HEART AND SEOUL July31 - Augst 7, 2005

HEART

Dear Family,
We were among some twenty people to receive and greet President Hinckley as he came to the temple before flying onto other destinations on Monday, August Ist. Because of the very limited space and his equally limited time, his visit was not made generally known. He entered the temple about 9:30a.m., shooks hands and conversed with each of us before taking a quick tour of the temple itself. He was gracious and amazingly spry for a man of 95 years of age. That of course, had to be the climax of all the days of the previous week which we reported to you in last weeks Heart and Seoul.

SEOUL


Friday night we celebrated the 73rd birthday of Elder Scott Hess and Sister Uta Kastendicks 69th. Have we told you about the Gammons? They are a couple missionaries working primarily coordinating the military activity. Sister Gammon had her 72nd birthday Thursday and Brother Gammon will have his 75th birthday on the 17th so we included them in on our birthday celebrations. These people along with a few Korean temple workers and President Lee and Matron made up a fine birthday social which we held outside in the beautiful gardens of our apartments. We had hamburgers, hot dogs, watermelon and all the trimmings including cake & ice cream just like at home.
Today was Fast Sunday. Our friend Blaine Gruenwald will be returning to his studies of International Law in Shang Hai and our new Chinese convert, Joanna Ying, will be returning to her home near Bejing. Your father bore his testimony and told the Branch how she was converted in such a short time and then called on Joanna to bear her testimony. She speaks English very well and gave a heart felt expression of appreciation for learning about Jesus Christ and his church. In her testimony she related the miracle relating to her baptism. Her mother and father are members of the communist party, have no religion, and especially were opposed to what they knew about Christianity. When Joanna called her mother to tell her of her interest in Religion, her mother was opposed. She related her many, many prayers that her mother would have a change of heart because going home with this new found religion could be a serious wedge in their relationship. For the first time in the several months she has been in Korea, her mother took the initiative to telephone Joanna and told her she thought it would be a good idea for Joanna to commited to her new found church. Joanna saw this as an answer to her prayers and literally a miracle. Here we witnessed another incident of a person from China taken out of their homeland long enough to be exposed to the gospel and taken back home to China for future nurturing.