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.