Final week of the transfer, gearing up for the next

This week is usually pretty quiet for pictures.  We are focusing on preparing for Saturday evening's transfer calls.  We had the last interviews with the office elders, Assistants and the Office Couple.

This week we also said farewell to a wonderful couple who have served for 18 months.  They are from Korea originally and nearly 40 years ago emigrated to the US and then came back to serve a mission.  We will truly miss them.  Gratefully, we got a last few minutes with them and some fun pictures:

We really had fun with this little video clip!

We had interviews with these good missionaries.

 We had a nice district council and a lunch!

We attended church in a small ward in Ansan Sunday and they invited us to take a picture since one of the elders will be going home tomorrow.

Two of our delightful sisters created a little video clip of their singing.  Apparently, the older brother of one of the sisters taught it to her.  It's called, "Knock, Knock, Courage Come Out!"  It's meant to give them strength and courage when they need it.  We had fun with it!

Finally, Sister Turner and I don't get to sit down much to our own home made dinners.  We are so busy with things, we get home late often or we've had such a late lunch and we're not hungry, so it's easier to just get out a left over or some Ramen and rice.  This night we had some time to cook a nice steak, have some baked potatoes, broccoli, and a salad.    Some times our preparation day is nice just for the meal.

This is a short one.  So much happening this next week!  Love you all!

Baptisms, Interviews, Meals, and a Sister Party

This week represented a good variety of all the things we seem to do here.  The only thing missing was a zone conference, but the three district councils took care of that.

The true highlight of the week were the two baptisms.  The first was of a man who is deaf.  His friend introduced him to the gospel and we have never seen anyone so happy as he entered the waters of baptism.  He was wanting to serve everyone during the refreshment period after.  The thoughtful elders asked many missionaries across the mission to use Korean sign language to say "Congratulations for your baptism, we love you".  Some got connected as a single recording, where others were individual areas.  Here are the results:

A Young Single Adult group also welcomed him by singing "I am a Child of God" in sign.  Unfortunately, it was too large to lead here.  We've put it on Facebook.

I don't think we've seen happier missionaries!

The next day we had another baptism.  This has a unique story.  Ten years ago a young man wanted to join the church.  His mother wanted to learn about it.  She attended church for ten years.  She was a member in every way except she hadn't actually made the sacred covenants in baptism. Her son served a mission and recently was accepted to BYU-I.  He was able to baptize his mother.  It was a special day. 

The day before, other members were going to the temple.  Even though she couldn't enter the temple, she took a tour of the area and said she had a most spiritual experience.

 Another recent convert was also able to be in the temple to perform proxy ordinances.  What a day!

we had interviews this week with three different districts.  We enjoyed lunches and conferences as well.  We forgot to take pictures of some lunches.  We start each meeting by standing and reciting our missionary purpose in Korean and in English.

 We followed the meeting with a Korean language study period.  Learned so much!

 The sisters love to pose with Sister Turner.  You'll see more later..

We had one evening free and found these colorful hearts.  We're so close it is hard to tell they're hearts.  It was Valentines week after all.

On this day, the elders made a special lunch for everyone.  It was some of the best Budaejjigae ever.  It's the military stew we've talked about before.  Budaejjigae

 We had a great district council and language study as well.

 The camera ran away

 Powerful threesome!

We had one more day of great company!  We had lunch, but no picture.

 Again, runaway camera.

We got to finalize the week with a sisters' preparation day. A houseful of daughters is loud and happy regardless if there are two or 24.  Even included the moisturizing masks.  Lots of happy sisters and friends.

 they watched Moana and can be seen here charting the stars

 Had to show they were well chaperoned!

We need to figure out and elders' preparation day, but the house is a bit small for the 50+ elders.  We'll have to think through that.

Nothing to show here, but to say the least, we awoke to an amazing surprise announcement on Saturday morning allowing missionaries to call, text, email, etc. their parents every preparation day.  We expect the missionaries will call a lot.  We are excited, but concerned that they may get distracted with the goings on at home.  We encourage parents to resist the urge to share all the good and the bad going on at home.  Share as much as would be sent through an email.  This will be a great blessing to their lives and the lives of the families if managed in moderation.  It's a great day in history.  We're so happy to be a part of it.  We love these young men and young women.  They are clearly the cream rising to the top!  Until next time!

Lunar New Year and plenty to keep everyone busy

In Asia, the Lunar New Year is a big deal.  Families travel to their home towns to visit their ancestor's graves and to visit grandparents.  That means the city is pretty empty.  Missionaries like it on these days when we get together for conferences.  It was a three-day holiday.  The two busiest days were Monday and Tuesday.  We had them use one day as preparation day and the other for a zone conference.  The third day, Wednesday there was much more for them to do.

Because of the holiday it is difficult to order food to be delivered and we were not inclined to ask families to give up their holiday to help, so Sister Turner prepared a wonderful meal of Mexican Haystacks that were a huge hit!

We had training, we had music, we had laughter and, as always, a few tears.  We hope you can get more detail from your missionaries. 
We started with the Suwon and Gyeonggi zones coming to the mission home because we had facilities to cook everything.

 This is the Suwon zone

 Sister Turner likes to have a little fun with them.

 This is the Gyeonggi zone

 More music

Being a traditional holiday, some sisters broke out the traditional dress.

 There is no shortage of good music!  These two played  a wonderful duet that showed much joy in their faces.

 Good supply of food!

Sister Turner's Tasty Treat Time - Cinnamon Roll Cake!

 This is the Seoul West Zone

 This is the Seoul South Zone

 More music

We only had one day of interviews this week. We did not have a district council since we had zone conferences this week.  We did still have lunch with them, but forgot pictures.

We had a special week with two baptisms.  The first was a high school student.  There was so much support for him.  It was a fun afternoon with him.  They had a real good treat table after. 

On Sunday, we were able to attend yet another baptism in the same building, but a different ward.  This man is a classically trained singer and right after the baptism he sang, "Savior, Redeemer of My Soul" to all in attendance.

 This good elder also sang a special number for the man being baptized.  It was a spiritual experience for everyone in attendance.

Sunday evening, we conducted a "Why I Believe" fireside where we invited those learning of the gospel to come be with the missionaries.  Two individuals who recently joined the gospel spoke followed by one of our wonderful sister missionaries.  The missionaries sang a few musical numbers as well.  The man baptized this day sang again.  What a spiritually wonderful evening!

Sorry you can't clearly see everyone of the delightful faces as they sang "It's Glorious".

One of the things we strongly encourage with our missionaries is that as quickly as possible they invite the new members to attend the temple.  As you can see by the smiles on the faces of the two men on either side of the sister, they had a great day at the Seoul Temple.

Finally, we thought you'd enjoy this picture.  It's a bit of an optical illusion to either Terri's or my incredible strength... She almost looks like a puppet to a ventriloquist.

We have been so blessed with a mild winter.  We feel for all of you in the US that are having a truly schizophrenic winter with extremes of cold or snow or rain, or other nasty weather.  With all the time the missionaries spend outside we are grateful for this blessing.  Last winter was a real challenge.  We pray for the missionaries serving in the various areas ravaged by the strange weather in the states and Canada.  We are an army of One, even though there are over 65,000 of us.  We love the work.  Thank you for your constant prayers and support.