June 9 Email

Ktown lovin

Summer has officially come our way! People talked about how humid and hot it would get, but it's one thing to talk about it and another thing to walk around all day in it. Gotta love being sticky from the humidity from the time you get up to the time you go to bed! Hopefully I'll get used to it. Older missionaries say that you eventually do. 

So this week I was told that we got to go to our ward's picnic. When I first heard that, I thought we'd go to the park that is close to the church and just eat lunch. I quickly found out our ward does their ward parties right. We went to a beach in Inchon and spent the day there! The beach is a place I never thought I would end up on my mission, but there I was hah. 

Last Saturday, a family in our ward had a baptism for their little boy and invited us. A quick sidenote on a weird thing with age here is that they count your age different. So I'm 19 years old, but here I'm 21. Since their counting system for age is different, kids don't get baptized till they are 9 or 10, priesthood 13 or 14 and missions 21 and 22. Anyway, the service was really small. It was the 4 missionaries serving in the ward, the Bishop, and the 5 members of the family. I think I and a lot of other missionaries (especially from Utah) grow up with so much support in the gospel and then go on their missions and see a little bit how it is to not grow up with their entire school/work/city being the same faith. I really am thankful to have grown up in the good environment I did, but I'm starting to see how these members don't have that but are still so strong. During the service, I was looking at the bishop and thinking, "He could be across the street right now at the 7 story brand new catholic church, having all the church business taken care of by a full time pastor and only have to show up to participate in his church" but he was there and willing to volunteer so much of his time and effort to what he believed to be true. Maybe thats why I enjoyed that moment of our church feeling small compared to the world because I know these people are there because of their faith and willingness to believe. I love what I'm doing right now. It's so hard, but I'm slowing see what really begins to happen when we are willing to forget ourselves and serve God and his Children. 

Form 녹번 with Love. 

Elder Nixon