Letter from Elder Rife~August 16, 2011

The weeks are seriously flying by. It's so weird! Sorry this email came later than usual. We've just been super busy and we were told to email on Tuesday instead of on Monday this week since Monday was a holiday here.

I have a lot of pictures to send home this week. Some of them are of our apartment. I kinda freaked out last week cause it was dirty and went on a 3 hour cleaning spree. It was pretty disgusting. Whoever the missionaries were that were here before me were pretty gross. It blows my mind that people can just live in a mess. I won't get into details though because it was pretty gross. Food trash in Korea is a problem, though. It's not like back home where you just send it down the drain in the kitchen. It's more like camping. You've gotta pack it out. Kinda gross haha. But there are some pictures of our clean-er apartment. I still have some more work to do on it. I'm so thankful for a mother who taught me to be clean. It's hard to feel the spirit in a place that is dirty and disorganized. I have definitely gained a testimony about that.

This morning I went to the mission office to do pass-off with the AP's. It went well. I passed off 5 of the 7 things I need to pass off but we ran out of time, so I will have to go next Monday again and just do the two things I didn't have time for. That will be good; I have a little more time to prepare.

We didn't get to meet with the two kids we met last Sunday through streetboarding. We hope to meet with them this week and teach them the first lesson. I'm excited to get to teach them for sure. I'll write more about them next week.

This last Sunday we had dinner with 3 returned missionaries from the Daejeon mission. It was soooo fun! One of them, 이은하, is in my ward here and I see her every week. The other two 박일훈 and 이수진 live nearby but I haven't seen them since I was ten years old. It was soo good to see them! They each have 3 kids. It was pretty wild with nine kids at dinner but it was really fun. It's crazy that it's been ten years since I saw them last and that they now have 3 kids! We looked through their mission albums and it was so fun to reflect on our memories and see pictures of them with me when I was so little. I'm pretty sure it was the funnest night of my mission. We talked for a while and ate really good food then we shared a spiritual message and left.

My companion and I have gotten into "Heart Attacking" members. We feel like it's a good way to show them that you love them and appreciate them. It's pretty fun. We did it to 이은하's house and then she called us the next day (when she saw it) and said that it was her birthday and she was so excited when she saw all the hearts on her door. I like to think we were led by the spirit to heart attack her house that night but I don't recall a prompting or anything. haha.

Anyway, I'm about out of time. It was a pretty good week last week but I hope we see more things happen this week! It's still been rainy around here which is no fun, but oh, well. I hope we can see some miracles in Anyang this week!!

Love you all!

-Elder Rife