Wow, time really does fly. It's already the last week of this transfer. What is really crazy is that the Elders that are leaving this transfer are leaving a week early for school stuff. It has been so strange to see people leave. Elder Bocchino's companion Elder Hinton left this morning with his parents. Crazy. "The bad thing is that time flies. The good thing is that you are the pilot"-Elder Uchdorf.
So life goes on. I am probably going to be transferred this week out of 해운대 because I am young and have been here for 2 transfers. The younger missionaries move around a lot more. I will miss it. I have been spoiled here. I have no clue where I will go but I did have a dream that I was going to the big island. :) But I was disappointed to find out that many missionaries have had that same dream. Darn.
I believe I talked about English class last email. Well along with that a lady that I have been trying to get to come to church or meet with us randomly showed up to church this week! It was really cool and the other sisters in the ward were really nice to her. She is 45-50 years old and really good at English. I guess she has traveled a lot. A few weeks ago she just randomly showed up to English class and had a lot of questions about our church. She really wanted to go to church but due to her circumstances it was too early. We had stressed it last week and she ended up coming! I really hope us or the sisters can start meeting with her. She is really nice and seems to be willing to try it out. Our other 2 investigators are still progressing. There are so close. I think that it is only a matter of time before both are baptized. I will probably be gone by then but that's OK. It's defiantly not my work. We are just tools.

Elder Anderson

It's the Little Things

my bed and my new invention: Light switch

So..... Both our investigators canceled with us all this week. One of them came to church and said he is doing really well with the word of wisdom so that gives us some excitement. We have another progressing family. The father is a member but hasn’t been active for about 15 years. He basically is a non member though. For example he didn't know we don’t drink and things like that. The family is very nice and quite wealthy. He is a plastic surgeon and has already brought us to 2 different really nice restaurants. Wow, it's really nice to be in 해운대. I will be sad to leave when I do. Let’s see.... we teach a free English class twice a week at our church for whoever wants. They are on Tuesday and Saturday. We actually have a really good class that shows up. We get between 10 and 20 people. Because it is 해운대 everyone speaks really good English that comes. I usually teach most of the hour. I really like it because it is basically just telling stories in English and explain what people don’t know. I tell all sorts of stories. Lately I have told a lot of winter stories like snowmobiling and snow ball fights. It gets insanely cold here but it doesn't snow. We also try to get anyone in the class to tell stories to practice their English. It’s pretty fun. Something I have taken to realize this week is all the small miracles we see. They are sometimes so small that they could easily be pushed out as nothing but they are so important. For example, yesterday we had a long subway ride. There was a young couple next to me staring at my name badge. I took it off and gave it to them and explained what I could about our church. It was really fun because Elder Snyder was right next to me whispering things to say to them. Eventually they were so interested that Elder Snyder and I switched places. They were writing notes down of the stuff we were saying and they gave us their number. It was really fun and cool but its just one of those simple miracles where someone finds us. If we hadn’t decided to actually go where we were going we wouldn’t have met them. Things like that make this work worth it. I love it here.

Elder Anderson

our missionaray Christmas card.

I only have 30 minutes because we got permission to go to a local amusement
park today so I will get right into it. This week has been really good. We had
zone conference where we got our new rule books from President Jennings and a
few things were announced. Apparently it is now world wide policy that all
companionships get a cell phone! This is going to be amazing for us and I'm
sure other missionaries as well. The Korean people are so dependent on their
cell phones and when we don't have one we miss a lot of things. We are really
happy about it and I'm sure it will only help the work. We will get them in
about a month or so. Our Investigators are doing good. The one we inherited is
still having problems with the word of wisdom so we will have to move his
baptismal date. The Other one that found us is doing great. We are still
teaching him but unfortunately we can only meet with him once a week. We are
trying to figure out a way that we can meet with him more often. He should be
able to come to church next week because his wife and baby will be back. This
week we also got a change in the bishopric. The new Bishop will be amazing. We
already work with him a lot. He devotes so much time to the church, he said that
we can expect more calls from the ward now. We are more than willing to help him
out in anything. Overall it has been a great week. We are already starting the
4Th week of the transfer! Wow, time flies. I love the work. Thanks for the
support

Love,

Elder Anderson

I'm feeling success

Hello from Korea! It has been a really good week. First news with our investigator that we inherited. He is doing well but has a smoking problem still so we will probably have to move his baptismal date back a few weeks. I really hope all goes well. As for our other investigator that we just barely got, he is doing great. I couldn't believe how prepared to here the Gospel he is. It's incredible how much the spirit works on people. He is really accepting to everything we have taught so far and has asked a lot of questions. He still cannot come to church for a few weeks but we are look forward to it. I'm excited.
This week we have done a bit of bus traveling. As some of you know it is really hard for me because of motion sickness. At one point I really thought I was going to blow but luckily a seat at the front of the bus opened us with a window. Whew. Our threesome is going well. We are figuring out how to work effectively and we really worked hard this week. I really do love this work. Sorry for the short letter but we don't have much time this week. Thanks for the prayers and the support.

