US-KR-US-KR-US-KR 7/4/2026

 I did an exchange with my boy Elder Ko this week. I'm on an absolute generational run of bad luck in the 4-man + serving with a Korean department, so that was pretty fun to serve with a Korean for a whole 18-ish hours. If you've ever had a native comp, count your many blessings—I learned so much in one day. 

We set some pretty high goals and were able to hit all of them. We did a lot of teaching on the street and set up return appointments with 2 people. We were doing our daily planning and I paused to talk to a guy walking past us and now he's a teaching friend haha. Green dot before we even finished daily planning.

The spiders are back. They're everywhere and seem much more bound to ambush humans this year than last. In the church while teaching an English class over Zoom, a spider dropped right next to my comp's face and he about died. Not 20 minutes later while sitting in the clerk's office it happened again. A different spider dropped even closer to his head this time and my comp used his phone, which we were using to call a teaching friend at that very moment, to bat the little demon directly at me. As Elder Kearon said in his most recent talk, those offices are small. I was pinned against the wall and the demon's web was somehow attached to my chest, and he was flying down that line straight for me. Clutched up and he got curb-stomped though, so we're good.

We met some Canadians in the bus terminal, and I'm not sure if I've become a Korean or if they truly were just crazy loud, but I was lowkey getting embarrassed with how loud they were talking with us. Both of them were chomping on about 5 sticks of gum apiece too, and to top it all off, one guy was talking about how the Jews are all taking over the planet and that "the painter" (Hitler) was right. He was an absolute yapper—he almost made us miss our bus despite me telling him 10 times we had to leave.

Absolutely tragic that I'm not in the U.S. for the 250th, but hopefully I can fight off the Moser cancer-gene long enough to make it to the big 300th. Truly the most goated country in the world—go look at a list of the 100 most influential inventions and take note of where 95% of them were made (we also have a flag on the moon and a helicopter on Mars) What a privilege it was to grow up there, in the best state of the union nonetheless.

Ether 2:12

"Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ, who hath been manifested by the things which we have written."

The greatness of America comes from God, make no mistake about it. And if anyone tries to tell you that the Constitution and laws of the land aren't inspired or Christian in nature, yeah, go ahead and ignore that joint.  Anyways, make sure not to rebel against God because there are a lot of verses in the BoM that explain what would happen there too.

Happy 4th! 

Brain Rot 6/28/26

Not gonna lie, my biggest complaint about koreans is that they are cooooooked out of their brains. You thought your 7 year old cousin was bad??? Nah! In church yesterday I joined the youth class to try to get them a little more engaged in the discussions. The branch pres asked a question, which I was the first to answer, and then he went down the line of the youth and had to either wake them up or tap their shoulders to get them to look up from their phone, and had to repeat the question for every single one of them. Later, he was having two of the youth take turns reading, and the second they finished reading it mumbling as fast as they could, they would immediately start scrolling again. He had to ask them to lock in on a 5 second basis for the entire hour, it was so exhausting just watching it. People don't even look up from their phones to cross the street here.

I'm 10-0 in ping pong for the last 2 weeks. five of those are my companion, who unfortunately for him, was playing sting pong with me. He's got some welts haha. 

I was complaining about how rare it is that we get to teach an actual lesson to my comp while we were walking to the library the other day, and not 10 minutes into my language study a random woman tapped on my shoulder and asked if we had time to go outside and introduce our beliefs to her. Talk about an assist from God holy. 

Every transfer we do a teaching role play with our mission mom. This transfer, we were supposed to do the restoration with her, so when this lady asked us if we could "share a quick introduction of our church, how the church was formed, and what your basic beliefs are,"  I was thinking, "let's go! We are so practiced up right now." I thought my comp and I were about to take this perfect opportunity to give the most baller, perfectly structured 1st Lesson ever seen. Thinking we were on the same page, I looked over at my comp and gave him a "take it away " nod, and bro immediately started with "in 1820..." Which is basically the very end of the role play that we had practiced, so the whole concise and smooth thing immediately went out the window.

I got a shoutout in church from one of the members. She started quoting me in her talk from a video I had filmed for the mission Facebook a longgg time ago. I was confused cause I didn't know it was posted, but she told me after that the add had popped up randomly on YouTube haha. 

I went on an exchange with my boy Elder Curtis and unfortunately every single person in Nonsan was super grumpy that night so it was kind of a lame exchange. Not a single person even let us finish saying hi before yelling at us lol. Finding in Korea. This guy was struggling to move a massive couch so we asked him if we could move it for him and he hit us with a "하지 마라  가  가!!" which is about the equivalent of "Oh piss off" in an English accent. Dunno who pooped his party.

