Colten's Advice: Don't Eat the Anchovies! (Sept. 7)

Sorry school started for me. Here is the most recent email. Enjoy!

Can you believe that another week has flown by!?! I am having a hard time just thinking about what happened this past week. 

Monday we didn't have a P-day, it was moved to Tuesday, so we worked hard and tried to meet a lot of new people. In fact it worked so well that the shoe vendor we started talking to taught us how to talk with people. After telling us that a ton of churches in Korea just yell at him to go to there church and repent, he counselled us that we needed to talk with people. He said we didn't need a soap box or anything fancy, we just needed to learn about the people with whom we talked with. I think his reaction was prize-less when we told him that is what we did. He stopped for a second and then started laughing and said that we had tricked him. He was super sweet and we are hoping that we can meet with him again. He seemed interested and walked back into his store from his smoke break with one of our pamphlets without even realizing. 

Funny how you just meet awesome people. But I think it is even better when awesome people find you. 

We were talking with someone when this other man, John, ran up to us and told us he wanted our number. He seemed super interested and we excused ourselves for a second and exchanged numbers. Now he wants to take us out to eat. 

Back to Tuesday, We had our Temple day for the transfer. Tuesday was really great. We ran into a Russian couple who didn't have anyone to attend there wedding ceremony and we were invited to attend. It was an interesting experience having a Korean preform a wedding ceremony in English and then the Russian couple was reading what he said in Russian. It was such an amazing experience. 

Now to the anchovies. We went and helped our less active friend, Oonsung, and like always he wouldn't let us leave until he feed us. After ordering food for us, he pulled out his collection of kimchi to add to the meal. Some how dried shredded candied anchovies ended up onto the table. 

That was probably one of the grossest things I ate. 

In Korea, you have to try all the side dishes at least twice in order for it to be polite, at least that is what I am told. I just tried to stick to the Kimchis. Dinner was super good and we are hoping to see him at church next week. 

Thursday we had another surprise. Elder Whitting came and spoke to us. He is the Area President for the Asia North portion of the church. He is super funny and I really felt inspired after I spoke with him. He said his main assignment from the Quorum of the Twelve was to make sure that President and Sister Sonksen (The mission president and his wife who are in charge of all the missionaries in the Korea South Mission, where Colten is assigned to serve. President Sonksen is the one in charge of making assignments and watching over the missionaries of the area) had not turned tail and flown back home. He was cracking jokes the whole day that we were with him. It was really great.

Hope everything is well back home, 

Try to stay awesome.

Love Elder Brown

Spicy Chicken Feet (August 2)

I apologize that all he seems to be writing about is food. I know he is learning and experiencing so many different and more interesting things. 

So I missed a bit from last week. I had two dinner appointments I forgot to talk about. One was with a member family at Asheley's. It is a Korean take on an American Buffet. It was really good and I thought I ate fishes eyes. But my companion disappointed me by telling me that it was some fruit, that makes more sense because it was in a fruit salad, but I think I will go with fish eyes. Anyways after 4 plates of dinner, I decided to move on to 4 plates of dessert. It was really good, but I felt sick afterwards. 

Also last week we had a dinner appointment with someone who I call Dog tattoo. I forgot his name and we met him right after he got this tattoo of a dog, hence the nickname. We had octopus and vegetables with the all to common apron of protection. It seems that anytime we end up going to a restaurant, we are given aprons to protect our white shirts. Sometimes they work... 

Speaking of dinner appointments... Whoever prayed for me to have some might have needed to specify a day... We met a really cool Irish couple this last week. They just moved here and are going to be teaching English here. They were super friendly, hopefully the other elders will meet them... 

