Call To Serve: Korea, Daejeon Mission: It's Tough

April 27, 2015

Well, I’m here in the little city of Iksan now. Before I came here, we basically just met with as many people as we could to say good bye. Kinda sad, but there’s always good things ahead. And I really do feel like I am meant to be here in Iksan. But man, it is dang hard. The people here just completely ignore me when I try to talk. I’ve been trying harder than ever to talk to people and find investigators (because right now we really only have 1, who I haven’t met yet) but I have been consistently rejected harder than ever. I’ve only been here a few days, but man, it’s tough! I had one guy just straight up say he doesn’t like Jesus, and when I tried to strike a conversation with another guy by asking how big his family is, he very rudely just said, “Why?” I explained to a guy on the bus the other day that was just completely ignoring me and refusing to talk that I have left behind everything in my life to share this message and serve people, yet people see me and just immediately reject me. I don’t know. My comp. Elder Kim just keeps talking about how much he hates this area and wants to leave. I don’t want to leave, I want to succeed, and I want to do it here. When I saw Pres. Shin at the transfer meeting, all he said to me was to change Iksan. But how??

At church I learned that the 1^st counselor tries to take the missionaries out to restaurants on Sunday. This other guy told us we have to come to the church Mon.-Wed. at 6 and play ping pong because of the ping pong wars in the world. What the heck?? And there were less than 20 people at church, majority women. I know that this is where I need to be, but I just don’t know how to do it. Anyways, we were able to meet one person, Darlin, from the Philippines! The bad news is she is a 7^th day Adventist missionary and lives at that church. The good news is she has incredible faith! She tried to fast for 40 days, made it to 23 and was then hospitalized!! She’s met with missionaries for a little bit, but gets hung up on stuff like spirits and what not. Yeah, so there’s my week. It was better than this letter makes it seem, I swear! Oh! At church I gave a little talk and shared D&C 1:23 and 84:88. Look them up! And happy wedding Elizabeth and Jeff!!!

Love,

Elder Anderson

Me and our old guy investigator