Autism?!

June 15, 2025

We adopted this guy named Yuri, the name's Ukranian. He's a new member who has lived in Korea for 5 years. He went home to Ohio and got baptised by one of his friends and then came back here to Korea. As with most white guys who are living in an Asian country for no reason, he's a little weird. Maybe it's just the Ohio in him (oh that actually makes a lot of sense now that I think about it). He wants to go through the temple though, so Elder Kost and I have been doing a bit of temple prep with him, and he seems to enjoy it a lot. This Sunday we were able to get another new member to church, (who went inactive shortly after getting baptised) so it was an absolute win. She's a 20 year-old girl who looks like she's 14, but she's such a sweetheart. She's super shy though, and doesn't look at you in the eyes when talking with her. Her body is turned 90 degrees away from you at all times. So yeahhh she's pretty awkward too but not as much as Yuri, especially after what he did next. I was talking with her and Yuri walked up to her (right up to her) and said, "She is so autistic." like he was observing a specemin. I was really hoping that she didn't understand English but about 10 minutes later she came up to me and asked, "Do you think I'm autistic?" Tragedy. It might be a little hard to get her back again. 

Since I missed last week I'll hit the highlight:

We went to the beach for a massive stake activity, and I probably ate $200 worth of samgyeopsar, I apologize to nobody. Opportunities like that don't come around very often. I also flew a kite the size of Manhatten Island and it was fire. It's on a deep see fishing rod so I felt like I was catching a shark.

I bought new scriptures, and they're super nice and make my study in the morning way better for some reason. Unfortunately, the office lady didn't understand me when I said, "please just send the Book of Mormon so I still have money for groceries this week." And she sent me the trimple combo as well as both Bibles. Literally as soon as my money dropped it dissapeared and I had to grind out two weeks with .38 cents.  "Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?" I had faith that my Father in heaven would feed me like his birds, and miricles happened, amen. 

This last week we've been working with one of the newer members to teach his friend the lessons. Both of these guys love self defense, and the member actually trains the local S.W.A.T. teams. We've been doing a lesson every 3 days or so, and then a self defense training right after. Which is slightly ironic now that I'm thinking about it. "Man I felt the spirit strong! Jesus is so good. Anyways, lets learn how to kill a man with only three fingers if you ever need to." Each day is different, we've done hand to hand, knife, and gun so far. It's super funny though because he teaches us, and then Elder Kost and I do it super aggressively and perfectly and take him down every time and he just stands up in absolute shock and starts laughing. He's always like, "Koreans can notttt do this stuff first try. American blood. Wow." Then when we got to the guns and I was doing everything he was about to teach us already, he was shocked lol. In his defense, Koreans wouldn't know anything like that beforehand because they don't have any guns. But yeah, I cleared the Suwon church building of any potential threats in case anybody was worried. 

I hit an absolutely fat leg day Friday morning. In the missionary standards, it says to not work out so that you can't do your missionary work comfortably. Call me apostate because ya boy cannot go up stairs right now. What happened is I was already sore, and then played a fat soccer game Saturday morning, and then I had to do a 10 minute run (as fast as I possible could) Saturday night to get home in time (wearing proselyte clothing) because there were no busses and transfer calls was starting. I woke up Sunday and my right calf was completely stiff, and it still is. I don't know how long it's gonna last but it's strained hard hard, I can't pitch my foot.

Transfer calls: I'm moving again. I hate moving, it's such a pain. I'm going to a city named Sejong, which will be cool. It's a completely planned city, so the building all look the same, but that also means transportation is absolutely goated, which as a missionary sounds like the song David played that pleased the Lord. My new companion is Elder Rust, I've never met him so I'll have to let you know next week about him.

President Hong and Sister Park are going home this transfer. It's so sad that I won't be able to speak good Korean with them before they leave. We had our last meeting with them this week, and they were dropping some bars. Perchance I share somein my....

