Sunday, March 29, 2015

Made it to Angarsk - SIBERIA


This week was a good week:) Lots of travelling! On Wednesday we left early morning. We took a taxi to the bus station, a bus to a different city where we dropped off our bags, then the mission van came and picked us up to take us to Vladivostok. We worked all day in Vlad and then took a train back to that small city the following morning. We grabbed our bags and took a bus to the airport. We took a plane to Korea, a bus to the temple and had just enough time to do a little bit of work before grabbing McDonalds and going to sleep:) I got a BigMac and chocolate shake! It has been 3 months since I had one (last Korea trip). We took a bus back to the airport, flew to Russia again, and grabbed the rest of our big bags. We flew to Khabarovsk, then we flew to Irkutsk, then a taxi to Angarsk:) Siberia.  We got in Saturday morning around midnight. It isn't as cold as I had anticipated, it is starting to warm up. Around 0 degrees:)

We had a good few days here working. Lots of new people we talked to, lots of new faces I have the chance to meet! As a matter of fact, the Angarsk church here just recently became a branch this past week right before I got here.

I think it is so cool how you have the opportunity to email and talk with our upcoming Mission President:)  It’s kind of cool that he is from Mesa.   Make sure you tell him good things about me.   haha

We had a ton of fun in Korea! We didn't have any time to stop in the Korean airport for Burger King or Jamba Juice or anything, so we took a bus as quick as we could to downtown. That is where the Korean temple is. You are walking down the street, it looks like a small version of NYC, you take a turn up some dark alley kinda street, up a hill for about 100 yards and then you are there.  A bright white beautiful temple of God in downtown Seoul. Very cool. We did some work in the temple and then went really quick to buy Mcdonalds. 

When I was in the Korean temple, I was speaking with some of the Korean people in there. Some of them spoke English and I mentioned how I could read a little Korean. One man showed me his name tag and I read it and he thought I was the coolest missionary:)

We also met some people in the airports. There were a lot of Americans over in the Korean airport, travelling for business. We met a young looking guy, he was flying in from Japan. He looked American so we talked to him, and turns out he is serving in the Navy, stationed in Japan right now. He was flying to Korea to buy some fried chicken. ( not even kidding) We will have to go check it out next time. He gave us some Japanese money and we gave him some rubles. Cool guy!

We met some guys from Canada, I spoke some French to them and then they started going off in French and I was so confused. They spoke English too and were pretty nice. We also met a kid named Leo from Germany. He was on the same bus as us on the way to the temple. He spoke way good English and he told us how he just finished high school and he went on a big trip by himself. He flew to Fiji, Korea, China, New Zealand and all these crazy places all by himself. He just left, not knowing exactly where he would eat or sleep each night along his journey. Brave, some might say. Crazy would also be an accurate description. I don’t know if I would want to do it haha. We told him about the Church and the Book of Mormon and he said he really wanted to read it but the only copies we had on us were in Russian. Dang it. Hopefully he can find missionaries in Germany. We are praying for him!

Overall, a pretty good week:) Hopefully we can inspire these Angarsk-ians to come closer to Christ and accept his gospel. The Church is True and I Love You!

Love always,

Elder Gardner

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