Tyler's Mission in Seoul: Expensive Taxis and Miracles

This week we've seen a lot of miracles. On Thursday we went up into the country to find a less active. The town we went to was SUPER pretty. I wish I had some pictures to send of that area. The people were super nice and friendly, and we managed to find some people who new the person we were looking for and directed us to the house (also something that never happens in a bigger city. The old lady who answered the door said she didn't know the person we were looking for, but we felt like she had to be there, so we kept asking. Someone else in the house then came out and said the less active was her sister and that she had moved about twenty years ago. We weren't able to find the person we were looking for, but we were able to share a short message about family and family history with them. Hopefully they will spark some interest about what we shared. So, we went back down to the main road where there was a group of people shucking corn next to the bus stop. From them we learned that the bus had left about five minutes ago, it it was unclear when the next one would come. Assuming it would probably been a couple hours, we started walking toward the nearest city. About thirty minutes later we stopped at another bus stop and looked at our map. Realizing we had a super long way to go, we were wondering what we should do when we noticed a taxi call ad in the bus stop. So, we ended up calling a (very expensive) taxi to come from the city and get us, after which we took another bus back to Wonju.

The next day we had a meal appointment with a potential investigator. We were running late, so we decided (with the other elders) to take a taxi. Elder Ryu told him wherever it was we were trying to go, and the driver took us to a small town, and we paid him and got out. As he drove away, we looked up at the name of the school next to us and, lo and behold, we were in the same area we had been in just the day before. This was unfortunate because our meal appointment was in the opposite direction from the way we had come, and was now about two hours away from where we were, almost on the opposite end of our area. Somehow we had made a mistake when we told him where we wanted to go. When we called our appointment to explain what happened though, he wanted to meet us in the middle and then drive us the rest of the way. So, we were going to have to pay for a SUPER expensive taxi to come all the way from Wonju again and bring us there, which would have been over $60 or even $80. Luckily, though, we remembered the number we had just happened to find the day before for a much closer city. We still forked over a lot of money over a couple days for taxi fees, but we saved a lot of money the second day because we had missed the bus the first day. Interesting how that all worked out.

Last Saturday, a long-term English class member and church attendee wanted to have a meal with us. We had discussed what we needed to do to help him get to baptism, and were amazed when he told us he wanted to take the lessons for baptism. This was a huge miracle and he has been in our prayers a lot as we start preparing him for baptism. He seems already to be living the gospel and coming to church, so we need only help him understand that baptism is a gateway that leads to eternal life and help him start on the path toward the temple and receiving the Holy Ghost more abundantly. So excited for him!

This week is Chuseok! That means we are going to Seoul and staying there for the night for Chuseok conference. It's gonna be great! Chuseok is basically Thanksgiving in Korea, but has more of a Christmas-level feel to it. For three days we will either be preparing, going to conference, or deep-cleaning. Looking forward to it!

Elder Tyler Crisp

This week has been great! We got a surprise great new investigator, and Nick came to church. Unfortunately we haven't been in contact much with Wang Ju recently, but we will keep trying. This week is going to be a lot of fun because of Chuseok. I'll try to take and send some pictures.