Tuesday 31 January 2012

Life continues in MTC ...

Jan 31, 2012
  
Last week we got our Native Koreans missionaries!!!! :D THEY ARE SOOO AWESOME!!! they are very happy missionaries! hahaha~ and on Sunday, we had a very fun time at our temple walk! Took lots and lots of pictures with the Korean missionaries!! :D they are very funny and photogenic hahaha~ And they were SO excited to be out of the MTC!! :P we took pictures all the way up to the Temple and at the temple! ;)

Today my companion and I went to the temple, and we did Sealings. I just want to thank you Mom and Dad for being sealed in the temple and for Enduring to the End! I wish that for everyone, and it gives me the desire to find those who are ready to receive the gospel so that they can also enjoy the blessings from the gospel and from the temple! :) I truly enjoy going to the temple each week! I really feel the spirit, and am SO happy for the rest of the day! :D It really sets the tone! :D hehehe~

And I am soooo sooo excited for the devotional today! Today is the 50th anniversary of the MTC!! and I am sooo excited because some of the apostles and first presidency is coming to speak to us today!! :D YEAY!!!! I am excited to hear the message they have prepared for us missionaries!! :D

Also the language has been coming a long. I look back and see how far I have come, and I thank Heavenly Father for helping me along the way!! There still is a lot to learn, and it takes time, but I am confident that the Lord will help me to understand it better. We were challenged last night to start to teach our lessons with out notes. I'm a little scared, but I know it will be okay, because we can form simple sentences, and I know the spirit will help us.

This past week, I got sick! :( I was the last one in the district to get sick...hahaha~ so I'm not really that "tzah doaw! ;)". hehee~ But yea, so I missed TRC this week, but next saturday, I'll be able to go! :D

Also yesterday was not a very good day for me, I don't know why, but I was really down and my spirits were low. Until, my cha-mae started to cry in our last class because she was struggling with what she was trying to say in Korean. It was then that I realized that I was being very selfish and only thinking of myself. It made me sad to see her crying because she was frustrated, and stressed (because we weren't allowed to use english at all, and she didn't know the words in korean and we were not allowed to look at any notes). It also reminded me that my mission is not about myself! I am here to help others and help others grow. So I "rolled up my sleeves and got to work". I comforted my cha-mae, and tried to help her as best as I could. We then had a small girl-talk last night and had some cookies. :) And we said companionship prayer. I hope she is doing better. She did say she was feeling better today after the temple! so I am glad to hear that :).

When I was writing in my journal about yesterday's events, these phrases popped into my head (sorry I don't know which scriptures they are and I don't know if it's a correct word for word citing) but here they are:

"Lose yourself in the work and ye shall find yourself in the work"
"When ye are in the service of your fellow being, ye are only in the service of your God"
"Love one another"
"Feed my Sheep"

I realized this is my purpose, to help others come unto Christ, and to be a guide for them to strengthen their relationship with our Father in Heaven. I am only His instrument, but it is through the spirit that people can Come unto Christ. And someone said to me this week that I represent the Lord and His Voice, so I will do my best to represent Him as best as I can! :)


Oh! I forgot to tell you that I got called as a music co-ordinator in my branch ;P so I am enjoying that calling!!


Well I am over time... :P so I will go now~ :P and I will have a great week! and I look forward from hearing from you all, and I love you all very very much! I will continue to stay positive, and Love everyone around me and be patient! :D hehehe~ LOVE YOU and take care!! :D

Love,
Sister Kwok

Tuesday 24 January 2012

Life began in the MTC ...

January 24, 2012
An-young-ha-sae-oh!!!! EVERyone!!!

I want to thank everyone for sending me letters through dearelder.com! :) I LOVE receiving mail!! :D hehehe ... And Sis. Bateman! Thank you so so much for the box of brownies!! :D  I really enjoyed them, and my district enjoyed them as well, and a few other random missionaries I shared it with :D. How are you all doing? How is life?

Well I have to say, this week has been different from last week. I enjoyed this week, but it was a more frustrating week for me. I was a little discouraged, and I felt like I needed to improve in areas of my life, and how I was saying my prayers and I expected more of myself with learning the language. So, I was having a hard week. It is getting harder for my  dung-pan-ja (companion) and I to prepare lessons for our investigator Kim-hyung-jae-nim. Our last lesson for him was on Wednesday, and he said he was going to go back to Korea for 3 weeks. I was happy for him, but I was also really worried that he wouldn’t continue to meet with the missionaries when he got back to Korea. So on top of the frustration I had, it piled up, and I broke down and cried. But when I felt like giving up, my dung-pan-ja and my chamenim-dur (sisters who we share a room with) said some positive words to me. I also turned to pray and asked Heavenly Father to help me and comfort me and help me to know what I need to do to be better. I did receive a comforting feeling and that everything was going to be alright.

