July 14 Email

Make room for the missionaries.  There are now 5 of us in in our ward!! (3 sisters and 2 elders).  In case anyone is keeping score, it pretty much hasn't stopped raining since I emailed last and I don't think i've seen the sun since June. Hopefully, monsoon season will wrap up and we'll have some sunshine for Elder Nixon's birthday. It's really weird everyday because you are constantly sweating yet never see the sun and sometimes you can't tell if it's rain on your forehead or sweat. It was an alright week here in bong choen. The thing that has been the biggest challenge lately and is sort of always a challenge for lots of missionaries here is getting people who are really busy to make time to meet with us. Sometimes the hardest part of the lesson with some investigators is actually meeting and once we meet they seem to progress well.

I got both of my birthday packages this week and they are just sitting in the church waiting to be opened. I was about to open them right when I got them but all the other missionaries guilted me into waiting until next Sunday!  As for birthday plans, I don't have any yet, hah. I will probably spend it next pday since my actual birthday is Sunday.

So, I haven't given an update on the language in a while. Things are actually dare I say sort of kind of progressing.? I think the right thing to say would be there are some times I feel like I'm doing really well with the language and others when it still seems impossible. It's always comforting to get a younger missionary that knows less Korean than you do and see that at one point you were in the exact same place and look how far things have come. I think going from an old native companion to a really young American companion forced the language to speed up as well. it doesn't stress me out nearly as much as it did in the beginning. There are so many people I am blessed to have in my ward that actively want to help us with the language and want to teach with us and help us out. Maybe it's just because we are super young and sometimes have no idea what were doing, but they are seriously so good to us. I have this super bad habit of thinking I need every grammer/vocabulary text book ever written about Korean and today we are going to the bookstore to buy more, hah. I am growing quite the stack of study books, now it's just a matter of getting through them all.

Welp, this is the last email I'll send as a teenager! Maybe I'll be more mature in my next email...don't count it!

From 봉천 with love.

Elder Nixon