Happy Easter

Wow, this has been a bit of a crazy week! We had a bunch of meetings and other random things that came up so we were kind of all over the place, but it was a good week. We still have two investigators who have baptismal dates in the next few weeks. It is a humbling experience to invite people to be baptized and re-realize the importance of the covenants we make with God and the love He has for us in the promised that He gives back to us. I know that when we make a sacrifice to fulfill a covenant or to obey a commandment, God will always repay us!!

Our two investigators with baptismal dates are 최광식 (Choi Kwang-Sheek) and 이진형 (Lee Jeen-Hyung). We had some great meetings with them this week and probably the biggest miracle to me this week was the opportunity to feel a portion of God's love for them. I think that is one of my favorite parts of being a missionary.  I feel like more than ever before God has blessed me with the humbling opportunity to understand just an inkling of the eternal love He has for His children to the degree I will open my heart to let it in. In those moments where I begin to understand a tiny bit of how God might feel for these people, it makes every effort worth it. Sometimes we get stuck in the rat-race of life and focus in on the little details of life, forgetting the bigger picture. But I know that God fully understand that bigger picture and He fully understands each of us. His love for us is more powerful, more precious, more deep, more pure, and more dear than we can imagine. And I think the best way we can come to feel it in our own lives is by first seeking to share it with others. 

I know that God loves His children!

I know that every sacrifice and every effort is worth feeling that love in our lives!

I know that through following the gospel and staying true to our covenants, we are promised the opportunity to dwell with our families in that loving presence of God for eternity! 

Let's do our best to make sure nobody get's left out! It is eternity, after all!

I love you all and hope you have a spectacular week!!

Love, Elder Tolman

Transfer to Punghyang

Apr 13

안녕하세요?

This has been a great week! Last Monday we received transfer calls and got transferred! But the funny thing is that I moved to the closest possible area. I was serving in Chungjang, the south part of Gwangju, and I moved to Punghyang (풍향) which is the north part of the same city. The funny thing, too, is that the two wards are actually going to combine in May, so I will practically be back in the same area! I am serving with Elder 권동엽 (Kwon Dong-Yup) as co-zone leader. 

Elder Kwon is a convert of about 3 years and he's just a stud. He works really hard, he's really smart, he is funny and personable, and he just gives his all to the work. I'm really excited to work with him! It will also be fun to have a Korean companion again. Koreans are the best! 

I will definitely miss Elder Dursteler, but he's still in the area we are combining with in just a few weeks and we have lots of combined meetings up until then, so it wasn't too hard to transfer. I am so grateful I was able to serve with Elder Dursteler. 

One thing I really like about Elder Kwon is his "all or nothing" urgent perspective of missionary work. This weekend we made two new baptismal dates and I'm super excited to work with these people! 

One of the investigators is 최광식 (Choi Gwang-Shik) who is in his mid-30's and is really good at "Hanja" which is the chinese characters which about 60% of Korean words are based on. It's super interesting. So this weekend my companion and him gave me a Korean name based on the Chinese characters that ends up sounding something like "Tolman." (see below) It was a lot of fun.

One related interesting Korean fact is that almost all Korean names are 3 characters long and they are almost always based on chinese characters which each have special meaning. So each name has it's own cool meaning, which they like to talk about sometimes when they meet each other. It's really cool.

Also, I obviously enjoyed conference and was so grateful for the opportunity to listen to the words of the prophets!! One of my favorites was Pres. Uchtdorf's talk on gratitude. It is so easy to let our situations heavily influence our attitude and desires, but one of the miracles of God is that He is eternal and consistent. We can always trust in Him and can always find a way to cultivate an attitude of gratitude!

I also liked the common themes of truly loving God and being true to the faith. We are all going to face times when we will be required to stand up for our faith! Sometimes we are asked to stand strong in the face of opposition and evil. Often we are asked to not only stand strong, but to press forward doing good and preaching the truth. We are asked to make and keep sacred covenants and to more fully and more diligently focus our efforts on helping others do the same. Regardless of the situation, it will not be easy, but despite the difficulty, it is always worth it!! 

I am so grateful for living prophets who guide us in these latter days!! I would like to echo the invitation of President Ballard to treasure up the words of prophets not only in the standard works, but to also turn to Preach My Gospel often and seek guidance and revelation there. I know from personal experience that Preach My Gospel is written by revelation by prophets of God. Study it!! And let me know how it goes. I would love to hear!

