Elder Nathan Stagg: 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