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

Mom's post- I crashed the meeting

from mom. I couldn't stand it and went to the Priesthood session of the LDS General Conference because Caleb was singing in the choir. Jamon wrote to me and said he was an usher at the Marriott Center and he always saw women there watching the choir. I didn't go to my Stake Center, I didn't want anyone to see me there. I told Kay he could go to our building but he decided to come with me. We walked down to the Institute behind our house and were in a chapel all by ourselves for most of the session. We had a few really good sightings of Caleb! It was worth going for. He leaves for Korea on the 13th of October. Janae

Caleb is singing in the MTC choir at the Priesthood session on Saturday