Elder Spencer John Edwards: 농사, 등산, 가정의 밤... 재미있었다

Translation courtesy of Google Translate: "Farming , hiking , family home evening was fun ..."

Climbing a mountain with the bishop.

This week was fun and different. Monday was a great P-day... we raced through everything that we needed to get done and then had 3 hours to just chill at the church and play ping pong and play the piano. Who knew that you can play ping pong hard enough and long enough to get into a sweat? It was really fun. Afterwards we proselyted for a bit and then had FHE as a ward because Sister McKloskey is transferring. It was fun. There are so many small kids in our ward and they're incredibly cute. Tuesday was awesome. The sisters have an investigator that owns a farm out in the country side, and she needed some help so we got to farm for a few hours!! We dug ditches. We dug for over 3 hours and were then sore for the rest of the week. My back was sore, my thighs were sore, calves, hands, neck, lower back, core, arms, shoulders... I think the only muscle it didn't hit was my chest. A good workout, but it made the next 3 or 4 days torture. It was good to be able to help her with that because it would have probably taken her several days if we hadn't helped.

Farming!

The sisters are teaching a few men from Sri Lanka who are working here in Korea. There work conditions are pretty horrible... 18 hour shifts doing the exact same motion (grinding carrots) over and over only for minimum wage. But they're pretty positive about it and have some interest in the gospel. Elder Jung and I have been "helping" them teach because they need another man there and none of the members in our ward have time. We visited them last night and they fed us Sri Lankan food! Apparently they don't use utensils in Sri Lanka, so I ate with my bare hands. It was awesome. Sister Wijethunge, who is also from Sri Lanka, then taught them the Word of Wisdom in Sinhala, the language spoken in Sri Lanka. I didn't catch a single word. Nailed it. It reminded me of what it was like when I first came to country... it wasn't as bad as last night, but still pretty bad.

Eating sri lankan food. They don't use utensils.
Back to the baby days. Sweet.

We were able to teach a lot more this week compared to last week. On Wednesday we taught a couple college students that we found while street boarding 2 weeks ago. The first student is atheist, but has an open mind, listened well to the Restoration, and even prayed at the end of the lesson! It was his first time and he was a little nervous, but he prayed! The second student we taught is a pretty devout member of some Baptist church here, and he wanted to convert us. We knew he was going to try to do that, but we said we would meet if he would give us some time to teach as well. We ended up watching a video of their preacher for 30 minutes, and then they (he brought a few friends) talked about how we need to be reborn and be saved, like them. It was all good stuff, but we came here to teach and not to be taught (although we do plenty of learning along the way), so we taught them about the Book of Mormon and a little bit of the Restoration. He promised us 15 minutes, but it ended up being 6 minutes, which was pretty lame. None of them were interested or even really listened. *sigh* Oh well.

Elder West got a nice picture of Elder Jung and I proselyting.

This week we had to drop our alcoholic investigator, Brother Lee, because he wasn't keeping his commitments. He knows that alcohol is bad, but he refuses to even try to quit. He says he doesn't want to. So we dropped him, because it's impossible to help him if he doesn't put in effort.

Human flag on a small tree.

But, on the plus side, Elder Diede gave me a call from Dongdaemun last Friday saying that Brother Jung, whom Elder Weight and I found on the street and I got to teach once before I left (see the letter I sent on Feb. 16), would be getting baptized on Sunday!! Super cool. I wasn't able to go to the baptismal service yesterday, but it was cool to hear that he got baptized. He's a really cool kid and he should do great in the church.

I love you all! Have a wonderful week, remember your blessings, and keep the faith!

Love, Elder Edwards