Wait, what just happened?

So I just realized that yesterday was officially four months in the
mission. Where did the last month go? It's all moving so fast! I only
have three weeks left with my amazing companion! D: Ahhh!

Aside from the fact that the mission is shooting by like a spaceship
through hyperspace, I have some very very very exciting news!!! Our Phillipina investigator is getting baptized this next Sunday!! Ahhh!!
She just told us on the phone yesterday that she had decided to be
baptized and we are meeting with her tonight! I am so excited for her,
and wanted to spread the excitement all over the world! Though I'm not
completely sure, I think what really touched her and helped her decide
is the temple, and the fact that she will be able to be sealed to her
husband forever. :)

This last week was insane, and a huge growing experience for me!
Because my companion is Sister Training Leader, we do exchanges with
all the companionships in our zone. This past week we did two in a
row; super exhausting but super exhilerating as well! And our
wonderful Sister Gilbert (Mission President's wife) said that for all
of the exchanges, I will be the one staying in 진주, which means that I
have to get us to all our appointments and such. Like, actually have
responsibility! :O haha So yeah, this week was the week that I figured
out I'm actually a good missionary and will be able to survive when my
trainer is far away. :)

Both of the Sisters that I exchanged with were so kind, and I loved
every minute of being with them. One was Korean but could speak
English, and the other was American, only one transfer ahead of me.
That was SO fun because it was two young American missionaries. And we
experienced so many miracles! While planning for one of our members in
the morning, I felt like I should share an experience, so I translated
it into Korean. And then in the actual lesson, she started talking
about the very thing that I had prepared to share! It was amazing.

And with our less active member, she has really become excited to hear
our messages, trying to get her boys to listen, and really wants to
come to church again! Another less active member came to church out of
the blue! And she said, (right next to our investigator... :D) that
she had prayed as we asked her to and felt like she needed to come to
church. It's so great!

Interesting thing about Korea: while Americans wave as a greeting,
Koreans bow. The lower the bow, the greater respect is being shown. So
when you are super thankful, you bow super low. See what I mean about
Koreans being a very respectful society?

A couple other things:
I am super excited about Cara Buckner. She's serving a mission in
Hawaii! That's so cool! When does she leave?
And I heard Drew Guyer is engaged? Tell him congratulations for me :)
Also, didn't Becky Vogl get married last month? Why haven't I heard
anything about it? I need pictures! :D

I love you all so much, and can't wait to tell you about this next
very eventful week as well! The work is going forward with every path
towards success.

Love, Sister Segovia

" Freely ye have received, freely give." - Matt. 10:8
This statement really can speak for itself. Just share! The gospel,
your time, your talents, and possessions, they're all from God. And
doesn't He love all people? So who are we to keep His gifts from
others? This past week I have learned a lot about the law of
consecration, and realized there are a lot of aspects to this law that
I never even knew!

Korean Thanksgiving

Yep, so this past week was Chusok, the Korean version of Thanksgiving.
And it will be my interesting fact of the week. It's three days long,
where people just eat and eat and eat some more. Everyone gathers with
their family, and it's great fun for the kids because they get to play
for three days. But apparently it's stressful for the moms because
they are the ones cooking. The food is amazing though! We were lucky
this past week because we actually had appointments! Often
missionaries have nothing to do because we aren't supposed to make
appointments for those days, or tract or anything. But we were able to
get appointments, and we ate with three different families!

We had 추석 lunch with a South American couple who are 7th Day
Adventist. They also had friends over, including someone we had met
last month but hadn't been able to see her again. So that was a
miracle! They are some of the nicest people, and the food (lentils :D)
reminded me of home.

Then that night we had dinner with a less-active family and brought
ribs that my companion had received from her mom, and a cake. Two very
special-occassion foods for missionaries. That and the fact that we
were providing a service to this family, who had nowhere to go for the
holidays, made the meal feel like a feast!

The next day we were able to eat actual 추석 food cooked by our bishop's
wife. I can now say that I have had eel soup! It was... fishy. haha
But the rest of the meal was super yummy!

Okay enough about eating. There's something else more important that I
did this past week. I had a change of heart and a change in attitude.
A change that will affect the rest of my future! I was able to find
the article about the 4 missionaries that I talked about in my last
letter. It's called, "The Fourth Missionary" by Lawrence E Corbridge
and it is one of the most inspiring things I have ever read. I
encourage all to read it; there's things in there that help more than
just missionaries!

So here's what I learned. I have the potential to become the best of
the best. I have always had that potential. God has given me talents
and abilities, and I need to use them! As Brother Corbridge said,
"Your life's greatest work is you." Who am I? When I look back at what
I have been given, am I proud of what I've done with it? That is when
I realized, God did not send me here to be mediocre! In the past, I
was okay with mediocre, unwilling to put forth effort to become more.
But I can do better than that. And I am determined to! For the rest of
my mission, in school, in life, I want to be MORE. I want to do the
MOST that I can.

Yep! So that's what happened! Let it be said that this week was when
Christina Segovia changed the course of her life. :)

I love you all more than I can express! Keep moving forward.
Love, Sister Segovia

Sorry this email is a day later than usual, we switched our P-day to
Tuesday for this week because yesterday we had Zone Conference! I
absolutely LOVE getting to hear from our mission president and his
wife; they are so inspiring and give a new and renewed desire to serve
with all our heart! I also got to hear from them two other times last
week, one when we went to transfer meeting and the other when we went
to leadership meeting. I learned so much!