Spiritual thought:

Both of them spoke about obedience. Sister Park explained that Nephi was worthy and able to perform miricles at a moments notice because he was first obedient. President Hong talked about how our ability to feel joy doing the Lord's work depends on our obedience and worthiness. When I left the MTC, I was the kind of missionary to pick and choose which standards to follow, but literally the first day in the field I kinda had a "what the heck am I doing?" moment and realized that that wasn't the missionary I was gonna be. And man, once you live the obedient life, it's hard to go back. When I'm perfectly obedient I can speak with random Koreans with confidence, not perfectly obviously, but with confidence and well enough to comunicate. Make the hard choices to be obedient now so you can do the harder tasks later.  "Nothing opens the heavens quite like the combination of increased purity [and] exact obedience."  - President Nelson 

How much wood could a pupper chuck 🥢

June 1, 2025  

Hallelujia! Now that I'm not in Anseong anymore there's actually members that feed us. We had my first two member meals this week and they were absolutely gas. And I didn't understand anything exept for the tv which was talking about animal sacrifices and the showing videos of it for some reason. Why I understood that and not the conversation they were having I dont know. The second member meal was saturday afternoon, and per Korean standard, they just did it on the floor. Every missionary tells me that you have to stop thinking about how America is the goat if you want to live here, but I'm to stubborn and patriotic for that. (Side note: Koreans know more about American politics and history than a lot of Americans.) I give you my reasoning. #1: owie. It's sucks being on the ground that long. #2: They have a dog. Turns out, one of the largest advantages of a table is that dogs aren't tall enough to use them, or any other animal that you typically find in a house. Don't get me wrong, this dog was cute, but it ate 7 pairs of chop sticks (literally) and I saw several tufts of fur land in the food. Nasty I tell you. Why don't they care about germs here.

Patrick dropped us hard unfortunately. 

Elder Kost and I were having a rough week because we got dropped and none of our friends were progressing how we had hoped, but Saturday night one of the Brothers from the ward texted us to come to the palace (Suwon has cool stuff) so we showed up. He was wearing traditional Korean clothing and then gave us tickets for the tour. Unfortunately, he left right after that, which if you know mission rules very well, it's not ideal for us to be somewhere like that without a friend or a member when it is not on a pday. Usually we feel the spirit telling us not to do stuff like that but both of us suprisingly felt like that was were we were supposed to be. Long story short, the tour guide lady wants to learn English and the gospel, and we found a father who wants to do the same with his two daughters and wife. In fact, he wants to take us to dinner tomorrow with his whole family. Massive miracle. He is such a family man and is eager to see how the gospel can bless his family. 

Spiritual Thought:

We do a Bible/Book of Mormon class with one of our friends twice a week. I love this guy so much but he's had a hard time grasping why authority is so important to make covenants, and operate God's church. Funny enough, exactly where I was in the Book of Mormon when I went to read the next morning answered every single question he raised. I bear my testimony that the scriptures, especially The Book of Mormon, have been written for our day. God will guide our study of them when we prayerfully ask for His guidence, and we will recieve the answers and strength that we need to navigate life. 

Current Weight: 199 lbs

                                                            Patrick's text was memorable.

항상 피곤해요

May 25, 2025

Fellow Korean missionaries, listen up. The Monsters here have tea in them. My heart is brokerd  and the news is a tad bit late cause I've drank like 5 of them! The worst part about it is now is  I have nowhere to turn when I'm going to die of exhaustion. Imagine almost falling asleep walking to an appointment, and then having to sit in a hot house for an hour and a half listening to a conversation you can hardly make sense of. This is the predicament that I found myself in this week. This house had no chairs in it, but after 45 minutes of sitting on a hard wood floor the guy could tell that my lifelong chair-priveledged American heiny was getting pretty uncomfortable so he gave me a folding stool to sit on, which was very kind of him. That leaves me still with the problem of being incredibly tired. I felt like an apostle outside Gethsemane. It was rough, but since didn't have any tea-free Monster to drink, I figured the next best option was to pray for the strength to stay awake. Brutha I didn't even start the prayer. The second my eyelids touched I was out. I opened them to the realization that I was falling out of the stool! Needless to say that failed attempt to pray gave me the necessary adrenaline boost to stay awake the rest of the hour. 

Elder Kost and I had a lesson with our friend Patrick this week. Patrick is super curious about the gospel, and he has done a lot of studying because he wants to know if it's true or not. The poblem is, he's been studying the deepest doctrine out there. He doesn't take my advice that deep doctrine will not help grow his faith, especially when he doesn't have a testimony of any of the basics yet. He basically derailed our entire planned lesson with super deep gospel questions, which I could technically answer but I knew they wouldn't help him at all. Super funny though, after an hour and a half of these questions we were like... so.... do you want to get baptized on the 28th? and he was like "yes" so hallelujah.

He's been texting us hecka questions this week though, and it's been super hard to reply to them and make sure they don't sound bashy. I have to say though, some of my replies reminded me of the music video of the guy writing on flaming paper surrounded by flames, cause I was moving the pen like Kendrick. 

Another highlight was when we met a guy on the bus in the morning, and that night had a lesson, ping pong, and dinner with him. Finding can lead you on crazy side quests! 

