-insert creative title-

YeeeeeHAAAAAAAAAAAAA! It's you it's you it's you! It's REEEAAALLY You!
Uhh...
Whee!! -throws him and pulls the string-
'There's a snake in my boot
HA! It IS you!
Please stop saying that...
Prospecter said this day would come! ... GASP! Sweet mother of Abraham Lincoln! The Prospector! He'll wanna meet ya!
-Bullseye pops the box out of ... the other box-
Say Hello to the Prospector!
It.... It's a box...
He's mint in the box! Never been opened!
Turn me around Bullseye, so I can see... My the prodigal son has returned!
YeeHA! It's you its you its you!
Ok... I'm officially freaked out now!

Hey howdy hey y'all! I know this quote is full of possible connections to Gospel related topics, that just kind of happened, I was trying to think of a quote for the day and that was the movie my companion mentioned and that was the first quote that came into my head and then one thing led to another, I wrote it and felt I had to add this disclaimer, and that brings us to where we are now!

So! I have a really great story, but it requires some background information. So, awhile ago I had told the story about those other church's missionaries, preachers, ministers, whatever the right word for them is. Here we call them JeonDoSa-s. Now, the missionaries in Korea are quite different than us. Quite different. I could go on about stories about run ins that we've had with them, the meetings they have, and yatta yatta yatta, but today I'll just give a little background on their missionary work. These people are the Bible bashers. These are the people that will seriously target people on the street. They'll walk toward them, then pass them, turn around, an then overtake them, corner them with three or so people, and immediately whip out their little argument books, and go to town, most of the time yelling and arguing until the people just take off. Now, that has been my experience when I see that happen to others. So!! That's the background.

More background, although I've been learning Korean for a year now, Listening is incredibly hard!! Incredibly! Still working on it... So! We get an invitation to a ShikSa. Ameal appointment, at a restaurant. Yeah, restaurant. We were excited. It was a buffet, and you know me. I love food. So, we go to the restaurant, and we wait outside it until it's fifteen minutes past the appointment time. And we're right outside, talking to people, and I look at the text again, and realize that she had said meet IN the restaurant. So we panic, oh no! and rush in. We're talking to the hostess and trying to explain our situation. We stated the name of the person we were meeting. I'm pretty sure that I explained everything as simply as I could. I thought I did a good job. But, because we were foreigners, they had kind of ignored what I had said and were talking to themselves debating what was going on.

They finally came and talked to me, but they talked really really fast. I could only make out the word "GyoHwe" she said it two or three times. That means church by the way. GyoHwe, church. So I jumped on that. Yes! Church! We are missionaries! SeonGyoSa! We are missionaries! They all then said, Ahhhh~~, then they said come this way. So we follow them. I'm here thinking, ah, good our member told them we'd be coming, thank goodness. Now this restaurant has lots of dining rooms, they open them up when it gets busy and it was quite busy! So she lead us to a particular one, almost all the tables are ful except for a couple in the center, and she seats us down and she walks away. Now we're really confused, our member wasn't there, but we just sat down and just thought she had made a reservation for us. Now, when we came into the room, it had been full of talk and laughter and just restaurant noises. That kind of changed. As soon as she left, and the other people in the room saw us take our coats off, it went quiet. I mean dead quiet. I'm looking around at everyone and see they all have just a dead serious look on. Death glares. Glaring at us. One lady put her hands up in an X and just started shaking her head.

All of a sudden a whole bunch of memories come flooding back, mostly the part where the hostess kept asking us Church? Are you church? Two LDS missionaries in a room full of JeonDoSas... Heh. We immediatley grabbed our coats and just booked it out of there. Scared me half to death at the time, but five minutes later we were with our member retelling the story and we were just busting up laughing. It was fantastic :)

Wow, really long story. It was funny though, believe me :) I'll just close with this scripture, one of my favorites. Mormon 9:18-21

18 And who shall say that Jesus Christ did not do many mighty miracles? And there were many mighty miracles wrought by the hands of the apostles.

19 And if there were miracles wrought then, why has God ceased to be a God of miracles and yet be an unchangeable Being? And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God; and he ceaseth not to be God, and is a God of miracles.