Then just a little farther on down the road a man tells us to follow him into a 약국 or pharmacy, here in Korea they are all over the place. Then he buys us this vitamin drink and makes us drink it. Then he beckons us to continue to follow him saying that we look like we need to get something to drink. We go into a convenience store and he goes 'let me buy you some coffee.' we go 'no we don't drink coffee' he says 'don't worry, I wasn't going to get you hot coffee, We are going to get cold coffee' Eventually, we convinced him that we didn't drink coffee and he bought us a blue raspberry lemonade iced thing and started talking to us. It was a weird conversation, but after he was satisfied that we looked ok, he dismissed us to our dinner appointment. 

Before we saw him we had each just had a bottle of Gatorade so I don't know why he thought we needed a drink. But now that we are full of liquids we ran, more super speed walked, to our dinner appointment. Luckily we only had one that night. It was on the army base so we got stopped by the guards and they wouldn't let us through till the Special Forces Cornol came and got us. (We were eating with him) He served in Japan and he was super friendly. After making us finish the two serving dishes of some sort of chilighetti, we had a huge bowl of ice cream. Then we watched as he and his wife filled 3 bags full of meals and snacks to take home and have this coming week. Yep, pretty awesome, they even drove us home!

Well because transfers (A transfer is six weeks. Missionaries stay in their assigned areas until they are transferred. The mission president is the one who assigns the missionaries to their areas.) ended this last week we got a call from the AP's (assistant to the president. Also young missionaries like Colten, called to serve for a short period of their mission in a leadership position to assist the mission president with a variety of tasks). 

I got transferred! 

I am going to 일산 or ilsan! Now I get to live with the celeberties! 

I have no Idea who my companion is, we were not told this transfer. My companion is also leaving, he is headed for 의장부 uijangbu. Should be fun I guess. With this new information, I am now filled with dread because we have to eat all the food that the Cornol gave us before Wednesday... I don't think it will happen.

 Sunday came and we were told we were going to eat dinner with a really nice family, but before we could eat dinner with them, we would have to take the sacrament to someone in their home (The sacrament is the formal blessing and administering of bread and water representing the body and blood of Christ to Church members, usually during a Sunday worship meeting. It is the equivalent of communion in many other Christian churches.) . The old lady we went to visit was really nice and even feed us food. The only problem  with this is after the dinner she feed us we were going to be going to another dinner appointment. So we finally finished the chicken that she gave both of us and the vegetables that went with it and then the yogurt that followed, and ran to our next appointment. 

The directions we had were not very good so we got lost and were 30 minutes late, but they made sure we ate a lot, I think I gained 10 pounds yesterday... I also was told to try the spicy fried chicken foot, had I known it was chicken foot, I probably would not have eaten it. It was ok, but it didn't taste like chicken. 

Next week I will be writing in a new city, but I am still super excited.

Love

Elder Brown

Sunshine through the Rain

Ok, so this past week has been really great. Sorry about the build on the jelly beans. I thought I saw a sign for 100g of jelly beans for 250won so that's about a fourth of a pound for 25cents. Turns out it was 10g for 250won... oops, but I did get gold fish for a dollar! 

Our American dinner appointment was great. We had Hawaiian haystacks, I forgot how much I missed them. Then we taught a lesson on baptism because the oldest son was getting baptized. It was so awesome. Service was a lot of fun this week, although I now have a funny story... language barriers, got to love them right... anyways for another time. After service we always eat at this sandwich place called tospia, actually really good and really inexpensive? Anyways, the lady is super nice and always gives us a free lemonade with our food. She also gave us a huge plate of 떡 or rice cake. 

On Wednesday I ate with a bib at a restaurant... they gave them to everyone, but it was a weird experience for me. The food was really good, 짜짱명  a really good Chinese dish. We only ate out because our district leader had to leave a week early before transfers, so we joined the other district. It was basically a district zone meeting... 

