Turtles

Dear Family,

This week we went to a baptism of our elders. It is a mother and father who have taken 10 years to get baptized. How did they first meet the missionaries? About 10 years ago the wife was really depressed, so much that she wanted to kill herself. So she went to the balcony of her apartment intending to throw herself over, but when she looked down she saw two missionaries in white shirts. She recognized that they were servants of God and suddenly all of her desire to kill herself vanished.

Then throughout the years she met Mormons and realized there was something different about them, they had a light about them that she thought was so amazing. However about a year ago when she started to start meeting with the missionaries she was really confused. She was attending two churches, ours and another, and every time she would go to the other church they would say bad things about us that made her really confused as to which church she should go to. Suddenly one night she had a dream and in it there was a bright beam of light above her head. She woke up and mostly forgot about it, but that day someone called and invited her to our Branch District Conference where a member of the seventy was speaking. She said it was suddenly like there were all these pieces of a puzzle that the missionaries had been giving her over the years and they suddenly came together. Afterwards she went up and said "I want to be baptized".

Miraculous, huh? So sometimes it takes a while, but our good example is always worth it.

I also read a traditional Korean folk story about a boy named Turtle and his friend-- Stone. Stone was very rich and Turtle was very poor. Then one day Turtle's parents died and he was inconsolable. Feeling sorry for his friend, Stone asked his father if he could come stay with them, but he refussed saying they already had enough mouths to feed. Stone thought about it for a long time and then came up with a plan. He took his father's chopsticks and rice bowl and hid them in his back yard. Then he went to Turtle:

"Turtle, you have to do what I tell you do. I hid my dad's chopsticks and rice bowl in the backyard and you have to go find them."

"Why?"

"Because I will tell my father that you found them by sniffing them out and he will be so impressed that I have a friend with such a good sense of smell that he will let you come live with us."

So they did like Stone suggested and it worked out just like how he thought. But of course everyone in the town heard about Turtle and his amazing sense of smell, so the word got out and the king heard about it. The king had lost his royal seal and so he called for Turtle. He told him if he could not find it he would kill him-- Turtle was way scared and not certain what he could do.

Anyway, the day came that he was supposed to go find the royal seal in the royal treasury and as soon as turtle went inside he heard a knock on the door. When he opened the door there was a theif who said that he had stolen the royal seal without realizing how important it was and that if he was caught he would be killed, but instead he wanted to give it to Turtle as long as Turtle didn't turn him in.

So Turtle took the royal seal and gave it to the king who was really happy and gave him lots of rewards. As it always does, the word spread even farther until the king of China heard about it. He called for Turtle to come and told him that his daughter had lost her ring and he needed Turtle to find it. He would give Turtle a month to figure out the smell and then let him go find the ring (or something like that) So Turtle said the he was going to fast, only drinking water, until then. Except secretly in Turtle's belongings there was a huge stash of meat, so everyone else when they saw him was so surprised that he could live off of nothing but water for a month. The day for the ring to be found came and Turtle went into the princesses room. As soon as he went in there was a knock on the door.

Surprisingly enough, the ring had been stolen as well, but the theif thought Turtle had super powers, because he hadn't eaten for a month and was still alive, that he confessed his crime and gave him the ring.

Wow, lucky Turtle had been saved again! He received lots of riches and glory and headed back to Korea. When he came back to Korea though he was attacked by a theif who came up to him and said "Give me all of your money! Also, I am going to kill you unless you can solve my riddle. I have a stone, can you tell me what is underneath of it?"

Turtle was really surprised and more than a little terrified, but he had no idea what the answer to the question was. So he told the theif he had no idea the answer. This is where I got really confussed, for some reason he didn't kill him... And the answer was that there was a turtle under the stone and then they all laughed about how the stone was going to kill the turtle-- haha..?
Anyway, whatever happened, Turtle learned a good lesson from it so when he went home he told everyone that because of nose bleeds he no longer could smell things out and so to stop asking him and he lived happily ever after with his friend Stone.

Oh how I love Korea.
--
Sister O'Bryan
Daejeon PO Box 38
Daejeon-si
Chungcheong bukdo 300-600
South Korea