20 And the reason why he ceaseth to do miracles among the children of men is because that they dwindle in unbelief, and depart from the right way, and know not the God in whom they should trust.

21 Behold, I say unto you that whoso believeth in Christ, doubting nothing, whatsoever he shall ask the Father in the name of Christ it shall be granted him; and this promise is unto all, even unto the ends of the earth.

I know this is true with every fiber of my being. I know that previously I had thought that miracles were those incredible manifestations of God's power, manifestations that would shock and leave people in awe of the power of God, and they are! But some of the most incredible miracles are not those that move mountains, but those that move hearts. The true miracles in this life are the ones that heal souls and mend heart. The true miracles are those that affect us for the eternities. Repentance of past wrongs, forgiveness for the prodigal sons, love for the sinners, understanding of shortcomings. These are the miracles that we all should strive for with all our hearts. As we look at the world around us, how many miracles has this world seen? Countless ones. And yet, they are forgotten. They are ignored. They are swept under the rug by those impetuous ones whose hearts are sown with doubt and unbelief. Search and strive for those miracles that change eternity's course. These are those that matter most. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Good Luck, God Bless, and God Speed,

Elder Annen

Lilo and Stitch!

You shouldn't play with guns!
Oh, OK.. -hands it over-
-gun starts beeping- Oh! I forgot! It's your birthday! Happy Birthday!
-gives it back-
Nuh nuh! Nuh nuh! Merry Christmas! -throws it to him-
Theres no Christmas! -right back-
Happy Hannukah! -starts their whole toss back and forth game-
-change scene-
Shouldn't we get Stitch?
Trust me! This isn't going to end well!
-change back-
One potato!
Two potato!
Three potato more!
Four potato!
Five potato!
My..
...mother..
...said...
...that...
...you...
...are...
...it. ...
HA! I win! .... -BOOM-


Well Hey howdy hey! A late Merry Christmas to y'all and an early Happy
New Year!! I wasn't sure which movie to put for this one as there were
a lot of movies that came to my mind when thinking about Christmas.
Really wish I could have quoted "It's a Wonderful Life" but I'm afraid
that was one I just can't remember well enough... So sorry... But! I
thought I'd both wish y'all Merry Christmas and give a shoutout to my
Sister in Hawaii all in one shot... Yes it did take me the better part
of three sleepless nights to figure that out, but hey... Small price
to pay ^^ Fun fact about the new year though... New Years here is not
that big of a deal. As in the day that everyone else celebrates the
New Year is not really a big deal. The BIG New Year here is actually
based off the lunar calendar. So, this year, the lunar New Year is in
February. Some thing I though was funny. The name of the LUNAR new
year is 설날 "solnar" which is actually pronounced "sollar"... It made
me chuckle a little ^^

Anyway! things are going well here, in Kangdong. Definitely cold...
Freezing might be a better word for it... Yes! Freezing! We've
actually come out with a new form of proselyting here. (PS the word in
Korean for 'proselyte' is Jeon-doh so I'll use that word, much more
natural to me) Yes, we do what's now called Choom Jeondoh. Dance
Jeondo. You go up to the person on the street and while you jeondo to
him you're hopping from one foot to the other, bouncing around, doing
the worm and busting out a few dance moves Gangnam Style. This way,
you hold their attention, you are able to deliver your message, you
stay warm, and you get some fantastic videos to put on YouTube after
you get home ;) It's a blast.

We have found an absolutely wonderful talk... Talk? Spiel? Words?
Anyway, something that Elder Jeffrey R Holland spoke... Wrote...
Whatever! My English grammar is down the drain so I'll just type like
I talk right now to get my point across. Elder Holland said words like
this in the Jan 2010 Liahona: "As a new year begins and we try to
benefit from a proper view of what has gone before, I plead with you
not to dwell on days now gone nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays,
however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned
from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing
experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need
to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced,
then we look ahead and remember that faith is always pointed toward
the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and
events that will yet be efficacious in our lives.... Faith is for the
future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith
trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that
Christ truly is the “high priest of good things to come” (Hebrews
9:11). Keep your eyes on your dreams, however distant and far away.
Live to see the miracles of repentance and forgiveness, of trust and
divine love that will transform your life today, tomorrow, and
forever. That is a New Year’s resolution I ask you to keep."

