Be responsible, no excuses

           We were able to listen to Elder Lynn G. Robbins devotional given at BYU to the Education Week crowd. His message of being totally responsible for our actions without ducking behind excuses seemed to fit the events of our week.

Our soldiers came to Family Home Evening in modified combat gear so they would be prepared for the simulated war exercises. They aren’t required to wear their body armor or carry their weapons, but they do need to keep track of their gloves and eye glasses and all the other pieces. When they are fully decked out they could pass for human mules with gear strapped to every part of their body.

At our District Meeting was Sister Morillo was preparing for her first baptism of her mission. It was six days until the baptism and she already had the programs printed and all the details covered. She and Sister Hale return home next week. We will miss them both.

The training helped me look at prayer in a new way. Elder Stuart used the prayer of the brother of Jared when he took the six stones to the Lord as an example. He acknowledged his relationship with God beyond addressing Him as Heavenly Father and explained his need. He had already cut the stones from the mountain and shaped them to be used as lights before he asked the Lord to touch them to make them glow. I’ll review those verses and see if I can’t align my will more closely with my Father’s as I pray for each of you.

On Thursday, I taught Korean to the soldiers with the sisters and on Saturday we were teaching English to Koreans. My friend from the USO came without his granddaughter so he must have felt the instruction was good for him as well as his granddaughter. There were seven adults and four children that we taught in four groups. Afterwards, one of the sisters had brought homemade sushi rolls for a snack and almost everyone stayed and stayed just to visit. The sister missionaries had hoped to meet with one of the students alone and teach her a missionary discussion, but none of us had the heart to send any of the other Koreans away. The English class ended with a video of Elder Costa’s conference talk and Sister Hale’s testimony on the importance of families so all of them learned something about the Lord’s plan for us.

We thought we had a lot of rain and then it rained some more. If you look closely at the picture on the right the red path near the river disappears as the water covers it. The path is several feet above the normal water level.

Sunday, Sister Hale gave her final talk in Korea. It doesn’t seem real that she will be a student at BYU-Provo in less than ten days. She said they were told that the more time sister missionaries spend doing missionary work in the rain the more handsome and faithful their future husband will be. These two figure they have been soaked enough times to merit a prince in shiny armor. At district meeting they were asking for help to find investigators who want to change and on the way home they both utilized the train ride to visit with a Korean and invite them to learn more about Jesus Christ. Sister Rhoades hasn’t even been in Korea twelve weeks and carried on a conversation in the language for thirty minutes. She’s amazing! She trusts the Lord. She has had an awesome trainer who has taught her to trust the Lord can do His work. They don’t make excuses; they just go to work. (PLUS they buy me a little watermelon when they see a farmer selling them in the market. I give them a gold crown for that alone!)

Faith, sacrifice, and consecration

In July, all the missionaries in South Korea united their faith in a fasted for rain. There had been a drought in the country for three years.  The next couple of weeks we had the annual monsoon rains that occur every June.  We have had abundant rain every week in July and August and more in the forecast.

The stream with the little specks (ducklings) is usually a trickle with barely enough water to sustain the little fish the herons and egrets eat. The ducks have been very joyful with the rain.

This waterfall is coming over a dam that holds back the drinking water for the military post. Usually no water flows over the wall and plants grow on either side of the fish ladder. We took these pictures on our walk home from the USO on the bridge that crosses the wetland.

I heard loud claps of thunder and heavy rain just about the time the sister missionaries were scheduled to return to their apartment on Friday night. I called them to see if they needed rescuing but they said they were already at the apartment complex and then came to our apartment to bring me some fresh grapes. They were both dripping wet. Each had given her umbrella to a Korean woman on the bus who needed it. “It’s what Christ would have done,” Sister Rhodes said.

The yearly August training exercises began this week and the USO had a variety of visiting military personnel who have arrived to train over the next few weeks. We were visited by the new post commander, Col. Jacobs and CSM Copeland on Tuesday. Col. Jacobs has been in South Korea less than a week, but he came to the USO anticipating we would be there to give us an “Outstanding Volunteer” pin and to thank us for our service to the soldiers under his command. It was nice not to need to find him and try to convince him we were an asset to his post.

We also saw several soldiers who were students and had a chance to reconnect with them. One, from the DMZ, was very pleased that we remembered him, another was hoping for more study materials to do a bit more cramming before taking the promotion exam. One soldier confided in me that he was being trained to kill people and he really didn’t want to be put in a position where he had to take the life of someone else. I wouldn’t want his job either.

We took a two-hour train ride across the Han River to a district conference broadcast from Salt Lake City to all the stakes in South Korea. Elder Bednar was the anchor speaker. This is the second time he has spoken to the people of South Korea in less than a year. He pulled out the cat-of-nine-tails and very specifically outlined where they can do better. It is a call to repentance that could apply to almost any stake in the church. I took it as a personal call to repent. He admonished us to begin with faith, apply sacrifice in our service, and move towards consecration of our will to the Lord’s will. He reminded us that it is the Lord who is hastening His work. We are either part of that team or not. One of the speakers used the exact quote from Pres. Hinckley at the dedication of the Seoul Temple that Koreans hold as a protection against conflict with their neighbor and pointed out the kingpin of consecrated service to secure those blessings. Those who claim, “All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth” (2 Ne 28:21) were called out.