On Thursday we tried to visit a possible investigator, in our mission, we have to meet the person twice and have a return appointment in order to have them qualify as an investigator, but he was busy. He is so ready to hear the gospel though, I wish he would see how much this could change his life. We also got asked to check on a new member, a member was found living in our ward that hasn't been to church, he lives on the very edge of our area, about an hour away. We didn't find him, but we talked with the people up there, they are super nice and have never seen a foreigner. It is really funny because when the kids see us they go 와국인입니다. or 'Its a foreigner' Sorry, I never learned how to spell well. I sldo experienced what happens when your sister forgot to pray for you...

 It started pouring, and I mean raining. 

Thankfully we brought umbrellas.

 On Friday, we were supposed to go meet with another possible investigator, but he cancelled on us. Claimed he was moving to Germany that day for business related issues and was at the airport. I found it funny that he decided to move over night, but oh well, guess the next set of missionaries can talk to him in three years. Hopefully we can meet him some other time. 

On Saturday we decided it was time to move out of the cloud that we have been living in for the last week or so. It started pouring very hard. I think by the end of the day, my brown shoes were closer to the color black than brown. Then we had another dinner appointment. It was really good. I still can not get over the fact that I am eating octopus sometimes...Anyways, This week has been a blast. I hope it has started to dry out back home, just remember that even if there is is rain outside in your life, There can always be 'Sunshine in (Your) Soul Today' this weeks theme song.

 Anyways Hope you are doing well. How has God blessed your life this week? I know He has and I can not even see you!

Love

Elder Brown

July 19th

Wow, this has been a great week! So last week P-day ( Preparation day: the missionaries have one day a week, usually Monday, to do everything that they need to do to prepare for the week.This includes grocery shopping, writing emails home, laundry, and some sight seeing and fun. This way they can focus all their attention to studying and teaching the rest of the week.) was a little weird... We emailed on Monday, but had P-day on Tuesday. This is because we went to the Temple! It was amazing! I really liked the artwork. It has a really interesting Korean touch to it. 

After the temple we went to a fun pizza buffet which happened to be on top of another resturant on top of a store on top of a different store. We had to ride a maze of escalators... Its how we do it in Korea! The pizza was really good. I really like this sweet potato pizza that they have here. It is really good. They also had this really good fruit salad with a fruit that is white, but it has a bunch of black seeds in it. Kinda looks like cookies and cream Ice cream in a cube. It was super good though. 

Sorry I forgot to take pictures... but they had really good Ice cream! I think I have been eating a lot of popcicles lately... they are really cheap and it is really hot. Speaking of popcicles, I tried a corn flavered one. Never Again... It was like a frozen milk bar with corn kernals inside of it... now I know why there were so many in the freezer... I also tried this really good one. It is half Chocolate covered ice cream bar covered in milk, half cookies and cream ice cream bar. Super Amazing. 

We also got our first investigators! They are a married couple that met the missionaries a few years ago and they are really interested in the church. You can just call them the Choen family (전) They are really awesome and they took us out to dinner. 

FUN FACT: if you know nothing about Korean culture, it revolves around food. (Which is probably why his whole email is practically about food. I bet he forgot to bring his journal or was ready to eat lunch so naturally he talked about food.) An appropriate way to ask how someone is doing is by asking if they have eaten They got us each these big bologna things, basicaly really really tasty super thin very large hamburger. But it is seriously, amazing. Really hard to eat with chopsticks...but super fun. 

We have been walking a lot especially because WE LIVE ON THE SIDE OF THE SOUTH MOUNTAIN but that's ok, it has been a lot of fun. We also streetboarded this past week, we stand on a corner full of people and ask people to put a sticker on our board which contains questions. Then we ask them what they think the answer to the question is I.E. Where are we going after we die? Then we can start teaching, it is pretty awesome. Afterwards we ate at this place that is better than McDonalds, but not super amazing. They had this european burger that was really good though. It was a regular burger with all the works (except ketchup) but it had an extra cheese pattie. Seriously it was a fried slice of strange cheese, really good. And because one cheap ice cream cone is not enough, I had three. Can't think of anything else, but I maybe getting jelly beans today... a lot of jelly beans. we will see

Lots of love from Korea,

Elder Brown

Oh! we have an American 식사 tonight! I am so looking forward to this! 

