Jeju: Merry Christmas from Korea

Well not a ton has happened this week... oh wait well except for Christmas!

This week we moved houses! That really wasn't to fun! About a year ago the sisters got pulled out of our area, but the lease on there house didn't stop until the end of this year so they moved the elders into there apartment. So we had all the sisters stuff and elders stuff that we had to move! we ended up having to throw half of the stuff away because we live in a box the size of most of your kitchens! It is one room and one bathroom! super fuN! and turns out it cost money to throw anything away here! so we just made a huge pile of trash behind our house and slowly are going to throw it away when we have money! Our new house was infested! We vacuumed up at least 2 cockroaches and found like 3 dead ones! And we have been counting and since last Tuesday we have killed 114 mosquitos! I am covered in bites! Fun island life!

This week has been super busy with moving! We did lots of proselyting like usual, and we finally visited the referral we got from the Hawaii temple! The number we got didn't work so we went to the address to find out it was like 100 apartments! Even better is that we couldn't walk inside the building without a code so we had to stand outside and call each individual room! It was super windy and cold and we both didn't want to do it! So we decided to pray and figure out what would be the best use of our time! After the prayer the thought came to my head that (jesus would leave the 99 to find the 1) so we stayed in the freezing wind and rung every house! Super cool experience!

Then christmas was super fun on christmas eve we had a branch party! We all did some talents and we showed the christmas initiative video! then the elders quorum president pulled me and Elder Youngblood aside and told us santa hurt his leg and he needed a backup... so Elder Youngblood volunteered me! So i was santa in Korea! Ho Ho Ho what fun times! then i got to Skype my family and it was super nice to talk to them!

This was such a cool christmas! I have never had a christmas like this in my life. it has always been about me me me. But it is so cool to not worry about, what santa will bring, or all the christmas lights, or the music, or festivities. those are all fun and not bad things but it kind of distracts from the real meaning of christmas! This has been cool to spend my first CHRISTmas doing the Christ's work! Doing the things he did. My call home was really good! It was nice to see my family again. It made me realize how much i love them, and miss them! Its nice to see how supportive they are and how much they respect my decision to serve!

Loving it out here! Crazy to think that in a month i will be out here for 6 months! almost 1/4 of the way done!

Elder Stagg

Check out this beach.  Could it get any better?

Santa loves our Christmas sweaters.

Nothing says "merry Christmas" like a bouquet of fish heads. 

A rare snowfall on the volcano.  It's a Christmas miracle.

Downtown Christmas decorations

Moving day.

Pretend like I'm a Christmas mouse

Unlimited Christmas cheer

Christmas breakfast

Jeju: Arm Wrestling for Milk

Wow what a crazy week! The lord has blessed us so much! I have seen more miracules this week than i can count! ok so this week we picked up 2 more investigators. every night we stay up till 10:20 contacting everyone we can and we got 2 appointments with some old investigators and they want to keep meeting! One wants the book  of mormon in english because he says the korean bible is hard to understand and so he studies it in english! So he said he wants an english book of mormon! He is super good at english! Which makes our job easier! But we still speak in korean  becuase we were called to speak in that language! also the scriptures say every ear will hear this message from there own language! but it helps when we dont know how to say something! the other one is an orange farmer! Which is very typical here in jeju! (The grow over 250 different kinds of oranges! We met again with our old investigator! but he said he forgot about our appointment so he got super, super drunk. it makes it a lot harder to teach when they are super drunk. we tried teaching him how to pray but i dont think much stuck! so we got him to pray for us! Hopefully we can meet with him again when he isnt drunk!

Then we have a meeting with a potential investigator this sunday, he is a super awesome kid who is really interested in our church! Like all highschool students here he is super busy so he said he will come to our church on sunday and we can meet after church! hopefully that works out! Next we got a refferal from..... yup you guessed it the hawaii temple's visitor center! Except they gave us the wrong number and only have an address, so we have spent the last week trying to figure out the address. I think we got it so we are going to check that out tomorrow.

