Tongyoung: 6 Month Milestone

안녕하새요!!

Hello, as you all might know this past week i reached my 6 month mark this past week! How crazy is that?? I have already been on my mission for 6 whole months!! IT does not feel that long! I only have 3/4 left... :( It is going by so fast! I feel like i am going to be coming home next month! crazy! The mission is soo fun! Soo awesome! and so uplifting!!! The amount I have learned and grown is incredible! And its only been 6 months! I have come to know savior in a whole new way! reading and watching videos about his life used to just be interesting but not meaning much.. Now they are coming alive! As i learn about his life I learn how i can improve not only as a missionary but as a child of god! Something that I have found as i have been studying his life and teachings is that before when i read the stories or watched the bible videos i thought they were cool but it was so long ago how did him healing blind or feeding thousands of people affect my life now? This past week I found out that i was missing something! Every Single ONE of his miracles actions we can learn from. He is the only perfect person who has lived on this earth! So everything he does should be an example to us! For example, the story of Christ feeding 5,000 people with a couple loaves of bread and some fish. I never understood who that was supposed to help me. But there is symbolism behind it! Christ didn't get mad at the disciples for not having enough nor did he ask them to give more than they had but he took all that they had and made it enough! Same thing in our lives! Christ never asks us to give more than we have. He just asks that we give all the we can, even though it is never enough. But Christ will make it enough! Everything in life that we go through if we ever feel inadequate or useless remember we just need to give all that we can and christ will magnify that one hundred fold and make it more than enough! "By small and simple things are great things brought to pass"  I love studying the life of christ and using that as an "Instruction pamphlet', if you will,on how to live my life, and how to be the best missionary ever!

This week a lot has happened! actually not really! haha i mix my weeks up sometimes.

Ok well before i explain what happened i need to go into all the weird churches of Korea.

So there are soo many different churches here in Korea, it is probably the same in the U.S i just didnt know because i grew up in Utah! #kaysvillebubble but there a bunch of weird ones.

so you have the regular

catholic

baptist

Presbyterian

etc. 

But then there are some really weird ones

Shin Chon Jee (dont know the american name for that) but the translation i think is something like new sky new land.

And they are weird!!  So they have a prophet and I am not 100% sure all that they believe in but i do know that they believe the second coming can't happen until all the false churches are destroyed. So they infiltrate churches and destroy them. They pretend to be investigators and then get baptized and then start teaching false doctrine or stuff like that. There is this one are in our mission that had 600 members they called a bishop and about a month later during sacrament he got up on the pulpit, tour his shirt and started yelling and telling people that this is Satan's church and they are all going to hell.... That ward now has 36 active members.... GO KOREA!!! haha fun things happen here! 

next is Hannanemeeh Kyowhay or "Gods church" and they are super strange. They believe that christ failed as our savior because he died. And that we had a new savior come a like 20 or 30 years ago but then one day he got hit by a car and died so they now worship this "saviors" mother who is a white lady who lives in seoul and they think she is gods wife and our new savior... super weird stuff haha but there are some other weird ones that i am not going to go into

Ok so yesterday we met a member from the Shin Chon Jee church. He is my same age and really believes in his church. We sat down and taught him the first lesson, and then he asked some questions which we tried to answer but he pulled out his bible and was trying to bible bash with us.. except the only problem is that thier bible is almost a whole new book, we might as well be using the book of mormon and a bible because they had no similarities.For example he told us that his "prophet" can prove everything and when he recieves revelation he proves it. and in there bible there is a verse that says something like prophets will be able to prove everything, but in our bible it says prophets will be able to testify about everything. Something like that. It is all in korean so i am not sure the exact words but it has that feeling! So he wants to meet again but i am not sure if it for us to try an convert him or for him to try and convert us! we will see! haha

Well that's about it! We have spent lots of time with E Sung Joon, and yesterday he got interviewed for the priesthood.He really wants to goon a mission. We went street contacting with him and it was really cool! he was super excited! Even though there are no active youth his age he is getting along with the members great!

Love you all! Stay active in the church, if the missionaries need to focus reactivating members it is wasting the lords time! If you just stay active then the missionaries and members can focus on people who haven't heard this gospel! So read the book of mormon everyday and pray! "the book of mormon a day will keep the devil at bay" 

Remember doubt your doubts before you doubt your beliefs! 

