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.
