Princess Disease [week 31]

Fun fact the word for brat in Korean literally translates to "princess disease."

Well I had a cultural experience with my fellow missionaries. It was swell. We ran around in robes called hanbok and looked at Buddhist statues at the Hwaseong fortress in Suwon. I liked it. It was cool. We rented these traditional costumes from a costume shop and most of the elders chose the peasant hanbok, but I chose the  one that a king would wear.  I guess I am a brat (see what I did there?).

I also went on an exchange with a cool guy named 이현호 Lee Hyun Ho. Pretty nifty huh?  It was a grand swell week. 

Stay in school don't do drugs. Also the advice that every old senior missionary gave at the cultural event for having good families is: 1- to not have a TV, and 2- to be united with your spouse. Those oldies are so full of wisdom. Literally three for three said basically the same thing when asked: "what is the key to a successful family?" Pay attention to the media that comes into your home. Books, music, TV, video games, etc. So um, yeah let's do that. 

Alright love you guys. Makes some choices that will unite your family. Over and out. Love ya bye. 

SCRIPTURES!!!

Read D&C 111:11 I'm memorizing it lets see how close I am. "Therefore, be ye as wise as serpents and yet without sin, and I shall pour out blessings for thy good Faster than ye are able to receive them." 

Check it and report back. Pronto stat asap

PICTURES!!!

Some wild Korean stuff and me. 

There's a happy lookin dragon. He must've just finished off some human beans ahahaha hahaha hah... get it? BEANS!?! There is no graffiti in Korea. It's crazy. The cities are so clean and safe. 

There's a dog in a stroller. I see this more than I see kids in strollers. 

Another Episode of Missionary with Missionary [week 22]

Well hello you lovely lot. welcome to another episode of missionary with missionary. Episode 42: the answer to life the universe and everything. So since we have last corresponded, many things have corresponded. My companion and I got ourselves a nice man to commit to being baptized on march 26th of 2022. What a cool guy he is. His name is 병춘 Byung Choon He is in his fifties and speaks fluent English. He lived in the states for 20 years. He has been binge-listening to the Book of Mormon and is through Second Nephi after only one week of reading. What a cool guy. 

There is an election going on in Korea right now. There is a red side and a blue side. There are cars with huge megaphones on top, driving around screaming to "Vote for the blue guy" or "No vote for the red guy!" And there was a cool rally type of deal on the way to the grocery store there were tons of people lined up on the sidewalk dancing to a political song written about their politician. There were two of them one block apart. One was red and kind of hyped-up angry sounding, and the other was blue and chill out sounding. It was neat. I want to say who I want to win, but I haven't read so much as a news paper or Wikipedia article about Korean politics, so I'm going to not vote. President Nelson seems to be a solid guy. I'll listen to what he has to say. 

Oh! Guess what? We got transfer calls yesterday. I'm going to be leaving Nonsan, and moving to Boondong! My new companion's name is Elder Carter. Seems like a nice guy from what I can tell by his picture. He is the Zone leader for the Gyonggi zone. That means I'll get to go on some sweet exchanges every once in a while. 

I had a lot of pizza this week. Let me tell you about that. This is interesting. 

• SO! The first stuff we had was grocery store pizza. It was frozen, so we had to unfreeze it by putting it in a microwave oven. And THEN we ate the pizza. It was a couple clicks under ok. Like if I was very hungry and everything tastes better, then it would be like a 5/10. 
• Then we got free dominos pizza the same day from a friend of the last missionaries that served here. It was DELICIOUS. I wish I was more hungry. It was more of the shepherd's-pie-type pizza. It has more cheese and less potatoes than shepherds pie, and it has pizza crust and is served in flat triangles instead of thick squares. 
• AND THEN! The next day we met with some other elders after district council and went and got some pizza. It was gross. The normal pizza was lacking in all three basic ingredients: being bread, cheese, and tomato sauce. And the crazy Korean pizza was like one centimeter of bread and an inch and a half of cheese. It tasted good as I was eating it, but then one elder said it was like Play-oh, and I realized he was right. Play-Doh Pizza. AND THEN!!! We had pizza the next day as well. It was a solid 6/10, oh and we also had more another day when we brought a teaching friend some food. So like five times in one week. It was a culinary adventure to be sure. I like the shepherds pie pizza and the marinated beef pizza the best. The normal American pizza isn't good here. They make their own stuff better. Holy smokes let's talk about something else.

