Elder Wardle's Mission Letter

  The Most Beautiful Field is White and Ready to Harvest This is going to be a short update, as we spent all of our preparation day today hiking in Mount Jiri National Park, and it has left me very fulfilled, but tired. That being said, I would be remiss to slouch out on an opportunity to update you with pictures and news from my new area! First of all, the members of this branch are incredible. It is a much larger branch with more active worthy priesthood holders than my previous exposure to serving in a countryside branch, being Gimje. We have already had opportunities to serve the members twice, which involved helping one member move, and the other harvest sweet potatoes! This is in addition to a couple member meals, and I was only serving in my area for 3 full days this week! We also have some visitors to our branch for the next few weeks! A family from Utah will be saying in 남원 (Namwon) for a couple months for part vacation/part taking care of a newborn around family, as ...

 A Short Stay in Chungju This past week was the week of transfer calls. We knew Elder Smith would be leaving,  so we spent a lot of our time meeting with members so I could be very familiar with the work in the area. I love spending time with members and this was a fantastic week because of it.  But then transfer calls came and Elder Wardle staying in Chungju was not to be! Turns out I will be moving to Namwon this next transfer, with the lovely Elder Idiart! I'm surprised, but also excited. That area has been filled with my previous companions for a long time, and I look forward to serving in one of the smallest cities in our mission. This week while teaching a lesson about faith, our friend asked a very insightful question. We had been talking about the Savior's teachings found in Matthew 17: 20, which teaches that even a small amount of faith can give us the power to move mountains. Our friend thought about the scripture for a moment, and then asked where we move the m...

 Chuseok and a Year in Korea What a wonderful last two weeks we have had down in Korea! In some ways it's been busy, and in others more of the same, so I will try to pick out the highlights here I started off the week with an exchange with Elder Wagner. We started in the MTC together, and it was fun to reminisce, particularly as the date of the exchange was exactly one year from when we finished the MTC. We had a busy schedule of meeting potential English interests over zoom, but most of them canceled. We also met an old Muslim teaching friend for dinner. He ended up being 30 minutes late and came with 2 girls we had never seen before. It was a pretty aggressive double dating setup, with too many questions about if we could help get them American Visas, so we took the fact that they were late as an excuse to leave early ourselves for the sake of our "other appointment". I'd heard stories from other missionaries, so it was good to get that out of the way and made for a...