HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey president,
This has been a tough week. We've been working super hard, trying to find new investigators, but its been tough.
Anyways, study has been pretty great, I've been continuing reading Jesus the Christ, and studying for investigators and members just to try and figure out what they need. Its been a struggle to stay awake during study recently, but I'm doing better right now. Study is something thats pretty important to me and a lot of times I feel selfish about it. I feel like I spend too much time studying for myself and not for our investigators, but I've been having trouble picking out what their needs are to tell the truth. All the same I feel if I just stay awake, I can get all the study I need done, both for me, and for the investigators haha.
Speaking of investigators, we have a baptism on saturday! I'm super excited about it because to tell the truth, I feel like I did nothing with the previous baptism, and this one I've played a much more active role in. The investigator is pretty awesome in my eyes. At first it was really obvious that he was just going to church and meeting us because of the pressure his brother (the investigator is a referral) had been putting on him. Now he has some real friends in the ward, and I think he is really genuinely progressing in great ways.
Training is still going great, Elder Hunter and I get along really well. Interestingly enough, this week, Korean has been super hard for me. I am not sure what is is, but its just been harder this week. Maybe I need to be more aware of it in my prayers, but regardless, its not the most important part of the work.
One miracle that was awesome this week, is that despite the difficulties, we did find a new investigator!! He came to english class, and we shared a message with him, and we think he has interest. He is being fellowshipped by another investigator actually, really interesting haha. That other investigator is an amazing missionary and when he gets baptized he will be amazing for 계산 ward.

Have a great week President and see you on Sunday!

Wooooooooo!  Happy birthday dad!
I'm sorry I haven't sent anything, but I plan on sending things for Moms birthday for all of you!  Especially Mom and Dad though because of birthdays and then Christmas too, but nonetheless, things will be sent.  Hopefully they are fun Korean things!
If you have any requests for things you want, I'd love to do my best to try and find them.  Still no dice whatsoever on a Korean nativity.  Christmas isn't big, but I could probably find you something with a big fat schwastica on it because it doesn't mean anything bad in Korea!  It was really weird when I first came here and saw them all over the place.  It's some ancient symbol for something here.  I'm not sure what it is yet, but nonetheless, that can be sent if you so please.  However it probably will not be remotely well recieved in America so I discourage having interest in that.  Seriously.
This week has been tough to say the least.  It was super hard to stay motivated.  We keep on recieving promises that we will find investigators, and for the longest time, had not a lick of success.  I can street contact on my own now, and can more or less understand whats going on when I call people on my own too, so between the two of us, talking to lots of people is not a problem.  The thing that is problematic, is finding people who are genuinely interested, and don't just want to learn english.  We're supposed to be able to find three investigators a week, and we have been pulling up zeros for weeks in a row, BUT... this week we finally saw success, and we found a new investigator!!!... as you already read in the part to president haha.  I don't know much about him really because the way he showed up and was an investigator all the sudden was really surprising.  I would be meeting with him again tomorrow, but we're going on exchanges with the zone leaders and I won't be here for his lesson :'(  That's alright though, as long as he gets taught by someone,  I have no preference, and the zone leader who will be teaching him with my companion is super awesome anyways. 
I want to give a huge thank you to Kari really quick for helping out my sister with her bridal shower!  That's so awesome that that could work out, and it's so nuts how soon Lindsay will not share the same last name as me...  Kinda sad but cool at the same time.  Just as long as the first child's middle name is "waitforit".
I had heard about the shooting that occurred this week, I didn't know that it was that many people that were involved.  I heard about it at a meal we were having with a potential investigator, who is awesome, but unfortunately doesn't really have much desire to learn.  Anyways, I heard about it and was just immediately upset.  It was like a two hour long lunch appointment, and it took me like 20 minutes to be willing to talk again.  I feel so sorry for what happened.  It makes me sad to think that people are put in that state of mind to where that sort of violence seems becoming to them.  Reading about it only made it harder to think about, and it was hard to maintain composure really as I read it.  I think this is the second shooting that I've heard about in the past two weeks or so.  I really hope that none of this has to do with stupid theories about 2012.  How are people doing with regards to that anyways?  Fortunately nobody in Korea believes in that by the way.
Well with regard to other things, I had a really good experience yesterday at church.  It was with the investigator who will be baptized on saturday, and I lead the lesson.  My companion was helping people do something, not sure what , but it doesn't really matter, so I was with some young Elders, like Kyle Merkley's age, teaching this young man.  In missionary work, you're always supposed to give commitments and such, and there weren't many new commitments to give to the investigator, but his older brother who referred him seemed in need of one.  In Korea, if somebody older than you in your family tells you to do something, you do it.  THats the way the culture is pretty much, but it's kinda problematic in that regard for people to actually be converted.  Anyways, I told the older brother to make sure he's helping his younger brother as best he can.  I told the younger brother it was his responsibility to himself to follow christ.  Granted, his older brother has stock in the situation, but that he should not be converted for his brother.  It was really cool in my opinion, just because it was the first time I've played much of a role in the lesson and felt really prompted to do something out of the ordinary.
This week has been tough, but awesome at the same time.  There's always something to learn from and I love serving here in Korea.  It's tough, but luckily our ward members are awesome, and seeing them is a great motivation to keep working.
Everyone is so awesome and I'm sorry that I haven't been able to do Korean time, it's just hard to teach for me haha.  I can talk, and usually understand, but teching via email is tough.  If people are upset at its absence let me know, and I will try and accomodate time for it in the future

