거미 기습 and a Date? 10/25/26

I was teaching a college student on the street pretty late at night the other day. He agreed to read a verse from the Book of Mormon with me so I was holding the book for him while he read when I felt something land on my back. My comp was standing behind me and I heard him gasp, followed by him frantically slapping my back. He obviously missed the target because I felt something crawl up my shirt into my collar and down my back. By the strength of the Lord almighty, I stood steadfast long enough for this student to read the verse, unfortunately a rather long one, while my companion was practicing taekwondo on my back. I felt the thing run back out from my shirt and around the front of my body which is when I caught my first glimpse of the monster. A massive spider. I tried to get it off but missed and have absolutely no clue where it went. It could still be with me to this day for all I know. Satan is real. 

We tried finding on a road by a college that has been pretty successful the past few weeks. Turns out, going after the sun goes down is a terrible idea. The foreigner ratio goes up exponentially and they're not quite so willing to talk to us. I complimented one guy passing by and he stopped and asked "Do I know you? Is this some type of advertisement?" Which depending on your definition of advertisement, yes, but my definition requires some sort of monetary value for me, so I told him no, haha. When he saw my name tag he said, "I'm sorry, I don't have time to listen to your advertisement." And then he did a massive Greatest Showman ahh bow before dramatically spinning away. Really made my day. He was a goofy guy fr. 

The rest of that night kinda sucked. We weren't having any success. When I asked if we should call it and head back home, my comp said, "Nah, that feels like giving up." So we kept going and the next person we talked to was super nice, at least until he read my name and said, "Sounds like Moses." Which is when he revealed that he just wanted to bash us and started shaking with anger. First time I've heard "Allahuh akbar" in person though.  May Allah guide his pilgrimage, meshallah. Rough night.

I was talking to a man in the subway station and we got on the train together. He sat down on an almost full bench, leaving the only seat for me between him and a female college student. I sat there and kept talking to him but that student to my right had fallen asleep within two stops and when the train accelerated again, she completely tipped over and her head landed on my shoulder. I could see our reflection in the window and we absolutely looked like a couple, lol. Didn't really know what to do, so I called the conversation with the guy to my left a little short and got up. 

We were late to our appointment with 황인길 but when we got there, he was reading the Book of Mormon outside the church, waiting for us to come unlock the door. Let's goooo!

We sent our other friend, 김범진, a spiritual message video and he replied, "I'm going to try fasting." So yesterday we fasted with him, pretty cool. 

I went to a city called Gonju for an exchange last week and I really wanted to show the elder I was with that our zone goal of finding people to come to church IS possible, even in the country side. Unfortunately, the first 30 people we talked to rejected us immediately. It was a battle to stay positive, but we grinded and ended up getting the contacts of 4 people who said they'd go to church. One of them loves guitar and had me show him "where the light is." iykyk 

We found and taught 41 more people here in Daejon last week, bringing our total friend count to 209...! We're dropping so fast, but I think the list is still getting longer.  We've been sending a ton of our friends to the other missionaries in our area haha. 

Spiritual Message: 

The joyful news for anyone who desires to be rid of the consequences of past poor choices is that the Lord sees weaknesses differently than He does rebellion. Whereas the Lord warns that unrepented rebellion will bring punishment, when the Lord speaks of weaknesses, it is always with mercy. - Elder Richard G. Scott 

Current Weight: 186.164  (I've been eating Nutella sandwiches all week )

Miracles and Melons!! 10/18/26

Hecka miracles again this week. We were able to find and teach 30 more people. Our pmg is getting massive again. The best part about our pmg though is that probably 80% of our friends are dudes between the ages of 17-25. Dream pmg, fr. 

The guy I found in the subway last week came to church for the first time this week! He loved it and before I could invite him again said "I'll be here next week." 

We put two of our friends on baptismal date last week too. 황인길 and 김범진. They don't know each other but they both agreed to be baptised on the same day, should be great. When I invited 황인길 to be baptised he laughed for a good 10 seconds, not a very good sign, but then said, "....해야지" (basically "gotta") He smokes, but when we met him on Saturday he told me he hadn't smoked even once for 4 days. sSooo prepared rahhhhh! 

Yesterday I got rejected by two separate people on the train I was riding, and then everybody on my car got off at the same station leaving me completely alone. I looked down the train to the next car and saw a student my age-ish looking pretty sad. I went up to him and asked him if he was ok and then after he explained some of his problems we read Mosiah 24 together. Before I even asked he asked me for my number and then when I invited him to church he was super down to come. 