Next day, our investigator left us; our district made a video clip on his experience while we taught him. He said that he felt our love for him, and he came to know that there is a God. He also felt a special feeling in his heart each time we met with him, and he came to know that it was the spirit. He learnt how to pray; and because he has learnt how to pray, he then prayed to know if the reading the Book of Mormon was right. He received an answer that he should read it and it made me happy. He said he would seek out the missionaries in Korea and he would tell his family about this religion. Also, he would attend church over there. It made me very happy!! :D

We now have two more investigators. I will meet with my second investigator tomorrow. But the one I did meet yesterday was definitely a neat experience. He's an atheist, and My dung-pan-ja and I didn’t really know what to say to him. But we prepared what we wanted to say, but mostly, we were led by the spirit to say the things that we said in our lesson. Because I didn’t really feel prepared for our lesson, and I didn’t have much written down on my notebook about what we would cover. Before we went to teach our lesson, my companion and I said a prayer that we will have the spirit to be with us that we will know what to say to him, and as the lesson went on, insights came, and I don’t know how my companion and I did it, we were able to put sentences together! :D

On Sunday, we had a fireside, and Elder Christensen talked to us. When he began his talk, I noticed that he was stuttering a lot. It didn’t make sense to me as to why he stuttered, because he was a well educated man. I was sure that he was also a good public speaker. After a few sentences, he mentioned that about a year ago he had had a stroke. As I heard that my heart went out to him, and I prayed to Heavenly Father that he will be able to get his message across to us, and that he will be okay. I do also believe that many other missionaries did the same thing, because as he continued to talk, not once do I remember him stuttering again; nor did I recall him having a difficult time speaking. It made me SO happy to know that our Heavenly Father was helping him to get his message across to us.

His topic was on Missionary Work, how we as missionaries should NOT assume that everyone already knows how to pray, read the scriptures, have faith, etc.
We need to make sure when we extend commitments that we teach them to know how to do it. Another thing that he said that really stuck out to me was that even though there are many members in our church that have callings, and maybe to us, some members seem like they are lazy or don’t want to fulfill their callings; it just might be because they don’t know how to do it, because they are not taught. So keep in mind that we need to teach one another how to magnify our callings, or teach others to learn to do their callings. That was the main part that I got out of Elder Christensen's talk.

Well, I have really enjoyed my life here at the MTC!! and it's just going to get better!! :D heehhe~ I am absolutely LOVING my teachers and my district, especially my dear dung-pan-ja! They are definitely a great   example to me, and we encourage each other a lot! Yes we joke a lot, and 'pick' on one another for fun, but it brings us closer with one another and I really feel like we are a family. We are SO excited and I cannot wait to go to Korea!! I will definitely prepare myself as best as I can so that I can speak with the Koreans!

Oh and today, we are getting some NATIVE Korean's in the MTC! :D I AM SOOO EXCITED TO MEET THEM!!! EeeK! :D hahha.

And also don’t worry, my whiplash has been doing great! I had a mild flare up yesterday, and it has been about 2 weeks since my last flare up! Heavenly Father has been blessing me, and I am able to concentrate in class, and do all of my studies, and participate during my gym hours. So don’t worry too much, just keep praying that it will continue to heal and let me do the things that I need to get done!! :) Thanks everyone for your love and support and the prayers!! I really appreciate it and I do feel the blessings from your prayers! :) Thank you! I love you all and Wish you all the best this week!! :) can’t wait to hear from you all! and I'll email you guys again next week!! :D
Love,
Kwok Chamenim! :D

Tuesday 17 January 2012

My FIRST letter Home

Jan 17, 2012


An-young-ha-sae-yo kah-jook! :D
How are you all doing? How has your week been?? :D

Well this week has been SOOOOO amazing!!! :D My companion and I are really close! she is such a darling, her name is Johnson chamenim (chamenim for sister).
She is like half a year older than me, and she is the second oldest of 5 kids. She's the first to go on a mission, and she is doing wonderful!

Our district is AMAZING!!! we are already like a family! :) we have: Elder(s) [chong-no-dur]: Breakvoult (from Germany ;D), Morris, Keech, Brown, Jenson, Gibbons, and Andersen.
Our teacher, Chamenim Judd, is an awesome teacher. She has taught us a lot of Korean already, and she said our district has a lot of 'Jung' (Unity). So I am enjoying it here!