I love you all!
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transfers happened this week, I refuse to be clever at this point...

We don't like when he's sad, but we sure do love learning experiences =)


Hey President!

This week has been a little tougher than the past few, but that's okay we keep on working. For study I've started reading Jesus the Christ a lot actually. It's really interesting to learn a bunch of the secular and kinda non church affiliated ongoings of the time around Jesus Christ's ministry, as well as learning more about the spiritual side of things. I though it was really interesting how Elder Talmadge takes a great deal of time to explain basically every facet of pre-birth Christ and what all went on with regard to that. I think it's really great to learn from in that respect and increase our knowledge of whats going on.
One of the reasons that this week has been so tough was because aside from the one investigator that we have that will be getting baptized in not too long, we have no investigators. This isn't because we haven't been looking for investigators, but just because we've had no success finding. It's really tough because we spend lots of time conacting, all to no avail. We want more people to teach but its just more and more hard. That being said we've been trying to work with less actives to help them and find investigators through them. No great success yet but we'll keep trying.
Training is going good as always. This week was cool because I got to see where I was six weeks ago and how far I've come. It really is amazing the progress that is made when the Lord has an active hand in the growth of a young man. While this week we did work pretty hard, there was one day that I definitely could have worked harder. Elder Hunter was working super hard on I believe last tuesday, and I just was being lazy. On the day there was a total of 41 contacts and during our contacting time where we split up, I only got 4 contacts. It really was a shameful experience, and I feel awful for it. While there have been days that were substantially more tough than that one day, that day was definitely the worst day of my mission thus far. Definitely was a day to learn from.

Have a great week president!