Peace!!

Elder Stagg 

#TheChurchIsTrue

Tongyoung: The only priest in our ward

Public! 

Hello! This has been an awesome week! (like usual) First off E Sung Joon got confirmed yesterday! And he wants to go to the temple sometime next month! He also wants the priesthood! (he will be the only priest in our ward) 

Next we called those elementary kids that i talked about last week and they said they wanted to play soccer, so on Wednesday we played soccer with them and a bunch of their friends! And WOW!! They are good! They have amazing ball control and me and Elder Pak, who have both played soccer before, were very impressed! Once we finished we were walking home and one of the kids said what is todays church message? Haha so awesome! So we talked about prayer with them! We have no a group of 4 kids from 5th-6th grade that love us! And we are planning on having them come to church this week and we can teach them and play bang! Hopefully they continue to have interest!

Next we were proselyting in the morning, like we do everyday, and we saw this older man walking so we sped up a bit and started talking to him at first he was kind of rude and kept saying he was busy, but we were persistent, and after a while he warmed up to us, so we went inside a CU (like a 711) and he bought us some drinks and he ate some ramen while we talked. Turns out he gave up smoking 6 years ago, drinking 9 years ago, and said he hasn't had any sexual relations  in 8 years. He said he did it for self control and he just felt like he needed to stop those things but he was not entirely sure why. So our first lesson we taught him was about Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity. It was cool to see how god has prepared him for while to meet us! He wants to meet with us again and feed us lots of food! :) I think he is very wealthy but not 100% sure. I am hoping that he will recognize that this could be the reason why he felt like he needed to stop doing those things! Hopefully he becomes an investigator! We are planning on meeting him tonight!

The other prepared person we were again proselyting and I started talking to this kid about my age we talked for a bit but it appeared he had no interest, and i was about out of things that i knew how to say. So my companion jumped in and started talking and together we kind of explained our church to him,and he had LOTS of questions. We ended up sitting down on some steps outside and taught him about baptism and the whole 1st lesson! He seemed to except it pretty well. He wanted a book of Mormon but we gave our last one out about 10 minutes  before me met him. He seems SUPER interested! 

We got a new investigator, we met him yesterday and it started out kind of rough. He didn't have any real questions and so we struggled with knowing what to talk about with him because he wasn't giving us much to go off of. So about 4 minutes into the lesson I decided to say a prayer in my head and asked that we would have the spirit with us and be able to discern his needs. After that i noticed a huge difference and the lesson went pretty good! 

We met with Alec this week and had lunch. Turns out his grandma and all his aunts and uncles are LDS, and his grandma sends him Verses in the book of mormon a lot! hehe awesome grandma! His mom went less active before he was born because within 2 months of each other she lost her husband, father, and brother. Really hard for her and she was angry at god. She always raised him telling him you can find faith outside of church or religion. But she had him go to boy scouts every week, between that and his grandma he has a pretty good knowledge about our church. He said he is really busy and doesn't think he has time to meet with us but that he is interested. (I think it is more of an excuse so we are going to keep trying :) 

Thats about it! 

This week I have been reading a lot from Jesus the Christ (SUPER GOOD book! I advise you all to read it!) But it is super cool learning more about Christ's life in great detail. And it is helping me become a better more Christlike missionary. For example, Christ used every opportunity to teach no matter what! Like when he was at the well in Samaria and asked the women to give him water, when she asked why him, a jew, would ask her, a Samaritan, for water. He used the as an opportunity to teach her about the living water he could give her. Even though he was probably thirsty and could of waited till after she gave him water he saw it as a teaching opportunity! He knew who's business he was about, and that was his father business which takes precedence over anything else on this earth. So thats my goal is to always be teaching because i am about my father's business also!

Love you all

Stay Gucci

Elder Stagg

A ping-pong soccer court we made for family night (you need to blow the ball)

Toungyoung: My First Baptism

Anyonghasayyo!! 

This has been a super fast and incredibly amazing week! The success and miracles are just pouring in! And I love it!! Our small ward went from 1 youth to 3 in the past month! (1 is 7 years old and the two others are our recent converts who are both 16) We finally have a priest age kid in the ward! 