I forgot to tell this story but I went hiking last transfer with my old companion and every person we walked past he would say "you can do it!" in Korean, so I made fun of him because not even another language could hold him back from being what he is, a white person. After that joke though, he doubled down, and every time we passed someone he would say the typical white-hiker phrases but translated-- and it was lowkey pretty funny.  "You're almost there!" "Just a few more minutes," "The view is great, you're gonna love it!" 

I was sitting at a bus stop when this bus ripped in and the back door opened and immediately a grandma inside started yelling at me, "YOU!! Get over here" I ran over to the bus and she threw two bags of melons into my arms and said "PUT THEM ON THE BENCH!!" and then the door of the bus closed and she was gone just as fast as she came. Man it was so random. I've been referring to it as the melon drive-by. It seemed extremely coordinated. 

I met a woman on a bus and she didn't want to talk to me at first but then we finally got talking. Turns out she has been battling cancer for 7 years now and she had just found out recently that it metastasized pretty bad. We read some scriptures together and it was a pretty special moment. 

Spiritual Thought:   I've always loved the analogy of the oxygen masks in a plane. You have to put yours on first to help other people or else you'll get asphyxiated and die . We're helping so many people apply the gospel in their own lives but it's always suprising how easy it can be to forget to do it yourself. Just a reminder to lock in and do the things you claim are important yourself.

Current Weight: 187.70

Six Seven 10/12/26

Holyyyyy! Last week might have been the most miracle filled week of my whole life. I can't write all of them down, but here's some of the highlights. If you didn't like the "2 second email" last week, you're in luck. Get ready for a yap fest. 

Our mission has a goal for each missionary to baptise one person per year. To hit this goal we still need to baptise 67 people before the end of the year. That's roughly 6 people + one amputee people per zone. (The number was like 6.8 people) To accomplish this my comp and I have been grinding finding hard with as much faith as we can muster. The first day went ok, but we kept trying new approaches and strategies to invite people to church, with a specific focus on helping people feel the spirit. Studying PMG helped a ton in really trying to dial in a strategy. I don't think we have it down yet, but let me tell you, we got something cooking over here. We threw away habitual finding habits and tried to give everyone a unique personal conversation with tons of love, and then unapologetically introduce ourselves as missionaries and ask to share a verse or message. I had about 5 verses that I was using during the week that I would try to tailor to each person and dayyygum, I have never seen the spirit working on people so clearly in my life. People who initially tried their best to ignore us or tried to make an excuse to not read a verse, once having read a verse and been given an invitation, almost seemingly against their better judgment would say they would go to church and gave us their numbers. I could almost see the spirit whispering in their ear "bro trust, give them your number." Some of them looked genuinely confused as to why they were accepting our invitations haha. We were able to find and teach 28 people in about three days.

My companion said hi to a lady in the train station as we were passing her to sit on a bench to contact when she blurted out the old name of the church. (The Korean name changed about 25 years ago) We asked her how she knew that name and ended up teaching her a whole lesson. The subways came and went 3 times and she willingly missed it every time because she wanted to hear more. She came to English class after that too.

I taught a guy and got his number about two weeks ago and on the way back from a leadership meeting in a different city my companion ended up sitting next to him on the intercity bus. My companion taught him and got his number again, and when he went to make the guys record on PMG he was like, "Huh???? We already have him?" Haha. God really wants this guy apparently so He put him in our path in a really random place (again). He's meeting with us on Friday. 

Matter of fact, I think we ran into at least 3 people I have previously taught on the street. They all still remembered the convo I had with them somehow. (thank goodness cause I don't!) and we were able to get back in touch with some of them. I don't think people realize how unhelpful is it when they say, "I'm the guy you met on the bus!" Lol 

For all of my fellow missionaries, if you don't know this strat yet. Listen up cause this "lowkey" carried this last week. 

  Fistbumps

Ever wonder how to naturally close a 20 yard gap with someone? Yell a compliment and then hold up your fist. This simple move temporarily strips anyone of their agency and they must reciprocate. They're turning away to leave? Simply hold up more knucks. It's lowkey magical how well this works. 

