Happy After Christmas

Things have been crazy around here.

First off, I apologize for the lack of pictures lately, I know that my words probably arent as exciting without them.

Christmas was... well... Christmas. It was really difficult. BUT, it was wonderful to celebrate the birth of the Savior as a missionary, and to be able to do the work that indeed, the SAVIOR did. (walking around in the cold, talking to people, being selfless. *the latter was particulary difficult. I was actually feeling pretty selfish*)

But hey! The season was wonderful and hands down the best part was being able to talk to my family over Skype. That was certainly the best gift I recieved this December.

 

Things are progressing in Naju. The branch here is INCREDIBLE and its unfortunate that it took me this long to figure that out. The members are wonderful and they truly care about the people that we are teaching and LOVE them. Its comforting to see that even after my companion and I transfer out of the area, the members will take care of what we left behind. This is the ideal situation for missionaries.

 

A Miracle: We had a really miraculous experience with an investigator who were are teaching who is Buddhist, Sister Han. She is about 30 and is single and wants to learn English. She up until recently has actually been pretty bitter about anything that we talk about that is iffiliated with religiion. We were teaching her a lesson about the plan of Salvation and Sister Han was being increibly rude. Sister Choi then began a short testimony of an experiecne she has had in her life that has helped he testimony of the POS to be strengthened, and immediately the feeling in the room completely changed. There was no bitterness or tension, just peace. WE left Sister Han that night feeling much better than we had a few minutes earlier.

This week we taught her again, only to find that her attitude about the gospel had COMPLETELY changed. She told us that she had read a portion of the Book of Mormon, and had a lot of really positiv things to say about what we were teaching her. She was particularly amazed when it turned to my portion of the lesson, where I talked baout missionary work , adn how there are 80,000 of us all over the world, teaching the gospel. I told her in the most simple of Korean that I can speak- We teach other people about the gosple becuase we want them to be happy.

I have never witnessed such a drastic change in someone like this before. It surely was the Lord softening her heart.

 

A Funny Story: Our washing machine leaked this week, onto my bag of dirty laundry that has been sitting near it. For like, TWO weeks. Now you can imagine what happens when water mixes with clothes and you leave it there for a very long period of time. Not. Good.

So of course my natural instinct is to throw them in the washer, only due to our lack in MSF money, we have been out of laundry detergent for a few days.So after acquiring advice from my companion, she just tells me to was the clothes in SHAMPOO. here is the inward conversation that I had with myself-

hey, thats a really dumb idea. youre only supposed to use laundry detergent in a washing machine

but i dont have anything else

but that is only for HAIR

Well it cant be that bad, maybe it will make them smell good.

What would my mother say?...

 

..... so i did it. TWICE. and my clothes still smelled horrible. at this point im panicking so i decide to call sister ashby, a sweet senior sister who is serving in the mission office with her husband. but before i do, i ask myself, 'ok, what would my mother do.' and this literally is what came out of my  mouth... 'something with VINEGAR, im so sure'

so i call sister ashby, and to my correct prediction, she starts off with this ' Ok Sister Pappa, I want you to go to the store and buy one bottle of vinegar. '

oh my heavens. is this sister ashby or diane pappa??

so 'i soaked em alll day' in the washing machine. and guess what? IT WORKED!!! Oh how I trust mothers, they know all the tricks.

 

Hey, I love you all and pray for all of you, in your own little corners of the world, doing what you are doing.

 

xo sister pappa