"This was kind of a little reunion.  These elders were all in my district for the first transfer I was here. The blonde one is Elder Stein, my district leader.  The other is Elder Cobabe, his companion.  Both really, really awesome people.  Love 'em to death."



....Uh, Iiiiiiiii gotta go to the bathroom..
Dinner! Is served!
Never mind! I can hold it.
We won't waste time, everybody dig in!
Don't mind if I do Lillian...!

I know this one was short but it was the only movie, for some reason,
that popped in my head that had something to do with a lot of food.
Reason being, Korean Thanksgiving is coming up next week! Super stoked
for that, I heard you get tons of food. I probably shouldn't do that
whole count the eggs before you scramble them or whatever that saying
is... Anyway, I'm excited.

SO. Funny story. I love learning about the myths from Korean culture,
mostly because it is so different from American, and also because they
are really entertaining. Now, I can't remember this story perfectly,
so please bear with me. If you know this story and I mess it up,
please take it easy on me... I don't mean to :) Anyway, during English
class this past week, one of the students told us the story of the
creation of the first Korean. Anyway, the story, I'll just summarize,
goes like this:

There was a tiger and a bear trapped in the sky. They both wanted to
come down to earth but they were unable to on their own. They were
given the chance when they were told that if they ate garlic for 100
days, they could come to earth. The bear and tiger agreed to try.
After struggling for a long time to eat the garlic, the bear gave up,
but the tiger kept going, completed the hundred days, and then came
down to earth and became the first Korean. The End.

Terribly sorry, not very exciting, but you gotta understand, I was
told this story in broken English, and this is what I (think I)
understood. Anyway, that was at the beginning of the class. Near the
end, we asked the question about if they could change one thing about
the past, what would they change? When the turn fell to my companion,
he said, as a complete joke of course, "I'd go back to the 99th day
and steal the garlic." Now, I thought it was hilarious, and I was
about to burst out laughing, but... Turns out, Koreans don't really
have the same humor as us Americans... Hehe. We realized it wasn't
funny to them then, so we apologized and kept straight faces. It was
really hard though when one of our friends there faked anger and
asked, "ARE YOU ENEMIES OF KOREA?!" It was so much fun, loved it.

Well, this area has been a much tougher one. We don't really have any
investigators, our records are kind of warped and we kind of were
having a hard time trying to figure out what to do. So we just hit the
streets and tried to literally talk to everyone. And oh my goodness,
we had a great time. We found some boring people, fun people, crazy
people, old people, young people, old people who looked young, etc
etc. But  we got an interesting reaction from one couple whom we
talked to. We told them we were sharing a message about Jesus Christ,
and it was fascinating what happened. Now, I don't care if you are
white green blue black or orange, you have heard about this man named
Jesus Christ. It's a fact. But this couple we talked to had literally
no idea who he is. We were kind of taken aback, never had this
reaction before, so we asked them where they were from. Guess where.
Just guess. This is really not that hard, just think about it. They
are in South Korea, they look Korean, they seem to have literally no
idea who Christ is, guess where they're from. .... -insert announcer's
voice- If you answered 'North Korea,' you WIN... a pat on the back,
well done. Anything more than that and it would cost me an arm and a
leg to send to you so... pat yourself on the back. Yep, they are both
from North Korea. I wish I could say that they comitted to baptism
right away, but they didn't. But, yesterday we had an absolutely
wonderful time with them.We showed them the Finding Faith in Christ
DVD because we didn't know where else to start. Their reactions were
incredibly touching. They were both listening and watching with rapt
attention to the movie. I have never prayed that hard, asking God that
they would feel the Spirit. I hope that we'll meet again soon with
them.

Hope y'all are doing wonderful!
Good Luck, God Bless, and God Speed
Elder Annen