Can anyone say Kimchi?

An yung ha se oh!

Well my dear dear friends! I have a new companion! His name is Elder Park! and he is from a place nobody would have guessed. I'll give you a hint, he's foreign (now ours is the only companionship in the mission where both missionaries are foreign)

KOREA

South Korea, mind you, although that would have been sweet if he had been from North Korea. So yep, that's the guy! He's a convert of about 3 years, from Seoul, South Korea, and 24 years old! I feel very weird training him because he is way older than me and way more mature. I was a tad worried at first because we didn't really have a lot in common, but then I remembered that the computer game Starcraft is a national sport in Korea. We get along really well. I am learning a lot about Korea and North Korea, and history and how to speak Korean. I've also tried some Korean food. More on that later.


This week was pretty crazy. Last monday was a work day, and Monday work days are tough so we pretty much did service all day. It was actually pretty cool. But did service and alternated packing and such for Elder Hakes while I was super nervous about training and the new training program and training in Sanford etc. Service was good because it took my mind off those things. Tuesday morning I left the cellphone in my pants that I washed in the washing machine and effectively destroyed it. At least I got it out before the spin cycle. So we put it in a bowl of rice and emailed our DL telling him we were without any form of communication. Everything got sorted out and we drove up to Springs and I stayed with Elder Palmer (2 companions ago) in Fountain. Got to meet his new missionary and ask questions about the training and such. He also lives above the Goodwill/Salvation Army type store, and they get whatever they want for free because they do service there. He found a Stormtrooper helmet the other day! So I took a picture with me in it. I tried and tried to get him to give/sell it to me but he wouldn't. Oh well. It was cool though.

Transfers was a good meeting, I was one of the last people to get assigned new missionaries so every time they introduced a new missionary the anticipation would kill me. President Anderson was awesome too, cracking jokes and having a good time while doing the meeting. You can tell he's getting way more used to being a mission president and making good exciting changes to the mission.

Sunday we had a "pack the chapel" day in 1st ward, where they picked good speakers/topics for non-members and then hyped it up for a couple weeks. We pounded the streets just inviting less actives, part members, anyone we talked to, to church on Sunday. We even went by Tony's house at 8:30, after dark, when nobody was home and left a note in his door inviting him, except I forgot to put 1st ward is at 11:00 instead of 9. He came to the 9:00 church. Oh well. The ward is really getting excited about Tony and starting to really invite him to stuff. I guess they were all saying stuff like "man, he's changed a lot! He wasn't this open last year" so that's going to go well. We had John there. He's solid as ever. His wife is going to church history sites on her vacation and loving them. John was talking about baptizing his wife. So that is starting to look really good. We had a less active invite us to an Elders Quorum service project, that we were going to anyways but he seems to be making a lot of steps back to church. And we helped another less active catch some chickens. Man I'm really starting to get into this farmer thing, at first I was super scared to touch the chicken but I got to the point I was just diving at them and grabbing them by the feet or by the body and just picking them up. I'm getting licked by cows, riding sheep, chicken hunting, next thing ya know i'll be movin to the country. I still want to milk a cow.

And ya, I'm starting to get into the Korean mindset. We visited some members who served missions in Korea and got some Korean food from them. I tried some Kimchi. To be honest, not bad, and I could see myself developing a taste for it. It had a good flavor. It's going to be a good 3 months though, I'm teaching Elder Park the gospel in addition to how to be a missionary. He's still fairly young in the gospel as a new convert but picks things up quick. He loved the MTC because it was like school back home for him. Go to school early and study all day. Those Asians know how to do education. His english is ok, but still needs a bit of work. So I'm almost teaching him english too. It's going to be rewarding though, he's teaching me a ton and he probably doesn't even know that he is. I'm getting a chance to learn too.

He's also eaten Dog Soup before! Maybe we'll try that next!

Alright, love ya lots!

an yung!

Elder Gibb