The Blessing of Understanding Korean

Hello friends and family! 

So a lot has happened in the last two weeks. My companion elder Gailey transferred to an new area and my amazing MTC companion came to Sacheon! Elder Skousen is a beast and a really great missionary. This week has been super awesome and we have seen a lot of miracles this week. 

As you probably think, it is super super hard because we both don't speak the language like really well. It usually takes a long time to master the language or even to be able to speak well so it has been hard this week. But we both have understood so many things this week that we would never have thought possible to understand before. We both our trying to put our trust the God and trust that he will not bring His children to us to teach just because we are not good at korean. If he sees that we try really hard, then we still can work miracles!

This week we taught two lessons! Once to a wonderful 50 year old lady. She is very sweet and really enjoys meeting with us. Teaching her about God's plan in a way for her to understand was very difficult, but in the end, it worked out. We hope to see her start progressing now and see the Spirit work with her. We also taught the Hong family this week. They really are amazing! We teach their boys english for a little while as a way to serve the family and then we share our message with them. They have a lot of questions about Joseph Smith which is great because we can answer them! The father and mother have a big desire to help their kids be better and have good lives, so it's great! SO thankful that we were able to find them last transfer.

We have reconnected with a few less actives this week and have set up some times to serve them and show them our love! Super awesome! We are finding that most the people we have on record have moved, so we are organizing the area so  that future missionaries can know who to focus their efforts on. 

The Lord is real and he loves us. I believe that he is blessing this area right now and has a desire for his children to be gathered and found here! 

Love you all and have an Great week!

Elder Meeks

Back Together Again

Hello friends and family! 

So a lot has happened in the last two weeks. My companion elder Gailey transferred to an new area and my amazing MTC companion came to Sacheon! Elder Skousen is a beast and a really great missionary. This week has been super awesome and we have seen a lot of miracles this week. 

As you probably think, it is super super hard because we both don't speak the language like really well. It usually takes a long time to master the language or even to be able to speak well so it has been hard this week. But we both have understood so many things this week that we would never have thought possible to understand before. We both our trying to put our trust the God and trust that he will not bring His children to us to teach just because we are not good at korean. If he sees that we try really hard, then we still can work miracles!

This week we taught two lessons! Once to a wonderful 50 year old lady. She is very sweet and really enjoys meeting with us. Teaching her about God's plan in a way for her to understand was very difficult, but in the end, it worked out. We hope to see her start progressing now and see the Spirit work with her. We also taught the Hong family this week. They really are amazing! We teach their boys english for a little while as a way to serve the family and then we share our message with them. They have a lot of questions about Joseph Smith which is great because we can answer them! The father and mother have a big desire to help their kids be better and have good lives, so it's great! SO thankful that we were able to find them last transfer.

We have reconnected with a few less actives this week and have set up some times to serve them and show them our love! Super awesome! We are finding that most the people we have on record have moved, so we are organizing the area so  that future missionaries can know who to focus their efforts on. 

The Lord is real and he loves us. I believe that he is blessing this area right now and has a desire for his children to be gathered and found here! 

Love you all and have an Great week!

Elder Meeks

Carefully Living the Gospel

Hello everyone!

I had the opportunity to watch General Conference which was such a privilege. I am so amazed by how much God wants us to know and there are so many things that we can learn, improve, and do! Sitting in our church office and watching almost 12 hours of conference was fun and Elder Skousen had a bunch of american candy that we snacked on! 

I wanted a thought I had after listening the talk careful versus casual by sister Becky Craven. It really touched me and reminded me about how much the Lord asks us to do, but also how much the the deveil wants us not to do those things. As I was reading the talk again this morning, I was reminded of the scripture 2 Nehpi 2:28:

"O that cunning plan of the evil one! O the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish."

We need to be careful and aware of the things the lord has asked us to do! We as humans have some major human frailties, which means moral weakness, so we have to be so so SO careful as we live our life! I imagine how frustrating it must be for Satan because all of his minions are casual about bringing souls down to hell. He can never truly succeed in anything because casual people don't get anything meaningful done. It is literally in the nature of the evil spirits! So lets not have that evil minion spirit and be careful in the way we live! I am so grateful for the prophets, apostles, and the other men and women leaders we have to look to as people who are carefully living their lives!

Have a great week!

Elder Meeks

Press Forward

1.Elder Gatherum and I

2. We bought a new pan. 

3. Car ride to stake Conference 

4. Area Book deep clean! 

5. Saw an opportunity and took it:) 

Hello Everyone!

First off, I would like to recognize my amazing sister and her amazing service as a missionary. I am so grateful for her and her amazing example of sincere missionary work and and the way the love of Christ work through her to touch the lives of the people of Taiwan. What a woman of God! Love you sis! I am also grateful for my brothers and father who served honorable missions and the stories they share with him that have built my faith in the work and inspired me to be better! I want to press forward faster and harder because of them.

We are teaching a few people right now and I am so grateful to the Lord for putting them into our path. I would love for all of you to pray for them and their progress in learning about and beginning to live this life changing gospel of Jesus Christ. We are teaching a nice lady who had just English interest at the beginning, but after hearing our message, agreed to meet separately and here our message! She was able to feel the spirit and we hope she will keep doing well. We are also beginning to teach a nice family of four. They want the best for each other so we hope to help them come to the knowledge that Jesus Christ is the way! We have a few others, but they are having a hard time progressing. if you could pray for them, that would be great! 

Our less active work has been great! Sometimes we have long walks to houses, so elder Gaily and I get to have long talks about a lot of things. Our companionship is becoming more unified and more effective as we grow closer together! What a good guy he is! 

I got to go on an exchange with elder Gathrum who came to Korea the same time as me. Really great exchange where we got to put our Korean to the test and see if us 4th transfer missionaries can preach the gospel to the people of Korea. We had success and a really great time. If we try our hardest to speak the language, the Lord will fill the gaps!

Some other highlights of this week

We had stake conference.

I learned how to make some yummy Korean food.

A guy bought us pizza

Got some discounts in the market because we are white...NICE!

Talked a lot with the young men and helped them see the reasons for going on missions.

Love you all! 

Elder Meeks

One by One Part 2

Hello People!

The only reason for the title of my email is that we caught one of the baby rats living in our ceiling. I have some bad news. The rats figured out how to get into another room of our house so that basically have full reign of our house now. Yikes.

This week we had the opportunity to help an old man in our branch clean up his yard. Super fun doing that for him and helping him out. He lived in orange county for a long time, but his English is leaving him fast so it's funny the things he says. We are going to help him every week I think. 

We found an awesome family to teach this week! The dad is pretty interested and the mom wasn't there when we met with the dad and his two sons. We hope to help this family out. It is a rare opportunity to talk to a young family like this. 

We had a great branch council meeting this week which excited the missionary work efforts of the branch. More steps are being taken to do more less active work in our area which is amazing! The branch president is such a wonderful man. He is a master teacher and a quiet dignified leader. He loves all and strives to make others happy. Watching him and what he does has taught me a lot about always being aware of the needs of the people around you. 

How great the fathers love for all his children! 

Have a great week!

Elder Meeks