Week of March 17 2013: Other people's prayers

Dear Everyone,

Hope everyone's doing well and this week was great. I keep forgetting
how time is moving for everyone else, and kind of for me, too. Sorry
also for my lacking letter last week---I'll try to make up for it this
time in details, but it might be hard. This week really almost felt
like a day. We had interviews with the mission president, which was
interesting---mostly just talking about how things are going, what
help we need, etc. He asked if it would be good to have sister
missionaries in Jinju, which is interesting because we've been
wondering if that might happen lately. Almost all of the people we're
meeting/trying to meet with are women, and it's kind of hard since we
have to have a male church member, and our ward members are pretty
hard-working people. Right now the nearest sister misionaries are on
an island called Gojeh which is an hour and a half by bus from here.

We're still meeting with Sister Lee (E), who I don't know if I already
told about in more detail. She's studying English at a national
university here in Jinju, and is pretty awesome. After the first time
we met, she read all of 1 Nephi in a week, and this last time she read
all of Matthew, which is pretty impressive. She studies really hard,
and speaks English really well. At first I think she didn't totally
understand how reading scritpure is different from that kind of
learning---but this last time she said she really felt good while she
read, and is starting to understand better how these things can help
her life, which is really great. She also brought my companion a bunch
of English books, and lent me some books for foreigners learning
Korean, completely out of the blue. She's a really amazing person, and
I hope we can help her well.

Also sorry my details about food have been scanty. I think the problem
is that most of the time we just make it ourselves, so it doesn't
really end up like Korean food. I think one of the things I've come to
appreciate the most is rice with this red sauce and 김 (kim), which is
dried seaweed, sprinkled on it. It's pretty simple, but really
satisfying, especially with tofu. Right now we don't have any kimchi
in our house, but whenever we do eat it it's great. This week one of
our really great members took us to a vegetable buffet, which I didn't
even know existed. It was really great, actually. There are
restaurants here called meat buffets all over, but this is the first
vegetable one I've ever seen. Basically just everything is made out of
vegetables---they have some meat-looking foods made out of non-meat,
but mostly just lots of vegetables, soup, kimchi, rice, etc. Maybe if
we go again I'll take a picture.

This week was more kind of trying to figure out how to find things
myself, etc.---but it was good, and I was able to learn a lot. I've
come to realize how much other people really support us and one
another, and it's really awesome to see. It reminded me of one of
President Monson's talks about how God answers other people's prayers
through us. I'm so grateful for all you guys have given me, and I just
hope I can help othe people the way you guys have helped me. I love
you guys. 감사드리고 열심히하세요.

-Elder Campbell