"A Whole New World"

A week ago I was in 강남 (Gangnam), a hyper-modern, densely-populated area situated in the middle of Seoul, filled with obscenely rich people. Where you could walk for 30 seconds and see 3 Maserati's (no exaggeration; happened more than once). Where it was so dense that 40 minutes on the subway could take us to the edge of our area.

And now I'm in 김포 (Gimpo), a city outside of Seoul which is about as polar opposite to 강남 as it gets. Where you can walk for 30 minutes and not see any sign of civilization. Where there are some places that we literally can't get to because even spending our entire day on a bus we wouldn't have enough time to get there and back.

This place is awesome. On account of people here being (much like most people in the world) poorer than in 강남, they're way friendlier. The number of people willing to stop and talk to us on the street is easily dozens of times more than what it was in 강남. The ward is about the same size as it was in 강남, but much younger. (강남 was basically two families and tons of old couples.) This ward also includes two Patriarchs and an Emeritus Seventy. So that's pretty cool.

Our house here is way bigger than ours was in 강남 and is only shared between 2 Elders, not 4. Also, our 18th story view here definitely tops the brick wall we had right outside our window. My new companion's Elder Anderson, who's basically the missionary that every missionary should be.

We've also got a ton of people we're meeting with. Yesterday our investigator 유덕균 (or DG, since he went to high school in Chicago and always speaks English with us) came to church with his 8-year old brother, and they both loved it. Then we gave them this super awesome Christmas tree which for some absurd reason somebody had been throwing out the other day, which made his brother the happiest little kid in the world.

Basically, things are going great. As usual.

Merry week before Christmas, my friends.

리스 장로

"A Good Week"

On account of it being Thanksgiving this past week, our bishop, 김정기, hooked us up with a Thanksgiving-esque feast last Monday. You can't find turkey very easily in Korea, so we had duck, which is a) close enough and b) way more delicious.

We spent much of the day Tuesday at a seniors' center helping out old people. They all thought it was so cool that there were Americans there, so it was lots of fun.

Our zone got super lucky and had our Temple P-day [Once each transfer P-day is moved from Monday to Thursday and one's zone goes to the Temple.] on Thanksgiving. So after going to the Temple we all met in 영등포 and had an incredible Thanksgiving dinner, courtesy of our mission president's younger brother who happens to live here in 서울. Tons of fun. Then during our meal the first snow of the winter started falling, which of course didn't stop us (all the zone's elders) from playing football. Best Thanksgiving I've had in Korea yet.

The next day we had some personal interviews with President Morrise (happens once every other transfer). Those were great.

On Sunday our ward had our Primary program. We only have two kids in Primary, but they've both got a lot of personality (8 and 9 years old), so it was a ton of fun.

The cherry on top: all of the mosquitoes in our apartment are finally dead.