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
The spiders sound terrifying. There is something to be said for cold weather. He sounds like he's have a great experience and sliding right into Korean life. It will be even better when he can understand everyone.
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