Elder Anderson

A Threesome now

Wow, lots of things have happened this week. First of all we are now in a threesome. It's really odd for Elders to be in a threesom but there was an odd number of missionaries and president decided to put him with Elder Snyder and me. His name is Elder Mikkelsen. He is from Ogden I think. We are all tall, white, and balding (from mom- they must have let the rain touch their hair). Haha. He is 6' 4", Elder Snyder is 6' 2" and I am 5' 11". At our height it is somewhat hard to proselyte without scaring people on the street. We are still working out how do get things done but I think it will go well.

We call ourselves a pack rather a companionship. No more companionship meetings, now we have pack meetings. I feel like I'm back in cub scouts! It should be quite the experience. We have not been able to go out and find people like we were able to but I believe the Lord makes up for what we can't do.

We have an amazing investigator that actually found us this week! His parents are Buddhist but lately he has been wondering about God. He is 30ish, married, and just barely had a little girl. He decided to look into religion and started listening to a Christian radio show. He then heard about us through a friend's friend and decided to stop wondering and actually do. He called us at one of the only times we were at the church teaching English. Elder Snyder answered the phone and he asked if he could somehow meet us and find out about our church. Like we would say "no" to that!? We met him on Saturday. We taught the first discussion and answered some questions of his. He is really good at English but we are still told to teach him in Korean because that is his native language. He says he drinks but wishes he didn't have to. In Korea drinking is how you get to be friends with your boss and get promoted. It's just what you do but he says he hates it. He seems like a very sincere man and we hope he sees how the Gospel can bless him. Unfortunately he cannot come to church for the next 3 weeks because his wife is taking care of their baby in another city with her parents. A pretty good excuse if you ask me. We are looking into seeing about going to church there. That would be really nice.

We had a sudden meeting at the mission home for all the close areas because the head of the Korean department at BYU, and probably the most knowledgeable man about Korea in the US came and spoke. It was amazing. He talked about Korean religions and how we can build on what people already know. I love hearing people like him who have a PHD from Harvard and just amazingly smart, talk about religion and feeling. He really made us feel like the religion barriers that appear there aren't really barriers but bridges. I read a short easy book that I really liked called "Drawing on the Powers of Heaven" It was amazing and I really liked it if anyone is interested. Its only like 100 pages but it is really powerful. Anyway. I love it here. Thank you for all your prayers and support. I hope all is well.

Elder Anderson

I am staying put for this transfer!

The big news of the week is that it is transfer week! That means I have already been here for a whole transfer. So here is the news. I am staying with Elder Snyder another transfer. Our area has been moved to a 2 man area instead of the 4 man it was. Elder Snyder is our district leader.

Elder Bocchino is still in my district and Elder Wells has been moved clear our to jejudo. That was a shock for everyone I think. Jejudo is a beautiful Island in our area but they speak basically another language from what I hear. Elder Wells will do great. Because our house now only has 2 people I think we are going to be able to be a lot more focused. I'm really excited for this transfer. When a team gets closed they naturally give all there investigators and what not to the other team. So we got an investigator that I have never met but has a baptismal date. Haha. From what I hear he is pretty shy. That's all I really know about him. We will see how that goes.

Thanks for the package by the way. I especially liked the Tarragon. haha.This last week I read a really neat book that I would suggest to anyone. It's called "The Book of Mormon on Trial" It's really good and a really easy read. It is a cartoon book about a trial with the Book of Mormon and it goes through a court of law and proves the book of Mormon is correct. Really cool. The author actually did it in college while getting his law degree. Anyway. I suggest it to anyone if you can find it. We gave the book to a member that is really good at English and she read it in a week. She has been really hurt twice by other religions so she is always skeptical about everything, we actually really like it because she is willing to ask questions. After reading it she said that she never understood how people could cry while bearing testimony of the Book of Mormon but now she understands. It was really cool. The book does not make a testimony, it only strengthens.