-Elder Clawson
 
Hey everybody!
Another week in Korea and I am still loving it here!  So with transfers now, they have whats called the 12 week program, so usually new missionaries stay with their trainer for at least 2 transfers and dont move around really, so I hope that answers your questions about transfers.  And yes I did kinda have a day of suck.  I seriously had the worst feeling that night of my entire life.  I know when I broke my collar bone that I joked around and said "I want to kill myself" and what not, but really having wasted time of both mine, the Korean people's time, and especially the Lord's time, that night I went to sleep hoping that I could feel the slightest bit better the next morning about my performance that day.  I ended up not feeling better, but the next day was better nonetheless.  The day I sucked we had like 3 hours of planned contacting time, and I didn't talk to hardly anyone, and the next day, we had not a minute of contacting time planned, nor did we do any of it, and I talked to the same amount of people.  Needless to say I felt a lot better about myself that day.
A little more about the place we live at since you guys want to know.  So the bathroom is also the place where we have the laundry machine, yes it is pretty small, but only kinda small by Korean standards.  A huge apartment in Korea is about the same size as an Lindsays apartment in college was.  Not big at all...  So yeah kinda cramped, but thats okay.  The bad actually is big enough for me, Koreans are relatively large with respect to the rest of the Asian community, but still lived in incredibly cramped living quarters.  Actually when I first got here, we found a full mattress and I sleep with a 요 on top of that so it's pretty comfy.  We talk to other missionaries pretty often.  We haven't had a p-day we didn't and usually we do some contacting together at least twice a week, and always do english class together.  English class is okay, nothing super crazy and is kinda fun usually, there's some people that come that are just english sucks as we call them, which means they have zero gospel interest and come just to learn english.  Kinda tough to put up with usually too but thats okay.
So like I said in the attached thing up top, it is super cool to see the new missionaries come in!  Well after the day that I sucked, I had been revitalized in my will and desire to talk to people and such!  Thursday, when our district was contacting together, I took one of the missionaries (every companionship in our district is training now, its kinda crazy, I'm technically older than 2 missionaries in my district out of 6 total) and was showing him how to 전도.  I ended up running into two people who wanted to bible bash.  It really is irritating.  It bothered me soooooo much.  I seriously don't understand why people get so hung up on things that are of such a trivial nature like what these two people wanted to talk about, especially since later I looked up their arguments in true to the faith, and now I can rebut them, with the bible!  Suck on that one crazy people who believe in "Heavenly mother", not with regards to the wife of God, but with regards to Jesus reincarnated as a woman.  It's weird, don't worry about it too much.  Anyways, yeah, I can understand people to the point where I know when they want to argue with me, but did not argue back!  We aren't supposed to bible bash you know, so I just testified, and said that since I'm young I don't know how to answer their questions, and if they want to know why we believe the way we do, they can go to mormon.org ^^.  That was fun for me hahaha.
Time is starting to go by pretty fast I would say.  Also fun fact, I had totally forgotten that I spoke in the MTC.  The new missionaries were saying that my Korean was better when I left the MTC than they are right now.  I still don't think so, but my companion says I'm learning stupid fast which is always fun to hear!!!!  Yay for self esteem.  I like to joke around that my narcissism hit an all time high while I was in the MTC and is slowly being brought back down to a normal human level.  It's fun out here and I am getting good at ping pong!  Its sweet because my companion is pretty good so I have someone thats at least worth playing around all the time whenever we have time for it.  Also, my companion is sick right now.  He kind of reminds me of dad because he refuses to let it slow him down.  He just always wants to work super hard which is awesome, but at the same time I don't want him to die.  That would be problematic. 
Well I don't have too much more to say of great note, but keep Korea in your prayers!  Really just keep everywhere in your prayers haha, I find myself praying for other parts of the world with regard to missionary work all the time.  I think as loyal and devoted that missionaries become to their field, that we just want the work to go forward in anywhere that it can.  I simply have the opportunity to serve here in Korea as opposed to all the other places in the world that I could have gone.  I love it here even though the weather kinda sucks, its still awesome.
 
I love you all and keep being awesome!
 
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Look how good he is at pictures!!

Another week, no clever subject line...

I continue to struggle with not spell-checking these letters. Red squiggly lines bother me. Love love love him! Pictures also will be up shortly.


Hey President!
This week has been pretty great, as far as really everything goes.  My study this week was either focused on what we had aimed to teach our investgiators, (I don't think one lesson went as planned) or I was reading our Heritagae from the Missionary Library.  I really like that book just because it helps me to know more about what the early saints had to go through.  I have known a lot I would say abou the history of the church but it's always cool to learn more and see where we came from really.  Also it was super cool to see my last name in a church endorsed book!! Woohoo Rudger Clawson haha
The investigator I will talk about this week I think I may have talked about last week but I'm not totally sure.  He's an older guy and really has a lot of interest in the church.  He is fluent in English so he actually helps us teach english.  He really likes everything about the church, in fact its the man you met last week at church.  He really enjoys it, and everything feels right to him, the only problem is that he has a lot of ties to the church he is attending right now.  His wife is a 전도사 for that church in fact, so it may be very difficult, but we're really trying to help him out, he's a super great guy.
Training is still coming along pretty awesome.  I'm learning in many ways all the time.  One miracle I think I saw this week was just when we were contacting yesterday.  There was a man I started speaking to and he spoke English, but it was easier for me to converse with him in Korean than in English.  I wouldn't say that is the miracle so much as the evidence to an ongoing miracle.  Korean is so tough, but some how it keeps coming.  Elder Hunter helps so much all the time, and does his best to keep me motivated.  He's a great guy, but more importantly a great missionary.
Have agreat week president!