So yesterday we baptized E sung Joon! His testimony is remarkable. He was so nervous/excited before the baptism but super prepared! He wants to serve a mission so bad, and so we are going to start inviting him to help us teach. We will start with just members. But hopefully if he wants we can start doing proselyting with him! 

Next We have gotten 4 new investigators! 

2 of them are in 6th grade, and we got permission from their parents to teach them. although we need to work on making simple lessons hopefully with interactive activities to go along with them. If any of you have any ideas please let me know! 

Next we were at our english class when we heard someone playing piano, so we went up stairs and there is the kid we have never seen playing the piano! haha we talked to him and he said he had met with the missionaries about 2 years ago and just felt like he should come back to our english class. we haven't me with him since because we have been super busy! But i think he has lots of potential! He is 24 in american age

Next, about 2 weeks ago we got a call from random number that said he wanted to meet but was super busy and didn't know when he could so he said he would call back later. So about a week later he called us again and basically did the same thing. But then he called us yesterday and asked if we could meet in 20 minutes.So we met with him. He is from Uzbekistan. He can speak a very little bit of english, and decent Korean. However he knows no religious words in either language. He has been here for 2 years doing construction work, he works EVERY day from 6am to 9pm. He send most of the money back to his family. So he has only learned Korean from people talking around him. He is muslim, and 24 years old! half of our teaching his acting. He didn't know the word for god so we were pointing up and pretending like we were praying and a bunch of other stuff... he said he understood but we have no idea if he did our not. There is no church material published in his language either, so he is going to be hard to teach.

And last, Elder Choi (from the 70) came to busan on our mission tour. He had a really powerful talk and i felt the spirit strong! He focused a lot on suffering. Christ had to suffer in almost all of his life. He died for us, atoned for us, got mocked, beat, scorned, the list could go on and on. He suffered more than any man could handle. So if Christ was perfect and he had to suffer why would we as imperfect people not need to suffer? But it is when we suffer and how we react to the suffering the defines us. We need to learn to suffer with and in god. Lots of the apostles that have spoken to us have told us to not take notes and what they say, but on what the spirit tells us.

When we suffer "look up". That was his famous Quote of the day. Just look up, in everything we do and all of our problems will go away. That doesn't mean that Christ will heal you, or take away all of your trials but he will ease your burden. After all we have trials and afflictions to help us remember Christ. When Christ got nailed to the cross and stabbed with the spear, did he heal his scares? No! The reason why is so that we will always remember him, he has engraved us upon his hands. And so when we have trials or afflictions and we turn to god but he doesn't take them away, the reason is probably because he wants you to always remember him. Just like christ kept his scares even though he had a perfect body. So remember LOOK UP!!

Thats my spiritual thought for the week!

Love you all

--Elder Stagg

Korean Fried Chicken, probably the best thing in the world.

Yummy,  
It is mission tradition to get it most pday dinnners, every transfer night and the first meal with  you new companion. It is super good and they deliver it to your door!

Then it is a picture of my lesson in church about agency, i used dads famous lesson

Americans get to carry real guns

I am Elder Stagg tie

Look!  I have found ice-cream

What the heck are you looking down here for?

River front

Bay front

Harbor Front

Look Ma.  I just caught the world's smallest fish

My first Baptism: E Sung Joon

See no evil

Speak no evil

Smell no evil

E Sung Joon and the first councilor in ward and his wife

Missionary goodness

E Sung Joon ready to join the missionary ranks wearing my old suit

The sisters asked me to do another baptism

Tongyoung: Bishopless

안녕하세요!! Lately I have been struggling with having good studies. I found my self focusing more on not falling asleep then I was focusing on studying. Well I was reading the Joseph Smith History, which is SUPER good, and when i got to verses 10-13 I realized what I was doing wrong. When we study we need to have questions in our heart, a desire to find those answers, and an environment where the holy ghost can speak to us but more importantly we need to be LISTING for the spirit's voice testifying us to us! I was then prompted to look in chapter 2 of Preach My Gospel (How to have effective study) and it talked about a lot of the same things. But mostly when I study what are they reasons why I am studying? Is it for me or is it for my investigators? Anyways that has changed my outlook on study and how important it is for the day. Just like Joseph Smith when he read James 1:5 he didn't just read that feel the spirit and think WOW that was really cool and then never think about it again. He said he "Reflected upon it again and again" after we finish studying, listening to conference, going to church, etc. we need to continuously ponder what we learned and more importantly what we felt the spirit teach us! And then a really important part is to record what you learned somewhere so you have that again in the future! 