We should be pretty busy this week because of suddenly being a 2 man area but it should be good. Thank you for everything you have done. Thanks for the letters and prayers. Elder Anderson

traditions

This week has been great. We got a new investigator this week! He is a referral from some other missionaries, we hope it goes well. He is about 45 and is interested in the gospel. Many Koreans follow the crowd with religion. One of the biggest things for us is to get over that our church is a small church. People look at that and say, "Wow, not many people must like that church." If we came out here and set up a huge church on the top of a hill we would get so many people coming to church. It's a good thing we don't actually. I don't think God is trying to win a popularity contest with the other churches. That is why this investigator is different. He said that he doesn't like how churches here are big and each pastor is different. Yep, that's us. We are small and we teach the same thing all over the world. He is going to bring his son who is our age to our next meeting. I'm excited for him.

We also found a man on the streets that was going to buy some beer and we ended up talking to him for about half an hour and he ended up not buying beer but bought us lemonade. Haha, He didn't seem too keen to meet us again but we left him with our number and hopefully he decides to see.

Koreans are very superstitious. There are things that we wouldn't even think of that they get all upset about. For example, if you burn something, black charcoal gives you cancer. Or you can't sleep with the fan on because you can die.

I don't know where they get this stuff but it's fun. I really love the Korean people. They are a really nice people. They work so hard too. Wow, it is so hard to find a father at home because they always work. They have made a lot for themselves in an extremely short amount of time. This place is still developing like crazy. You can still see some of the 3rd world country that this used to be. I have heard it said a few times that Korea is a 3rd world country that was thrown into the 21st century. It's funny sometimes because you will see a grandma walking down the road and she looks like she is just living on the streets but then she will pull out a cell phone and start chatting away. haha.

Some foreigners in our ward are moving away this week back to the USA. The called us up and asked if we wanted any of the foreign food. We came home with a few bags worth of food like cheese and pickles and peanut butter. Wow. We made tacos last night. So rare in Korea. Anyway, I'm loving it here and the gospel is still going out to the world.

4 Weeks in Korea!!!

I cant believe I have been out here for 4 weeks! I am now starting to get used to some of the weird things about the mission and the country. I really do love it here. My area is called Heyenda, it is probably the richest part of Pusan so I really do not have it bad at all. It is full of people. The beginning part of this week was pretty tough. We knocked on so many doors and no one would even open them. About half way though the week we decided to go out further from the main city where there hasn't been a lot done. We prayed about where to go and decided to go to this one apartment that was really far away. We went all the way over and found some apartments that have been amazing. We have contacts that we are going to go visit and all sorts of people are letting us in. Its about a 30min walk from where we live, the people are so nice.

It turns out they are full of army personnel. That explains why they all seem to know quite a bit of English. We are so happy the Lord led us to somewhere that would give us a chance and we hope that we will see some more success there. We currently have 2 investigators but neither are really progressing. One of them is getting a hold of some anti material which is really depressing. We are able to answer anything she has given us but she won't stop looking. Heyenda is really nice for me because most the ward and our investigators speak really good English so if i just can't think of it in Korean I can say it in English and they understand. I'm honestly pretty spoiled here.

Here is something interesting: Koreans don't use A B C D E F G when dealing with music. They use Do Ray Me Fa So La Te. It makes sense, they don't use our alphabet but I just never though about it. "Ray sharp" just sounds so strange. Ha ha.
The work is going well and I really do love it. I hope all is well and I appreciate your prayers and support. Love you all! Elder Anderson

random pictures from Korea

This was part of the first day's activities.... a photo scavenger hunt. Caleb had to have his picture taken with a grandma. When he explained what he was doing (I am not sure if he explained or someone else did) she grabbed him for the picture.
Street tracting.......


An investigator gave Caleb an umbrella, it's a good thing, did you know in Korea the rain makes your hair fall out!

New Horizon

This week has been good. The highlight of this week was the group New Horizon. They are a singing group of missionaries that went to Korea about 30 years ago. They got back together recently and toured Korea giving firesides and we were a stop. We were lucky enough to have them come to our ward. One of the members of the group came to our Gospel principles class (taught mostly in English for foreigners) and talked about the group. He said that there mission president did a survey to find out how many Koreans actually knew the name of our church. 7%. He wanted a way to boost that so he got together some missionaries that could sing and play instruments well and had them start singing and talking about our church with people. Apparently it was a huge success. The got on Radio and Television. Each time they were on they would tell everyone that they were Mormon missionaries and that all Mormon missionaries were tall, white, and loved Kimchee. He talked about people letting missionaries into their house saying, "Ya, I saw you on TV, come in" The president then did the same survey and 70% of Koreans new our church after that. I kindofwish we had something like that today. They all were there for our sacrament meeting and it really donned on me. This is really going to be with me all my life. It was fast Sunday and many of the members of New Horizons got up and talked about there amazing time here and how Korea has always been apart of their lives. Elder Snider and I were talking about it and its just strange that we will eventually be there. 50 year old returned missionaries with only a memory. I will use my time I have to the best of my abilities. The work is hard but I love it.Everything is well, the work goes on.

thanks for your comments and guest book notes, I forward them to Caleb!