I am super excited we got someone on date for baptism. There is also a teaching friend that seems to like me more than my companion, so I'm going to be like "I'm leaving which is so sad. I'll never see you again... unless you invite me to your baptism." It simply won't fail. It's mathematically impossible for that to not work. I have the spirit on my side, my rugged good looks, and my charming Korean baby- level speech proficiency. I speak like a toddler, but that's actually pretty good. I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to communicate anything, but I can.  So it's all good in the hood. 

I love seeing how happy the church is making these people that I am teaching. It makes me happy too. Hmokay, I love you guys. Have yourselves a splendid week. 

Truly Truman

PICTURES!

The black and white circles on the brown square is a board game called GO. It is the second oldest board game in the world (with the same rules as those at the time of its creation) To backgammon. Sennet is the Oldest Board game in the world which is an Egyptian board game, but no one knows how it was played. The picture was taken at the end of the game and lots of the stones were taken off the board to help with scoring. It is one of my favorite board games ever! I love two player strategy games. pretty awesome and nerdy huh? I can't choose between GO, chess, and Shogi. then there is also Korean chess 장기. nerdy stuff, but I love it. I gave my companion a 20 point head start, and I haven't counted up the stones yet, but I'm pretty sure I won. The game is played by taking turns placing stones on the board and trying to surround your opponents stones with your own and capturing them. It's so fun. 

There is a picture of two 3D printed Kirby's. They were in a Baptist church that me and elder Titensor went to. It turned into a jolly fun bible bash. I don't know why we went in the first place, besides to say hi to the pastor, but it was still a weird idea. 

There is a picture of me with my new DRIP! For those of you not in the know, drip is a stupid word all the kids are saying these days to mean bling, or fashionable stuff. Anyways. There is me with my new Hello Kitty phone case and a super-duper cheep watch that looks expensive from a distance. There is tons of unauthentic stuff you can buy here. Like supreme T-shirts and Adidas and such. It's all made by some cool third party or something. 

There are some false Idols. Very cool. Really pretty. I would be more respectful of the religious statues, except they put gift shops in all of the Buddhist temples, so they seem to be on the same page as me anyway. 

There is a picture of a sign that prohibits being mean. I love the signs here in Korea. I can never tell how serious the signs are. I think the graphic designers just had a good sense of humor or didn't take themselves too seriously. 

The group picture is of my district. Those studs. 

There aren't many physical keys here. It's all electronic, but these keys are physical as you can see. And if you look closely...they are crazy keys. They just look wild. I wonder how the locks work if there needs to be pins pointing in every direction? Hmmm interesting. 

안녕하세요 제 사람들 (annyeonghaseyo je salamdeul) Hello My People! [week 15]

Hike on P-Day to another Buddhist temple

Hello everyone. How are you on this fine day? I am doing pretty well. This week I went on an exchange with Harmon 장로님. What a nice guy. We taught two English lessons. The first one was with an old guy and the second was with an old gal. They were both super enthusiastic about learning English and very open to The Book of Mormon. The old lady spoke fluent Korean and Chinese and now she is learning English! She liked me because I could guess what she was trying to say in English really well. I taught her the words feminine and masculine when she was describing Biden and Trump. She thinks Biden is handsome. She also knew more about American history than me which makes her SUPER smart. 잰 도 (the old gal) inspired me to learn Korean with a renewed enthusiasm. She was super excited to learn. 

The rest of the week consisted of lots of Facebook finding and language study. Fun times. 

My favorite scripture is Moroni 10:32. Read that.

PICTURES!

The only picture that needs any explanation is the candy and Mountain Dew. I got the drink for free! When a clerk says "service," that means it is free. I had to tell my companion this because I knew this Korean tidbit and he didn't. So yeah! Free Mountain Dew, and some sub-par, on-sale chocolate. Delicious!

Merry Christmas 메리 크리스마스! [week 13]

안녕하세요 여러분. 어떻게 지내세요? 

