Elder Spencer John Edwards: 아직 안덥다 ^^

Translation courtesy of Elder Edwards: "It's still not hot.^^"

This guy is totally wasted.
We tried to teach him the Word of Wisdom,
but he wouldn't have any of it.

It got a little hotter this week. But the nights are still really cool, to the point that I wore a hoodie to bed one night because I was cold. You may wonder why I'm so hung up on the fact that it's not hot... It's because it's so weird to think back to exactly a year ago, when I woke up to a bed that was damp from sweat every morning. It's really nice now.

Beating a rug.

It was a good week. But also kind of lame. This week the last of our investigators kind of dropped off and aren't meeting anymore for a few reasons... some are sick, some are busy, and some aren't interested. So Elder Taylor and I currently have zero investigators. Which means A LOT of proselyting. Which is what we did most of this week. We also fasted on Saturday to be able to find people, and that went really well. Still no investigators, but we're both doing fine and still working hard, even though it kind of really stinks to proselyte for 5 hours in a row. It's really hard to not just get sick of it because it's hot and people ignore us, but we made a special effort to really concentrate and try to help every single person that we met.

The soccer guys were a little violent one day...
but I still won.

I guess the Pope came to Korea for something. Everyone is talking about it. We don't watch the news, so we never know about anything that's going on in the world.

Our branch is still struggling. People aren't really fulfilling their callings, people aren't working together, people are blaming and pointing fingers, and as a result, recent converts get neglected, people become less active, and no home teaching gets done. It's hard. It's hard trying to bring investigators into this kind of environment, where there's a lack of patience, diligence, and charity. We're trying hard, but there's only so much we can do as missionaries. We aren't exactly members of the branch, and because we switch and transfer so often, missionaries can't do a whole lot to help the whole problem. One thing I've learned from this... Home teaching is SO important. It's so necessary to strengthen, support, build relationships, love, and serve. And it's very obvious the difference between a branch that is doing home teaching and a branch that isn't. For all of you out there with home teaching assignments, don't take them lightly!!! You are helping to build the Kingdom of God.

A sweet place with tons of grass that we found.
There's not a whole lot of grass to be found
because of all the apartment buildings.

On Wednesday, while we were proselyting after district meeting, we met a really rich man, who may or may not have been drunk. He asked Elder Taylor how much his watch was. Elder Taylor responded that it was 10 dollars. The man then asked to try it on. Elder Taylor obliged reluctantly. The guy then latched it onto his wrist, pulled 10 bucks out of his wallet, and informed Elder Taylor that he was buying the watch. He was not very nice about it. But luckily we got the watch back, thanks to a kind citizen who noticed the trouble (we told the guy that he couldn't have the watch and he got mad) and made the mean guy give the watch back. The kind citizen turned out to be a very intense women who is very serious about her church, and she preached/yelled at us for 20 minutes. Sigh. The days can be pretty weird sometimes.

I love you all! I'm doing well and happy to be doing the Lord's work!

Love, Elder Edwards