I love you all and I know this gospel is true!! I hope you have a wonderful week being true to the faith with an attitude of gratitude!! 

Love, 

Elder Tolman (or)

톨만 장로 (or)

도온만 (Do Ohn-Mahn) 장로 (or)

Elder 道溫滿 (Do Ohn-Mahn in chinese characters - it ends up meaning something funny like "the path full of warmth")

                                    Korean Relief Society March 2014

                                     Brother Jo baptism March 2014

Another beautiful baptism in Korea!

On Saturday 조병수 (Jo Byung-Soo) got baptized! He is an amazing man. He has had a lot of difficulties in his life over the past couple years and it has been so humbling to see him seek and find for the first time the only true source of pure joy, help, and purpose! He doesn't look super excited in the picture because he works like 120 hours a week and is just a tired guy, but it was a beautiful baptismal service. President Shin (our mission president) was the one who initially met him in his taxi and President said that he didn't even recognize Brother Jo as the same person because his countenance had changed. The gospel is true!!

We also saw another pretty amazing miracle somewhat related to the baptism. We went out to lunch with Brother Jo and his son before the baptism at a little buffet near our church. As I was getting my food, a man came up to me and asked "You're the mormons, right?" I said yes and he went on to explain that he had met with a Elder Nephi Choi (who was one of the AP's when I got here) for about 5 months, but moved from that part of Gwangju to our area and lost contact. He suggested told me to take his number and give him a call later because he wants to meet. I was there with our investigator so I didn't want to take too long, but we swapped numbers and a general idea of times that would work and then parted. About 1 hour later, he called us, gave us his address, and set up an appointment for us to come by tonight to visit. Holy Cow! I am so excited to meet this man tonight that God placed in our path. We didn't do a thing, but I know that God can do all things through us as we seek to give our all to Him. God sure is amazing!!! 

Apart from miraculous coincidences and even baptismal services, I think that one of God's miracles I have enjoyed the most as a missionary is the joy of being a part of His work, a tool in His hands to spread the love of God! We definitely aren't perfect and the fact is that there are very few perfect things in the world, but God is perfect, His love is perfect, and this Gospel is perfect and our eternal divine destiny is to become as He is!! I know that God loves us so deeply and so personally. One of the best ways to find happiness is to seek to receive and understand that love as we strive to share it with others!! I know that as we do so, we are filled with the power, strength, and peace of God. I know that because God promises it and He always keeps His promises!!

I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week!! 

-Love, Elder Tolman

PS:

Here are a couple fun pictures: (1) Brother Jo's baptism, (2) We had a relief society program for sacrament meeting and all the sisters dressed up in their Han-bok's (the traditional Korean outfit)

Elder Tolman's 20th birthday/ The Power of Perception

잘 지내셨죠?!

This has been a wonderful week! I love Spring!! I love Korea!! I love being a missionary! 

On Sunday, there was a lesson about the resurrection and we were all asked what we think of when we think about resurrection. My favorite answer was 봄 (aka Spring!). Spring is such a beautiful symbol of rebirth, renewal, and of life. We all experience every variety of "winters" but we have the ultimate promise that every winter will always be followed with a spring, including death itself followed by the glorious promise of a resurrection!!

Our investigators are doing well. This is the last week before 조병수's baptism and we are all just praying that he will be able to keep the word of wisdom this week and be clean and prepared for baptism!! 

I don't have hardly any time, but one thought I have had recently is related to Korean taxi drivers. We don't have cars or bikes and we take taxis fairly often, sometimes because it's cheaper with 4 people together and sometimes just because we need to get around fast. As we strike up a conversation, we often ask them how their job as a taxi driver is and how they like it. The majority of people we talk to say that it is miserable and there is nothing good about it, but there are some people who seem to just love what they do and have plenty of good to say about driving a taxi. It is the same job! Same city! Taxi drivers have a pretty hard job here in Korea, but somehow there are some people who know how to make the most of it! 

Recently I have thought a lot about how important it is to just have a positive perspective. It's so important to make the most of each phase of life while we've got it!! Love the people! Be grateful! Live and learn! Serve others! Serve the Lord! See and love all that is good and glorious about life! I can promise it's there when we look for it with the hope of the gospel and with the eye of faith! I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to preach this gospel. I know that it is true!!

I love you all! Have a wonderful week!

Love, Elder Tolman

PS: My Bishop made me promise I would send this picture home to prove that they took good care of me on my birthday. They are the best! 

