Elder Garrison Lott

This week not much has happened, with the gaining of technology we're also changing all of our paper records to online ones. So this past week we were given the direction to stay inside and put in a lot of them for hours a day. So I've learned a lot about patience this week (: it's been good for me. I'm really looking forward to this week though when I can get back to being outside and shaking peoples hands and talking to them on the street for a few hours a day! I didn't realize it until this past week, but I actually really like that! Before I just did it because that's what we do and it's fun, but now I'm realizing how much greater it is! It's sort of like a healthy spiritual drug I guess. Going out and working hard for hours and coming home tired, but feeling accomplished and having seen God's hand. And I got addicted and was going through withdrawls this past week ㅋㅋ [ha ha].  But it's also made me realize some other things in life a...

This week has seen a lot of changes!! As some of you may have noticed, we got Facebook and other various new tools to use in our missionary work! So feel free to check those out! Just know that I won't really personally chat with anyone unless it has to do with the gospel and will help me fufill the missonary purpose. So if you have any questions about missionary work, the message we share, anything at all like that, or have a friend that might be interested just let me know and I'd be happy to talk! (: I'm going to be honest though, at first I wasn't too excited to get these new tools and for the past couple of days I've really felt uncomfortable mentally using them. I totally came on my mission with the mind set that I'd be sooo completely out of the world and out of that type of thing for at least 2 years and I was honestly really enjoying it so far. And so the past few days have been interesting. But as I've expressed my feelings to God time and time ag...

First off this week I would like to thank everybody for their prayers and support. It is definitely working!! And second off, I would just like to testify that this is God's work and He is involved. He dosen't forget us, sometimes He just uses methods that we couldn't even think of. This week we met with one of my best friends here in Korea a few times. And during one of the times we were going over some things he'd have to do in order to get baptized, one of them being get his parents permission because he's a minor. Well, we talked about it for a while and he came to the conclusion that he'll wait a few years until he dosen't need their permission and then get baptized because he really didn't want to talk to his parents about this. And I completely understand him. To just show you the tip of the iceberg that my friend is facing, his mom is a leader in a church that when it's translated into English is the Heaven's New Order... anyways tha...

Question of the Week: Is family history or genealogy work popular in Korea? Answer: YES. A big huge YES. Genealogy is so big and important here!! So Koreans traditionally have this book that gets passed down from generation to generation with literally all of their ancestors for the past couple thousand years written in them!! And it's so crazy that you should bring that up because the other day I got to see one for the first time at a part members house!! The wife and kids are members but the husband is not, but he's so into family history!! And I had heard about these books around and I was really wondering about them, so I brought it up with him and he goes to this cupboard that's full of ancient books and pulls out one that's written in Chinese characters (Korean is a generally new languge especially the written part, so to do family history you have to know Chinese but he's a scholar at it!!!) and starts going through it with me, and explaining it and tel...

Question of the Week: Does South Korea celebrate the New Year on January 1st, or is Chinese New Year in the Fall a bigger deal? Answer: So they do celebrate it on the 1st here but I've heard it's a lot bigger on 설날 [ New Year ] (based on the lunar calendar?? and Chinese things maybe? I don't know haha) and this year it's in February (: but as far as celebrating it on the 1st everybody gets up super early, climbs a "mountain" ㅋㅋㅋ and watches the first sunrise of the year together! And because it's p-day and a Korean tradition, we got permission to get up early to do it!! It was really fun! I'll probably just do a lot of commentary with the pictures, so I'll end this part here. So, so many sunrise pics!  And then my pants are amazing, directly translated they're either called grandma pants or country pants depending on who you ask ㅋㅋ and they are supposed to be as beautiful and comfortable a...