Now a brief side-story about what has been going on in the life of Elder Stagg for the past week!

 So, this week we have accumulated 2 more investigators, but we havent been able to meet with the 4 kids from last time yet...

The 2 new investigators we got this week are

Alec: He is 24, from Washington, and is an English teacher here in korea. He is a genius! He graduated highschool with his associates degree and had is bachelors by age 21! He has been in korea for the past 2 years, and unlike most english teachers here can actually speak decent korean, or so he says. His grandma is LDS and his mom has been less active most his life. He says that he doesnt have a "religion" but he says he has the same morals as religious people. I met him on a bus, I walked on when all the sudden I heard "I like your shoes". It took me a second to realize that was english, so i turned around and there is this white dude sitting down in one of the chairs. So I sat next to him and started talking with him. I got his number, but turns out we already had it, after thinking for a bit he realized he met missionaries a year ago and played basketball with them. Super cool guy excited to continue meeting with him, and hopefully switch our interactions from mostly being friends to mostly Gospel discussion

Next is 탁영새 (tacg young seh) 

He is probably 50-60, he has a wife and kids but lives by him self in the smallest apartment i have ever seen. We showed up to his door and knocked and let us in. We sat down and he was cooking some soup on a camping stove and drinking some sort of korean alcohol. He tried getting us to drink and when we said we dont drink he got really red in the face and started yelling at us and saying the jesus drank, and lots of swear words. Then we finally appeased him enough to accept that we dont drink so he said fine here is some coffee.... well then we had to explain that we couldnt drink coffee. Then he got REALLY mad and he was probably yelling for at least 4 minutes straight! haha If you think understanding regular Korean is hard wait until you here an old drunk man yelling, i am pretty sure i understood at most 5 words! haha super funny! Well we taught a little bit about the  restoration, and he said he is Buddhist but he had some interest. we are planning on going back this week and hopefully there is less yelling! haha

Update on old investigators!

So E Sung Joon is getting baptized this sunday! He got his father to sign the baptism paper but his mom didnt know he had been investigating our church. He had been hiding and reading the book of mormon. He has read a lot! He would call us every once and a while and say elders! I just finished 2nd nephi! then 2 hours later he would call us with a question about jacob or enos! he is flying through the book! But yesterday was lunar new years which is a huge holiday in korea (it is 3 days long) so his grandmother was home. Well he was reading the book of mormon because his mom was gone but his grandma must of saw him because he got a text during church from his mom, who was very angry. Apparently his grandma had told his mom that she saw him reading a book like the bible, and then his mom realized that when he had been leaving every sunday for the past 6 months he had been going to church. Well now he is scared that he wont be able to get baptized so keep him in your prayers please! 

Next is Kim jong Won

He is super awesome! We just finished teaching him law of chastity and he looked at me and said so at first I couldnt drink alcohol, smoke, do drugs, or drink tea or coffee, and now i cant have these relationships with girls.... is there anything else i need to know about! haha we told him that those were kind of the big harder ones to follow. But he has told us he has a desire to stop! He hasnt been 100% sober from alcohol but he said he is trying! He leaves this friday to austria and wont be back for 3 weeks so hopefully everything works out with him! 

The others not much is happening with so i wont mention them

So a brief history on our "ward". It used to be a pretty big ward with about 250 people. but lately korea has been really struggling with people going less active. We have a list of over 200 less actives, most of those have either blocked our number or have no interest. So we have probably about 26 members and no bishop. Well we have a bishop, but 2 months ago he moved to daejon and they havent replaced him yet. So its still a ward because you can never downgrade but it is smaller then my branch in seogwipo! 

well i think that is all for this week!

Love you all!

Remember god knows each and everyone of you! If you ever have a question or concern let god know! He already knows it but he cant do anything unless you ask him or talk with him! The more sincere your prayer is the more sincere your answer will be! I KNOW this church is true and I KNOW Jesus Christ is our older brother who died for each and everyone of us so not only we can live with god again but we can have all of our burdens and trials taken from us! How cool is that!

Elder Stagg