Restitution

This week will be one year for me. I have many mixed feelings about that. On one hand time has flown. Insanely fast. On the other hand I feel like life before the mission is a haze and that I have been here for 15 years. Anyway, time is a strange thing. This week was pretty interesting. I am currently with Elder Bordman and Ballantyne. We are covering 2 areas and 3 wards which is pretty rare for our mission. Its been a lot of traveling but it's working out. It's kind of strange to be back into a threesome. Elder Ballantyne is really young, only second transfer so it is fun to remember where I was back then. It has been really good.

I think the highlight of the week for me was yesterday. It was Sunday and we had found out earlier last week that the kids that got caught had to pay $1000 fine or work it off at the church. They have been working it off and the bishop told them that they could come to church as part of there time to work. Yesterday 2 of the boys showed up and one of them had is mom and sister. It was pretty funny. They smelled like smoke and what not but the ward was really nice to them even though they looked like fish out of water. They went to the first 2 meetings like normal and then Elder Bordman and I took them into another room for 3rd block and talked to them about us and our church. They were pretty fun and I was glad I didn't wasn't mean to them when we kicked them out of the church. It wasn't too awkward of a situation. They were good and well behaved. They said they would probably come back next week. Speaking of next week, I will have a new companion then! Things change quick. I love this work. It is amazing. Thanks for all the support of love. I appreciate it.Elder Anderson

break in and another transfer

Elder Rockwood

Another fairly crazy week for me. Two big things happened that threw us all off. First of all our church was broken into. Elder Rockwood and I were first on the scene. They had spray painted a lot of the outside and wrote on the front mat in Korean "We hijacked." They had somehow gotten into the building and messed it up pretty good. We made our way upstairs to the second floor and found it a mess. They had used the kitchen to make who knows what and also used the font as a bath. Other stuff had been scattered all over. We then went to the 3rd floor where the chapel is. On our way up we started to smell cigarette smoke and saw it had been messed up as well. What surprised us is that we walked into the chapel to find 5 Jr high students chilling near the piano smoking. There were 3 boys and 2 girls. I'm pretty sure they were more surprised than we were. They had burnt an umbrella in the middle of the floor and spray painted a few things. They kids quickly removed themselves from the scene of the crime. Only one kid seemed to be sorry. As he left he kind of looked at us and said "It's a church!" in Korean. As they were leaving I grabbed my camera and got 2 pictures of them all. One was good and got most of their faces. I gave it to the police when they came and about 2 hours later we found of that they brought the picture to the schools in the area where they were identified and caught. They next 2 days were spent helping the bishop out in cleaning up the place and repairing a few things.

Second crazy thing. Transfers 2 weeks early! President called up on Thursday night and informed us that Elder Rockwood would leave to another area. Quite the surprise but it's happened to me before. An Elder has to go home early for school so they had to do a little adjustment. For 2 weeks I will be in another threesome with the other area in our district. Elder Bordman and Balentine. Pretty exciting week. I really enjoyed Elder Rockwood. He was a great first junior. On to new things. This will be 7 transfers and 9 companions. I am a pretty troublesome missionary apparently. :) Our investigator ee ien gol(이인걸) is doing good. We were able to meet him with sister Olsen(She is Korean but married an American and has forgotten most her Korean) It went well. He is really nice and willing to listen These next couple of weeks we will have to cover 3 areas rather than just the two so it will be a little more difficult but fun as well. Elder Rockwood and I are sending our emails to the other's families. Hope everything is still going good for ya all. Korea is awesome. I love this work. Hard but it has a lot of rewards with it.

(note from dad: I taught Caleb in the areas I have apartments, a camera is more powerful than a gun)

My first talk

Welp, mom is out of the country and won't get this for a while so I debated just not sending one but she would probabaly consider me dead so I will inform you on my week. Relations with the wards are getting better. It is sometimes hard to show both wards we are working because they only see half our work but we are going good. We got a new investigator this week from a referal from a different area. He is in the Navy as a diver for his profession. He is really cool, very built. He has a lot of English interest but we taught him the first and he followed along and asked questions. We will see how that goes down the road.

This Sunday I gave my first talk in Korean. In every ward you go to you give a greeting talk and a leaving talk. Every once in a while we also give other talks like this one. I spoke on smiling and being willing to talk to people. It was good. I felt like it created more of a bond with that ward. It was hard though. I really like giving talks and making them entertaing and good but doing that in Korean is a bit more difficult than in English.

This last P-day we went to an island that had 3 little museams on it. There was a restored battle ship, a navle battle museam, and an ocean museam. It was really fun to see. Korean museams seem to have quite a bit more technology shoved into them. In the middle of the battleship there was a room full of computers and a full stage simulator game in the navel musean and other fun things. Korea is fun. It was a good week. Life is still good. Thanks for the letters and support. Love you all!Elder Anderson

4th of July and no root beer

Two weeks into this transfer, things are still chugging along. This week I think that I got my first real member referral since coming here. It was pretty fun. I did something I have always wanted to do. we met with the investigator and talked about our church, he is a business owner and so was the member so we were all pretty professional about the whole thing. He asked for our business card, I asked for his and we set up another appointment. It seems simple but I have always wanted to set up an appointment like that. I think it's the business side of me.

The next day we taught him a really good lesson in a park. He seems pretty interested, especially in the book of Mormon. He said he would start reading it every day along with his every day reading of the bible. Can't argue with that. His name is 이인걸(lee ien gol). This week was also the 4Th of July. We happen to have a military base in our area and we were invited to go in the evening to eat and watch fireworks. It was like going into America. Suddenly everyone could understand me and I could understand them. It was a really cool experience.

We have a member that lives on the base and the sisters have an investigator there too. The member brought us to have a giant steak. The fireworks were really fun as well. Good old America. It kind of reminded me of the little things that made Korea and America so different. Although when we asked if they had root been on the base the waitress still went and checked the wine closed and came back to inform us that they don't. That is truly only in America. This week was good. The work still goes on even with 2 young Americans that can hardly understand the language. We are blessed. Love you all. Thanks for the prayers and support.Elder Anderson