Week 67

Hey family!!!

Surprise! I ended up being able to get on a computer today :)

This week was full of celebrations...super fun!!

First of all, on friday it was Sister Mathieson's birthday (she is one of the sisters living in my same house right now) so we planned a few surprise parties for her...it was awesome. On Thursday night we surprised her at an investigators house with a little birthday party and our recent convert came as well. We at cake together and it was delicious. Then we pretended like that was all, but little did she know that we had been preparing another surprise for her on Friday night at our apartment with just us sister missionaries. She loves cats, so we threw her a cat birthday party which included cat masks...it was great. On friday night there was a baptism at the church for a little boy who's parents are less active in our ward. So we all attended that and then got home at 9 and surprise! she loved it. I attached a pic of us in the cat masks :)

Also this today is Chooseok (Korean Thanksgiving)!! So in honor of chooseok we decided to wear hanboke (the korean traditional dress) to English class on Saturday night and to church on Sunday. People LOVED it!! the members loved that the sister missionaries work hanbokes. I attached some pics of that as well. (Sister Mathieson did our hair...she rocks!) There was also a miracle at church yesterday! So while we were walking to church we saw a woman and introduced ourselves to her and she happened to be coming to our church as well. She is a member and has been living in utah for the past 20 years, but just moved back to Korea this week to live with her mother. Her kids are all grown and married so she decided to come back to korea. (her kids live in Arlington and Maryland :) ) So I sat next to her during relief society and was getting to know her, then someone told her that there was someone waiting for her downstairs, so she left to see who it was. A few minutes later she came back into the room and grabbed me and my companion to come meet her neice downstairs, who she wants to refer to us! yay!!! so we briefly met her neice who is 15 years old and super cute and she told us that she would come to church with her neice from now on. A new investigator with some real potential!!!! yay!!!!!! Sister Ha and I were way excited! So we are excited to meet her again and hopefully all will go well with her :)

This morning we went to our relief society president's house for a huge delicious meal. So Chooseok entails an ancestor memorial service and a huge meal. So usually families will meet together (families always go to the father's side of the family) and the set a beautiful table in front of their ancestor's names and they bow and honor their ancestors and then they eat the meal together. They will also visit the graves of the ancestors sometimes. I haven't seen the ancestor memorial service because it's usually just families that attend, but I got to eat the delicious meal :) and then they took us up to the mountain to see a huge buddhist temple and one of the biggest buddah statues...it was awesome!!!

This week was super fun learning more about the korean people and their culture. I feel super blessed to be serving in this country! I love korea :) I know that these experiences on my mission will affect the rest of my life forever. So thankful to get to serve the Lord here. I know He is helping us in this work.

Love

Sis Liv