After closing a massive gap in the subway station with two high schoolers using the fistbump strat, my companion and I somehow started speaking one on one with each student. I got the luck of the draw though because when I introduced myself as a missionary the student I was talking to started asking great questions. He told me he wants to be Christian but that believing is difficult. I told him that I believe because of the Spirit I feel when I read the scriptures and pray. He told me he was scared of death so I read a verse about the resurrection with him and when he finished reading he looked up and said, "It feels like the Spirit just hit me in the head." And then asked a question about people who don't learn about Jesus and die, which as Latter Day Saints, we kinda cook on that question ngl . After I explained the Spirit World, the look of amazement he had was soooo awesome. "I've worried about that contradiction my whole life and it just got solved." He's coming to church this week.

황인길 형제님 said he started reading the Book of Mormon from the start about a week ago and when we met him again a week later he was all the way in Alma 11 and has been marking it up as he goes through.

Spiritual Thought:  So many of these miracles happened because we had faith that IF we did our part THEN the spirit was 100% going to pull up and carry the boats. Do your part and God will do the rest. 

The Curse Is Lifted 10/5/2026

We had transfers last week and holy, we finally did it.  After exactly 474 days since my last 4 man, we are SO back. President saw the absolute grind we were running and I guess decided that it would be best to send us two more elders. (we didn't have dinner half the days) I bought a spikeball set a year ago and finally today got to use it. It's been a tender last few days. 

My new companion is a dawg and we're running it up harddddd. I love going to bed feeling like I did hard work.

Keep grinding, I gotta go.

Go watch conference!

Eternal Gas 9/28/2026

 I added a bunch of people to this email list last week and I thought it would be funny to share this story as their first taste of being on my email. If you don't think farts are funny you're just dumb (respectfully) because you're choosing to live life with the same amount of farts but less joy. 

The subway stations here in Korea are these massive empty stone rooms with multiple floors under the city. Lots of room for people, but  there weren't many people because it wasn't rush hour. We had finished finding on the train and were walking to leave the station when we heard a massive fart, from seemingly the edge of eternity itself. The perpetrator (perchance even victim?) was nowhere to be seen, but the echo through the massive, empty subway station was impressive. 

Had a lot of success finding and teaching this last week. Of course, lots of contacts (역시 대전), but much more importantly, a lot of really great moments of getting to bear my testimony. I have been sooo fired up about the restoration recently and it's so fun teaching people about Jesus!

Korean Thanksgiving was this week and I don't think I've ever done so much contacting in my life. It was utterly insane, I think I wrote the equivalent of a 20 page paper in Korean over the course of the day, but it worked out great. We are back in contact with a lot of great people. I also tried on traditional Korean clothing for the first time of my whole mission. 

I was playing a game with one of the Korean sisters I'm ward sharing with right now at a member meal on Thanksgiving. I would say a word I know in Korean to her and she would try to translate it into English. I was lowkey cooking and then the member, an old guy who I didn't think knew hardly any English, decided he wanted to compete with her. He beat her every time! It was so funny.  We were hypinggggg him up. My comp was laughing so hard because this old guy just secretly had crazy ball knowledge like 상대성 이론 (theory of relativity) 핵잠수함 (nuclear submarine) 약탈하다 (to plunder)-- to name just a few of the ones he knew. The Daejon members are insaneeee!

In one of our teaching appointments, we asked our teaching friend if he had read the introduction to the Book of Mormon like we had asked him to the previous week. He responded by pulling out his Book of Mormon with a book mark all the way at 1 Nephi 9. That's what we love to see, individually seeking spiritual knowledge, baybeee! Unfortunately, our member who was there started teaching him about outer darkness and started listing the people, by name, who are gonna end up there. Pretty crazy, cause I was always under the impression that Jesus was gonna be the judge at the last day but yk, we ball. 

I went to an area called Seosan to have an exchange with the district leader there this week and it was something. A man was building a cabinet on the street and we stopped to help him. I showed him my wooden dog feeder that I made for my dad and BAM! instant friendship. It was crazy though cause we were in the streets almost the whole day and literally 90% of everyone said they were Buddhist. A statistical anomaly. One lady even testified of a miracle where she had her paralyzed leg healed. It was a pretty sick miracle. I don't think it had the affect she was hoping it would have on us cause the Book of Mormon has already solved the problem of religious diversity, thankfully. 

Spiritual Thought: 

In honor of my dawg Elder Wolfert, who returns home this week, I'm just gonna echo the testimony he bore recently that no matter our capacity, when we choose to act, God magnifies our efforts. I saw that all this week, and as I read my journal from the start of the mission I was kinda shocked at the miracles I was seeing and things we were accomplishing even back when I didn't speak a lick of Korean.

