August 14 Email

WHO TURNED UP THE SUN?

 Well, the first 2 weeks of August is the hottest time of the year in Korea. I thought the constant rain was bad, but the constant sweat is probably worse. Either way, I've been soaked where ever we go, pretty much the entire summer. It makes for good small talk on the street though..."hey exuse me! why is it so hot here?" That usually gets a good chuckle out of the old Korean men. There is a special place in my heart for the old men of this country. They may be hard to understand but they love foreigners and they will laugh at the few stupid korean jokes/idioms that I know, every time.

So, it kind of always seems to work out that the one time a month I am lowest on energy, (fast sunday), is the craziest most hectic day. Yesterday was no exception. We were really excited because we had 3 investigators that committed to coming to church one of which is a guy we had never met before who just called us and said he wanted to come to church. It's a really good Sunday here in our ward if we can get 1 or 2 investigators to come, so we were excited for yesterday. We get to church and they all came, which is super awesome! This is where is got a little extra crazy. A random person called the church phone during the 1st hour of church and said that he wants to attend today, but he doesn't know where our church is. So, we told him where the nearest subway station was and that we would meet him there and show him where the church was. Once we picked him up and got back to the church, he told us that he wanted his friend to come too so he called his friend to come. Halfway through sacrament meeting he said that his friend was at the subway station but didn't know where to go. So, we go back to the station and pick his friend up and make it back to the church just in time for the closing song. So Sacrament ends and we have 5 investigators there and we don't know who to talk to first! 3 of them we had never met before yesterday and had just randomly called saying they want to come to church. Luckily our ward members helped us out and I feel like all the investigators were talked to and didn't feel out of place. Easily, it was the craziest Sunday in Korea so far, not to mention a few hours later we went to a chinese class at our church taught by one of our members. So, learning Chinese through Korean wasn't super effective especially since my brain was already fried from running around everywhere yesterday. Lets just say, I slept well last night.

 Speaking of sleep, I don't know if i've said this before, but they don't sleep on beds here, rather sleep mats that are about 6 inches thick called a yoh. Word going around the mission is that lots of missionaries have received back problems from sleeping on them so the latest trend is to forego the yoh and just sleep on the wood floor. My companion has done it since I've been with him and I told him I would never give in, but this week I hopped on the band wagon. I have to admit sleeping on the floor isn't much different then the yoh and I'm getting used to it. The first few nights were rough though. If you told me last year this time that I'd be sleeping on nothing but the wood floor every night, I wouldn't have believed you. We asked the mission doctor though and he agreed that it's better for your back to sleep on the floor.

 This week I was served a crazy fish stew. they literally took a huge raw fish, cut it into 4 big pieces, put it in a broth with Kimchi and put it on a stove on our table. crazy Korean food venture of the week. Got to go to the temple this week for the first time as Seoul Nam(south) mission. It was a really good experience this time. I feel so lucky to be a missionary that gets to go so often because it is so good to go as a missionary. all I have for this week!

From 봉천 with Love. Elder Nixon