Man, I cannot believe how much we are learning about the Korean language. Already in a week, we know how to put sentences together, past, future, and present tense sentences,
and we know how to pray in Korean already. Now I just need to work on my Dano (vocab). But I do agree with Chame-nim Cho that Korean is easy! :D hahaha~~

Well, we've been teaching an investigator, his name is Kim-min-seung. He is from Busan, but lived in Seoul. He is now studying at BYU in the engineering program.
And also investigating in the church. The second day in the MTC, we had to teach him IN KOREAN!!! hahaha~ Let me tell you, it was HARD! because we only knew a
few phrases in Korean, and I was still having trouble to understand my sun-bae-nim (Teacher).

So Johnson Chamenim and I prepared a lesson for Kim hyung-jae-nim (brother) about how Heavenly Father loves each and every one of us, and wants us to go back to him.
And we got to know Kim hyung-jae-nim too. But before we went into the lesson, My Chamenim and I prayed for the spirit to be with us, and to help us teach Kim hyung-jae-nim.
And surprisingly, I was able to get and understanding about what Kim-hyung-jae-nim was saying to us.

And that wasn't the only time that happened to us, the second lesson that we taught Kim-hyung-jae-nim, our lesson started out with us asking him if he had any questions. And even though
we were not prepared to answer his question, the Spirit guided Chamenim Johnson and I to explain to him why our church was different from other churches. It was amazing!! and then we
were able to tie in the answer into our lesson which was about Joseph Smith and about the Restoration of the Gospel through the Book of Mormon. And then we invited him to pray.

Our last lesson, which was yesterday, we taught him about prayer, and the importance of prayer.We challenged him to pray to Heavenly Father each day, and he was excited to do it!
And we gave him a Book of Mormon, and he wants to read it!! :D I am sooo soo happy for Kim-hyung-jae-nim!! :)

This week has really built my testimony about the power of prayer, and the power of handing things over to the Lord, BUT making sure we do all we can to prepare. Also I have a testimony of His
love for His children! I am so happy when Kim-hyung-jae-nim was excited to read the Book of Mormon and pray! it made me happy, and I know it makes Heavenly Father happy as well! because he is
coming unto Christ. I also have a testimony on striving to listen to the spirit and how important it is for us to work to be worthy for the spirit to be with us, because it is the spirit who teaches the people.
We are only there to help the people make the connection and start to build the relationship with Heavenly Father and teach them to listen to the Spirit as well, so they will know for themselves that
these things that we are teaching them are true.

I am soo happy I decided to go on a mission! I truly know that this is where I need to be. I have enjoyed helping my Chung-no-dur and Cha-mae-nim (elders and sister [in my district]). I have also enjoyed
learning about not thinking about myself, and thinking of others. It truly helps me see the world differently. And I want to continue loving the people around me! :)

Well I am soo soo happy and excited to go to Korea, and serve the people of Korea!! I KNOW that this is where Heavenly Father wants me to be, and I am grateful for my decision to go on my mission!
I am learning SO much about discipline, and Cho-Aye-oh (It is good!) ;D hehehe~ Well I am running out of time! Sarang-hey-oh!!! (I love you) and I can't wait to hear from you all to see how you're doing!!

PS-> PLEASE WRITE TO ME!!! I ENJOY GETTING MAIL!!! :D hehehe~

With LOTS of Love,
Kwok Chamenim

Monday 9 January 2012

Saturday 7 January 2012

The Time to leave has ARRIVED finally - January 7th, 2012

January 2012

The time to leave has finally come ....

  • January 6th, 2012 - Tiffany was set apart as a  Missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints !!!
  • Thank you again for the love and support of friends and family
  • Tiffany Left Vancouver on Jan 7th, 2012 flying to Seattle, Washington, USA. Somehow, there was no seat booked for her to fly from Seattle to Salt Lake City, Utah!!!
  • She panicked and called the hotline - Mom for assistance. She had to fly on stand-by; but Heavenly Father would not let His servant wait too long; somehow, the airline came up with a seat for her and Tiffany arrived in Salt Lake City on schedule!!!
...... Stay tuned ....

Friday 6 January 2012

Set Apart - Now I am a missionary

Set apart as a missionary by President Walker

Families and friends came to support .... :-))  Special night with special feelings ...









Thank you for all your love, support and advises ... :-)) I am charged ....