KOREA!!

Wow, I finally made it to Korea!  We finished up the MTC stay by saying goodbye to all of our super close friends going to the Busan mission, and then got packed up!  It took forever to pack everything!  I finally got to bed around like 12:40AM and got up around 1:50AM to head off for the airport.  I slept a lot on the flights (but I'm still feeling the jet-lag even now).  Half the group going to Daejeon had a delayed first flight, so they missed the connecting one headed to Incheon! So they had to stay the night in San Francisco and fly up the next day.

the coast of Korea

In Korea our first night we got into companionships with older and experienced missionaries and hit the streets for a few hours proselyting on the streets.  I was with an Elder Andrews from Las Vegas, and while most people weren't interested at all and just told us that they were busy, there were a few who actually were interested and listened to us.  I understood nothing of what they said, but was able to bear my testimony to them on the Book of Mormon and the church.  And they understood what I said!!! People know what I say when I speak apparently, I just don't know what they say when they speak.  Which is kind of important...But that will hopefully come over time!

The next morning we went to a Korean bath-house, which was the most relaxing place ever.  Wasn't weird like we thought it would be at all - even though there are naked men walking around.  But it was still pretty great!  On Thursday, we had a big transfer meeting where all the missionaries being assigned to new areas for the most part, plus those about to go home all went.  And that's where we got assigned to our trainers.  My trainer is a really cool guy from Logan, Utah named Elder Wagner.  He's been out on his mission about 13 months now and his Korean is excellent (in my fresh eyes at least).  We got assigned to the 농성 area in southern South Korea.  Neither he nor I were in this area before and we have no investigators to teach from the last companionship, so we're basically starting fresh.  We call it 'whitewashing'.  We've been doing a lot of stuff and we go to bed exhausted each night. 

We went to a baptism on Sunday for Elder Wagner's last investigator (he used to be in 첨단 which is really close to 농성 so we went to that ward).  He's Sri Lankan (however you spell that) and an amazing guy. It was so cool to meet him. (in the picture, Elder Wagner has the pink tie with his arm around Dinu)

Overall, there's a lot of walking and a lot of Koreans everywhere!  We ride buses quite a bit to get around because our area is so big, and that's pretty cool! (except when it's jam-packed with people)

The food is definitely different (some in a good way and quite a bit in a weird way) and my body is doing its best to adjust!  In all the aspects of mission life, it's going to keep taking some adapting and adjusting.  All in all, time.  Which is frustrating because of course I want to not be floundering around as a newbie, but want to be used to all of this right now!  But it's a great experience for me overall.  A very humbling one to say the least! 

Hope you're all safe and doing great! Love you all! I'll keep you posted with my adventures!
~Elder Woods