We are working so hard! I am always so tired! but i love seeing the change this area is making! I love christmas and i have seen so many miracles that come through showing the churches #lighttheworld video with people! It brings the spirit in so strong! If any of you havent seen it do it! Just go to Mormon.org and it in there it is! super good video! SHARE IT ON ALL YOUR SOCIAL MEDIAS! I have been starting to notice the spirit more in my life and i am working on always following the fealings i get! I am so happy i get to spend this christmas serving our lord and savior jesus chirst! there is no better way to spend chirstmas  then by serving others! thats all chirst did so what better way to celebrate his birhtday?

here is a funny story! So we were walking and i started talking to these 2 drunk old men and after a while they took us into a 7-eleven type store and tried buying us coffee but we convinced them that milk would be ok! So he made us grab    2 things of milk each. we sat down and started talking when he walks over again with a handful of these wierd pastries. So then they start making us eat and drink what they just got us while talking to us and yelling a lot (because they were drunk) all in all they were super nice and super funny! But i drank at least 1 liter of chocolate milk and strawberry milk, ate at least 3 of these wierd pastries and felt like trash! But we talking to them for a while then one of them said he was stronger than us and we told him he probably was, but nope that wasnt enough for him.... so yeah he made us arm wrestle him!I haha super funnY! we are sitting in this gas station, we just drank so much milk, and we are arm wrestiling this 70 year old man.... and he beat elder youngblood. So he looks at me, after a hard battle i barely beat his right arm..... but holy crap his left arm is soo strong! he destroyed me! then he stood up and started cheering then they just walked out and left! super weird but super funny!

Loving my mission so much! Love my savior so much! I love serving during chirstmas time and hate how fast it is going! I am not going to lie this has been a hard 4 months but it has been some of the most happy, fun, and enjoyable time of my life!!

Sincerly

Elder Stagg

Jeju: First Investigator

Today for P-day we got up at 5:30 and hiked the giant volcano on our island! It took from 7:30-3 it was like a 9 mile round trip! Super fun! Except the view was gone because we were walking in a cloud! at the very top it was so cold and everything was frozen! It is the largest mountain in Korea, fun fact of the day!

Wow this week has been really fun, strange, hard, tiring, short, and very rewarding! First lets start with the fun and strange!

Haha so there were 3 things that happened this week that are super great!

1)This old drunk man was talking to us and kept asking me if i thought the picture of Mary in one of our pamphlets was attractive! then he kept pushing me off the sidewalk and yelling in my face, while doing that he tried to convince us that Mary and jesus were from Jeju! haha really great guy!

2) Yup another old drunk man was talking to us and grabbed book of mormon from my hands was yelling some drunk slurred words that i think were supposed to be Korean, then he started smacking me with the Book of Mormon over and over, we finally decided we were just going to leave then he grabs my name tag so i have to get that back from him, finally when i got it back he started beating me again! Good day! Think of the mansions in heaven the he was building for me!

3)We were walking down the center street and yup another old drunk man was just on the side of the sidewalk peeing all over his hand, right in front of the main street! haha elder Youngblood about had a heart attack he was laughing so hard!

Wow great week!

Now lets get into the hard, tiring and rewarding!

Ok well this has been a busy week! I feel like it has been maybe 3 days since last p-day wow! I am always tired and i count down the hours till i am able to sleep! haha We proselyte for at least 4-6 hours a day! We don't stop contacting till 10:20 just trying to get people we can meet with! Plus the branch has given us the assignment to contact all of our less actives (19-21). So we are always walking as fast as we can! The other day we sat down on the bus and within 1 minute i was out! haha and the bus ride was only 7 minutes! however we are working hard and have seen the fruits of it! I got my first investigator!! We were using the prosolying board, that me and elder Snyder made, for the first time and we got his contact! One thing led to another and we met with him and he was super interested in the book of mormon! He said every time he reads it he gets a super good feeling in his heart and he doesn't know what it is! He flies to seoul every week and said he wants to meet at least once a week! I am very excited for that! Pray for me and him that he will continue to seek this course in his life!

The church has come out with the #Lighttheworld and it is super awesome way to talk to people! They have light the world cards we hand out and it has a QR code that we have people watch the video. and let me tell y'all something the spirit is sooo strong when you watch that video with them! It is such a great video! I encourage you all to keep up with those videos and acts of service!

Anyways i am loving my mission! I am loving the people! I love Christmas! and i love that i get to focus it all on my savior jesus christ! Love you all and thanks for all the support!

