Hello friends family and anyone else reading this! I love you!

This week has been full of success and blessings!  I really learned the importance of Faith and trusting in God.

I don't want to say that I was broken down but before this week I really was, I had little faith and was to scared to talk to people cuz I understand nothing.  But this week I had the opportunity to go on an exchange with another newer missionary who doesn't know much Korean either, and we had a big talk about faith and not being afraid.  So, we set out to proselyte on the street for 7 hours straight in Kimcheon. We had a goal to place 7 Books of Mormon, and we really believed we could do it.  Before this my goal was to talk to 5 people a day and I usually didn't meet it or get more than 2 or 3.  But I had to have talked to at least 35 people. We were able to place 9 Books of Mormon that day! Super crazy!

We also have another investigator who made a baptismal date on the exchange.  My companion committed him while I was gone! I'm so excited!

We taught Hamed, our Egyptian investigator this week! We were able to find Arabic pamphlets to give him! He is so excited for his baptism which is awesome! I can't wait for Christmas day so that he can finally have that in his life!

Have a good week everyone! I love you all! I know that if you have faith anything really is possible! 

THE FOLLOWING ARE EXCERPTS FROM AN EMAIL HE WROTE TO THE FAMILY, ANSWERING MANY OF THE QUESTIONS WE PEPPER HIM WITH EACH WEEK:

Hi everyone! I love you all!

The language is coming well! I can understand a word or two here or there when I'm talking.  I mostly just look for the words house, work, buddhist, christian, and atheist and go off of that when contacting.  I can teach the gospel pretty well though for a trainee.  

My companion is super funny! He's from an island in our mission called Goje I think, I'm not sure though, I know which one it is on our map.  He plays the guitar and a bit of piano so at night he plays cool songs on his guitar.  He's a goof ball sometimes, it's really funny.  He's also a super good cook.  Like crazy.  

The branch is super small.  We get 15-23 members at church depending on if there's harvests or anything going on. The branch presidency is just the president and the mission leader.  The mish leader is super cool, he brings us kimbop everyweek for mission conference.  They always make jokes about me when conducting sacrament meeting which is funny.

The members feed us two times a week.  Usually to a restaurant, but when it's at a house it's really just Korean food. Soup, rice, noodles, and side dishes.  Super awesome, but this one member made us steak cuz she didn't know if I could handle Korean food.

We have only taught three real sit down and teach lessons the whole time.  Two to Hamed the egyptian guy and one to 김진훈 .  They both have baptismal dates. Super awesome!

Schedule is different depending on the day.  We wake up at 6:30, do planks and push ups.  Then we get ready, do personal companion and language study.  Eat, do training for an hour and hit the road.  We usually go to the church and do something, which is different depending on the day.  We do a lot of stuff with members and less actives, if you include those we teach, probably 5 lessons a week.  Then we proselyte a little in between meetings and head home to plan from 9-930.  After that it's chill till bed at ten thirty.  It's hard because every day is different. 

The food is crazy.  The Kimchi is way better than the Utah stuff.  I'd have to try it again tho.  Today we are going to try traditional Andong food which could go either way I heard... Not a lot of insane stuff tho, usually just rotten veggies and meat.

The spiders are all dead so I'm not scared haha. 

Have a good week! Love you!

기족과 사랑

Hi everyone! 

This week has been so amazing! I'm constantly feeling the spirit and really learning to love everyone!

Last Monday we had district Pday, so that's why the email stunk.  We only had a half hour to email and it was split into two 15 minute periods.  We went to this amusement park and ice-skated! Super fun!  

Tuesday we had another service activity at the old people home.  After we finished playing games and eating nasty Korean old people food, we helped one of the members whose dad is a nonmember, dig holes to put radishes in for the winter.  So many radishes!  We dug two holes that were 3 feet deep and 10 feet long and filled them with radishes.  Unfortunately the only pics I have of it are on one of the sisters cameras, so I'll get it next week.

We also spent all day Wednesday digging holes for radishes.  

The radishes here are way different than american radishes.  They are super big and green and white.  Also they taste better.  Pickled radishes are a side dish for pretty much every meal I eat.  We have a big box of radish slices in the fridge and I sneak slices all the time when I get hungry.  Soooo yummy!

Thursday we had Zone training meeting and the mission leadership council decided to make it a goal to baptize someone before Christmas as a gift to Christ this year.  They challenged us to up our dedication and consecration and watch the Lord bless us with miracles.  So we thought, how can we find someone to start teaching and baptize?  Since our area is so big we decided to try to visit one of the other cities.  So we randomly chose a city and it turned out to be 영양 Yoengyang.  Friday we set out on our adventure.  When we got there we quickly realized that this was not a great place to proselyte... It was super countryside and there were no people.  We walked around for 2 hours and only talked to like 5 or 6 people... But is was fun! We probably won't go back there for a while.  

So after our lack of success in visiting Yeongyang we decided we needed to fast.  So we fasted Sunday and we saw a crazy miracle.  Right after Sacrament this Arabic man came up to my companion and 류명재 (one of the members) and asked about Alma 7:14.  Turns out the missionaries gave him and Arabic Book of Mormon months ago and then lost contact.  The scripture talks about being born again and repenting.  So I explained baptism, he told me he wanted to take the next step and felt that this church is true, and then I felt impressed to ask if he would be baptized (all in English) AND HE SAID YES!!  So we are going to meet with him and prepare him for Baptism.  

His baptismal date is December 25! Christmas Day.  He is so awesome.  He's from Egypt and his family is still living there.  He speaks a little bit of Korean, a decent amount of English.  His native language is Arabic though.  So it's a little crazy when we have three people in a lesson that all speak a different language haha. So ya that was an amazing faith builder for me.  