I love the way that he spoke this. I will only add my personal
conviction and wholehearted agreement of what he said. Of course the
past is important. Of course we must learn from mistakes made and
successes achieved. But we must move on as well. We must for forever
and always look to the future. Look for the miracles yet to be. Look
for service opportunities yet to be performed. Learn, Look, Laugh,
Love. Do it once. Then keep doing it. Look forward with faith toward
those wonders that the Lord will yet perform among the children of
men.

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Smile! Laugh! Love! Help Someone! Be
Happy! Stay Warm!

Good Luck, God Bless, and God Speed,
All my love,
Elder Annen

My Family's in Florida!

Buzz? Uncle Frank?
-flight attendant lady- We're the last ones off the plane!
Where are those guys? -goes to look out the window- Excuse me! But
this is an emergency!!
Yes? Sir?
What city is that out there?
... ... That's New York, sir...
-whispering- Yikes I did it again...
Something wrong, sir?
-still whispering- I'll be fine... Oh no, my family's in Florida and
I'm in New York... My family's in Florida? I'm in... New York :)

Hey howdy hey everybody! It's been awhile. Well, a couple of weeks
anyway. I wish I could tell you guys all sorts of stories about really
awesome things like, just off the top of my head, that we found Jack
Johnson's house that he was here in Korea and that we're going to try
to talk to him in the next few days and baptize him
(ahem, FIRST by the way, first), but... I don't actually know if he
has a house here or not, we still need to find it. Anyway! As is
classic during this season, I just had to quote some Home Alone. I
just had to. I was debating about changing it to "my family's in Utah,
my sister's in Hawaii and I'm in... Seoul" but that would be taking
it too far.

This was a good past week. I got transferred yet again to a place
called KangDong, my companion is an Elder Griffin who apparently,
exciting fact here, was in Proctor's math class at Utah State! So!
That was really fun to hear. He tells me he didn't talk much with him,
but when I mentioned the Van Dyke, he knew exaclty who I was talking
about ;)

This area that I'm in right now is the kind of area where we don't
have any investigators yet so we do lots and lots of talking to people
on the street. We run into a lot of fun people, I will try to pay more
attention to them so I can tell you the stories later. Just a fun
fact, drinking is a huge part of Korean culture, so a lot of the
people we talk to area really happy to see us when we first talk to
them! But then they sober up when we try to contact them again and
then they use words that I don't know and haven't had the courage to
look up yet ;)

But there is a really inspiring story that is told in this mission.
The bishop of a ward in my greenie district had a story that just
keeps me going. His story in a nutshell is that during a really rough
time of his life, he had turned to drinking. One night he's out
drinking and partying with his friends, he runs into the missionaries
on the way from one bar to another. They start talking to him and he
reacts in a way that may or may not surprise you. He started swearing
and threatening and shaking his fists at them, so they of course
backed off. This was in the evening or so. On the way home these
missionaries find him on the side of the street passed out from all
the alcohol he had. Kind of as a joke, one of the missionaries put a
Book of Mormon on top of him and left. As for the rest of the story,
I'm sure you can guess it. After all I already told you he is the
bishop of a ward now. He read the whole book that next week and the
Spirit in that book changed everything. Such is the power of the Book
of Mormon. Don't ever take it for granted. Don't let yours sit on a
shelf or a table somewhere. Read and study it as often as you can.

Good Luck God Bless God Speed
Elder Annen

Patience

He should be here in... I'd say half an hour..
Who? WHO?! I'd like to know who!!
I told you Archimedes I am not sure... He'll be a... a boy, smaaaaaal
boy, eleven, twelve years old... Oh no no no that can't be the one!
Surely that fella must be nineteen or twenty! ... There! Yeah, there
he is! Hehe, a scrawny little boy round twelve! Yeaaah he's a regular
little grasshopper.."
And where, where are you guessing he'll be at this very moment?
I am not guessing Archimedes I KNOW, where he is... Uhh.. about a mile
from here, just beyond the forest. Right on schedule... If all goes
well"

-Fast forward a bit-

Well! -cough cough- you did decide to drop in after all didn't you?
Oh... Oh you are a bit late, you know...


