Korean Olympian

Hello! I hope all is well and everyone is watching the Olympics. Korea is apparently doing quite well especially on ice. Pretty much everyone has it on and they are all quite excited about 김연아(Kim yun ah) She as been in the newspapers for months now in anticipation for this. By the way, if you are a male in Korea and win a medal you are considered a national hero and do not have to go to the mandatory military 2 year service. Its a pretty good incentive. Anyway, this week was good. At church we had 2 less actives come that we have been working with and one says she plans on coming from now on. We were really excited to see her come back and begin the repentance process. This gospel brings so many blessings into peoples lives. It makes it a lot easier to share when you have a testimony of that. This week we had a lady come to our English class that we had contacted a couple of days ago. It is surprisingly rare to try to get people to come to a free English class. I am convinced that if we had people pay for it we could get more members. Weird. Anyway, we knew she was coming so we got a member that is about her age to come as well so it wouldn't be so awkward. It was really good and hopefully she can meet her sometime outside of English class and not about English. She said that she doesn't know her time schedule though. The member we brought is amazing. I mention her a lot because she is probably the best member missionary I know. She is always trying to visit less actives with us and has taught investigators with us many times. She even found 2 investigators that we are teaching now. A member like that can make or break a small branch like this. We had a good week. I hope that all is well back home and that you are paying attention to those Olympic Koreans! Elder Anderson

Happy New Year (In Korea I am 22 years old. 20 in America)

Hello! I hope that everyone had a fantastic New Year this last week. It is quite a big holiday here. It is a 3 day holiday and lasted from Saturday to Monday. It was fun to be with members and we were able to meet a few less actives that we had never met before and invited them back to church.

On Monday we went to Tague and on the way back we had an interesting experience. We took the train back to our area and as we were getting off we noticed white guy getting off at the same stop. it was fairly odd because the area we are in is pretty countryside and there aren't a lot of foreigners. We started chatting and found out that he was a German foreign exchange student living in Seoul. He and his Korean friend had taken the wrong train and got off at the first place they could, bought a ticket to go back and had an hour and a half delay in our little city. Previous to this we had planned on spending some time with a less active woman. She told us that she could take us to see the World class soccer stadium. The only problem was that because there was no one else we were not able to drive with her alone. We explained the situation early but she insisted on meeting us at the train station. Our new friends quickly fell into our plans and we were definitely blessed for following the rules. The 5 of us then crammed into her car and we went to the stadium. It was perfect for everyone. The German was 24 and had met the missionaries before. We chatted quite a bit about Korea and our church. He was Catholic and knew a bit about our church already. He was really fun to talk and we cleared up a few important misunderstandings about our church. We also talked to his Korean friend a bit and exchanged numbers as we left. It was a really neat experience. Missionary work is amazing.

Martial Arts and needles

Hello from Korea again. This week has been good. Last P-day we went and played screen golf as a district. I got +4 on the front 9 and that was all we had time to do. I was pretty proud of myself.

That same day we had a less active invite us to his Martial arts studio where we could learn with his regular class if we wanted. We got permission and went. It was really fun. We were there to add English to the class and try to get them to speak,but learning ju jitsu was pretty fun. I don't think many people can say that they have thrown their companion. It was all safe though. Mats, safely landing, and such things. Hopefully we can bring an active member that is his age so they can chat and be friends because we can't keep doing this especially since he soon wants us to start kickboxing and we definitely can't get permission for that. This week we had a different less active come to church for the first time since I have been here which was exciting. She said she can come often as well.

One of our members offered to take us to a traditional medicine shop. I personally don't enjoy traditional and medicine being used in the same sentence. We walked in and the place was full of old people waiting. We thought it was going to be a long wait but it wasn't because all the old people had already been treated. Nearly half of them had needles poking out of their hands. I really don't like needles and there were people with up to 20 running down the back of of their middle finger down to their wrist. We talked to a few and apparently it helps blood flow as well as arthritis. The miracles of acupuncture. I'm not willing to try it out but fun to see. We also had president interviews yesterday which are always fun. It has been amazing to serve under President Jennings. Hope all is well back home.

Concert, visiting and wishlist

It is cold but starting to warm up here. It is around 0 degrees C, so not insane. I like the cold especially when I think about summer. This week was a good one. We got the opportunity to go to a Korean concert at the university with a part member family which was amazing. It really made me realize that I am not anywhere close to America. Very Asian. I actually think that their concerts are more entertaining than ones in America. They almost always have music and dance or singing. They wouldn't let us take pictures which was a disappointment but still it was really fun.
There was an old Man that was dancing and yelling nearly the whole time they had the drums and dancing going on. Luckily they had guard rails that he couldn't figure out how to get over so he stayed in the audience.

This week we spent quite a lot of time with an amazing member that brought us around to some less actives that she wanted to visit. We have gone around with her on the bus with her and it is always an amazing experience. She is such a wonderful member.

This week we had Zone conference. It always gives us a big spiritual boost for the transfer. I have so much respect for President Jennings. Missionary work is amazing. I love my area and the members here. Things I would enjoy: New journal, taco seasoning smashed up Doritos (to take up less space maybe just smash them up into little crumbs and zip lock that and send it. If it is too hard then don't.)