Hello guys, how are you? I'm doing just peachy-keen, thanks for asking. 

This week has been pretty wholesome. Very high quality. Super nice. 너무 좋아요. Anyway, last Tuesday I went to district council. The zone leader is super cool. He got 6 baptisms as a trainee. He asked us all to tell everyone why we came on a mission and that we should be honest. He said he used to hate the idea of going on a mission, then he told an awesome story about how that changed. It's too long of a story for this email, so just take my word for it. I said I have always wanted to serve and my reasons for being here keep getting better the longer I'm out.  GO ME! 

On Christmas Elder Titensor and I went out and about and delivered presents to all of our branch members and teaching friends. We bought candles and Elder Titensor wrote a nice note in Korean and I origami-fied the notes and we gave them out to people, plus candy for kids.  The things Elder Titensor wrote on his note were: "We love you, Jesus Christ  loves you, if there's any service we can do let is know, Merry Christmas, during the Christmas season if you focus on Christ you will find more happiness." 

We got some good, teary Korean gibberishy (because I still don't understand what is being said) reactions.  It was swell. 

This picture is from a baptism on Christmas day--we traveled up to Daejon to be there for the baptism of Brother 뢰건명.

Left to right it goes elder Harmon, Jito, Me, then Brother Rowae Kon Myong, then Elder Rau,
then elder Doe (front) Titensor (back), then idk, then elder dickey.

We also got to eat cake and pizza that some members provided. The cake was DELICIOUS, and the pizza had potatoes and corn on it, so the first two bites were disappointing, but then I realized it was just shepherd's pie in disguise. And I LOVE shepherd's pie! It was a Merry Christmas after all!

The delicious cake.

Right now I'm in a waiting room to get some booster shots or something, and there is a Korean game show on, and it the most highqualityentertainment I have ever had the privilege of laying my eyes on. I can't wait to watch more when I'm a fluent RM. 

This week I have grown a lot more than I have helped anyone else grow. So it was a great week for me. I grew closer to the Savior and improved on the language. I can't wait to help others out with the Gospel. That's why I'm out here, so I'm looking forward to that the most. 

Alright, I love you guys! Thanks for your prayers and kind words. You're all the best!

PICTURES!

I went to a Buddhist temple. It was amazing! I loved it, it was easily my favorite Korean cultural experience. 

There's those big, murderous, colorful statues. They were huge, I should have taken it next to myself so you could see the scale. 

The picture with me and the huge statue in the background is a Buddha statue. It's the tallest stone Buddha statue in Korea at eighteen point something something meters tall.  

• From the article in that link: "The statue, which is widely known as “Eunjin Mireuk Buddha” as it is located in Nonsan’s Eunjin village, is 18.12 meters in height, the tallest in Korea.
  
  This Buddha statue is wearing a cylindrical coronal on its head. Its large head and face with strong features make it all the more impressive. Unlike Buddha statues in the Unified Silla Dynasty, which pursue refined and ideal beauty, it boasts enormous size, massiveness, and bold beauty.

The green lanterns are in the ceiling of one of the rooms in the temple. Very pretty, the smoke detector kinda ruins the magic, but whatever.

There's a picture of me with a funny tongue sticky outie statue behind me.

The picture with all the happy-looking, super handsome, (but ugly in comparison to ME) elders is us at a noodles restaurant. SCRUMPTIOUS! Left to right it goes me, Elder Titensor, Elder Jito, and elder Harmon.

The picture with the figurines behind glass are some One Piece action figures in a super nerdy nerdy museum called robot museum. You had to buy a drink to get in (I got hot chocolate because it's cold) and you go in, and there was a room absolutely FULL of robot action figures. Then there was another room full of one piece and other anime action figures. It was so nerdy and awesome! I taught Elder Titensor how to play GO in there. 

The flowers on the street are projected.  There's tons of projected advertisements and art on the streets at night. 

The torch statue I just thought looked cool, and I had room for one more picture on this email, so there you go!

Allright love you guys! I'll schedule this email to send tomorrow morning for me so I don't notification bomb you all in the middle of the night. Love you! 

Truly Truman.