동대문구 용두동

Dongdaemun district!!

A good week. Last Monday was spent cleaning ALL day. We emptied fridges (we have 2!), freezers, garbage cans, cupboards, and then cleaned them REALLY good with some powerful cleaning supplies. Houses get kind of gross after years of irresponsible teenagers live in them. And it doesn't help that this house is infested with cockroaches!!!! Everytime we moved something that hadn't been moved in a while, a new little gang of cockroaches would scurry in every direction while we squealed and banged them with sledghammers and sprayed them with some powerful bug killer. It was actually a pretty good day. We (the 6 elders in this house) all bonded together after that experience, similar to a group of survivors who endured and suffered through a great trauma or natural disaster together. The day after that we got to go to the temple in the morning and then have P-day! We didn't do anything super cool that day, but the temple was great and it was good to see a bunch of other missionaries that I know at the temple.

Elder Choi and I (he's a zone leader in another area).

There's not a ton of privacy in this house... we actually have two showers, but they're both in one room not separated by anything. And we have 3 toilets!! That's a pretty good number for us. And those are a little better because they're separated by stalls. Except the stalls don't have doors. And the bathroom is also the laundry room... someone just threw a washing machine in there and called it a laundry room as well. So basically, you learn to not be too shy here.

Mom, I'll just put the answers to your questions on here. That's cool, right?

1.   Tell us about your companion. His name is Elder Leewonhyung. He's 24 years old, has been in the army for 2 years (that's a requirement for every Korean male), finishes his mission this January, and super buff. He's really good at English due to living with Americans for the past year and a half, but we usually speak in Korean together.

2.   What are your responsibilities as ZL? Give zone trainings once a month. Take care of the zone. Go on companion exchanges with each of the district leaders (3) once a transfer. Attend the monthly stake presidents meeting and discuss missionary work. Be the model companionship in the zone. Strive to make this zone the model zone in the mission.

3.   Where do you live now? How many missionaries are there in your apartment? Right next to the church in a place called 동대문구 용두동 (you can google it, find the church, and then see our house.) There are 6 missionaries in this apartment.

4.   How many missionaries in the zone? 24.

5.   How is the city vs the country? BIG. One of the biggest differences is having so many people to talk to!!

6.   What is the ward/branch like where you are serving? It's good. I don't know a whole lot about it yet, but the members are really nice and work hard. Our ward mission leader is awesome and really works hard to fulfill his calling. This ward actually isn't that much bigger than Wonju branch... I think about 50 members come out every week.

Elder Lee and I at the temple.

Things are pretty good right now. Elder Lee and I are both healthy and happy and working really hard. I struggled a little bit with confidence this week... which is interesting because I never struggle with confidence. But I struggled this week with knowing what to say when we proselyte, specifically. I'm doing fine now, but it's really interesting to see the HUGE difference that I felt in my ability as a missionary when I had less confidence. I didn't feel as ready, prepared, qualified, or happy. And speaking Korean became SUPER hard. But I'm fine now, I have confidence, and the work is going well. 

Elder Lee and I picking small appleish things.

Elder Lee and I found 3 new investigators this week, and all three of them agreed to be baptized in October! We have changed our approach when we invite people to be baptized a little bit... First, we invite almost everyone to be baptized at the first sit down lesson with them. So we'll meet them on the street once for the first time, and then when we meet them in the church we'll invite them to be baptized. Second, we set a date with them, whether they feel ready or not, and then tell them that we will help them to be ready by that date, and if they feel ready, they can be baptized then. We express to them that it's okay if they don't feel ready then, that we can do it later if they don't feel ready, but that it would be good to work toward a goal (the date). And it works like a charm. Almost everyone agrees, and then they have a lot better idea of what our expectations are and what we are here to do as missionaries.

So now we have a lot of investigators, with 5 of them with baptismal dates starting at the end of this month and spreading through until the end of next month. It's pretty cool. I don't know how we're going to get them ready by then, but we're working hard to know the doctrine ourselves and to help them understand it. The work is really rewarding right now. It's really cool to do the Lord's work, to invite people unto Christ and help them enter into the gate of baptism.

I love you all!

Love, Spencer

동대문에 왔다

Translation courtesy of Google Translate: "Came to Dongdaemun"

Hello! There's not a ton of time today, so this might be shorter and I won't be able to respond to any other emails... sorry.

I'm in Dongdaemun! Literally translated, it means East gate. And there are TONS of people here. Tons of people to talk too. Elder Lee and I had about an hour and a half of contacting time on the second day I got here (Wednesday), and we got triple the number of contacts I could have gotten in Wonju. It's so awesome. Proselyting is a lot more fun when there's enough people to talk too. We've already taught a few lessons, and have 3 baptisms lined up for the end of this month! Not all of them are for sure, and I don't know a lot about all of them, but it should be really good. 

Elder Leewonhyung = Elder Lee

Elder Lee is awesome. He's a really hard worker, he's not complacent, he's a great teacher, he dies (goes home) in January, and he's super funny. I'm having a blast with him and learning a ton. I thought that becoming a zone leader would be a huge teaching opportunity, not a learning one. But it has definitely been both. Being a zone leader is pretty cool. We had our first zone training meeting 2 days ago on Saturday, and it went well. Our zone covers 3 areas, and each area has 6-10 missionaries in it.