-Elder Clawson

 

Hey rest of the world!

How have you all been?  Great? thats great, me too.  I talk to myself but I guess thats my problem, anyways, yeah Korea, about that thing!  This week has been pretty fun!   We went to another meat buffet on monday, and I still cannot eat as much as Koreans, but thats okay, they can eat all they want.  It actually got to the point to where I had eaten so much meat, that everything I put in my mouth tasted like meat.  With culture you kinda have to eat more than is humanly possible, so needless to say I struggled a little bit.  I don't think I've eaten that much in a single meal in soooooooo long.  Probably not since some crazy conditioning time in water polo.  It's almost unpleasant how much you have to eat.

Oh, I just remembered, I think I'll do a christmas list right now!  If you don't want this in the email thats fine, I have no preference.

Mac and Cheese (not easy mac), the boxed kind

Ecco shoes. Theyre european, one of my pairs of shoes are dying, I need another kind of.  My Euro shoe size is 43

Kinda long fleece scarf (they only have knit ones here, and I can't rock knitten scarfs)

So I'm going to keep referring back to that as things come to mind because I can't just bust out a perfect list immediately after being asked, I'm not that awesome.  Thanks so much for the pictures by the way!  They're perfect!  I think if you come across pictures you don't think I have and send them than that would be perfect too.  Koreans always love more pictures! 

That's so scary that Lindsay gets married in like no time at all!  It's just straight nuts!  Slash kinda cool I guess, Tony's a pretty cool guy, he knows that though.  Lindsay better be excited by now!  I feel like she wouldn't get too stressed about the wedding and everything, I don't know for sure but shes not that kind of person generally.  However with marriage all bets are off I guess.

Side note, I wonder how many people start their emails home with "Well, another great week in (insert mission field here)".  I noticed I didn't but that's always the first thing I think of when I begin to write a letter.  That'd be a fun stat to here.

So I kind of want to talk about one of my investigators.  He's the guy I talked about in my email to president.  He's such an awesome guy.  He's like 70, and has a jacked up leg from from crashing on a bike, not sure what the nature of the injury is, but nonetheless has an injured leg.  He used to be a math professor at Northeastern Illinois University and is super smart.  He speaks English obviously and just wants to always learn and teach people.  There's this other investigator that he became friends with and he is teaching her English and she is teaching him Japanese.  He also wants to teach me and my companion how to play chess super well and then how to this other game called badu.  They're both pretty fun and he thinks I suck at chess which is probably true, but that's not that big of a deal.  He was actually at the baptismal service last week.  We invited him to come to church and he said that he would maybe only come to church for like 2 hours, and ended up staying for 5!  It was so cool.  Really I think he genuinely meant it when he said that he would only be there for 2 hours, but when he felt the spirit and heard what was being said, he couldnt leave.  It took him seriously like half an hour after everything was all over to leave.  He did not want to leave the church!  It was soooooooooo cool.  We met with him tuesday night and asked him what he though about church.  He said that he really enjoyed it and loved it all, but he has a whole bunch of ties to another church.  His wife is a proselyter for another church (they're kinda crazy in Korea, we're really calm compared to them), and he met her through a friend that is a pastor for that church.  I feel so bad because there truly are a lot of relationships that he could lose if he were to join the church, but I know its the right decision for him.  He is seriously the nicest person I've met in Korea and just wants to help people.  He wants me to tech him guitar and there was another missionary he wanted to learn piano from, but she's going home so I will probably actually teach him that too.  He's so awesome, I think he's my favorite investigator right now.

Oh yeah, I don't think that I said this in my last email, I think it happened after that day in the week.  I had a dream apparently that resulted in me sitting up and yelling at my companion in Korean.  He was a little upset, but now I dream in Korean I guess.  If Peter gets to be able to read this, now you have a whole new dimension of scary to deal with if you spend a night in the same room as me again haha.  Also if you do read this, please right me bud, I want to hear from you! 

Sorry there's no Korean time this week, I have to go for lack of money to pay for computer usage, I love you all and stay safe!  I also pray for you in the mornings too!

 

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