식사 = Dinner appointment

Finding Joy in All Things

So another week, not enough time to describe everything that happened.

So this past week we received a call from a Sri Lankan man. There seem to be more foreigners or 외극인's interested in the gospel than Koreans. But that is ok. Anyways, he is a member who needed some help and knew that missionaries can help people. He is really interesting and super cool. He is in a rock band and he is also 54. He had some pretty cool pictures of him in the 80's. After we helped him with what we could, we said good bye. It was a weird experience, but he is super cool. 

This week, I met three Canadians too. One of them is a translator. I think he has a really cool job because he gets to travel the world. Then I also bumped into a Canadian couple here on vacation. They are really awesome. 

Also, I started playing a game while we are out street contacting. So, the streets are always full of police officers here in Seoul. Every time I pass one I say hello. But the funny thing is no one every says hello to the police officers so they look at me funny if I have never said it before to them. The cool part though is their response when I have spoken to them before. Sometimes, a police officer will even greet me before I can greet him. Kind of a lame game, but it makes me smile and it makes them smile too. 

We also had a crazy lesson this week. The person was 20 minutes late, but we talked with him as we walked to the church from the train station. We then gave him a tour of the church and then we tried to teach him a lesson. He was really interested, but he told us right off the bat that he didn't believe in feelings from the Holy Ghost. It was a really hard lesson, but it went ok. 

We also had exchanges this past week. Our district leader, Elder Mac, has two companions. I went with them and it is really interesting how they go about helping others come unto Christ, but I really learned a lot. I feel like I have been doing a lot of that. We also stopped and got Ice cream because it was super hot and humid (more so than in Missouri). That same day, we taught English and the Assistants to the President had a baptism. I think we ended up spending the whole day at the Church. 

So after English class, when we were setting up for the baptism, we noticed there were a lot of mosquitoes. Turns out someone had left the windows open in the women's bathroom. After closed the window, we looked out side and saw this massive ball of mosquitoes. It was gross. 30 minutes before the baptism, we (the missionaries) were told we were doing a musical number. In Korea, the do things a little differently... after we finished the musical number (singing during the baptismal service) the congregation started clapping for us. It was a little different. But the baptismal service went well. That's pretty much it for the Week... oh monsoon season is about to go into full swing, don't worry about me, with all your prayers, I probably wont get too wet :)

Elder Brown

Fun Fact: Our church building (the one to which I am assigned) has 3 floors and a basement, all owned by the church. The church was built in like 1983 and it has not been remodled since the constuction... I think. But the roof belongs to the city of Seoul. There is a really nice city park on the roof. I found this out this week.

When You Don't Understand, Testify of Christ

So last Monday, we went and toured one of the many palaces here in Seoul. I will have to send pictures later but it was huge! We walked around for 2.5 hours and we didn't see everything. It was so much fun, but we didn't have enough time to go shopping... We ended up going to a little market and paying rediculous prices for everything. Can of spagetti sauce 3300won or $3.30. Yep, we are not going back there again, ever!

 On Tuesday, we do service at a retirement home of sorts. The old people are so awesome! We made crafts with them and did puzzles, it was so much fun, I only which I could have helped by grandma with her puzzle better. Basically, when she got confussed and asked for help I said, 'maybe here?' becaus ethat is all I know when it comes to puzzles. After service they gave us a bunch of bread from a bakery that is all over Seoul. Paris Bargutte. We ate at this sandwhich place that I guess we are supposed to go to every week. The sandwiches are very cheap and the owner is super nice, she gave us free drinks to go with our sandwiches. Then we taught English which is supprisingly fun. I also gave the spritual message at the end...in korean...which was fun. 

