yayyyy!!! wait for it...

 Oooops... We forgot to post last week... BUUUUTTTTT That means you all get an added bonus of Scott in your life this week!! We love and miss him dearly, but there's only another couple weeks till we get to speak with him ON THE PHONE!! Other notable things: we are concerned that he continues to address his Mission President in such a casual "Hey President!!" manner, but trust him. Maybe... Let's all hope he really does send us a video of him speaking Korean though!!! Thanks for your continued interest in our sweet young man!!




Hey President!
It was so cool that you could come to our church meetings this week!  It was awesome to have your spirit and Sister Christensen's Spirit there too!  I know it helped with our other investigators that were there.
For my personal study recently I've been reading the missionary library, and finished Our Search for Happiness, and am moving on to our Heritage.  From what I've read in Our Heritage it seems really cool and I'm already learning a lot of neat things about the church that I didn't know about prior.
Our investigators seem to be doing pretty well.  One of our investigators that was at church yesterday, the older man that you and Sister Christensen were talking to, seems to be doing really really well in my opinion.  He seemed to really enjoy the whole thing, including the baptism and meal after.  I'm really excited to see the progress that he will make in the future and hope to see him in the baptismal font in not too long!
Training continues to go really well, Elder Hunter is doing great as always.  He pushes me hard which is very good for me and it really helps my Korean.  He says that by the end of the two transfers I'll speak better Korean than him, I don't believe it, but he's adamate.  His spiritual influence is so awesome too, he does such a good job, and I know he's an awesome missionary and he's seeing the fruits of his labors.-Elder Clawson

Hey family and other folks!

Yeah that's right!  I got my first baptism!  Even though really I didn't even do anything to be completely honest, but nonetheless, I still got a baptism!  Anyways, this week has been pretty good and actually went by pretty quick too!  So I guess I have neglected to tell everyone the nature of what it's like here in Korea.  First, the area I'm serving in is in Incheon which is substantially less cold that seoul.  I'm getting a coat today but previously I haven't really had too much need for one.  Also tomorrow I'm getting a new suit too because we have to wear suits everyday, and to be honest, I'm tired of wearing the same suit everyday for over a month, now approaching two.  Anyways, so our house is just me and my companion.  It's cool I guess, sometimes I wished that we had more people and other times I'm glad we don't.  There's good and bad to it I guess.  If I had to compare my area to anything I'd probably say its like LA pretty much.  Probably most similar to the garment district, not in that everywhere people are selling things, but in just the way it looks and such.  In that way it kinda reminds me of home and sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm in the opposite hemishpere from everything I've known prior.  I guess 계산 is more like a suburb though.  It doesn't take too long to get to real city though.  One of our neighboring areas has like 30 story tall buildings all over the place and what not.  It's pretty sweet, the difinition of city and suburb are substantially different for me now than they were before hahaa.
To answer some questions of yours, no I am not losing weight, in fact I am gaining wait.  I hate it!  So if you go to have a meal with a member and you don't eat like a mountain of food, they think you hate them or something!  I didn't eat much before my mission, and now there's all this crazy food, which really isn't that crazy, that I have to eat even more of?!?!  It makes no sense and a lot of sense at the same time.  Culture here is crazy but that's okay.  The last package you sent is totally intact and having some of provo around was pretty sweet hahah.  We did have thanksgiving dinner actually.  It was at the home of an American family who are members and wanted to host a bunch of missionaries some they had 20 something people in an apartment.  Granted it was a bigger apartment, but that's still pretty small here in Korea.  It was pretty awesome having some american food though.  There's no costco around us so we can't really get anything from there, but maybe later it will be in my area.  That's fun to hear about your thanksgiving!  I missed home a little bit thursday even though I know that I probably went to sleep before you guys even woke up.  That's super cool to hear about the turkey bowl!  That was something that I really really missed.  I've played football once here, and I was pretty much at the bottom of the heap of people.  When you have a gang of college athletes in your mission all playing, it gets tough to keep up, not to mention me being without cleats when other people have them, but thats okay it was fun.  Sorry dad, I don't know where your cleats are but I'm pretty sure that the air mattresses are towards the front of the rafters, kind of by the face of the house but I'm not sure, sorry I can't be of more help with that.
 Also I'm not sure where the sprayer is either, if I had to guess I'd say the storage unit, but its probably behind somewhat of a wall of stuff.
Also, what up about being the only one from our ward serving in the eastern hemisphere!  I know its all the lord's work but still!! haha, no not really, everyone else hopefully is just as happy about where they are.  I know that I am!  There's times that I just kinda one be sitting back home, but usually i'm pretty happy being here.  The bishop here plays guitar too, electric guitar!  I talked to him once and he liked some of the same players that I like so that was kinda a funny thing to hear about hahah.  Also, there's this guy that's supposedly following the mission president around and is kind of a creeper, but he's from fullerton!  Despite all stalkerness it was kind of cool to see him too! haha, fun little tastes of home all over the place.
One problem that I have begun to face here is kind of entertaining, and I accidently dug myself a bit of a hole as a result of it.  So a couple of weeks ago, we were at a members house, and they found out that I play guitar, and said that I should perform at their Christmas talent show thingy mabobber.  I said sure, that will be fun, I'll just need to borrow someones guitar.  They said that I should get it soon so that I can practice.  Here's where the sarcasm comes in, I started saying that I don't need practice.  Koreans don't get sarcasm folks.  It's a problem, but I'm learning to stop it.  Mind you all of that was in Korean, so that was kind of fun for me to learn to be me just as much in Korean as in English hahaha.  Mom, maybe I will be less sarcastic when I get home, were you praying about that when I put in my papers? hahaha
Oh yeah, totally forgot about this for a while.  While we were at thanksgiving dinner, president authorized the family to let us watch BYU football games.  We watched a couple, both of which BYU lost, but there was a couple shots that I totally saw Desi doing the cheerleading thing!  It was so weird, I'm just sitting there, and I'm like, oh there's cheerleaders, wait, isn't desi a cheerleader?  Oh theres desi, this is kinda strange...
It was super funny and it was pretty cool to see the game, and watch it with two people who will be playing on the BYU football team when they return home hahaha.
The area here is doing super, super awesome.  Everyone works so hard and the ward is really dedicated to missionary work.  Our previous ward missionleader even has a guy that he's trying to turn into an investigator.  He basically runs the equivalent of a hot dog stand, and is a super nice guy, it'd be really cool to see him get baptized and then he'd give us even more free food!  We have another baptismal date next month and were hoping to get two more in the next week or two!

quick Korean time real quick.
so this one is more of a concept than a phrase really.  basically if you conjugate something in middle form (do "yoh" as an ending instead of "im-nee-dah"), and then instead of just ending in "yoh", you end in "yong".  so if your saying hi "an-nyang-ha-say-yoh", you would change it to "an-nyong-ha-say-yong".  Basically this just makes everything really cute.  it turns from "hi" to "heeyyyayyyayyy", it hard to do with out voice, maybe i'll send a video of the difference at some point.

Love you guys, stay awesome, and keep Korea in your prayers.  I pray for you every night!

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