Monday, January 30, 2017

New schedule, broken doorknobs and the like.

Lots of great emails this week. Thank you to everyone who wrote!

This week was a significant one. You may have already heard, but there was a world-wide missionary broadcast this week. Effective immediately, the missionary schedule that I have grown so accustomed to over the past 18 months has changed completely. The last 6 months of my mission, I will be living a whole new schedule.

I don't know how much different the schedule is in other missions, but here in Busan there were some huge changes made. (The new schedule gives mission presidents more flexibility to adjust the schedule according the their respective missions.) As usual, we are up at 6:30. But now, instead of starting studies at 8 and going to 11, we hit the streets at 7:30, just before the sun is up, and we proselyte. We do personal study from 9:30 to 10:30, and we can decide when we do companion and language study. Meal times have changed. A few of the rules have changed. Basically, the new schedule gives missionaries much more freedom and loosens the rules just a tad. In effect, the new schedule and rules are supposed to help missionaries exercise their agency more. From what I've seen so far, it makes each missionary a little less accountable to mission leaders. Thus, accountability is now much more between each missionary and the Lord.

One of the biggest changes is the fact that daily planning is now done in the mornings instead of at night. We come home at 9, and from 9 until 10:30 we have personal time (we are also allowed to go to bed early now!!).

I think these changes represent a significant hastening of the work. It's exciting to be a part of it.

Fun things that happened this week:

I had my first real Dan Jones moment. On exchange with a young missionary, we found ourselves surrounded by college students. I figured it could be used as a teaching opportunity, so I held my name tag in the air and announced loudly that we are missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That drew attention quickly. Instead of rejecting us, one student yelled "I believe in Jesus Christ!" Then a few more joined in. We handed out about 25 contact cards.

One night our door-knob broke. We stood outside with our b-team, all four of us, until late into the night, while the lock-smith drilled our doorknob off. I'll send pictures.

Zone Meeting. Lots of work, lots of fun. This Changweon zone is full of great missionaries.

Brian came all the way down from Daegu to visit. Unfortunately, he came on the biggest holiday in Korea (Lunar New Year), so every restaurant was closed. We ended up buying rice burgers from a gas station and enjoyed a low-budget lunch together.

A guy came to the church today and tried to steal all our hymn books. Yep.

We now teach English to a kind old man in his apartment once a week. He has some gospel interest too, so we'll see where this goes.

Plus much more.

Wish I had more time. More next week!

love you all,

Elder Sorensen