Gongju Is In Desperate Need Of An Apartment Change (27&28)

Mar 16
3 min read

Waddup!

Hope you guys had a good week! Here in the Korea Seoul South Mission (KSSM) has been really awesome! I saw so many miracles this week and I've been really pushing myself to be the best I can. Without further adue let's talk about the week!

GongJu Area.

After living in Suwon for 12 weeks I thought moving a decent ways down south would make things drastically different. However, as it turns out when people say "countryside" in Korea it usually means there is 3 less apartment complexes than normal. Don't get me wrong GongJu is different but it is still a dense city. I mean, our apartment is literally on the 13th floor. Speaking of the apartment...

I don't want to offend anyone who has lived in this thing in the past, but it might just be the worst apartment in the entire mission. It a bedroom, kitchen/living room mix, a study room, and a bathroom with one of the nastiest shower drain I've ever seen and unfortunately smelled. It looks like Elder Chappell and Elder Willis who lived here before me scooped up all of the gunk that was on the drain, and instead of throwing it away they just plopped it to the side and it has been sitting there for I don't even know how long. For three days I have been trying to build up the courage to clean that thing. I'm blaming Chappell ;).

(Update, I made my companion clean up the mess that was in there and not even 3 days later there is a candy wrapper now on the drain and a bunch of other crap. Ugh...)

I got to meet some of the members this week which was sweet! There are some cool families here in this ward. In fact one of the them is a family of 3 kids and their names in korean translate to "Love, One, Another." So kind of clever not gonna lie. Other than that I haven't met anyone else yet so can't wait to keep meeting them!

He's Not From Utah?

Yeah so, it took 3 transfers to serve with someone from America and he's not even from Utah. My companion is Elder Willis and he is from colorado (Idk where in Colorado) and he has been out on his mission for a year longer than me. One thing that’s cool about his mission is that he spent about 30 weeks in the Osan military base speaking English. So, he didn't get to learn a ton of Korean. But he is actually pretty good at it so that gives me motivation to keep improving.

He is also teaching me how to cook which is sweet because I've never really tried to make anything on my own. But so far i've mastered making really good fried rice.

Conclusion.

Well, we had a cool event call Elders conference where we hiked up to the top of a mountain in Daejeon. I got to see a lot of my good friends and even meet Elders in the mission who I've never seen before. There is an Elder in this mission who is 6' 10" named Elder Pugmire. I've literally never seen someone as massive as that dude. He literally dunked a basketball by standing on his toes. Insane. I was able to help put 2 people on Baptismal date in one week which is just so awesome. That doesn't happen very often here in Korea. Granted it just so happened the two people who are on baptismal date aren't even korean but thats okay! One is in my last area in Gokbanjeong and the other is here in GongJu! The guy here in Gongju is Philippino and apparently he had met with missionaries for years and had NEVER been put on bap date. So, the first Sunday I asked him what he felt about baptism. He said he doesn't think he is ready to make the commitment. I again asked him why. He told us he wasn't good enough to get baptized. We then told him the reason we get baptized is not because we are perfect but because we want to try to become perfect. That seemed to do the trick so he said he'll try.

Boom thats how its done. Not sure why this dude had never been asked to be put on baptismal date but I hope we can get him dunked here shortly.

Anyway, that’s about it I'm sorry for continuing to be lazy and missing emails. I need to get better lol. Hope you guys are lovin' life rn.

Love Y'all

-Elder Christensen