Elder Wardle's Mission Letter

 I survived my first week in 대전 (Daejeon)! I've got a ton of content to get to this week; this has been by far the busiest week of my mission so far; we arrived home before 10 only once! Transfers happened on Tuesday, and I met my new companion Elder Zito! He's great, with a very action oriented mindset. I think we compliment each other well, because our skills don't overlap, so we are going to really have to rely on each other. This is the first companionship of mine where my companion isn't just universally better than me, and carrying my own weight is both rewarding and terrifying, particularly because my Korean is the better of us two, and that's not because I have passable Korean. Good news is is that I'm temporarily in a trio with Elder 성현(Seonghyeon)! He is serving in the 대전 (Daejeon) 2 Ward, and will be companions with one of the missionaries currently in quarantine so we will be in a trio for the first 2 weeks of the transfer. He is a legendary missiona...

 Wow this has been a busy week, particularly in the last few days! I started off the week with a transfer with Elder Bagley. It was actually a transfer between the 김제 Elders, the 익산/군산 Elders, and the APs, so we split the 익산/군산 area in two and had Bagley and me in 군산, and it was awesome! It was the first transfer I have been on where I was the senior companion which was kind of crazy. It was comforting to see other missionaries struggle with their language in the same ways I do, and also a warning sign of what can happen in an area if nobody in the area can speak good Korean. We also had several meetings with members this week which was a blessing. The members of this branch are all very unique and I enjoy getting to serve them and get to know them. We made cookies to share with the members on Sunday, and it was kind of a mess. We had to mix shortening without a hand mixer, we didn't have a bowl big enough for the dough, etc etc etc. BUT the cookies turned out really tasty! In the ...

  My 21st Birthday This week is going to be two weeks worth of content, because  somebody  forgot to hit send on last week's email and it ended up sad and alone, sitting in my outbox for a week. I don't know who that was, but I've rearranged the info to fit in this week's email. We have slowly been losing our minds doing Facebook finding all day, so one thing we have started doing is just traveling to random locations and talking to people along the way. We are still unable to do street contacting, but we are absolutely able to say hello to everyone we meet, and if they engage us in a conversation we are able to talk! We have visited a few of the satellite villages in the area, but without much success, considering these "villages" aren't much more than a gas station, a cafe, and half a dozen houses that may or may not be abandoned, so we will likely be sticking to the main road in 긴제 (Gimje). Christmas was also way more simple than I'm used to! Christ...