Joy and Gladness

The big explore this week was a trip to northern Seoul for our first zone conference. Wow! We were so impressed with the elders and sisters who prepared and presented the meeting that we’re excited for the future of the church. It is a zone of about 35 missionaries so it was a good sized group and the missionaries directing the meeting were utilizing almost to perfection the principles of teaching they learned in the MTC. They switched off teaching in English and Korean so it gave us experience listening to the language. Wayne’s niece, Maren Young, just arrived in the mission last Wednesday so this was her first zone conference, too. We have the apartment the farthest north in the zone and hers is the apartment at the very south end of the zone, about an hour by train, but we hope to see her at other zone activities.

The rest of the week was a mixture of activities. We are now in charge of the Monday Family Home Evening at the base chapel and Wayne told a fun story to get the soldiers thinking about choices. We started volunteering at the USO greeting soldiers as they enter and dispensing game controllers and DVDs. The director plans to have us tutoring soldiers in math and reading to boost their score on the military entrance exam so they qualify for more opportunities.

We did more exploring in our neighborhood between rains. We found factories to the north, some with horrible smells of decaying flesh so we’re thankful the wind blows north. The mountains are very close on both the east and west so there is a little housing and some older shops on those sides. Some of the housing is modern and very nice; next to them are small, older and often decaying homes and businesses that speak of a minimal standard of living.

We’ve met most of our soldiers now and finally have a list to contact the others. Wayne gave his first District Council talk today and we went to our first Ward Council. We’ll do what we can to teach the branch members how to build their family tree on Family Search and find their own names to take to the temple. There are lots of great opportunities to serve.

One evening this week when I wrote in my journal, these are the feelings I expressed: I am feeling very happy this evening. I feel the mantle of a missionary and it is very sweet. It is nice to focus on serving and to have so much time to work as a team with my favorite person. In speaking about missionaries in D&C 75:21 the Lord promises, “And you shall be filled with joy and gladness…” Wayne and I are thankful to be recipients of this wonderful blessing.