And then to top it all off, one of the guys who blocked us after he asked for MY number... after approaching ME a few weeks ago was at the library.... I didn't see him until he was right in front of me, but all I did was say hi, give him a handshake, and then say have a good day before I walked away. About 6 hours later he texted me, for the first time ever, and said, "I don't have any interest in your religion. Do not approach me ever again." What part of my handshake put you in the waters of baptism brutha? Calm down, dangggg.

That being said, God has helped me get used to rejection so much. Back in the ol' Iksan days I used to absolutely crashhhhh out but now we just giggle and skip away when people overreact because it ain't us missing out on the good news. 

Did some awesome member work this week and finally feel like the members are getting tight with us.

A grandpa on a roof played a few k-pop songs for us haha. Is that apostate if we are trying to teach him? Idk. We eventually were able to teach him a bit and get his number, super nice guy. 

Spiritual Thought:   Romans 1:16

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek."  Don't be ashamed to share the gospel! 

Current Weight: 188.3

The Ghost of Tsu.. Nonsan 6/26/2026

 Happy Father's day to all the goats out there! Especially you, Pop.

I was in bed the other night and was curious where my comp was, because it was about 10:45, so I left the room to see if I could find him. I found him studying something at his desk in the super faint light of his alarm clock. Now, I wouldn't say I was trying to scare him, but I absolutely did walk up to him quietly so that that was an option if I so pleased. As luck would have it, I didn't need to choose! He stood up to go to bed right then and turned around to see a glowing white guy in the pale light of his alarm clock right next to him. He did the most blood-curdling scream I have ever heard in my life and jumped so high he could have hit his head on the ceiling. Unironically the funniest moment of my entire mission. I couldn't go to bed for about an hour cause I kept laughing. 

We met a guy from Nepal, and bro was STANKY, let me tell you. Heaven's to thank it was an outdoor apointment, but still, everytime the wind blew my way... 하나님의 곁으로 갈 뻔했어요. Anyways, his favorite hobby is photography, so he showed us a bunch of his photos, and like, some of them were aight, but almost all were unbelievable mid. I showed him one of my photos I took from Idaho and bro said I either AI-ed that joint or "edited it heavily" until I proved to him it was original because I have a bunch of photos from the same day that look exactly the same to each other. Once that was settled he proceeded to explain how America faked the moon landings because quote, "cameras weren't invented yet." As if cameras weren't invented well over a hundred years before the moon lndings. Just for the sake of the argument, let's grant that there were no cameras back then... don't you think people would have realized that they were somehow getting footage from the moon?? I genuinely could not cobble together his argument, you cannot make this stuff up. God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers.

Bashed a pastor who told me Joseph Smith was "of the Devil and a liar" who admittedly had never read a page of the book of mormon in his entire life, so I just read him two banger verses from the BoM about Jesus and he stopped talking completely. Have not heard from him since.

Did an awesome exchange with the AP's. Elder Fisher and I talked to literally everyone we saw. I ran after a lady who had just got in her car and gave her a book of mormon through the window, and also ended up praying for her sick cat.... We also did our companionship study in front of a helicopter, so that was tuff.

Monsoon season decided to start precisely when Elder Fisher and I were finding on foot about 3 miles away from my house... We got caught lacking and didn't have umbrellas. There goes my Book of Mormon... 

Our friend Sarah came to church and has read all the way to 2nd Nephi!! She is going through the book with serious attention to detail and is finding every single little leaning she can, super impressive.

Spiritual Thought: Our motivation to serve God and be obedient to Him has to be because of our love for Him. If it's for any other reason, our motivation will dissappear the second our environment changes. This is something I've been working on my whole mission because my behavior sometimes changes completely depending in my companion at the time. Live for your love of God, and His love for you.

Love you guys! 

Current Weight: 188.9

Uzbek 6/14/2026

 We found a new friend last week from Uzbekistan who's about our age and is crazy fluent in English. He knows every meme under the sun, so I could make any joke and he understood the reference—probably more than any of my companions, haha. This guy is so cool, and we've been able to start teaching him. He took us out for Uzbek food last week and dropped $70 on us.  No offense to the Koreans, but it was probably the best food I've had since I got here.

I did an exchange with my ZL, Elder Neilson, and it went really well. We did a ton of finding and had so many good conversations—it was awesome. When we went to Daejeon to end the exchange with the other elders, the door to the church was shattered, and when we looked confused, the other elders said, "Yeah... we were here till 10 last night." Revelation is real, y'all. We had Zone Conference the day prior, and our president gave a seemingly random request to always lock the door to the church when you're there and to only let in people who you know. At least, it seemed random, right up until 10 hours later when a crazy guy was going absolutely bonkers outside the church trying to get in to the missionaries and shattered the front door.... He got arrested and all the missionaries are chilling, but still, when Pres speaks, you best be listening. 