Wednesday, my companion was called a ginger, which is funny because he is. We also handed out flyers for  the free English class that we teach. It was really weird because I was talking to girls. 

-SIDENOTE- in korean culture, if a man approaches a woman it is generally excepted that the man is flittering with the woman. In order to prevent that, the past mission president said 'no talking with girls'. This however does not apply to handing out fliers for English class.- 

Thursday we meet President Sonkson. He is super cool and is going to be a great mission president. But the highlight of the week was that night. We were eating dinner, wishing we had something to drink besides water...big mistake. 

For all of you preparing to go on missions, save yourself the trouble and do not have this thought. So we leave the apartment and Elder Bishop gets a phone call, not thinking, he turns down the wrong road. He ends the call and keeps going. As we are walking, we see two old men struggling to move this big wooden chest. We ask if we can help and a women walking down the hill told us to go help them. We run and help them, but one of them disappears. When we finish, we are told that we can not leave because the other man went to get us drinks. At this point we are hot and sweaty and would just like a glass of water, but the man comes back with soda and expensive milk. The old men, at least in their late 60's then tell us to drink. Now in Korea, if an old person tells you to do something, you do it, but we really have to go. 

So we end up drinking a bottle of super carbonated( Korean Soda is more carbonated than American) Orange Fanta and some other kind that tastes like Sprite in about 30 secs. Not smart, but the old men are almost in tears because they are so happy that we helped them and even more so for accepting their token of appriciation. We got away with not drinking the milk in front of them, but only under the condition that we take it with us. After asking them to meet the missionaries in the area that they are moving to, we headed down the road we wanted to go down originally. But this was up a super steep hill. By the time we made it up, we felt a little sick, but we keep going. While helping the old men, we missed a phone call, so Elder Bishop returned it. While he is on the phone, we pass two women, but in the fading light, it looks like one of them is a man. I say hello and the woman that I thought was a man responds. Then turns around real fast and starts talking to me. I still understand nothing but I act like I do because that is what I was told to do. You act like you understand them and then you testify about Christ and then they understand that you don't speak Korean. Well, she knows that we are missionaries. 

SIDENOTE- After the conversation, Elder Bishop infortms me that she is a buddist monk.- 

She says something about UTAH and BYU and I thought, "oh she is asking if I am going to go to BYU in Utah," luckily, I can respond to this. So we are talking and she motions up the hill and says something. I thought she said 'I am going this way, can you walk this way with me?' I agree, turns out she was asking if she could buy us something to drink... So we talk a little bit more and she stops at a convience store and I see her go to the drink section. I think to myself, I really hope she doesn't buy us something to drink. She ended up getting both of us orange juice and super expensive apple juice. Crazy right! well my companion was on the phone for this whole conversation and he tells me that the person he was on ther phone with wanted to take us out to dinner. It was a crazy night. 

I know that God is always looking out for us and wants us to always be happy. If He could answer a small desire of our hearts, He will answer your concerns. 

ON Friday we met a really cool kid, but as my companion was talking with him, a drunk man (there are a lot sometimes) stops me and wants to talk with me. Lets just say that it was really interesting to see him try to not fall over and he had a lot to say to me. The kid that we met though is super cool though. I really like him. He even tried to help me understand what he was saying. 

Saturday was uneventful, except for English class. 

On Sunday, I gave my welcome to the ward talk. But we also had a super awesome suprise. So we are greeting people at the door, all 8 missionaries in the ward, and this girl walks right up to the sisters and says 'I am looking for my God. I am from China. I want to be baptized today.' Yes that was rather exciting for the sisters, but it just tells me that there are many people ready and willing to come closer to God. 

That is all I have for this week.

Love

Elder Brown

KOREA!

WOW! this has been a crazy week. Sorry if I miss spell something. I am typing on a korea keyboard. And the pictures will be fun to work with. To start back in America... I have forgotten just about everything. Sorry. I can tell you that we had a lot of fun and that we studied hard, but other than that, I have nothing.