The thing that we have really been focusing on is obedience, but
obedience from the heart. I learned that there are two kinds of
obedient missionaries. In D&C 4, it says to serve with all your heart,
might, mind, and strength. So one missionary is 100% obedient, but
only with all of her might and strength. She follows all of the rules,
but is not happy. The second missionary is also 100% obedient, but she
puts her heart and mind into it as well. She is truly happy and will
receive the most blessings because she has truly changed inside and
out.

I just remembered that I kind of learned the same thing at the MTC
already, but I guess I forgot and needed another reminder!

MOM!! I got your package last week; it got here WAY fast which was
awesome. And when I opened it up, I felt like I was opening a treasure
box! Seriously thank you thank you thank you for all the things in
there! It was Christmas in September :) I love you so much!

This week is a holiday in Korea! It's called Chooseok and it's pretty
much like Thanksgiving. It's super huge here; everyone gets together
with their family for three days and eats and eats and eats. So it's
super fun! Except the only problem is that as missionaries we don't
have family here, and we aren't aloud to schedule appointments on
those three days. Sooo the next week is going to be kind of slow, but
we are planning on having a district feast today and on Thursday (the
actual holiday) we are going to buy a cake! Yay!

As far as investigators go, we are having success! The Lord really is
blessing this area! We got another new investigator, though we won't
be able to meet with her again till next week. AND GUESS WHAT?! Our
Phillipina investigator has a baptisimal date! Ahh! I'm so excited for
her :) She still has a lot to learn but her heart is so open and the
ward is really trying hard to help her feel accepted. They even had a
party for her and her husband's one year anniversary this past Sunday.
I love these people!

Okay, here's this week's special! Interesting fact about Korea,
there's no dryers! Everyone just drys their clothes on drying racks or
clotheslines. It's way better for your clothes of course, but
sometimes things happen like what happened today. My companion needed
her jeans, but they were dirty. So she quickly washed them and then
comes in and asked me what the fastest way to dry clothes is. I of
course replied "by dryer..." haha but I walk into the room later and
she's ironing her wet jeans so that they will be dry enough for her to
wear them. :D

Anyway, I hope you're used to reading mile long emails because it
seems that I can't keep them short! Love you!

Sister Christina Segovia

P.s. I forgot to tell you, I have now officially eaten octopus, grown
and baby, and enjoyed it. And I also have had large and small
intestines, and don't enjoy that as much. Haha

"Live unto me." - D&C 124:86
Everything we do should be with Christ in mind. What would he do? What
would I do if he were here? How can I change to be like him? And as we
learn to live unto Him, our thoughts will turn out towards others
rather than ourselves.

2nd Transfer

Yeah, this past week has really showed me just how fantastic my
trainer is. Her faith is so strong, and her ability to love everyone
is beyond me! Okay, it's not actually beyond me (in fact it's my goal
to become the same way) but really, she is such a huge example! Here's
some big things that happened in the past two weeks.

1. My companion had surgery a week ago, so she has been walking around
with a hole in her foot! Literally. She had a corn removed from her
heel, and it just barely stopped bleeding. But she never complains,
and was kind enough to walk around all day after her surgery because I
was selfish enough to want to go to district P-day! I still feel
terrible about that. But it seems to be healing, even with all the
walking we have to do as missionaries.

2. Today is the first day of my SECOND TRANSFER! And guess what? We
just got called to be Sister Training Leaders! Technically my trainer
is the official STL but since I'm her companion I'll be doing the same
thing. I'm super excited, and can't believe how much the Lord is
trusting me with! But like I said, I have a great trainer and we are
learning so much together.

3. We got two new investigators this past week! One of the ladies,
Gladdis, is from the Phillipines! She just moved here last week and is
the wife of one of our bishopric. She doesn't know Korean and though
she knows English, not gospel English. So it's really hard to teach
her, but we just got a Tagolog Book of Mormon and some pamphlets that
we can give her tomorrow :) We have faith that she will progress very
quickly, as well as the other lady we have started teaching. With
obedience and love, Heavenly Father will speak through us and the
windows of heaven can be opened!

So I started a list of all the interesting facts about Korea and
decided to make it a weekly special! The first one I want to share is
about how creative Koreans are with ice-cream. We get ice-cream pretty
much everyday here. Yeah I know it's very unhealthy, but their
ice-cream bars are amazing! I still haven't tried them all, and have
yet to come across one that didn't make me want more. :D There is this
one that looks like a watermellon slice, with chocolate as the seeds.
Yum!

There's lots more that happened, but if I were to write it all you
would be reading this email for hours. So many lessons learned..

Mom, you seriously cracked me up when you said you were reading the
Book of Mormon in Korean. :D :D Don't worry, Korean is read from left
to right, just like us. And learning the alphabet is actually super
easy! Thank you for wanting to do something like that for me! It
really helps me and gives me courage!

Okay, I'll end here! Can't wait to tell more next week. Love you all!

Sister Christina Segovia

An inspirational one-liner I found in the scriptures (there's tons if
you look for them):
"I will fight you battles." - Our Heavenly Father, D&C 105:14
Heavenly Father really does care about each and every one of us. If we
allow Him, He will help us through any and all challenges. We are
never ever alone!

Mom! Dad!

Mom! Dad!

Ah I only have zero time because we have to run help a ward member
out, but I love you all! And thank you so much for the package; I'm so
sorry it cost so much! I wouldn't have had you send it if I knew how
much it would be. Gah!

All I have time to say is that this past week I have been able to
experience a lot of miracles. We have met amazing people, and I have
learned so much just from a few days!

Thank you for the addresses, there's one more I would love to have:
the Mouritsens!

Okay I love love love you and am sorry I didn't get to actually email
you today, I had so much to tell you! Again, thank you for sending the
package, I'm excited to get it and will repay you however I can!

Love, your daughter :)