Our house is literally 20 feet away from the church... there's a big gate surrounding the church and the parking lot, and our house is INSIDE the gate. It's a big house, tons of room, but we have just one problem... cockroaches. Our house is crawling with them. Elder Lee and I moved a big board off the wall to rearrange the board, and 6 of the nasty little cockroaches had been chilling back there. We had a small fright which may or may have not included girlish screaming, and then got to work with some bug spray and a large rubber mallet kept in the house for the specific purpose of killing cockroaches. Today is going to be the big clean day that happens twice a year... So it should be really interesting waging war with nasty bugs. At least they're not spiders.

Me, Elder Leewonhyung, and President and Sister Christensen,
with me and Elder Lee wearing traditional wedding clothes
(it's Korean thanksgiving here, so tons of people wear them)

This weekend through until tomorrow is Choosuk, which is the Korean thanksgiving, and the second biggest holiday in Korea. Everyone goes to their hometown and chills there for a few days with family and eat tons of food and think about/make food for their ancestors. I don't know a whole lot about that part, but I heard they make food for their dead ancestors. So we had a mission conference on Saturday as well as a zone training meeting. Elder Lee and I wore sweet traditional wedding clothes, so we looked pretty awesome.

I love you all! I'll try to write more next week. There's so much to write about!

Love, Elder Edwards

Goodbye Wonju district :(

Elder Taylor and I and our pastor investigator. His hair is awesome.

이동전화왔다 헐...

Translation courtesy of Elder Edwards: "Transfer calls came, wow..."

Elder Taylor and I, after riding the bikes in
pouring rain for 20 minutes.

Transfer calls came. I'm leaving Wonju ㅠ.ㅠ My new area is 동대문 (Dongdaemoon), which is in the big city... Seoul. I'll be going from our small 6 man district to a large 10 man district, with 4 Koreans in our district!! My new companion's name is 이원형 (Leewonhyung), and he's pretty old in the mission. He'll die sometime before 2015. And we will be zone leaders together! Zone leaders over Dongdaemoon and two other areas (Eemoon and Hwayang). Dongdaemoon is a ward as well, and I'm super excited to serve there!!! There will be TONS more people there than here in good old little Wonju. It's going to be weird leaving the countryside... I don't know any of the missionaries that are out there working in the city. I only know Elder Leewonhyung by name and sight. So it'll be a little bit of a new experience for a country bumpkin such as me, but I'm super excited.

Saying goodbye... yes, I got transferred :(  

This week was a good week. We proselyted during the week days, and then this weekend we had a District Conference over in Gangneung. That was long. We rode there and back with members on Saturday, and then rode there and back again with members on Sunday. 7 hours in a car/rented bus. It was long but good. Really cool to see everyone one last time before I leave, especially the Taebeck branch members. It'd been a long time since I'd seen them, so it was good to see them once more and say goodbye. President and Sister Christensen came to District Conference and both spoke (President in Korean, Sister Christensen in English which was then translated). It was some good meetings. One thing that I heard that I really liked: "Big problems come from thinking that the small things are not important." The theme for the conference was "small and simple things."

More goodbyes...

This morning was spent frantically packing stuff that has scattered through the house over an 8 month period and trying to fit it and newly acquired items in suitcases, which we just barely mailed. Leaving Wonju is lame. I've been here for 6 transfers, and been in the countryside for 8 transfers (11 months) counting Taebeck. The city will be somewhat new. People say that transfers are good, and they usually are, but I don't want to leave Wonju. But, at the same time, I am really excited to work in the city. Goodbyes are hard, mostly because I know that I'll probably never get to see any of these people again. But change is good. I leave tonight (a day and a half earlier than usual), to meet my new companion and catch my first meeting as zone leader tomorrow morning. Here goes nothing!

I love you all!

Love, Elder Edwards

머리 잘랐다

Translation courtesy of Google Translate: "Hair Cut."

Not a whole lot from this week... Except that we picked up a few investigators! Finally. One is a pastor for another church who is really interested in the Book of Mormon, and another is a man named Brother Hong, or Jeffrey, that the sister missionaries found on the street, who came to church yesterday. It was really cool... I was talking with him and asking him about his interests and why he wanted to come to church, but he responded that he didn't have time, and told me to call him later. Then he left. But, he came back 20 minutes later and said he wanted to learn more right then! So we grabbed a member and sat down with him and taught him about the church. Super cool. He said he had been praying to God for some happiness because of some hard things in his life, and he also said that he had interest in the Mormon church. It was cool being able to tell him that he could and would find that happiness here. I just hope I can meet him again before I get transferred. Transfer calls are on Friday and there's no way I'll get to stay in Wonju for another.

Our zone leaders.

I got a haircut last P-day. And the lady butchered it. So I just had Elder Taylor shave it all off and now I look like a large baby. Lame.