He loves hearing from everyone!

Week 2

I have now been here for 2 weeks. It doesn't seem like that long or maybe it seems like longer, things are still kind of a blur for me. The work still goes on. Unfortunately we spent all this week trying to find people. We have been working really hard so we will just keep chugging along.

This week I spent quite a bit of time with Elder 채. There are 4 of us in our apartment. Me, Elder Snider, Elder Hoffman, and Elder 채. Elder Hoffman is the District leader and so he has to go on splits with all the elders. Going with Elder 채 was way fun. He is so funny. He speaks pretty good English and we work hard when we are together. The funny thing is that he is only a 2ND transfer greeny (new missionary), it is OK though because he is Korean.

So let me tell you a little bit about our 즌도 (proselyting) First of all I have yet to even see a house in Korea, everything is apartments. All of the apartments are 20-25 stories and are just stacked everywhere. On my first glimpse out of the plane looking at Korea all I could see was green and apartments. Because of this all of our 즌도 is climbing stairs in apartments. Every apartment has what they call a 과리자 (gwallyja, or a kind of security guard.) They usually let us in fine and we go to the top and work our way down.

The food is good although its sometimes hard for my body to digest still but it is getting better. I hope that all is well back home. If you have any questions about Korea do ask and I will try to answer. I love the people, they are all so nice it seems. There are a few things that I am still getting used to but I think that all is well. Thanks for your love and support. Elder Anderson

Pusan! We are the new missionaries in the area- expect a call

I made it to Pusan. Wow. Needless to say this has all been quite the shock. There is so much to tell you all but i just don't have all day. So i will try to share as much as possible. First of all my P days are on Monday. Not quite sure when that actually is for you but oh well. The Plane ride over was long and tedious. I got to have some Korean airplane food though. ha ha. I was praying it would get better when i actually got to Korea. Luckily it has. We finally got to the mission home and asleep around 11 local time. And then got right back up at 5! but we did it for a good cause. We went to a 먹여탕! it's basically a bath house. ha ha. I loved it. It was so so relaxing and they had all sorts of different little pools you could go to and just relax. After that we met up with the soon-to-be trainers and went out to 즌더(proselyte). It was great even though I had no idea what was going on. Wow, we just ran and talked, ran and talked. My trainer is Elder Snider. He is pretty funny and a great missionary, I'm glad I got him but all the trainers that were there looked like they would be great. I really lucked out. From what i hear from everyone this area that i am in has the best ward, the best housing, and is pretty much just the best. It's all really nice. I was pretty excited to go out and really get started on this missionary work. Most of our work is done with knocking doors. That is we found my first investigator! She was great and let us in immediately. Apparently she had been to church in America before and spoke great English. However, she was very stuck on the members not being perfect. We talked to her for hours about how people are not perfect. She even openly admitted that she knew the book of Mormon was true but she still would not come to church. We tried and tried but she just wouldn't see. It was really tough and heartbreaking but we had to drop her. We really did try everything and we answered every one of her questions and she new it but she just would not take that faith and turn it into action. That's OK. Hopefully we are just a stepping stone for her and that she will eventually see. Sorry if that was confusing but i couldn't go to deep into it because of the lack of time. I hope everything is going well at home. The mission is going good and I love the work. I love you all. Elder Anderson Mission address:Dongrae Post Office P.O. Box 73, Busan 607-600부산굉역시 동래우체국 사서함 73호 607-600 Korea

Caleb and his trainer, Elder Snyder

The Elders and Sisters made their own Korean lunch – “kimpap.”


Caleb arrived safely. President and Sister Jennings wrote and said he was given a meal, the likes of which would not be seen for a while. He stayed for a day of training and then he was off. Here is his trainer, Elder Snyder.

"His first area will be Haeundae in the heart of Busan. Here is a picture of President and Sister Jennings with Elder Anderson and Elder Snyder."