Weight: 187.968

Miracle 9/20/2026

 Last week was busyyyyy. So much contacting and teaching. We had at least one member lesson every day, something I haven't done once since my 2nd transfer. Pretty miracle filled week.

On a bus I had one of the most spiritual conversations with a guy sitting next to me. It was fire and then boom, all of a sudden he hits me with "crap this is my stop" and jumped up. Bruhhhh nooo! I was gonna get his number but I just had to give him a name card as he got off. I said a fervent prayer because nobody ever responds from a card, but I could see him reading the card as the bus drove away. Twenty-five tense seconds later, someone sent me a text with their name. Let's goooo!  Absolute miracle. Later, when I was explaining this fire miracle to my comp he said, "oh no. Was it just one text?" And immediately my brain put it together that the text message was actually from the guy my companion was talking to at the front of the bus. I'm just a fool and a loser and I fumbled that guy, fr. 다음에 

President came to our ward and I got to talk to him about fighter jets and Flight Sim for about 10 minutes. Then at the Mission Leadership Conference the next day, he gave me a shoutout when he gave a fighter jet analogy to the whole room! Unfortunatly, it was the worst MCM ever cause the 뼈해장국 restaurant was closed. President came to me and gave me a personal apology because he knows how important that is to me. 

Spiritual Thought: 

"The work of devils and of darkness is never more certain to be defeated than when men and women, not finding it easy or pleasant but still determined to do the Father’s will, look out upon their lives from which it may seem every trace of God has vanished, and asking why they have been so forsaken, still bow their heads and obey."

 - C. S. Lewis

Current Weight: 186.69

신천지 (cult) (x3️⃣?) 9/13/2026

 On the way to district council I saw a 30ish year old women at the front of the bus reading her Bible. This isn't the first time this has happened during my mission and it's always been a golden opportunity, so I went up to the front to talk to her and I asked her what her favorite Bible verse was, and then shared my favorite too. Then I taught her a bit about the Book of Mormon and got her contact. Getting her contact was suspiciously easy though, and I was just thinking, "why is this so easy?" Anyways, after our number exchange, she leaned forward right into my ear and whispered "신천지 " which is the name of a church in Korea that's infamous for chasing people down, cornering them, and even locking a few LDS missionaries into their church one time haha! 

I don't say the word "cult" lightly because, believe me, I've heard it plenty of times, and it gets pretty old, especially because people just use it any time they disagree with somebody and have nooo clue what they're talking about. That being said, this is now the 3rd time I've run in to Sincheongi and all three of them have looked around, leaned in, and then whispered that name in my ear in a sketchy voice with a really weird smile. Not quite what you would do if you're trying to beat the allegations. One guy on the train even said, "이단" to describe themselves, which means cult, so I guess they're chill with the description. I keep blocking her number but her calls keep coming through so I don't know how she's doing that but--crikey. 

On a brighter note, I got to do an exchange with my last comp Elder Galligao. During that exchange I found 3 separate people on one bus ride to a members house and of those 3, 2 are planning to meet us this week. Hopefully they're not just undercover missionaries. 

We did probably 15 hours of teaching appointments last week and 8 member lessons. It was a good week for the teaching. A lot of really weird questions were asked though haha. One of our members used the Book of Mormon to answer a question in an absolutely fire way and I didn't know he had that kind of ball knowledge and now my respect for him is UP!

Last night we had a member appointment at the Stake President's house and he put all of the missionaries at one table while the big adults sat at the big table. I felt like I was at a family reunion as a kid again when we had our little-tikes table. Not to mention they made us Mexican food. I was weak. It was fire. The sisters even brought a friend from America who doesn't speak Korean so we got to yap it up in English the whole time.

I told my comp I missed my dog and BAM. Two border collies in 3 days. I haven't seen a single border collie my whole mission and then I got to play fetch with 2 of them in a three day period. God cares about the little things, fr.

Spiritual Thought: 

I'm plagarizing this thought from a talk I listened to a long time ago but I can't remember who it was. 

Any historian with a brain believes that Jesus Christ was an actual historical figure, and almost everyone agrees that Jesus Christ was a wonderful person. The principles in The Sermon on the Mount are almost undebated among people as good and one of the best teachings of all time. Some people say Jesus was a good guy, just not the Son of God, but that option is not open to them. Jesus didn't leave that option open. He's either who He says He is, or He's an evil man.