Elder Lust

June 22, 2025 

Transfers went pretty smooth not gonna lie, I missed my stop by one so I only had to haul all of my luggage for about a 15 minute walk instead of an entire afternoon. It chose to rain again just like last time though. My new companions name is Elder Rust, which is unfortunate because Koreans try to say his name with the english pronunciation every time we meet and it is completely undistinguishable from Lust. Incredibly unfortunate name lol. The korean pronunciation isn't much different actually. 러스트 for those of you who read. 

Suwon will be missed, that ward was so fire. Elder Kost was a great trainer, my finding has improved sooo much because of him. I actually feel like I can do some missionary work now, which is pretty important. Still not great at it but as long as it's improving nah mean

I'm mad poor again, as always, but it's because I had to pay my debts to Elder Kost for keeping me alive when I had no money. So I was dreading this move until I showed up to this new house. It was like parting the veil to the next life. The house I'm in now was a 4 man last transfer but is now a 2 man because there wasn't enough work for 4 elders, so it's pretty big. But most importantly and lovely above all else is that 4 elders decided to leave all of their food, comprising mostly of gluten. Which is important because Elder Rust is allergic to gluten so it's all for meeee.

I genuinely don't know how the elders afforded all this stuff, they have fruit upon fruit, meat upon meat, and granola bars galor. It's like my mom went shopping again. I've had to eat the same dirt cheap meal for months so it's nice to actually be able to cook up a variety now. Hopefully it lasts me till the next payment haha. 

White washing is such a weird experience. Usually it's our job to introduce people to the church but yesterday our teaching friend literally introduced us to everyone when we got to the church. We have no clue whats going on, but we've made a lottt of phone calls. I hate calling people by the way, Koreans start yappin on the phone sometimes. I wonder how many times I've laughed in completely unexcusably innapropriate moments because I had no clue what they just said. 

We had a lesson with the sisters last night because they have a man they're teaching that they wanted to refer to us. The guy is jewish and I'm pretty sure he met with us just to bash. I've never heard some of his opinions before and it's absolutely wild to me that you can only believe in the Old Testament. That's like making huckleberry pancakes and settling for just the pancake. I don't know how you can read any of the scriptures without the context of Jesus Christ, but every time I showed him a verse, such as isaiah 53, or the verse about the man pierced for his friends, he would just tell me that the translations are wrong and that the Hebrew version doesn't say that. He told all of us that God wants everyone to learn Hebrew because that's the only way to truth. His idea of God is so different from what I believe, he believes that God started Judeism by showing hundreds of thousands at mount Sainai so faith isn't necessary, and that we need to know Hebrew because that's where the truth is. I believe that faith is the most important step to knowing God, and that God has declared that, "every man shall hear the fulness of the gospel in his own tongue, and in his own language." Super interesting perspectives that I've never really heard, but he was super nice and very profesional so it wasn't actually a bash I want to clarify. 

Played baseball with a bunch of Koreans and had the most fun of my entire mission so far. 

Unfortunately, despite the miraculous amount of food, the elders before us were absolute slobs. We cleaned this place almost the entire first day here. I think this place has had a posterity of hoarding elders for ages because the amount of stuff here was wild. I understand why they might leave their jacket here, or maybe a nice pair of shoes, but I cleaned up used razors, tons of used floss, pictures of peoples families, nasty mystery rags, and probably 29 tubes of toothpaste... it was disgusting. Also keep in mind this isn't the states where you have a conveniently massive trash bag you put everything in. The trash bags here aren't even a gallon and they all have to be sorted. I honestly think they must have to dedicate an entire elementary grade to teaching the kids how to sort the trash cause some places have like 10 different bins. Oh how I miss the 50 gallon trash cans on every street and corner.

My last full day with Elder Kost we went to Starfield (a massive mall) because one of our friends wanted to meet up there. We went to a nike store and Kost was talking with our friend when I noticed out of the corner of my eye that one of the employees was inching closer and closer to me while pretending to brush this shoe off of any dust. She was looking directly at me non stop though so she wasnt acting the "just doing my job" thing very well. I looked at her and started to say hello and before I even finished she exploded with energy and was like, "Are you Christian?!!?!! I am Christian too! Look my ring! It says God loves me." It was hilarious and I got her number and reffered her to the Sisters, she was actually super fun to talk to and was straight up crazy ready for the gospel haha. Crazy how God is throwing us into random shoe stores like that. Those sisters better not fumble this bag. 

Spiritual Thought:

I have listened to a lot of President Nelson talks recently (shoutout to Aunt Sherry) and it's been so cool to see with hindsight that Prophets really do see around corners. It's so exciting to me that the things that prophets have prophesied have always and will always come to pass. There's so many amazing things that will happen in the coming days and I know that following our prophet and the promptings of the spirit will always prepare us well. Their messages are always messages of hope and joy, even though many bad things will happen, because that's what the gospel provides even in rough times.