-Elder Stagg

Who wants some Christmas dessert?

A rare non-rainy day

The World Cup stadium

Just a typical meal with Elder Youngblood

Sprite on the coast

Found an awesome burger shop.  I love this place!

Christmas decoration in down-town Seogwipo

Island foliage

Hiking the volcano with my district

Top of the volcano with Elder Youngblood.  The unfortunate clouds prevented us from seeing the amazing island vista.

The locals endearingly refer to this as "American Primate in a Tree"

Jeju: Youngblood and Freshmeat

If any of you know the song "tear in my heart" by twentyone pilots the song starts out by singing an-yong-hasayo! Which is hello in korean! just by the way!

Wow so this has been a crazy!!! week! haha ummm where to start! Umm first of this was transfer week! And I thought that me and my companion were safe! haha my companion had a mental breakdown and.. well lets just say he is struggling taking care of himself let alone a trainy! so we got transferred! Umm the even CRAZIER news is... well lets just say I met my new TRAINER in the MTC!! haha My new trainer is elder youngblood! He finished his training 2 days ago and has only been here for 1 transfer longer than me! haha luckily he is SUPER good at the language, I have no idea how he is that good after 2 transfers! haha so i lucked out! He is a super cool kid and has a strong testimony! I am excited to learn from him! We are going to need to work really hard becuase of how new we both are but we will see a ton of miracles in this next transfer! I am really excited to work with him in seogwipo! Umm it is really funny! haha So seogwipo is the farthest area away from the mission home! haha And the youngest mission companionship is there! haha plus we are the only companionship on the whole south end of the island! haha We are going to see lots of miracles!

Umm what next... As far as missionary work we have proselyted a ton!! Had one guy try and pay us for a Book of Mormon and he seemed pretty interested but would never answer our calls or texts and had a couple of other close calls but nothing has stuck yet! I have faith that with the combined faith and hard work from me and Elder youngblood we can turn this area around and instead of being the hardest area in the mission we can make it one of the most succesful areas in the mission!

Ok next Wow i feel like alma, nephi (the later nephi), moroni and those prophets just because of how worldly seogwipo is! It is super sad! We cant walk down any street in the city without walking past at least 2-3 strip clubs, hook-up rooms, etc. It is so sad! Everyone here drinks and smokes from the early morning to the night! These people need this gospel so bad in there life's but they wont listen to us because they dont want to change! Lots of people will tell us they know they do lots of sins but they dont think they can be saved, even when we tell them they can! It is very frustrating! 

Ummm ok my weekly miracles! 

So last thursday we flew down to the mainland for half training meeting and we arrived back in our area at 8pm so we had 1 hour till we needed to be home and we hadnt ate dinner yet! but we decided that since we had no time to prosolyte that day we should prosolyte for the next hour and eat after 9. So we had more success than usual and like the 6th person we talked to asked us if we had ate yet so we said no then he told us to follow him took us into this fancy french pastry shop and spent like 30$ worth of pastries, bagles, and french bread for us! After we tried talking to him and he wouldnt even take a message card! he just quickly left! haha The lord blesses his missionaries when we sacrifice for him! there are scriptures all over that say dont worry about where you shall live where you shall eat or anything like that but we need to only worry about the work we are called to do and god will take care of the rest! I have a testimony that that is true!

Another miracle happened 3 days ago! I had 17$ for the rest of this week and i still needed to buy groceries and pay for travel fees going to busan and back a couple times (it was going to be 45$ in travel fees!) We were talking about it when my companion happened to look down and notice a 50,000 won (50$) on the side walk. Now it was really dark outside and pouring rain! Somehow he noticed this small piece of paper on the ground the coolest part is that it was pouring rain but my companion said the money was completely dry (even though it was lying on the wet ground) he said it didnt start to get wet until he picked it up and then i got a little wet from the rain! WOW what a miracle! I now have money to pay for everything i need, its gonna be tight but it will work out! 

Ps we have nick named our area SOGGY-po because of how much it rains here! haha it has rained at least a little everyday for the past 3 weeks! haha 

Love my mission so much! I love seeing gods hand in my life!

Elder stagg

Sorry no pictures today my camera cord is on jeju and i am on the mainland! wasnt expecting to spend the night!