laura's letter 2/18/10

So it was the lunar new year this past week, which is a pretty big deal here. (It's like as big as Thanksgiving or Christmas). It was so fun to have dinner with a bunch of different families from our ward and join in the Solar cheer!It was a bit of a tough week though. Our inverstiagator (김 진 희, Sister Kim) who had a baptismal date for next week told us she was moving this week. Her husband's job with the goverment causes her to have an unstable living situation. We were absolutely devestated. My comp has been teaching her for the past 5 months and I have been teaching her for the past 2 1/2 almost. So, we were pretty attached to say the least. She is such a phenominal person. She has such a great testimony, and yet we are afraid that this move could put her behind on all of her recent progression, especially since we had finally gotten her to say yes to a baptismal date. There may have been many tears involved...but the work must go on and hopefully wherever she is moving to will have missionaries. (We will be looking into all of that) Also I have been very sick all week. So annoying. This time I decided not to take medicine, because last time it made me so tired. It's hard to speak Korean and do work when you are tired, so I figured I'd rather just be more alert and let it run it's course. Uhg. It was funny though, I lost my voice so I sounded kind of scary. People already get scared and uncomfotable when this random foreigner comes up and is speaking Korean and talking about a restored gospel. So, this week I thought we would just top it all off with a scary monster voice. It was pretty funny. Also for some reason our water heater is broken, which does not just mean cold water...our house is heated by water pipes in the floor, so it's been a little chilly. I tried to go out and fix it but all the directions on the heater were in Korean...haha. Whatever. I still love it all. I wanted to talk a bit about patience and love. Since coming on my mission I have learned more about these things than I have in like the past 20 years of my life. I have come to realize that they go hand in hand. It is so much easier to be patient with the people you love than it is to be patient with those you don't. Living in a 2 person apartment with 3 people, one of whom has a totally different cuture than mine, can cause some issues with patience. But what I have realized is that you just have to learn to love everyone. Focus on loving people and patience will come. Patience gets hard when you are having problems with fully loving someone. I still need a lot more work on this, but I just thought I may as well write this all down, in case someone who reads this is having patience issues...maybe it could help.I love you all so much. I love being here in Korea making a fool out of myself everday with my horrible Korean. I love the people we are teaching. And I love this church with all my heart.Happy Valentines!