I really liked D&C 117:11 this morning... "... and be a bishop unto my people, saith the Lord, not in name but in deed..." The Lord doesn't call us to just have a title. He calls us to act. I should be a missionary in name AND in deed. "Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone." We must have faith, and we must also have works.

Heading to the church after street boarding.

Anyways. I hope you're all well and healthy and happy. The weather is good... switching between sunshine and really annoying misty rain. Companion relations are good. Kimchi still tastes good. I haven't been approached by too many drunk men lately. And life is good.

I love you all!

Love, Elder Edwards

Some ping pong instruction.

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

Our awesome district at the Buddhist temple..

Elder Taylor and I.

컴퓨터가 고장 날 땐...

Translation courtesy of Google Translate: "When the computer fails me..."

This dumb computer is being dumb and keeps kicking me off. So this might be a shorter email. Blame the computer, not me.

Kimchi squatting in the rain. I'm getting better at it.

It was a good week this week. A little more rain than expected. And it was blissfully cool. We've actually woken up a little cold the past few mornings. Elder Roskelley stopped using his fan, so I've been sleeping with 2 fans the past two nights and that's made it even more blissful.

Elder Taylor and I with Johnny.

Church was good this week. I really like being a missionary... we're kind of separated from the branch. Not in a bad way, but a missionary can only get so involved in a branch or ward when he's switching around every 6ish months. I sat in Sacrament meeting yesterday listening to the speakers and just thinking about the branch. Thinking about things going well in the branch and things not going so well. I wish I could stay for longer. There are about 6 Melchizedek Priesthood holders, 4 of whom have been the branch president... multiple times. People go less active so easily here, so there aren't any really new people to take callings and fulfill responsibility. So as a result, almost every Melchizedek Priesthood holder has served as branch president, elders quorum president, and branch mission leader. They just keep switching around because there's no one new to take their place. It's a lot different from little Kaysville ward... That's a HUGE ward comparatively. Anyway. I don't know where I was going with that. We didn't have any investigators to church... again. A few said they would come, but they all punked. A less active member came in as soon as church ended and tried to measure every one's height and chest width... I don't think he's completely right in the head. So that was a little weird.

Making calls.

Door knocking amongst some little, traditional Korea houses.

We visited an 80ish year old man at his house a couple times this week. He doesn't have any family, lives in a kind of abandoned house, and can't move very well due to a neck surgery gone wrong. We've been talking with him about Jesus Christ and finding hope through the Atonement and the fact that we will all be resurrected. He doesn't really listen because he says he hurts too much. He just eats fruit because he can't stomach anything else and says he's just waiting for the day that he dies. It was so sad! There are so many people out here that just got shafted, got the short end of life, and are miserable. But it gives me hope in knowing that God is just and fair, and that these people will have it better in the next life. "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

I love you all!

Love, Elder Edwards

Sul Puma. Sul means alcohol. Do you see the bottle it's holding?

비

Translation courtesy of Google Translate: "Rain"

Me cooking my potato, zucchini, pancake creation.
It was really gross.

Hello! This week was rather wet. Elder Taylor and I were down in the market waiting for a man that was going to meet us there for an appointment, and a great storm came billowing in. I haven't seen it rain like that in a long time. And, like the smart missionaries that we are, Elder Taylor and I hadn't brought umbrellas. But, we got to help some really nice grandmas make it through the worst of the storm. A TON of really old women sell fruit and vegetables in the market everyday, where they just sit under umbrellas and hope people come and buy. When storms come, they throw a tarp over their wares and then tie their umbrellas down with a few extra strings, prepared just for that purpose. And then they chill there, holding onto the umbrella so it doesn't blow away until the storm passes. They get pretty wet. So Elder Taylor and I stayed in the market for around 15 extra minutes during the worst of the storm, helping grandmas hold their umbrellas down. It was actually really fun. I have never been more soaked in my whole life.

Wet after the storm.

It was a good week. We had a few less actives to church yesterday, which was good to see. One of them acted like a complete child the whole time (he's 40 years old) and caused me a lot of stress, but it was overall good in the end. It was Elder Roskelley's year mark this week, so we all went out and got a huge thing of Baskin Robbins ice cream, made even better by the fact that it was 31 day (which makes the ice cream cheaper.) I've been living with Elder Roskelley for about half the time that he's been a missionary. I love that elder. Speaking of year marks, it was my year mark in country this week! It's weird looking back a year ago and realizing I was in Korea then too. These last 2 months went WAY faster than the 2 months in the MTC.

At Baskin Robbins, l-r Elder Arrington, Elder Roskelley, Elder Taylor, me.

I finished my journal that I started at the beginning of my mission. That's the first time in my life that I've ever finished a journal.

Our friend Jjanggoo

We didn't really meet any investigators this week. Our investigators are dwindling lately, and so we don't have a whole lot of people to teach or invite unto Christ. Which is honestly really lame. But we're still working hard and working to find those people that will receive us.

The sun is shining, the sweat keeps rolling, and life is good.

Love, Elder Edwards 

My sweet new soccer uniform!! The man in the above picture,
Jjanggoo, gave me this because I always went to soccer in the
mornings in t-shirts. He figured I needed a uniform. Super nice, huh?