I will try to have the faith of Chika who just lost his job for the second time in about six weeks. He trusts the Lord knows where he needs to be working and will guide him to find new employment. He has so little control over his circumstances and so much faith in the Lord. His faithfulness is an example to me. We’re thankful for a few more months to be servants of the Lord in this corner of his vineyard where there is opportunity to strengthen ourselves as we seek to provide support to others.

The wonder of small things

               When I arrived at the USO on Monday, Command Sergeant Major Copland was there having a free breakfast. I took the opportunity to talk to him about our class and the correlation between the soldiers improved GT scores and their homework.  The soldiers who are not engaged in class either show no improvement on the predictor or fail to even take the exam. He was totally supportive of having the sergeants screen their soldiers with a contract of commitment to focus and make changes to meet their career goals. There are so few slots for the two remaining classes that we’re hoping to give those soldiers seeking to move forward an opportunity. He was back on Wednesday to help serve chili dogs to the few soldiers who were not on alert.

                We took a small box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch to each set of missionaries at our District Meeting, with the coupon I paid sixty cents a box. When Wayne pulled them out of his backpack at the end of the meeting, Elder Taylor was so excited that Wayne was very pleased that such a small thing could bring so much happiness. Later, the sisters heard a crunching noise in the missionary closet and opened the door. Elder Taylor was folded inside. His reaction was, “Can’t you have any privacy around here.”  His companion was passing off language milestones for sister missionaries. My guess is the box was empty by the time Elder Stuart finished the interview.

Monday night at our family home evening, Eric Anderson said that his brigade was going on alert at 4 a.m. and it would last for 72 hours. By Thursday, with the popping of the small arms target practice up against the mountain, two texts to the sisters to be sure to answer their phone whenever the office calls and the empty USO, it was hard not to feel vulnerable and uneasy about the possibility of conflict. It’s still business as usual for the people of South Korea.

On Friday we met with Gabriel. He studied for a little while, but mostly he just needed someone that wasn’t in a uniform to listen to him. He comes to church just as the meeting ends to visit.

A Korean grandfather has come to the USO to volunteer a few times.  He learned that I taught English to Korean soldiers and wanted me to teach his granddaughter. I did my best to explain about the English class at our building in Jihang the sister missionaries teach and gave him a flyer. He said he would come to the class on Saturday and asked if I would be there. Another woman brought her two children so we had five Koreans plus one soldier who has been helping. Sister Hale taught the two kindergarten children. I taught the older girl vocabulary by playing a matching game. The mother studied advanced English and the grandfather worked on Basic English. We all had fun while we were learning.

Small miracles happen when we least expect them. We’ve learned to trust the Lord’s hand as He guides us each day. We have no idea the impact of the ripples of our small acts into the future, but we trust that the Lord is able to do His work. We are only his hands. What a blessing it is to wake up each morning and know that we have one more day to be a missionary!

Sing, pray, and hug

                Our week ended with two consecutive days in Seoul. On Friday, we met with our zone of missionaries at the mission home for training. The topics ranged from drinking enough water, showering every night, budgeting money, keeping a clean apartment, to working with members in their missionary work. The missionaries were encouraged to sing and pray together every morning and night and follow the prayer with a hug. Hugging your companion is one of our favorite things to do but we also sing at least one song every day together in Korean before our prayers. We thought the missionaries were given wonderful advice!

                Saturday was our monthly visit to the Seoul Temple. We had five soldiers join us plus one of our Africans—a record number from our branch. We enjoy seeing other senior missionaries and sharing experiences with them. Both days hit record high temperatures so we were always totally wet when we were outside even though there was no rain. We are thankful for air conditioning.

                Most of our week was spent at the USO either at the front desk with our Korean friends or in the dining area where we met in small groups or one-on-one tutoring soldiers. While we had two of the soldiers from the class who scored extremely high stop us on post to report their success, others have come to us asking for a little more help to edge them over the magic number of points to get promoted.

                We made a trip to the Education Office to check out the materials left by previous teachers and compare our data on class participation and homework with their promotion test scores. We were happy to see a direct correlation.  The increased success rate of the class prompted a request from the education office director to increase the duration of the class by another day.  This was unexpected because the director had told us previously the commanders had requested a decrease in the length of the class to minimize the time away from duty assignments.  She thought the data would help her sell the longer class time.

                The daughter of the grandmother (harmony) who kidnapped me in July stopped me in the elevator today. She has been worried that I thought she was rude when she didn’t invite me to come in to have tea with her mother. She has been watching us and concluded that my caring for harmonies was genuine. It’s not always easy to judge the impact of our behaviors and service.

                Three of the people Sister Rhodes invited to church today were there. Four of the people I invited who promised they would be there were not. When I was thinking about whether to be disappointed or patient, I thought about the Savior’s patience with me. How many times do I try and fail or promise myself I will do something for someone else and get sidetracked? I have no way to look into someone else’s heart, but I can change me.

                This week I’ll try hard to appreciate all the things my companion does to help with the household tasks. I think the song and prayer and hug twice a day will help me remember my goal.