Korea will never be the same

Caleb called from the Seoul Airport. Everyone with calling cards were trying to use them. I called my calling card company and they gave me some extra access numbers for different kinds of phones in Korea. I gave Caleb a detailed sheet on how to use it and it worked. Most missionaries didn't sleep on the plane, they arrived at 7PM Korea time or 4AM our time. On the airplane they couldn't listen to music as they are not allowed ear phones, they must have speakers. Earplugs aren't even allowed. They had screens on the chairs in front of them and the missionaries found a chess game they could play with each other on the screens. It was a 13 hour flight. They thought it was cool to fly over Alaska with the high mountains and the Bering Strait, across Russia and down to Korea. Caleb said it is Surreal. They will arrive in Busan in time for bed and will sleep well I am sure.

My dad said 55 years ago today he started his mission to the USA Great Lakes Mission and that experience changed his life.

Janae's post: Caleb called from the airport on his way to Korea!!!!

(SLC Airport: Caleb is treated to a burger by Elder Singleton's dad, The Elders in the airport)

Caleb was allowed to have a calling card and call from the airport. Caleb is the trip coordinator for his group of 13 going to Busan Korea. There are about 40 all together going to Korea. A trip coordinator has his name on the top of the list of missionaries... usually starting with an "A." Very distinguished. We are so proud of him.

He wanted to hear all about Paul's funeral and I had just written up my recollections so it was fresh in my mind. Many tender mercies involved with Paul. He also had recollections of Phil Shumway who passed away this week. Before Caleb's mission, Phil called Caleb to come over and gave him a picture of a work horse pulling an extremely hard load and told him, this is how hard I want you to work on your mission.

I read a Pusan Korea missionary's letter his mom sent to me saying he will be one of the trainers. He said his new missionary will be conducting sacrament meeting and giving a 15 minute talk. While we were on the phone Caleb put out the warning to his group. Hopefully they will all prepare a talk on the airplane! Caleb said they all ready have a talk they have given so hopefully they are ready.


I saw Sister Kyoung Suk Lee from Inchong Korea, she used to be in our ward until boundaries split. She is in the USA until February, with her children, studying English. She said she saw Caleb at the MTC and spoke to him in the hall. "Very good pronunciation" she said to me. I got out of that, he can repeat the language. She said he has President Monson's nose. He could be President Monson Jr. she said!

Korean humor: Sitting at the dinner table someone may say "the food is so good if someone next to me died, I wouldn't even notice"

LDS Conference Center

The last MTC letter/ MTC Choir at the Priesthood Session of General Conference

October 7, 2008 the last letter/ MTC Choir experience the Priesthood session of Conference

This week has been quite the exciting week but I only have 30 minutes to write about it so I will try to be quick.This last week we got our flight plans!!! It was quite the exciting day for our zone. We fly Delta the whole time and fly from Salt Lake to LA to Seoul to Pusan. Getting those flight plans was so exciting. We are actually going to do this thing and go to Korea. We have been here since July and I think we are all about ready to leave the MTC. This week I also had the amazing opportunity to sing in the MTC choir at the priesthood session of general conference. Some people have asked as to how they selected so I will tell you: pretty much random. I was sooo lucky and grateful to get in but it was not like I was a better singer than those who did not get in. There were a whole ton of people wanting to get in so they had us all fill out a paper slip with what kind of choir experience we had (I had none). If you had any choir experience you pretty much got in but for people like me it was random. So that is how we got into this choir. It was such an amazing experience that I will definitely never forget.

There were 364 members and they had to take 7 charter busses to get us all up there. We right before the Saturday afternoon session but we got to listen to half of it on the way up. When we got there they ushered us into a random stage with seating that we could practice in. There was so much anticipation it was crazy. We practiced there for a while, got to eat a little lunchable, and then went into the actual conference seating. I never realized as to how huge that place was! I was sitting pretty far left facing the audience. I literally could not look at all the seating at once, even with my peripheral vision. Not to mention all the people that were going to be watching it on TV. Singing there was just so amazing and spiritual. We were sitting within an extremely short distance of all of the church leaders. It was pretty fun to point out the back of general authorities heads. Ha-ha. I felt that the singing went amazing. Any problems that we had previously dealt with didn't show up and I could just feel the spirit so strong. In my personal opinion I think that singing is the fastest and one of the strongest ways to feel the spirit. There is so much power in the songs that are sung every week. After we were done and conference was over many of the general authorities waved at us and complemented us. President Thomas S. Monson turned around, waved, and gave us a thumbs us. We all kind of chuckled. Everything that day was just so amazing. We ended by getting back at 9:45PM and went to bed. I am so grateful that I had that opportunity to sing in the conference center. Sorry I did not really tell anyone about me going. With only 30 minutes you forget some things. Thanks for the support. Pray for me if you will, I'm going to need it this up coming week.Elder Anderson

MTC pictures Busan Korea Group leaving in a week!

Caleb and Elder Singleton