Dongdaemun!

Dongdaemun is awesome! It's SO hot. But awesome. I miss Sokcho, but I feel like it was time for me to move on to a new place. First off - The ward is huge. We had 85 people yesterday. Guess I won't have to be first councilor anymore! The people are super awesome. They're all really nice and friendly. There's 3 meetings, like usual, instead of the 2 we have in Sokcho, so church is longer than I'm used to now. But I love it. More time to listen to Korean and feel the spirit! We live in a 4 man house with two Koreans, and they serve in the area next to ours, in a different ward. But we have a lot of fun together. It's so nice having your house on church grounds, because you can go play ping pong with the Koreans for your morning exercise^^

Elder Gardner is great, he's in his 3rd transfer, and I'm in my 5th (not including the MTC). He's REALLY good at Korean, and even a better teacher. It's wonderful. We really work well together, and we really get along. We have a lot of similar interests and such. He's from Oregon, and will turn 20 right before my year mark on the mission, so I'm almost a whole year older than him. We haven't taken many pictures, we've been too busy working! But we hurried and took one picture this morning for you guys.

Being new in a HUGE ward has some benefits - they all want to meet you so they invite you over for dinner, and they want to help teach! Lessons with a member make a HUGE difference. One being that they can actually speak Korean.

Our investigators are doing well, we have one guy from Nepal that we teach in English, and he's really prepared. I'm excited for him. The others are doing well, some progressing faster than others. The ward has really high expectations for the missionaries here, so we'll work super hard, like always! We're also trying to work with a few less-actives; they're all really nice.

I love it here! There's still one street that has fish, so I can get that good ole' whiff of Sokcho sometimes, and there's a few universities, including a foreign university, so there's a TON of foreigners. But since foreigners aren't rare, they're not too excited to see another white person. But oh well. There's PLENTY of people to talk to!!

I love my new area, even though it's SUPER hot, and I know we'll do some good work here.

Well, that's about all I have for the week.

Until next Monday,

Elder Franchina