아침 식사... 간장.

(Translation courtesy of Google Translate: "Soy Breakfast...")

I've just been having soy sauce breakfasts recently... usually eggs, ham, rice, and soy sauce. And it just struck me this morning that I've been eating soy sauce for breakfast. Weird, huh? :)

The Taegoogkee! (Korean flag)

Hello! The weather was SUPER cool this week... It's been glorious. I wake up cold in the mornings, which Elder Lee complains about but I think it's awesome.

This week was surprisingly really good. Last Monday and Tuesday I was on exchanges with the Junglang zone leaders, and we went to the DMZ on Tuesday with the Junglang district!!! (Pday was half on Monday and half on Tuesday last week.) The DMZ was pretty sweet. (DMZ = the Korean Demilitarized Zone is a strip of land running across the Korean Peninsula that serves as a buffer zone between North and South Korea.) There are a few tunnels that were dug by the North Koreans a long time ago in preparation for invasions, one of which has been turned into a tourist spot. So we got to go down into a tunnel dug decades ago by the North Koreans in preparation for invasion! Super cool. But we weren't allowed to take pictures, which was lame. The DMZ is a huge tourist location... it's also kind of a wildlife preservation, and people can look at the infamous North Korea. Pretty cool.

Exchanges with the Joonglang zone leaders (elevator pic).

A CRAZY guy came to church last week. "Henry" has been coming to English class for the past 4 weeks, and he's just gotten stranger and stranger. Apparently he's been kicked out of over 10 wards in Korea. We couldn't understand why because he seems pretty nice, so when he said he wanted to come to church we said sure. And then we found out why he got kicked out a ton of different wards. He came in 20 minutes before church started and sat in the back and was talking with me pleasantly (in English... he's really good at English and really interested in it, so I've never heard him speak Korean), when the second counselor in the bishopric came up and introduced himself and was super nice and tried to make him feel welcome. Well, Henry responded REALLY rudely and in a very low and rude form of Korean when just meeting someone (there are different "forms" in Korean... the higher the form, the more respect is being shown to the listener). And then Henry just exploded and yelled and yelled and swore and swore and cursed the church for a ton of different stuff. I will say this, I've never tried to learn swear words on purpose in Korean, but the ones I have learned, he used A LOT. So then the 2nd Counselor kicked him out. And then Henry came back with the police. And then the 2nd Counselor talked it through with the police and they all realized that Henry is literally crazy and now Henry isn't allowed on Dongdaemoon church property ever again. There are crazy people out there.

Elder Choi and I on exchanges.

We had a baptism in Dongdaemoon ward yesterday! One of the 11 year old recent converts referred her friend a few months ago, and she got baptized! That's the 3rd baptism in Dongdaemoon ward this year.

Elder Lee is down in his hometown right now. He came back up to Dongdaemoon on Tuesday night after all the funeral arrangements and funeral, gave zone training with me on Wednesday, and worked with me up until yesterday, and then headed back down for a mandatory military training for those that have already served their mandatory 2 year service. So he'll be gone until this coming Wednesday, so I'm once again a solo missionary jumping around between companionships. Elder Lee is doing really well. In fact, he's very similar to how he was before his brother died. This was (and is) really shocking to me... so I asked him about it on Friday. I said, "How do you do it? Your brother died 5 days ago. How are you able to focus and work so hard and smile and laugh with your brother dying so recently?" He responded that this is all he has. He said there's not really any use moping and not doing anything, so he's doing what he can right now, and that's throwing himself into the work. He really believes in the Plan of Salvation, and that gives him comfort and strength and a huge desire to share it with the people of Korea. And it's cool to hear him testify of it on the street. There's a power and a knowledge to his words that definitely wasn't there before his brother died. I just have a huge amount of respect for him. I don't know how he's doing it... he's amazing.

Service project with the zone!

I really liked Alma 37:34 this morning. "Teach them to never be weary of good works..." That's something that I can definitely say that I've felt before. Missionary work is awesome and great and rewarding and can definitely be qualified as a "good work", but it definitely wears on you sometimes. It applies to people other than missionaries as well... People can feel weary from their callings, be weary of scripture study/prayer, be weary of going to church, etc. But Alma teaches us to NEVER be weary of good works. And I think one very important way to not get weary is to remember that it is a good work. To remember that this is something that God wants me to do. To remember that by doing this good work I am working a little harder to endure to the end, and that I will be better prepared to meet Him at the last day.

I love you all!

Love, Elder Edwards