I know that this work is God's work.  We can't do it on our own.  I know as we show our faith God will bless us with success in whatever we need.  I know that he cares about me and is helping me all along the way. I'm so grateful for the blessing this mission is in my life.  Have a good week everyone! I'm on a weird computer in Daegu so the pictures might not work.  But I'll get them next week. Love you all!!

Below are excerpts from his email to Brad:

I did remember mom's birthday, I wrote about it in my journal and told all the 안동 missionaries about it :) 

I don't miss cleaning the house because I still do it everyday haha! I do the dishes because Elder 장 cooks all the food.  Also my job is vacuuming on P-day.

The political stuff here is nuts too.  First off, their president is involved in a scandal so 2 million people protested in Seoul the other day.  Over 2% of the population.  It was all over the news.  

The people here are also really invested in the US elections.  They HATE Donald Trump.  One of the members is going to BYU-I in December and he's super worried that he'll get sent home.  I had to explain to him that it's fine though.  

It's hard to talk to people here, especially asking questions but I'll try to ask people questions about serving.  They don't have gardens though.  My companion asked me about lawn mowers and we talked about lawns and stuff. Pretty funny!  Also my weekly email is gonna be clutch so don't miss it.  Love you! Have a good week!

--

Elder Geddes

 

                                                         A view of Andong from the church

                                                            Some Delicious Korean Ramen

                                                             PDay at the amusement park

Basketball and Stickers

Hello all!

It was another good week here in Andong!

The hardest part of missionary work so far has been the eating.  We eat maybe half our meals at mini tables and you have to sit criss cross applesauce.  It's insanely hard.  You also have to lean over the bowl to eat cuz you can't pick it up and put it to your mouth.  I can't lean over far enough or sit criss cross applesauce so ya, it's a struggle.  But the food is really good!  

The Ramen is 1000 times better than American Ramen.  Also at 7/11 instead of slurpee machines they have Ramen walls and hot water dispensers.  You can choose from endless choices of Ramen.  It's awesome!!!

We have been working with a less active man named 이정민 (Ee Jung Min).  He's about forty and he has some mental disabilities.  But he doesn't like to leave his house, even though he loves basketball.  The missionaries have been trying for over 4 months to get him to leave the house.  And we visited with him, and told him that I played basketball in high school, and he ended up accepting the invitation to come play with us! Pretty awesome! 

I'm beginning to see that I can have an impact on people and even though I'm just a trainee that can't speak Korean I can still help people come unto Christ. 

Sunday night we went downtown to Stickerboard Proselyte! It was my first time but apparently you do it a lot in Korea. It was so cool how many people would stop and talk to us and put stickers on our board. Many of them were curious about the questions of the soul and We were able to get a bunch of contacts and hand out tons of business cards and Books of Mormon.  It was awesome!

Sorry that this isn't super long, I don't have much time to email.  But have a good week! Love you all! Keep on choosing the right!

Greetings From Korea!

안녕하세요!

This week was awesome! I love it in Andong. It's such an awesome place! Me, Elder Jang and the Sisters are the only people in the area.  It takes up about a quarter of our mission and it's the largest area in Korea.  We have a small branch, around 30 members come to church each week.  There are a lot of less/inactives because some of them live so far away and it's hard to make it to church.  

People are generally really busy here so they don't want to listen to us.  Because of that and the fact that you don't find many people on the street in Andong, we don't do a lot of street contacting.  We mostly try to work with part member families, and less active member.  

We have one investigator who's name is Kim Jin Hun.  He is 40 and is mentally handicapped.  He's what we call an "eternal investigator"  He's been being taught since 2013.  I'm the 19th missionary that he's met.  He was even taught by my MTC teacher Brother Lees. His mom doesn't really want him to join the church, and on top of that he works the night shift at work and likes to drink coffee to stay awake.  But he's super nice, and funny, even though I don't understand what he's saying.  He hasn't been taught the restoration since 2013 so we're going to teach that this week. Hope it goes well.

I saw my first spider.  And when I pointed at it and said that's huge the sisters and Elder Jang laughed and said it's a good thing I came in the winter when they're all dying.  I guess they get huge.  The one I saw was about half the size of my hand.  They're called banana spiders I think.  They get into your apartment in the summer time.

Yesterday we went out to an old lady's farm to pick apples.  Andong has a lot of apple farms.  We drove about an hour to get there.  We had to go up the canyon to get there.  It was so pretty! There are mountains everywhere and they're covered in trees.  Since it's fall the leaves are all changing so the mountains are covered in Orange and yellow trees! It's awesome.  Also the apples here are bigger than both my fists put together. The put american apples to shame.

We had a branch Halloween party, even though Koreans don't celebrate Halloween.  It was pretty fun, we worked on that for hours, and the decorations looked so good.  We had about 20 people show up including a man named Bryan Wolf, who's wife is a member but he is not.  He teaches English here and we are trying to get in to teach him but he's pretty busy.  

(Random thoughts from his letter to his Dad:  So sometimes we sit at mini tables to eat and we have to do it criscross applesauce, so it's really a struggle for me.   I was told I became a Korean in just 10 days because of the way I ate my food!)

But ya, that's Andong! It's an awesome place! Spiritual thought of the week.  Go read Mosiah 14 and 15.  Everytime it talks about the Savior highlight it.  And underline anytime that it refers to him.  It's a great chapter on the Atonement and I know that if you read it you will learn something about the Savior as I did.  I'm so grateful for the atoning sacrifice of my savior and I'm so glad that I have the opportunity to share his gospel with people! 

Love you all!

-Elder Geddes