I finally locked in hard on ping pong this week, the first time I played here in Suwon I was dog water but two days ago I was in inner peace or something because I was airbending that ball.

Spiritual thought: 

One of Patrick's biggest struggles is that he is trying to make the doctrine of the church fit what he already believes. It has made me think about my ongoing conversion and what I need to do to become truly converted. Conversion is about complete submission to the will of Heavenly Father, not picking and choosing what we will and won't do. Jesus Chist is completely perfect at following the Fathers will, which is why we need to become more like him. I challenge all of you to think of something you do that isn't aligned with Heavenly Fathers will, and kick that sucker out the window.

Current weight 198.11 lbs.

The Stairs to Olympus

 May 18, 2025

Well I got moved on Friday and it was about as fun as I had been expecting. Eating my last Tony Burger was worse than a break up. My companion for the day was Elder Wolfert because he was going to roughly the same area as me. I woke up at 5 am, grabbed my backpack, guitar, and three suitcases and made the 10 minute trip to the bus station in 5 minutes, which should honestly qualify me for the Navy Seals because those suitcases are like 50 pounds each, and there's no comfortable way to move three of them at a time, believe me. Anyways, my efforts and unconstitutional amounts of sweat were in vain because our bus wouldn't let us on because of our bags. So we waited and got rejected by about 3 more buses. The ones that rejected us were the kind that are super low to the ground and have a ton of room, especially since it was before the city was awake so there wasn't anyone on the bus yet. By the time one of the drivers let us on, people were going to work already... so the buses were packed. And of course, the only bus that let us on was a passenger bus, which has like 5 super steep steps in a super narrow cooridor. When those bus doors opened it was like beholding the stairs to Olympus.

By the power of the Lord, I was able to get up those skinny stairs literally raising three suitcases that were wider than the stairs were. Hoorah  Shout out to that bus driver for his compassion. Unfortunately, I still had three more buses, a massive rain storm, off roading my suitcases for a quarter mile (it was very muddy), and a train to take. I finally got where I was going and dropped my stuff of at the new apartment and then went to teach 7 lessons. It was a long day haha. 

Elder Kost is a super cool guy. I don't know him very well though cause he almost only speaks Korean to me. He's about to go home so he's been through every grammer book missionaries can study, and he uses grammar that I'm not gonna be studying for another year, so a lot of the time I have no clue what he's saying to me haha. 

We had a teaching friend text us and say, "Maybe I can help you guys out with your missionary work. Maybe I can get baptised." Well alright man, it's a burden to carry but I guess we can help you out.  He was one of the people we met with on my first day here. He was super curious about the church because he's been investigating tonnns of churches for years and this one "seems different." Amen Brother, it is.

The church here is massive compared to Anseong, which isn't saying much because the Anseong church could fit in the gym of the stake center in Blackfoot. It is pretty big though, and I got to meet the ward yesterday. They're all super nice and most of them speak English haha. There were 3 Utah families visiting too, super weird. 

We went on a hike with a friend, and it was super fun. I liked hiking in Idaho, but mostly because of the camping and fishing at the destination, but I'm starting to really like hiking just to hike now. I put some of the pictures and videos I took on my google photos, and safe to say I was absolutely baffled at how many building there are. Skycrapers as far as you can see, seriously how is there that much concrete in the world. Humans are crazy. It's super weird to think that from the peak of that mountain there were several times as many people in my view as there are in the my entire home state. 

The new apartment is a little more rinky dink than the last one, but it makes up for it in the basement because theres about 12 high rises in this complex, and theres a massive underground event center conecting all of them. It's several floors and has basketball courts, badmitton courts, and some gyms. I don't want to know how many hundreds of millions it took to build this place. They might not have back yards but they make life pretty good anyway with those kinds of rescourses so close by. 

Spiritual Thought:

I started emphasizing listening to the prophets talks more often this week. I listened to "Think Celesctial" and loved how he said that the intense pain of his back injury was constantly reminding him of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for us. Not being able to talk to people has sucked but it definitely makes me think of the Savior more often, which is a good trade off. When I was on top of that mountain and I was looking at millions of people, I kept thinking about the Atonement and how Jesus Christ has suffered for every single one of them, and knows all of them perfectly. I have loved teaching people about how they can see their families again because of Jesus, and how they can be redeemed of their sins because of him too. Sometimes even this incredible truth seems normal to me because I've known it my whole life, but when I see people get emotional when they hear it for the first time, I am grounded again to the fact that the Gospel really is the best news. 

Have a good week gang

Weight 199 lbs.