Spiritual Thought:  Saints are sinners who keep on trying.

Tap Water 6/7/2026

 

We got invited to a member's house yesterday to break our fast, which is baller. Unfortunately, almost half the ward pulled up, and the dinner also doubled as a doggy play-date (I didn't know this), so there were a million dogs running around. I like dogs—not really indoor rats that much—but truly, I don't mind dogs. Where I draw the line is when you're eating meat traditional Korean style (on the floor with no chairs) and there's a million dogs running around trying to steal the food and licking the dishes. Also, the members just kept putting down those pee mat things instead of just taking the dogs outside to pee, and one of the dogs straight up fire hosed that thang with about 3 gallons of pee and then tracked it all over the house. Keep in mind, this is finger food, and all the members are petting dogs and cleaning pee while also eating and cooking the food. At one point my comp went and got a drink from the tap water (some of the safest tap in the world, btw), and you would've thought he was drinking enriched plutonium the way those members reacted. Immediately after yelling at my comp, one of the members passed a dog over the table, skimming the meat on the way, to a different member, and that dog had literally just peed. Germs don't exist in Korea, but heaven forbid your water has some minerals in it.

We had a pretty good week. Lots and lots of finding, lots and lots of getting threatened (there's a lot of foreigners here). We really wanted to make a green dot yesterday, and God alley-ooped me so hard. I was able to teach a guy almost the entire plan of salvation on the street, and he's coming to English class next week. Hallelujah, baby.

Nonsan is super tiny, so imagine our surprise when some members took us to a nearby town and it had a massive traditional Korean palace. This thing was dope. It even had a replica of ancient Korean villages.

Had DLTM meeting in Suji this week, which meant a whole day of traveling and such. I saw Elder Kofoed for the last time. I'm gonna miss that guy—what a GOAT. Man, I really gotta start making new friends 'cause all of them are leaving.

During the DLTM meeting, one of the elders asked our mission president how we can help our district members grow their desire to do missionary work. Unfortunately for him, however, he used the word 욕망 instead of 소망. Both words come up as "desire" when you translate them, but 욕망 is understood as "lust."  "President, I've been wondering, how do I help everyone in my district grow their lust?" I don't know if anyone caught it, though, cause I was the only one giggling. 

Spiritual Thought:  A member was telling me how he converted this week, and I thought the story was pretty cool. He was going to a different church and even wanted to become a pastor someday, so he studied and studied his Bible. He loves the verse "by their fruits ye shall know them," and after examining his church, saw no fruits—specifically that they weren't helping the poor and the needy. When missionaries came, he noticed how they and the other church members helped so many people. He fasted for 3 days and was praying to God to know if the church was true. On the 3rd day, he prayed sincerely twice to know, and no answer came, but on the 3rd time it did.

Not gonna lie, sometimes I can get a little frustrated when I don't have a massive religious experience after praying for 23 seconds, so this was a wake-up call for me that these kinds of things really do take quite a bit of effort, but that they also bless our lives profoundly. This member is a dawg, let me tell you.

Current Weight: 189lbs 

마지막 토니 버거 6/1/2026

 Phew that was a bussyyyyy week. Closing an area is harder than you might expect. 

I'm back in the Sejong District, this time serving in Nonsan as DL. There's not 16 people in this district so I'm pretty happy about that. My comp is Elder Talbot, he was my comp back in the ol Iksan days. He's my oldest comp in a longgg time. 

My last comp got sent to Osan and wanted to ship his bikes to his new area, but before we did I figured it would be a shame to ship off the bikes before bombing the massive hill in front of the city hall, so that's exactly what we did. This hill is pretty daggum steep and has a sharp turn halfway down that banks a pretty big drop off. In case you forgot, I haven't driven a car, motorcycle, or even a scooter in dang near a year and a half so your boy has been absolutely feening for speed. I used the parking lot to the city hall as a runway and probably hit 30mph before I even hit the hill haha. By the time I got to the turn I was going like 50 mph. That's when I started thinking "erm" you could say, and I started doing the math. I figured I should probably play it safe and use the brakes instead of trying to lay the bike down sideways hard and try to make the turn full speed because if I failed at that, missions over. That's when I found out the front brake actually doesn't work worth a dang, funny prank. I ended up pulling the most baller back brake drift around that whole dang corner like I was drifting the ol' Ford Focus back home,  not because I wanted to, but because it was necessary. I almost pulverized myself against the back of a parked minivan on the back side of the turn but barely missed it haha. It was some clutch gameplay, my mom was pretty close to getting a phone call.

