Sunday, November 27, 2011

Working Hard and Gaining Weight

Dear Mom/Family,

Well, hello there, how the heck are you doing?? I am just loving it out here in the grand Korea. So I hear you need some pictures eh? Well, I have been working on that. I have actually not taken all that many so I was less than inclined to send you the MTC pics that you already had. My bad!

So ya let me tell you about my week.

Started off on last Tuesday and we have really been working on trying to do something nice for the members and it has been pretty ridiculous. We have been working on trying to leave the members like little messages at their houses so that they can like remember us and maybe possibly give us some referrals. That has been a lot of what we have done this week. I have been pretty busy I must say.

I remember very well the stuff that they taught us at In-field. I try to use it every day but I find that I don't get to as often as I like. We talk to our ward mission leader pretty often, but we haven't really gotten much help from him outside of a couple meals at their house (which is nice I have to say). But ya, so we have done a lot of visiting members this week and we actually did last Monday get a new investigator. He is way tight and is missing the upper part of his right pointer finger but that is besides the point.

I had an interesting experience this week. I have been studying a lot of the vocabulary for the last couple days and I saw a significant improvement in my ability to hear and understand people. I actually have gone to a couple members houses where I actually understood 100% of what was going on. I didn't necessarily get 100% of what was said but it was pretty dang awesome I have got to say.

So this week we have 3 progressing investigators and it is pretty sick. One of them is the son of the mom I told you about last week (unfortunately she is not progressing). He has been praying and reading the BoM like a boss. He is so cool we even got him to come to stake conference. The next is the investigator we met on Monday, we met him again this week and he straight up told us he would like to come to our church this week :). He is so cool. Lastly is the investigator who we aren't sure if he was baptized or not. So an update on that. There is no record at all. Like none. Nada, zip, zilch. So we aren't exactly sure what happened (maybe he didn't get confirmed) but maybe we are going to have to baptize him again. So ya that's that.

Our other investigators have just kinda piddled out so we are kinda on a downward slope there hoping ot improve that soon so that we can get back rolling again :).

So ya that is that out here.

But dang I have got to say: we have a 3 year old dog othat I am going to get to meet :) I am pretty excited I have got to say. But ya....

So I have a confession to make....
:(

I am 82.7 Kg. Like weight... that's like 185 pounds. I am a fatty.... Gah, so I am very diligent in working out in the mornings LET ME TELL YA :). Sounds like the girls are all doing awesome. I love to hear that they are playing some good old Basketball. Oh and tell Kellie when she can consistently make layups she can start trying half-court shots :).

Oh and one last story. So I was on a bus yesterday and these two old ladies started talking to me telling me that I was cute.... So I began talking to them and I talked about the gospel and stuff. But goodness gracious you should have heard that bus.... IT WAS SO QUIET!! OH my goodness it was crazy. Every single person on that bus was listening to me. It was nuts. So apparently people like listening to the giant white American guy on the bus who was speaking Korean. It was pretty funny. But on a side note, Koreans and how they find people attractive is completely different here. It's like a checklist, and apparently I pass the checklist. So ya... I get talked about a lot. It's fun to listen to hahahah!

I hope that all is well at home I am kinda sparce on information this week sorry.... ;(

I love you all so much and I promise I will try to do better next week!
Love you all enjoy the other email!
Josh (Elder Crowther)

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Rough week

Wahhhhh!!!!!!!

We have a dog!!?!???!?!??!?!?!

YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYY!!!!!!! Why on earth did you not let me adopt one eh? I wanted a dog all while I was home and you never let me get one... goodness.........

I am so excited, goodness gracious. Take good care of her and get some puppies :) That means you've gotta get another dog. I would like to have a dog :) That would be fun. Gah, that is so cool. I am excessively jealous of all ya'll back at home now. Jeez.....

So, interesting week in the MTC eh? I am so excited that Tyler and Cory are in the MTC - that makes me laugh. I will have to send them some Dear Elders. They will appreciate that I think :). So ya it is ridiculous, like all my friends are on missions now! It is so crazy! I love it.

So this week for Thanksgiving we are probably going to 전도 all day haha. I dunno, Thanksgiving isn't that big a holiday here from what I am getting, so my guess is we will probably just chill.

Now let me tell you about this last week.

It was HARD, oh goodness gracious it was hard. We just had a really hard week. We dropped like 4 of our investigators so we are really back at stage one again. We are going to try and work with the members much more this time around because we need referrals. Most of our investigators so far just weren't ready yet or had different interests in mind, so it is kinda difficult. We are working on a program where we are going to try and visit like all the members like as often as we can and leave them like little messages on their doors and stuff so that they will remember that we exist and maybe start trying to do some more missionary work. It hopefully will be a good idea but we need some prayers!

However, despite all of our hardships this week, we did have a great experience with the son of that mother and son that I told you about a couple weeks ago. He is way tight and we've been playing basketball with him and kinda built a good relationship with him. He is a good kid and we invited him to Stake Conference which he came to! So he is so good and he really heard some good stuff at Stake Conference (but I will tell you about that in a sec). We also are just trying to meet more and more with the members (our investigators that is) and hopefully that will help us build some friends amongst the members with our investigators.