The flight: Well to begin, we went to bed around 12:30am and woke up around 3? maybe, I have forgotten, but it was really early in the morning. So we make it to our bus on time, We load the bus, get on the bus and it won't start. oops. So then all the missionaries ( I am traveling with at least 75 people to the airport) get off the bus. It starts, we get back on the bus. We barely make it to the train station and we hop on the train. Then we transffer trains. This is fun because one of the sisters in my district recently had surgery, she had to have her gall bladder removed. So as we move all her stuff, and ours, we catch the train. We make it to the airport and then we are going through security. We saw Stacy! the one from studio C. We didn't ㅗㅁㅍㄷ 샤ㅡㄷ 새 ㅅ맏 ㅗㅑㄴ ㅔㅑㅊ셕ㄷ, oops, have time to take his picture. We made it to our flight and it was a really nice flight. But then our landing was delayed due to the fog. This was a problem because our connection flight to korea was leaving soon. When we landed, we ran as fast as we could to our flight. We made it with 2 min to spare. Lets just say that Prayer works! I slept for most of the flight to Korea, could do a whole lot else. When we landed we were all super excited. We walked throught the airport, it was super empty and made it to customs. There were a bunch of health signs up too. But that is ok, as a missionary I have promised myself that I can not get sick. Plus the Mission ㅖㄱㄷ냥둣 ㅅ맏ㄴ ㄱㄷ미ㅣㅛ 해ㅐㅇ president takes really good care of us. We get of the plane after we go through customs and find our bags. Then we go out and meet our mission president and his wife. The Christensens are so nice, but they go home on thursday. Our new president gets here on Wednesday. It should be fun. They take our bags and we go and teach the gospel on the trains. That was... an experience. I think I have forgotten all Korean, either that or they taught me cantoneese in the MTC. On the train we met a man from Cambodia, he is studing here. He is super good at english which is good because I am too  Then we went and saw a 4-D historical film and then went to president's house. It was a lot of fun. I had my first taste of Kimchi... it was ok. and we had melona which is a  super awesome popcicle. After a quick personal introduction to president, we went to bed. The next morning after breackfast, we had a meeting all morning in which we found our trainers. Then we had Korean Pizza, which is way better than American. Then we had more classes and then we headed to our new homes. Public transportation and suit cases is not very fun... After hiking a small hill, we made it to our new home. It was a litttle messy, but that is ok because we cleaned it up later. Then we went to work. We were supposed to meet someone at the church, but he didn't show up. We had kimchi chige which is the hottest soup you will ever have, in boyh ways. The Koreans started laughing at us because our faces were turning red because of how hot the soup was. The next day we went out looking for people to teach. This is because my trainer and I are new to the area. As we were walking a man ran up to us and asked if we taught about God. After we confemind this he demanded, more like politly informed us that he really wanted to learn about God, us to teach him at his resturant later. We agreed, I mean that is our job, no? The rest of the day was super great as well. The nxt day we were lost and asked a man to help us. He couldn't help us, but he bought us ICecream, which is good enough right? We eventually found our way. Church was interesting... seeing how it was all in Korean. During Sunday school, I was asked to go with another Missionary to pick up a man from a mental Hospital. He is a convert and was fine until he was nearly choked to death by one of his customers. He was a taxi driver. They were driving over a river and he drove off the side into the river. He is the nicest person in the world though. I really like him. As we were walking back to the church, a man stopped us and asked if we taught about God. Before we could share a message with him, his caretakers dragged him away. After Church, which was ward conference and my mission presidents farewell. ( We had to do a special musical number in the middle of the meeting. It was a lot of fun) We had a 식사 ward lunch. I think I ate octapus or intestince, maybe a heart, liver?, chicken, chopcha, cucumber kimshi, super awful gross kimchi and aprocot jelly cubes. That is all That I have for now.

브라운장로

Elder Brown