As a young Mormon missionary in the Korea Seoul Mission, Michael Tally Ringwood walked the streets of a country where everything felt foreign and tried to pull himself out of discouragement. He struggled with the language.

Secretly, he wished he would be one of a few elders from his mission to be sent stateside to teach Korean Americans.

It wasn't until he was an LDS Church mission president years later that he could explain to people how hard those early days were.



Today, he looks back and thinks it was something as simple as singing hymns that got him through.

He had learned a person could use hymns to keep discouragement away and he selected two favorites: "I Need Thee Every Hour" and "I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go."

"Whenever I would feel discouraged I would sing those hymns in my mind," he said. "When I would do that I would feel the spirit and I would know that I was right where Heavenly Father wanted me to be."

Years later, as a new general authority for the church, Elder Ringwood knows he was in the right place. "My face may look American," he said, "but my heart is Korean."

See the rest of this story at ldschurchnews.com.

This story is provided by the LDS Church News, an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is produced weekly by the Deseret News.