Closing Anseong was depressing but we saw some really cool miracles. We taught an old lady how to pray in English a few weeks ago. She's not very good at English but she came to the last English class and said the closing prayer, which was verbatim the prayer we had taught her a few weeks ago, she had gone home and memorized it and had been saying it every day. That was pretty cool and made me really happy. A different day we left the apartment and ran right into one of our friends. He told me that his mother had passed away 2 days ago and I was able to teach him the Plan of Salvation right then and there on the street and give him a book of mormon. 

Tony was lowkey pressed about us leaving haha. Whether he admits it or not, we've grown on him. He tried to get me to give him my mission presidents phone number because, "it's not fair Anseong doesn't get its own guys" and because we're doing a "good job" so I told him he could've just gotten baptised and it would have stayed open. Then again, it wasn't even my president who made the descision, but...

Man it was just a bunch of absolute RIPs last week fr. Elder McBride died too.  Absolute tragic, but we spent the night at their house for District Council so we were able to run up a bit more spikeball before he left. Go get em champ.

Had to take 4 buses to get to my new area, which sucked, but I ran into Elder Wolfert at the bus station right at lunch time. Miracle fr. He discovered my gluttonous butt sitting in the KFC haha. "As expected. As expected."

Spiritual Thought:  Last week was the 75th Anniversary of the Miracle at Gapyeong. For those who don't know, there was a group of 600 soldiers from Utah, almost entirely LDS members, who were fighting in the Korean war when a suprise attack left 240 of them completely isolated, facing a massive force of thousands of North Korean and Chinese troops. What they didn't know was that these Utah men had recieved a blessing before deployment that if they "remained faithful, they would recieve no harm." And just like the stripping warriors in the BoM, they were able to fight off thousands of enemy soldiers in the middle of the night, killing hundreds of them, capturing 830 more, and not a single American soldier lost their lives. 

Baller story, and a good reminder that we serve an unchanging God who performs miracles today and forever, and that when He makes promises, He keeps them. (And also that He doesnt like communism... at least not when humans try to do it.... idk)

Current Wieght: ERROR

Failure 5/25/2026

 I got a call from headquarters to make sure we don't have anything left in our fridge by next Friday. That's mission speak for, "You suck at your job, Wazowskie. Pack it up." They're closing Anseong. I tried to save it, probably at least doubled the size of our PMG since I got here, but people just aren't staying at church. Sucks fr, especially since my Father opened this area, and I have to be the one to close it.

Other than that, pretty good week. We were trying to get rid of our Book of Mormons, so we don't have to pack them and take them somewhere, and we gave out 17 of them in less than two hours. Definitely my record haha, I've had whole weeks of my mission where I can't give a single one out. We also had hecka member meals... I'm gonna miss these guys.

Got to run up another exchange with the GOAT Elder McBriddle. He goes home in 3 days. We've got a fire District Leader who let us run it up. Elder Koo's dad brought him about 20 pounds of brisket, so naturally, we ate that for every single meal of the exchange. Best meat I've had in Korea for sure. 

I met my MTC comps trainer! That was kinda fun. Shoutout Elder Park!

At church on Sunday last week we went to the Pyeongtaek building for Ward conference and there was a musical number with a violin and a traditional Korean instrument that's basically just a glorified kazoo. The violin did the first 2 minutes of the song alone, and it was beautiful, and then kazoo bro came in with so much force it sounded like a squeaky chicken dog toy  I have never locked in so hard in my life to not laugh, I knew that if I did, I would lose all respect of the members. Thank goodness I avoided Elder McBrides gaze, that would have been game.

We're in our work out clothes right now and a lady missionary from a different church just tried to preach at me cause I dont look like a missionary right now. Hit her with the suprise couter-strike haha. She walked away with a restoration pamphlet.

A lady who works at a convenience store locked the whole district in the big freezer because we looked too hot, she genuinely saved our lives haha. 

Spiritual Thought:  "Elder Marion D. Hanks of the Seventy told of a man and his small son who “stopped at an isolated cornfield on a remote country road” and eyed the delicious corn beyond the fence. The father, after looking in front of him, behind him, to the left of him, and to the right of him, “started to climb the fence” to take some ears of corn. His son looked at him and said reproachfully, “Dad, you forgot to look up.”

I've been focusing a lot more on integrity recently. It really changes your perspective on life when you stop cutting corners because it's "just a small thing" and stop selling your soul for pennies. There's a lot of corn out there, but it's not about the corn.