Hey howdy hey everybody! It's been a few weeks hasn't it? Sorry about
that, we had some extentuating circumstances here... The North
attempted to invade but we held them off easily. No big deal...

Actually I probably better not joke about that, that is still entirely
possible. Anyways, how's everyone doing? It has been an interesting
few weeks for me. This quote is actually a very rough one...I'm sure
there are lots of messups.. My movie memory is starting to fade on
me... Sad sad day. But the reason for this one is interesting. I don't
know how many of you actually recognize the movies that I quote, but I
usually explain clearly the reasons I picked them. This one is going
to be the reverse. The movie is Sword in the Stone, but the connection
is one that some may know and others may not, and I will not be
explaining in depth. I picked this one just to show that even though
Merlin knew what was going to happen, sometimes things are thrown a
little out of whack. They don't happen as we exactly expect them to,
or when they do happen they still shock us. I'll just say that the
second option happened to me in the past couple weeks. And Yeah! Hope
you understood that one!


This one I will keep short. We had a great time learning to make
kimchi and celebrating the 50th anniversary of the church in the
country of Korea. I personally love kimchi now, but after making it
for about 6 hours solid... Let's just say I'm eating it in very small
doses now. It was a blast.


I wish I could report that we are teaching tons of people and that
there are many stories of people being baptized, but I'm afraid right
now the Lord is teaching me many lessons in patience. I chanced upon a
very curious scripture that I have never remembered reading when I was
studying patience. James 5:10 and for convenience I will quote it
right here. "Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the
name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of
patience." I have never heard this one. I have heard many many
differing scriptures regarding the heavenly attribute of patience, but
I do not think this has ever before crossed my path. The beautiful
simplicity of it is so incredibly to me. Take the prophets for an
example of patience. My study here has often brought me to the life of
Joseph Smith, and over and over again I am in awe of the incredible
patience of this man. None of us can of course count the number of
times we've heard the stories of his sufferings and trials and I think
that because of that we are slightly desensitized by the true horrors
that this man faced throughout his life. Serious horrors. I will not
disturb the Spirit by mentioning them individually, but it shows both
the incredible patience of the man Joseph and, to me, illustrates the
incredible comfort and love our Father in Heaven offers us in times of
strife and turmoil.


Brothers and Sisters, God lives. I hope none of us
will ever become desensitized to the incredible feeling the words
bring as we say them out loud. I know that God lives. I know it. I
know it. I know, with all the resoluteness of my soul, that God lives.
He lives. But I think more important than that is the knowledge that
He loves us. Roughly quoting from anothers words, The paradox of man
is that compared to God we are nothing, but we are everything to God.
He lives, He loves you. I testify that regardless of how difficult you
think the problem you're facing is, God is there. Remember and look to
Christ and to the prophets to how we can grow so much closer to God
during moments of extreme trail.


Good Luck, God Bless, and God Speed,

Elder Annen

Fluffy

Hagrid, the stranger who gave you the dragon egg! What did he look like?!
Dunno, I ne'er saw his face, kept his hood up!
This stranger though, even he must have talked.
Well, he asked me what sort of creatures I looked after, I told him I
said after Fluffy!
Did he seem interested in Fluffy?
Well of course he was interested in Fluffy!! How often do you come
across a three headed dog, even if you're in the trade! But I told him
I said, I said that the trick with any beast, is to know how to calm
him! Take Fluffy for example. You just play him a little bit o' music
and he falls straight to sleep! ...

... I shouldn't a told ya that...

Hello and what is up everybody?! Hope everything is doing so fine and
dandy! It is over here. So, uh, funny connection with this one, I'm
sure as all of you have guessed it, due to the fact that I left in the
references to a three headed dog named Fluffy, something to do with
dragon eggs... oh and the fact that the first word was Hagrid should
have been a dead give away. Heh. If you did not understand that this
was from Harry Potter, you should hang your head in shame and go stand
in the corner. Seriously. Do it right now til someone comes around and
asks you what you are doing. Then you can come back and finish reading
this letter. 