Now lets see... Stake Conference was boss. This was like a super awesome stake conference because it was like the first time in history that the Prophet wanted to specifically address the people of Korea. So my stake conference was presided over by the prophet who also gave us an awesome talk. Also, L. Tom Perry spoke to us and some other lady who's name I forgot to write down.

L. Tom Perry, talked about the restoration and history of the church and I think that was way good for our investigator because it really gave him some background as to what everyone was really talking about. He talked about the restoration of the priesthood and baptismal ordinances and how important those were. It was way, way, way awesome!

Then the Prophet spoke; he talked about the "Rescuing the Lost Brigade." Gave a lot of different ways that we could do that and talked a lot about how people really can change. It gave me a lot of hope for the future. It was awesome because I think the members really got it into their heads that they need to be working at this as well as us.

All of this was boss for our investigator because let's be honest, how many people get to hear a Prophet of God on their first church visit? It was way cool, I just hope that he grew from it and wants to know more, he has been reading the Book of Mormon so hopefully we shall see him progress even more and maybe even be baptized!

It has been a rough week, please send some prayers my way. Also, please pray for my investigators and ask God to guide me to some of His prepared children.

I love you all so much, thanks for everything!

Love you,
Josh (크라우더 장로)

Sunday, November 13, 2011

An Alien and an Oyster

Helloo!!!!

Well lets see how to describe things here in 대한민국...... pretty good :) It is going good. Hahaha, it has been a busy week full of ups and downs (as I am discovering that every week does) and so i've just gotta say another fun week in the mission field.

To start off before I answer any questions I have just got to say................... THANK YOU FOR THE PACKAGE!!!!.......

So ya I got your package and thoroughly enjoyed it's contents (If you know what I mean :)) I gotta say it was the third thing that I got here in Korea! So it was pretty dang exciting to get it :) I kinda freaked out. Hahaha. So yes.

It is officially.... not winter yet.... It's getting colder for sure but I have to say that it isn't really winter as in like the winter that I know yet :). Although I have heard from numerous people that it gets pretty ridiculous. So I will be thankful for the coat (the same one that I think every missionary in the world has ;)) so ya!!!!

This week we actually found 2 more investigators! It was pretty exciting and we got numbers off of 2 more people who are actually looking really good. We scheduled an appointment with one and the other was a guy that I met on the street the other day :). He did his army time and everything and seemed like an interesting and cool guy. So it has been a good week in that respect.

As to getting people to come to church though it has been rough. We got no more than we did last week and actually had to withdraw a baptisimal date from one of our investigators cause he didn't (we found out that he really doesn't have much gospel interest at all, only the fact that we teach english). But one of the new guys we found is really cool, he was gonna like become a monk like 2 days after we met him because he was so concerned about trying to be pure and good. But he is putting that on hold to study with us for a couple months and then he will make his decision. He's way tight though, we talked about some stuff and in the course of our discussion (lo and behold) I found out that he is studying French! So he was WAY surprised that I could speak a little bit (he can't speak at all but still) and ya it was just a boss time in all ways. He's so good :) So ya! That's pretty much it for that.

As for the lessons and stuff things are about the same as they where last week because we didn't have any come out to church. But the hard thing is they won't get any better because next week is Stake Conference over here and so people proabbly won't come......

Hard......

But yes, as to transportation for you Mom. We take buses, we walk, we occasionally take taxi's (that's interesting) and ya! We are pretty safe. Especially because the fine for hitting a person from another country (specifically America) is pretty dang high. So people are pretty safe around us :). But ya...... Let's see.......

Oh ok, this is my fun experience this week. So we went to a restaurant with one of our investigators, it was his mom's restaurant and we ate....... OYSTERS!!!!! Ohhhh man it was good. They were like fresh too. So they got them, they were still alive, then they put them on the fire in front of us and watched them slowly die and then we ate them! :) It was fun. They had like this oyster thing that like wasn't in a shell it only had half. So they put it on the grill shell down and we watched it writhing in pain trying to get off it's shell that it's attatched to. Then it died and we ate it, it was pretty delicious I must say. I was like a carnivorous beast. It was fun :)

But yes, that was my week I am attaching some pics (we ate at a Korean buffet this week. It was nuts they had like Pain au Chocolate's there and stuff. It was delicious.)

Love you all, I know this gospel is true :)
크라우더 장로 (

Monday, November 7, 2011

November

*note from Kris: Josh sent an email just for me this week, but included more general stuff in his email to David, so here are some bits from that:

I will start with the language seeing as how I'm going to answer the other two questions later. Language is actually going pretty well. I am slowly but surely beginning to understand more and more and it is starting to make sense. In fact, I even went to a member dinner the other night and I actually understood everything we talked about. Talked for like 1.5 hrs and it was just like, " HEY - I know what's being said!" It was pretty good. I still struggle if it is all 逢切奄 sprung on me [the Korean]; I kinda have to focus really hard to get it. So ya!

Me and Elder Dodd are doing awesome. We have recently decided we really like Ping Pong and need to beat the Koreans (because we play all the time) in a royal beating. So we have collectively decided to play a lot more ping pong. but we teach well together and we do really well. It's kinda funny because he's my district leader too. So that works out well. Our district is really small just 2 sets of elders but we do well. The other Elders area is struggling but they are gonna do awesome, I just know it.

First Zone Conference is on Thursday of this week. I will let you know more about that :). OH and I get my Korean nametag so I will send you a pic later :).