(It was mine and also another one of our member's birthday dinner)

봄 났어요!! (Spring!!) March 16, 2014

Today at 9:39 PM

Today is such a beautiful day here in Gwangju, South Korea! 

This was a good week in lots of ways. My companion has been feeling down a lot about not being able to speak as well as he feels like he ought to by now and just about wanting to be a better missionary, but this week he really did his best to keep his head up and do all that he can and it made a big difference. He is so amazing. I love Elder Dursteler! 

We had a couple fun experiences with our investigators. We met a man on a bus who apparently had met missionaries before and said that President Hinckley was definitely a prophet, so, obviously, we were thrilled to meet with him this past Thursday. When we met at the place he had planned, he took us to his office which was a religious academy that he owns. There are a lot of churches who are sometimes deceptive in Korea and like to try to convince missionaries that they are wrong, so when he took us to his religious academy a little flag went up in the back of my mind. He also mentioned that he had another friend waiting for us there and when we walked in they had a couple Book of Mormons open on the table. I thought for sure we had just jumped into what was soon to be a little Bible warfare, but I sat down quietly and we began to talk. I soon realized I was totally wrong! This amazing man had brought this friend who is looking for religion (and also likes English) and pretty much set up a member lesson where he was the non-member member. He pretty much told us to testify about Joseph Smith and then added his own testimony to ours. He also was quick to snag a second appointment and encourage this kind lady he had brought to attend our Church. It was such a bizarre experience, but one for which we are and were humbly grateful. We don't really know exactly why this man isn't baptized yet, but were determined to try to find out this week. God works miracles!

One of my favorite scriptures this week is Psalms 118:24: "For this is the day which the Lord hath given us; and we will rejoice and be glad in it." I was just thinking about what I have learned so far and what I would like to accomplish before time runs away and I realized that I just wanted to do my best to serve with no regrets. As much as I want to be a scripture guru, master teacher, or baptizing expert, I realized that the things I could possibly regret most are whether or not I really loved the people and served in a way that they knew it, whether or not I did my absolute best to represent Christ, whether or not I learned to completely give myself to God, and especially whether or not I chose to be happy. I feel like so often I get tied up in the details of excellence that I loose sight of the bigger picture. Lehi wasn't kidding when he taught that "men are that they might have joy." There is no point in being excellent, being perfect, having a high baptismal stat, or doing any other originally worthwhile thing if we are not happy in the midst of it all. I know that God allows us to experience trials for our benefit, but I also know that He has promised His personal peace, love, and guidance throughout the hard times, not just at the end of the tunnel. So let's choose to be happy! Whether today is bright and shiny, a little gloomy, or maybe even dark and dreary, let's trust that "this is the day which the Lord hath given us," and, with His divine hand in ours, "rejoice and be glad in it!!!" 

I love you all! Have a wonderful week!!!

Love, Elder Tolman

선교사업 - 최고이죠! March 9th

This has been a little harder week, but I guess that's just what makes life, learning, and living fun. A lot of our main investigators either got busy or haven't really been returning our calls, so we have been really working this week to renew our teaching pool. But despite our frustrations, we were definitely blessed when we relied on God to find who we could teach and were able to find a couple new people to teach this week. I'll keep you updated more as we teach them in the future!

This week I read a great talk by Elder Bednar titled something like "That we might not shrink." He tells a story about this newly married couple who only weeks after their marriage find out that the husband has cancer with a less-than-hopeful chance of long term survival. As part of the story, they asked Elder Bednar to give him a blessing and he said he first wanted to ask some questions and unexpectedly asks "I know you have the faith to be healed, but do you have the faith to NOT be healed?" The talk continues to elaborate on "the faith to not be healed," and it made me think about where my faith lies and how much a REALLY trust God and His eternal perspective of things. When we experience trials, it is hard enough to have the faith that God can make it better, but I think it takes even more faith to trust that He can make it better, but might not, knowing a greater vision of what we really need. Sometimes as a missionary I think I just wish that I could finally get rid of my imperfections and become what I perceive as the perfect tool in God's hands to just perfectly powerfully bless the lives of others. But I know that God understands me and he understands you. He knows what He is doing. We just need to trust in Him. He will guide us, He will bless us, and He will comfort us. He understands a so much grander, broader, more glorious picture than any of us can imagine. Let's trust that He is, that He loves, and that He knows! Let's have the faith to sometimes not be healed, at least not right away, knowing that God is over all and that all things are for our good! 

I love you all and hope you have a wonderful day!!

Love, Elder Tolman