Quick sidenote, it has been so long since I have even
thought about Harry Potter, I can't remember, tell me if I'm missing
something obvious, but what on earth does happen to Fluffy? Seriously!
I can't remember what happens to him... Them? Hims? They can't be
Hers, Hadgrid mentions its a boy... 

Ahmuhtin, Anyway! The funny connection, so, when I first came to countrty, 

I knew I was gonna see some weird things. I thought that with that kind of 

attitude, I'd never really see some thing that surprised me. But then, what do you
know, I'm on the street one day when I all of a sudden see a man with
a leash which was attached to, believe it or not, a three headed... Ok
I'm just gonna stop right there, I can't write with a straight face
anymore. No! There are no three headed dogs here, but I hope I got a
couple of you with that one. Moving on!


So, sorry I didn't write last week, I was having the kind of week that
makes it so I had a lot on my mind, and I couldn't think well enough
to type so I just... Yeah. Skipped it. But I will tell you the reason.
So I hope everyone remembers the North Korean couple because the story
is about them.(See episode .... .... someone keep track for me)

Ahmuhtin, From what they have told us, the
North Korean couple had to go back to North Korea. Apparently they
need to go back to their hometowns to sign papers and some random
thing or another. There are around maybe fifteen hundred North Korean
dissenters that had to do so. They were having a tank escort them.
But, we've been talking to a couple of members about it and they say
that stuff like this has happened before, but they never come back.

They are immediately arrested and no one outside really hears from
them again... So... Yeah.. That is a really quick rundown of the
drama that unfolded all the night before I had to email. Can you blame
me for having kind of a preoccupied mind that day?! But, they are fine
now. Unfortunately I don't know any more to the story. Some reports I
have heard was that they only had to be really close to the border,
and Yeah. This is the extent of my knowledge of it. One huge reason
being that I was just barely transferred so now I'm gonna have to hear
the story second hand as well... Sad.

My new area is really nice though! I like it, really far away from my
last area though, and I gotta say the move is a tough one. Remember
the subways here at rush hour? (See episode... again, I need someone
to keep track for me I don't have time to cite all these references...

Is it plagiarism if I don't cite my own stuff Mrs. Mattson?) So,
subways, rush hour, now try that with some two really heavy suitcases
and a backpack. (No I didn't lose the other one, we just sent it as a
package... trust me, it was a good idea) It was crazy.

I'm gonna end this email here, wish I could think of a funny story to
send y'all, but... I'm drawing a blank. I'll prepare better next time.
Thousand pardons and all that...

Love y'all tons!
Good Luck, God Bless, and God Speed

Elder Annen

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode: Saving Seouls Ep. #... ....
.. Seriously someone keep track.

Not sure what to call this one...

Show Details

Here is another little reunion... Jeremy with his trainer, Elder Choi,
and Elder Choi's trainer, Elder Christensen.

The fun has arriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiived! Thank you very much!
Turk what took you so long?!
I had a little pest control problem but it's all taken care of... WHOA OWW....
Hey guys!
Turk what is this?! Some kind of a joke?! Tell me I'm not looking at
the hairless wonder...
Well, Turk said I could come along if I could keep up..
AH NO!! TURK?!
-whispering- I'll handle this guys, Ok? -normal- Lusten buddy come
here! We gotta tiny itsy bitsy  problem here. Personally, I love to
hang out with you you know I do, but the guys... They need a little
convincing you know?
OK! What do I gotta do?
DO?! Whatta you gotta... Ohoho, it's so stupid!
What?!
Well, you gotta, uh you gotta go, get a hair.
A hair...?
Yeah, a hair, uh huh... -elephant trumpets- ...an elephant hair...

No reason for this one whatsoever. Popped into my head. Good movie, I
like it. So, I think I've kind of crossed a line or something on my
mission where all of a sudden I really don't have a lot of new
experiences, particularly in this area. This is an area where the
missionaries before us left us kind of high and dry, no investigaotrs
to really talk to , or pick up again, etc. so we've done a lot of
street contacting. Lots and lots and lots. So I'm terribly sorry, I
don't have a lot of really fantastic stories to tell. Unfortunately,
have not had times that worked out for us to meet with the North Korea
couple, but we're gonna keep pushing for that.

