and had been scamming people. With his dad gone to prison, Elder Choi began to bully other kids at school and eventually got sent to another school that was for the "outcasts" At this school he became the leader of a gang and he drank and smoked all the time. Well when his dad finally came home from prison, he was mentally unstable. His dad became addicted to gambling and alcohol. Every night when his dad came home, he would beat Elder Choi. One night he kicked elder choi in the face and it messed up his jaw and all of his teeth. Well one day after coming home from work, elder choi heard english voices in the kitchen and it was the missionaries. they asked him if they could meet with him and he agreed even though he didn't think that he actually would because he had work all the time. Well one day his boss decided to give him a day off from work and elder choi decided to call up the missionaries because he remembered how happy they were and he wanted to feel that same joy. He started taking the discussions and he and his whole family was baptized. I'm sure that I don't do this story any justice but it was amazing to hear the story of how the missionary's example of happiness completely changed this family! Okay well I've got to go, but I will talk to you later. Know that I love you all and I love the work that I am doing here!

Love,

Elder Oaks

1 Mar 11

Hey Family!!

Okay so this week has been pretty hard, as a companionship we had some struggles but I think we were able to work them out for the most part. We had our second TRC teaching appointment, we did really wel at the korean part (we introduced ourselves and asked the investigator a little bit about themselves) but then for the actual lesson we didn't really teach to our investigator's needs as much as we should have. This next appointment, we're going to be teaching the second lesson which is about the plan of salvation, i'm really excited for this lesson but at the same time it's going to be really hard because there's so much to cover during it!! Well my Korean is really starting to improve, yesterday we had an "english fast" where we were only supposed to talk korean the whole day, it was super hard and i didn't really talk much during the day but it was a neat experience. Well our district is getting along really well and we like to joke around and have fun, this is great for unity within the district but since we get along so well it's hard to study sometimes, it's definitely something that i need to work on. I just wish we had somewhere like the library where we could go to study without too many distractions!! If I can learn to study now, it's going to be much easier to study when I get to BYU!! Well I'm super glad that BYU beat SDSU, my companions and I went into the mailroom where they had the game playing and so we were able to get score updates from the workers there!! I heard that BYU is now ranked #3 is that true? So Today i'm thinking about going to choir, i'm not a good singer but my companion wants to go and i've heard that it's a really neat experience! I just wish i could have been here in the fall so I could go with the choir to General Conference! how cool would that have been?!?! So besides the ward/stake being split, what else is happening at home? I'm glad to hear that callie gets to go back to horseback riding lessons, i'm sure that is making her ver happy!! How's dad's training for that triathalon going? I can't wait until they open the MTC field so that we can go play soccer outside, basketball is fun but i'm not getting enough cardio! Well i'm about out of time, so i'll talk to you later! Love ya!

oh and mom, if you want to send me some more apples/oranges, i really liked those! oh and my companion's mom sends him about 2 packages a week, i expect for you to keep up with that!! haha jus kidding!

Well I love you all

Elder Oaks

MTC week 2

Yo Whats up family?!? This week has been super chill and i'm really loving it! I'm starting to understand the korean language a bit more and I'm able to pray, bear my testimony and sorta talk to people. I made a huge list of verbs yesterday that i'm trying to memorize. I seem to have a hard time memorizing korean vocab. It was soo easy to memorize the vocab when I was taking French, but since Korean isn't a latin based, romanized language, it's been really hard. I know it will come though if I keep on working at it. Well remember how I said that one of my companions was kinda making everyone mad at how he was acting?? well we had a companionship inventory (a meeting where we talk about the things that we like/dislike about our companions, and things have gotten significantly better. Well we had our first 'real' teaching appointment in the TRC and it went fairly well. I think we made the 'investigator' a little bit confused because we skipped around a bunch. I think our next appointment will be better. I just need to learn to talk! I sit there too much and listen to my companions. It's hard being in a tri-companionship especially when one of the companions talks for a majority of the time. oh well, we'll figure it out! Well our district has been getting along really well, I think if we were out int he 'real world' most of us would have been good friends. We all like to joke around and have fun, but at the same time we are hard workers. I think it's going to be a successful district! We have three elders going to the Seoul mission, two going to Pusan and two going to the L.A. Korean mission. It's crazy, one of the elders is from Sacramento and he got called to the L.A. mission! I've never heard of someone getting called to the same state they live in. Oh guess what!?!? So i've been doing a bunch of push-ups and pull-ups everyday! I try to get at least 150-200 pushups done a day and 40 pull-ups done each day! I'm gonna be soo big when I get back!!! haha I've also been HOOPIN everyday and it's soo sweet!! I've gotten pretty good at it actually! Yesterday I made like 5 points in one game! (we play to 7) On saturday I was playing basketball and I was jumping up for the rebound and someone accidentally pushed me, when I landed I landed on the side of my foot and sprained my ankle, my foot swelled up a bunch and now I have a super gross bruise along my foot! They gave me crutches for a day because I couldn't walk very well but the pain went down pretty fast. I didn't want to go back into the physical therapy room yesterday because I knew they wouldn't let me play bball, so i just played on a sprained ankle, it was fine. Well i'm outta here so i'll check ya later!! Elder Oaks

Journal entry

Yesterday

MTC week 1

Hey so I'm on  my second week in the MTC and I'm loving it here. I'm not gonna lie though, the first few days were really rough and I didn't enjoy myself at all. The first day wasn't too bad since I was only there for half a day, but the second day was the worst. All I could think about was how much I wanted to be at BYU and how close it was from the MTC. It's weird to think that all my friends are living a completely different life right now and they're only a couple minutes away. After I got over being homesick from BYU I have started to really love it. Before I came into the MTC I was really worried about how I was going to be able to handle going to church for 12 hours a day but I prayed for help that I would enjoy my experience here and I have come to love hearing about the gospel every day. I really love learning Korean. It's tough and I'm definitely not very good at it, but Its a new experience for me that I find a lot of fun. I have two teachers, one is brother Davis and he is by far my favorite teacher. He has helped me learn korean much faster that I thought possible (of course there is a lot of help from the lord). My other teacher is Sister Cho. Although my companions don't seem to like her that much, I think she is an  excellent teacher at teaching us the gospel and bringing the spirit into our lessons. Yesterday she bore her testimony to us in korean and although I had no idea what she said most of the time I could feel the powerful spirit that was in the room. Well I have two companions, Elder Doman and Elder Dorrough. I really like both of them and we all get along really well. Brother Doman was a football player at BYU and he's a really relaxed guy. He loves to joke around and so we always have a lot of fun. My other companion, Elder Dorrough, Is a very smart guy and he knows a lot about the gospel because he had the missionaries living in his house for two years. He's also a very interesting guy... It's hard to describe him. He's the type of guy that tells all sorts of stories and so i'm not sure whether or not I should believe him. Like the stories about how he had his own condo, had over 300 pairs of shoes, drove two cars, had his own business, worked as a western regional manager for Champs sports and all the big sporting good/shoe companies were fighting over him. He's also very cocky and likes to make fun of other people. Well I guess It's just going to be something i'm going to have to deal with. Well Overall im having a great experience here, although i'm not sure whether or not im looking forward to spending 12 whole weeks here. We were supposed to have another companion in our room, but he already spoke korean and so he is leaving in 3 weeks, lucky guy!!