Darkness was settling in on the last night of my first month in Yongin, South Korea. What an…interesting…month it had been. I was still a little green, no question about it. Yongin was only my second area. Three different companions in my first three months in the country; and I was about to receive my fourth companion the next day.
A month earlier when I first learned I was transferring to Yongin,
I was elated to find out I would have my first native Korean companion,
Elder Kuon. This would be full Korean immersion. Bring it on.
Yongin was about as close as we got to “rural” in our very
urban mission. Our small branch met weekly for sacrament meeting in the unoccupied
second bedroom of our modest, two-bedroom missionary apartment. The other bedroom—our
bedroom—became the makeshift Primary room every Sunday for the branch
president’s six beautiful children and their mom, the Primary president.
As it turned out, Elder Kuon and I got along great. He was
about five years older than I was, having completed his mandatory military service
before coming out on his mission. I was happy to have an older, wiser senior
companion from whom I could hopefully glean some great lessons about the Korean
people, culture, and language. What I had failed to anticipate, however, was
the change in how people would respond to us when we knocked on the doors of
their apartments.
During my first two months serving with American companions,
we received plenty of rejection. But people generally seemed amused, if a bit
bewildered, when they opened their door and found two Americans standing there
speaking their finest imitation of Korean. It wasn’t uncommon for a startled
person to slam the door in our faces; plenty of people turned us away. But
even when they rejected us, I often saw a friendly smile that said, “Thank you for trying to learn our language.”
With Elder Kuon at my side, the past month had been different.
We didn’t have many investigators when I came to Yongin and with such a small
branch, we spent a lot of time contacting people on the street and knocking
doors. To me, it seemed like as soon as people opened the door and saw a Korean
missionary standing there, the doors slammed faster and harder than before. I
usually couldn’t understand exactly what people were saying when they spoke to
Elder Kuon, but my sense was that he was frequently being told, in so many
words, that a Korean like him should know better than to interrupt someone at
home. There was also the issue that I had suddenly become invisible to everyone
who came to the door—they all looked right past me to my Korean companion. I
don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that we did not get invited into a single
apartment during the entire month of knocking doors together.
And so here we were. It was Sunday night around 7:00 PM, and
Elder Kuon and I stood on the sidewalk near the main intersection in Yongin.
With no appointments, we had a decision to make. We weren’t normally supposed
to return home until 9:00 PM, but tomorrow was transfers and we would each be
receiving a new companion. Retiring early that night didn’t seem unreasonable.
I don’t remember who said it, but one of us suggested that we step off the
sidewalk into the shadows and offer a prayer to ask the Lord what He wanted us
to do. In my simple Korean, I gave voice to a prayer that asked the Lord to
direct us in how to spend our time for the remaining two hours of the night.
After I said, “Amen,” I kept my eyes closed for a moment
before opening them. The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a light on
top of a distant apartment building. Many apartment buildings in Korea are so
tall that they have blinking aircraft warning lights on top. When I saw the
light, I felt a strong impression that we needed to walk to that distant apartment building and start
knocking doors. A little hesitant to suggest walking that far at this time on
this night, though, I spoke first and asked Elder Kuon what he felt we should
do. Being a wise senior companion, he replied, “What do you think we should do?”
“I feel like we need to go knock at that apartment
building,” I replied, pointing to the building in the distance.
“I feel good about that,” Elder Kuon affirmed. So off we
went. Once we got there, I knew exactly which building of the dozen or so
high-rises in the complex we should go to. We hopped on the elevator and rode
it all the way to the top. As was our custom, we said a prayer together on the
top floor, then began making our way down through the apartment building,
knocking on the two apartment doors on each floor, then walking down the stairs
to the next floor to repeat the process.
This particular apartment building had 20 floors. By the
time we had been rejected at every door for ten straight floors, I began to
feel bad about my suggestion that we walk all the way there. But then something
surprised me on the 7th floor. Elder Kuon knocked on the door of an
apartment, and a kind and friendly looking man opened the door. Elder Kuon gave
his normal introduction: “Hello, we’re missionaries from The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. We are here to share a message with you…”
The strange thing was that, for the first time in a month, I
wasn’t invisible to the person at the door. Instead, he looked straight at me several
times then back to Elder Kuon. I understood enough Korean to hear the man ask,
“Are you the Mormons?”
“Yes, that’s us,” replied Elder Kuon.
I braced myself for another slammed door, but instead, the
man said politely, “Please come inside.”
I didn’t understand much of the initial conversation in this
man’s living room that night. I saw his wife timidly hanging back in another
room, occasionally peeking around the corner to see what we were doing. Something
told me she was intently listening even though she didn’t want us to know it. Importantly,
I felt a warmth and a goodness in this home that had evaded us all month. At
some point, we formally started the 1st discussion, and I dutifully
rehearsed my memorized principles and bore simple testimony of the truths we
were sharing. The man smiled and nodded patiently each time I spoke. We had a
prayer with the man at the end of the lesson, and I could tell he invited us to
come back.
After we left the apartment to catch a taxi home, Elder Kuon
explained to me what had happened. When we sat down inside the apartment, the
man whom I would later come to know as Brother Song, explained to us that he
had an older sister who lived in Pennsylvania. Last night, his sister called from Pennsylvania to ask her brother
a strange question.
“Have you ever heard of the Mormons?” she asked. He told her he had never even heard that word
before. She went on to explain that during the previous weekend, she had been
invited by a close friend to attend a church meeting that just so happened to
be presided over by a Korean general authority, Elder In Sang Han of the
Seventy. (We later learned this was a stake conference.) She felt such a sweet
spirit at the meeting, that she felt impressed a week later to call her younger
brother in Korea to tell him all about it. At the end of her phone call, she
said, “You should find out more about the Mormons.”
Less than 24 hours after he hung up the phone, we showed up
on his doorstep.
The rest, as they say, is history. My new companion, Elder
Marker, and I had the glorious blessing of teaching Brother Song and his wonderful
wife, Sister Cho, the remainder of the missionary lessons. Within a couple of
months, both of them were baptized—Brother Song’s older sister even flew in from
Pennsylvania to attend the baptism. Twelve months later, I received permission
to be there in the Seoul Korea Temple when this beautiful couple received their
endowments.
Lead, Kindly Light (c) Simon Dewey
I reflect often on the miraculous events that led Elder Kuon and me to find this wonderful couple at that moment on that dark night in Yongin. When I think about the people and events that had prepared them to receive our message, I am amazed at how the Lord orchestrated things. I will never forget His direct answer to our prayer that night. “And I will also be your light in the wilderness; and I will prepare the way before you, if it so be that ye shall keep my commandments; wherefore…ye shall know that it is by me that ye are led” (1 Nephi 17:13).
