September 12, 2022 - ChungJu

 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 an amusing topic of discussion for the next hour or so.

This past week was also the biggest holiday in Korea! It's a holiday called Chuseok, and functions as a Korean thanksgiving, but on the scale of Christmas. The focus is on family and food, and most everyone travels to their hometown for the extended 3-day holiday to spend time with their family. It was very fun talking to everyone about what their plans for the holiday were, and how their families have blessed them, but when the holiday itself came, very few people have hometowns in Chungju, which left all the streets empty and the shops closed. It is against the culture, even for missionaries, to invade families' Chuseok time, and our mission knew that, so we planned a fantastic mission-wide activity in Daejeon! We played traditional Korean games and ate amazing food, and had a lovely training on how families and family history can help us with our missionary work. It also marked the exact year mark from when I arrived in Korea. It was so much fun, and I am so grateful for my own family.

Today was a special deep cleaning preparation day, which means we changed the schedule to be an all-day preparation day to give us extra time to clean. A challenge has also been presented, the cleanest apartment in each zone will get a chicken coupon, and I will always fight for chicken. But here is our little secret: ever since I got here, we have been deep cleaning the apartment one room at a time. When we learned of this challenge, we had already checked off all the to-do items on previous preparation days. We also spent the night before during our "prepare for bed" time recleaning and touching up, which gave us the entirety of today to do as we please. If you are wondering what crazy adventures we decided to do with this once-in-a-mission opportunity, you may be surprised to know that we just rested and relaxed haha. No regrets! I feel more alive than I have in a long time!

I hope you all have a stupendous week!

Elder Wardle

Pictures: We hiked up to some old ruins, visited a Korean temple, Huge mission activity, my mom sent me a new pair of shoes - yes, the old shoes used to be that dark color