One of the fun things we did this week was kind of mess with the new
missionary in our house. He has a great sense of humor and he laughed
really hard when he found out what was going on. I'm telling you this
so you won't worry and think we were being jerks to him. But, he's at
the phase where he asks all the time what the word for _____ is in
Korean, and all that fun stuff. So, unofficially, we tell him words
that are just way way off, just to see what people's reactions to him
are. Now, the first night we did this, it was with a half hour left or
so before we had to go home. So pretty late. And in Korea, that means
there are a lot of drunk people around. So, one of the things that we
usually like to ask is, have you seen foreigners like us before?
Foreign missionaries? Now the word for foreigner sounds like this.
whehgukeen. Wheh, meaning foreign, outside, different, guk meaning
country or nation, and een signifies a person.whehgukeen. Foreign
country person. Now, we told him to use a slightly different word, onw
they had only told me recently, but we told him the word was
whehgukay, which I think means alien, or something along those lines.
Every person he talked to was just roaring with laughter. We were too.
He caught on pretty quick, but we just had a grand time with it. We
also told him the word for girlfriend was dwehjee, which is actually
the word that means pig. So we had some great laughs to name only a
few.

Ok, I only have time for one more story, and I really need to make it
short, if I had longer I could tell it better, but ... What can you
do. So my companion and I get a call the other day from a name that
neither of us recognized. We answer and the guy asks if he could meet
with us now. So of course we say yes, we meet him at a park and show
him the way to our church. When we saw him, we recognized him right
off the bat. He was a minister we had met earlier, maybe two or so
weeks ago, and he said he had met missionaries before, and he wanted
to chat it up again with us. Got his number, yatta yatta, and here we
are now meeting him. We get to the church, we're in, we sit down, they
try talking to us. Sorry, he had brought his friend with him. They try
talking to us. Then, of course we're not native speakers and they just
start complaining up the whazoo about how they need someone who speaks
better Korean although my companion is really good at it. So, they're
making a lot of noise, and the bishop and his wife downstairs hear it,
and they come up to see if everything is alright. The guys we're
meeting are of course overjoyed to see Koreans to talk to and
immediately have them sit down and discuss stuff with them. Typical
Bashing scene, honestly. Most legit throw down I have ever been a part
of in my life, and I will explain. I do not like bashing, I do not
like that type of fighting. It is fun, true, but the Spriit is
instantly gone, and it seems that no one is really happy about them. I
am not advocating them. BUT! This one was so legit. The bishop and his
wife have both served missions, they have met people like this before,
and, let's just say they know how to handle them. They tagged teamed
it really really well, we helped them out when it came to harder
questions and scriptures, etc, and they were stumped after many of the
answers and questions we gave them. After an hour, we thanked them and
said that we have to leave. They immediately got up and started
yelling and saying stuff like, no we're not done yet, etc. etc. but
right before they left they told us that they had lied originally when
they had told us the name of their church and they now 'revealed' it
to us. All dramatic like. kinda creepy. One guy said I was you to
remember three jahs, -three characters- and he them proceeded to say
them , and announced, that that was where they were from, and a whole
bunch of other stuff. The creepy part was the other guy, the whole
time he kept chanting yook yook yook -six six six- over and over.
REally weird. But yeah, crazy meeting.

This story was really quite an eyeopener to me. I was told afterward
that that was their missionary work. That was what they did. They
found ways to meet with people of other churches, then fight and bash
and destroy those people, and then convert them to their religion.
There are many things going through my mind about that. Normally I
would be more eloquent about this, but time restrains me from doing
so. First thing is that I am so incredibly grateful for the strength
and power of a testimony. Particularly of my bishop and his wife's.
Such strong testimonies coupled with knowledge not only helped them to
withstand such blows from unfriendly sources, but to also rebuke them
and show them that the truth from God will always trump the the so
called wisdoms and philosophies of man. This also brought to my mind
the great appreciation for this gospel. Because, the gospel never
wishes to break down. The Fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ will
never break down that which is good, true, and just. The Gospel only
asks, that we keep all the good that we already have, and allow the
Fullness to add to our knowledge, and multiply our happiness to an
extent that we cannot believe.

Good Luck, God Bless, and God Speed,
Elder Annen

추석!!! Choo-sock!

September 23, 2012

"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