4/20/2014 Every day is a joy

Hello family and friends. 

It's a beautiful time here in Korea. The weather is great and the people seem to be more nice during this season. Every day is such a joy and I just can't wait to learn more and more. 

So Easter was yesterday but it didn't feel the same. Easter isn't really a big holiday in Korea so there wasn't really and eggs or bunny's or anything like that. The 6 missionaries in our ward sang a song in sacrament meeting though. Haha lets just say that some of the elders here don't exactly know how to hold a tune... at all. But it's ok because anything Americans do here is always good. Just smile and wave and they love you. 

So it seems like Americans attract all sorts of people here in Korea. Creepy one's included. My companion and I like to go running at this track near our house in the mourning and they is a guy there who just walks around the track every mourning. We talked to him a few times and he seemed nice, but then he started watching us really strangely and trying to stop us while we ran, kinda weird. Anyway we saw him on the street in the middle of the day and he came up and gave a hug to my companion out of the blue. Thankfully my companion is super nice and just kinda shrugged it off because if it would have been me we might have had another Elder Meeks punching a guy in the street. Hugs from really weird creepy strangers are not really my thing haha. 

Anyway we have been having some really amazing miracles lately. Just this past week we found two people who are in our English class who now want to learn about the gospel. Our investigator 박준규 is really amazing except that he won't quite his job to come to church. I just hope that he makes the choice and realizes that the things of God are more important than the things of this world. 

Our ward mission leader is the most amazing member I have ever met. Talk about magnifying your calling. He helps us so much with anything and helps us teach lessons to our investigators. He joined to church when he was about 16 and served a mission and is now married and has a kid and is just really nice and people always love him so he is such a good help to us. 

We have two DVD's of conference and during meals and at night we are always watching them. Our favorite one is the one by Elder Holland. He talks about Christ-like love and how we need to have that along we keeping the commandments. I love how he can be really funny but then bring it straight back on topic. It really brings the spirit in when we always have those playing. 

Can't tell you have much I love it out here. I can't believe that i'm almost not a greeny any more. Time flies and it's just the most amazing ever. 

Love you all and hope you all are doing well. 

Elder Daniel John Meeks 

Gangham Missionary Style

Hello family and friends, 

Ok time for crazy story time. So a lot of you may the the song "Gangnam Style", the most famous song on youtube right now. Well if you didn't know this, Gangnam is the richest city in Korea and is really nice and really big with tons of people. Anyway our investigator wanted to meet us there for some reason and we weren't sure why. But it was a teaching opportunity so we were able to get permission to leave our zone and travel there. 

Wow that city is really cool!!! Like i've never seen anything like it in my whole life. When you look up you can't see the top of the buildings. There are a ton of people there and everything is really clean. Our investigator said we had a few minutes to burn so he took us a really cool bookstore and he bought a bunch of Korea grammar books for us. Then we went to this park which was really cool. So our investigator is the brother in law of a man who is running to be the mayor of Gangnam and the reason we were going there was to get a picture with him. So our investigator kinda tricked us into coming, but we got to have a picture with somebody who may be a very powerful man in Korea. There were a few other men there and it was very strange because I could sense the power that the men had and how much influence the had. We were able to talk about why were here and how we were so good at Korea. It was really really cool.

 Oh and after that our investigator took us out to lunch and there tried to give us a hundred bucks. We said no of course and that we would rather meet him again. He said that would be good and we are going to teach him tonight again. Crazy stuff haha. 

We got to watch conference this weekend which was really awesome. So much amazing counsel and hearing the testimonies of the leaders of our church always helps out mine. I really liked when the one elder talked about technology and how you are not smart if you have a smart phone. Don't sift through the Garbage haha. 

I'm getting better at Korean and it's really fun to talk to people. If everybody would just talk slower I think I would be ok. But Koreans really like to talk fast so I guess I'll have to get used to it. 

This is just the most amazing time of my life. I feel like this is going to be over before I know it so i'm trying my best to make every minute count. Thanks for all the letters and the words of encouragement.

Love you all and hope you all are doing well,

Elder Daniel John Meeks 

4/6/2014 - a Real Letter

Hey everyone,

Life is really awesome here in Korea. One thing that has been really awesome is that our ward mission leader is like the greatest guy in the whole world. So he called us one day and asked if we had any appointments and that if we did he said he wanted to come. We said that we did and that he could come, except we were going to be talking to a man form Cameroon Africa about the bible and some deep questions about what we believe. His English is not very good. We were going to meet at a McDonnelds and the whole time there was music playing in the background and it was really hard to have to spirit in the room. But when our ward mission leader started to bare his testimony in really broken English I couldn't hear the music at all and the spirit was so strong. He was found by the missionaries when he was a teenager and was baptized and then served a mission. And then last night we had him with the family that we are teaching and he went so well. He was able to explain everything in a way that made them understand and feel the spirit. In Korea it's really hard to have lessons with members there because there is some sort of pressure or something like that. I don't really understand why that is but this time was really good and they felt really comfortable with him there. 

I played ping pong last week with the other elders in my house. They thought that they could beat me and they talked really big. I guess you could say that the years of playing ping pong in the garage helped me out a bit. I killed them all haha. 

So before my mission I wasn't the most clean person in the entire world. I think i've changed just a little bit. Mom, Dad please don't have a heart attack but i really like it when things are clean now. I think I came to this because the other elders in my house (not my companion) are absolute pigs and don't care about making a mess with our stuff too. I've noticed that being clean just helps bring the spirit into the room so much better. 

Everything is really amazing and our investigators are doing well. It's hard to get them to church but we are working on it with them. We talk to about 150 people a week and it is really nice. My Korean gets a whole lot better when we talk to people on the street. Listening is really hard but i'm getting there. 

I love you all and love this work. I have been on my mission for 4 months now and I can't believe it. I am 1/6 done with my mission. Crazy!!! I don't think i'm ever want going to want to have it end. 

Elder Daniel John Meeks