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

Chinhae (just east of Pusan)

This week has been a blast. Elder Rockwood and I are very similar. Koreans even think we are brothers. For all those who know Travis Gowen he is similar to him. Naturally we have a lot of fun.



We have been doing a lot of finding since we have had no real investigators. Finding is always good. This area is a little hard to proselyte because we have no colleges and not many people are walking around. We still do fine though. The area is smaller and less populated then most. Being a part of two wards is interesting. We both went to one ward this Sunday and we will go to the other next week. A little harder to manage but at the same time easier because they don't rely on us as much since they know we have 2 wards to cover.

Yesterday was probably the craziest day of the week. We were in church and for the third block the bishop brought us into his office and explained that a kid had been coming to Church for quite some time now and he wanted us to teach him all the lessons... right then... It was pretty rough but there in the bishop's office we taught all the lessons to this kid. He listened to it all and it seemed good. The bishop wants us to baptize him this coming Sunday. A little fast for my liking but the bishop knows him more and he believes the gospel is true so... ya. We should be having a baptism this coming Sunday if all goes well. We still need permission from the parents and also the interview.

We had a few other interesting experiences this week. I think my favorite was while we were proselyting we came across a lady that was convinced we were the devil. Like.... she called us "Satan." It was pretty strange though because she was basing all her arguments on the fact that the Book of Mormon and our names on our tags are translated into Korean so we can't be right because it means different things. I thought it extremely strange when she said she believed the Bible but not the Book of Mormon. We had a small group of older women watching as we talked to this lady. It was really funny because I would glance at them and they would give us a big smile and kind of an apologetic look because this lady would never let us talk.

The work is still going good. Hard but still moving along. This gospel is true. That's why I'm out here. I love Korea. Korean language is coming along, it's getting more fun. Love you all, hope things are good.

new companion new area Elder Rockwood and I are in Chinhae poonghoe

Wow, so our whole MTC district is now senior except for one sister because she didn't have to. Fun fun. This last week in 상인 was good but a little rough. Because of my companion, Elder 이태희's surgery on his foot we did a lot of sitting at home and studying. I'm all for studying for forever but it gets pretty boring pretty quick. I was sad to leave the ward. They were really good to me and very patient. We had a really nice area... but now I am very far from there. I am now in 진해/풍호 (chinhae/poonghoe.) I am with Elder Rockwood from Indiana. He is really good and we are very much alike. He went to Stanford and is pretty smart (That's our biggest difference) He is 4 transfers below me so we are not that far apart at all. I think it will be a good transfer for us. It may be interesting though because when we meet people they like to get to know us. We each bring some pictures representing who we are. In both of our sets of pictures we each have a picture of us riding camels, people may think that all Americans ride camels. Ha.

I am really excited for this transfer. We are the only Elder area to cover 2 wards so that should be interesting. We don't even really have sisters in our area although they may come here because of some investigators that they have(they just barely moved them out of the area.) Our area is right to the west of Busan. It is basically a bay surrounded with boats and ship building stuff, surrounded by houses/apartments, and surrounded by mountains. Its a pretty beautiful area. This last week the humidity just came rolling in which makes it really hot. It's not insanely bad though, still bearable. I think we will have a lot of fun and do tons of work this transfer. I'm really excited. Hope all is going well!

Culture warts and fire

This week we had interviews with the Mission President. It is now 90% sure that this will be my last week as junior companion. I will probably have an American Junior and I will be the senior. Pretty exciting. I think it will be fun, quite the adventure.

Because of all the missionaries leaving this transfer, our 4 man houses will be a thing of the past. Next time you hear from me I will be with my next companion.

This week was good. We were able to go to a cultural dance/singing event at the university here. It was really cool. I consider myself at least somewhat knowledgeable about music but I honestly wouldn't have been able to tell if they were playing those instruments upside down and backwards. They were pretty fun. My favorite was this group of male dancers with drums and hats that had a long ribbon coming off a stick that twirled around. It is hard to explain but it was really neat. Korea has so much culture behind it. Many of the older generation are worried about the Korean culture being lost as Korea progresses. I feel this is true in many ways but there are still many everyday cultural things that differ from the US.

This week Elder 이 had 3 warts removed off the bottom of his foot. They told him to avoid walking as much as possible. I've done a lot of studying and splits with the other missionaries in the house.

One time Elder Asay and I were going to visit a member we haven't seen in a while who works in a fire station. We were on our way to the fire station when we saw a building billowing smoke out of it. It must have just started because no one was there yet. About 30 seconds after that came the sirens and the whole fire station to take care of the fire.

It wasn't very big but still our friend was a little busy at that time. We didn't know what to do besides watch for a little and then try to go visit someone else. Funny how that works. Well thanks for all the support. Anyone who has been debating on writing me a letter recently I am calling you to repentance. Any mail is appreciated. :) Thanks.Elder Anderson

Here buggy buggy

Since being in Korea all my hopes and dreams of being a pro soccer player have been smashed.... However, I do believe that I would be pretty good in the NBA here of course. This week was pretty good. In one of our English classes a man showed up who comes every once in a while. He is a religion expert, well.... he knows a lot about different religions and thinks he is pretty cool because of it. We taught him a while ago and he told Elder Mckenna and me that we were spiritual babies.

Ha. I think it's funny when people try to convince me that I am wrong or that I don't really believe what I believe. You think that I would come to Korea, learn Korean, give up my life for two years, actually pay out of my own pocket to come here, and not first know that what I have is the truth? Come now. Anyway, he is pretty funny.

Currently our house consists of half Americans and half Koreans. Its pretty fun. A few days ago we were knocking doors. We were on the last door when out of nowhere this giant of a bug plopped itself right in front of the door. It was probably a good 3 inches long. When we would approach the door it would get into attack mode and start flapping its wings in anger. Elder 이태희 was pretty convinced that the bug was from the devil and that it was guarding us from getting into the door, we had to attack. We started throwing all sorts of paper at it and other things but it wouldn't move unless we got too close. We were just about to give up when I threw my pen at it and missed. I then wouldn't leave because I wanted my pen back. The garbage we threw was beginning to pile up when the door flew open pushing the pile and bug out of the way. A girl was leaving the house to go to school. We were a little stunned but quickly started introducing ourselves. She got her mom and we talked with her and gave her a pamphlet to read. When the door finally shut the bug was gone because it had failed its purpose and I was able to get my pen back. Success. Hope all is well back home. Elder Anderson