August 11 Email

I Think Even The Computer Screen is Sweating

안냥하세요!!! (ANNYONGHASEYO!) Friends and Family! HI!!

This week brought the crazy weather! Tuesday, I've never seen it rain harder anywhere in my entire life and we got stuck right in the middle of it. To the point where my umbrella couldn't handle it and broke and was really only slowing down the downpour! People were telling us that 장마 (monsoon season) was ending right at the end of July, but apparently it lasted something like 72 days this year! It hasn't really rained since Tuesday though, so we might be out of it...but now that were out of it we're in the hottest part of the summer! Thursday, I don't think I've ever experienced a more humid/hot day in my life. I thought I was smart for bringing a messenger bag to Korea to avoid the sweaty back in the summer, but my black shoulder strap literally bled onto my shirt so there was a huge black outline on my shirt the rest of the day. Also, it seems like it can be 85 degrees here and still pouring rain. So, it was raining when we walked to church last Sunday and I had an umbrella so I didn't get wet from rain, but the 5 minute walk from our apartment still had me drenched. By the time I got there, it was just sweat rather than rain. I think spent enough of this post talking about the weather. I hope you get the idea, hah.

This week we met two different non Koreans that we taught. One was from India and the other one was from Nepal. The one from India is working as a chemical Engineer here right now and was really impressed that we were giving up two years to be here. He is Catholic and has been his whole life, but seemed to have lots of genuine interest about our Church! I wish we got to meet him more than one time, but we had to refer him to the missionaries who have the english branch in their area. The other man from Nepal we met two nights ago. He is here working his 4th masters degree (what?) studying at Seoul National (the Harvard of Korea) and this was quite the experience. He basically studied all different religions extensively and kept asking us super deep philosophical religious questions that neither of us could even understand what he was trying to ask (in English). My companion was finally just said, " Look I just graduated high school!" We both kept it as simple as we could and told him that we may not know the philosophy of every aspect of our religion, but we know that we have felt that it is true. Not sure if we will ever meet again, but it made me happy that Korean forces me to keep things simple because at the end of the day the gospel really can be seen simply and still truthfully.

Lots of our investigators are still on vacation for this month so we've been working really hard trying to find new people to teach. We met with a new investigator this week who actually is Korean, ha. His name is Brother Lee We planned to meet with him Friday night at the subway station and then walk him to our church and teach him there. So, we were at the subway station waiting for him and I thought my companion was on the phone trying to describe where we were to him. So a random person comes up to me shakes my hand and starts talking to me. I thought it was a little weird because we always have to start the conversation when we talk to people on the street. I was being pretty awkward because I knew we couldn't talk long because we were looking for our investigator to meet at the time. So my companion finally gets off the phone and then comes up to us and says "hey brother Lee!" My companion was actually on the phone with a ward member and the guy I was sort trying to get to go away so we could meet our investigator was our investigator!! nothing like a super awkward first impression!! I apologized as much as I could to him, but he was okay with it and we're cool now. It is interesting how God works sometimes. We've worked really hard trying to find people to teach through our own efforts of talking to everyone we can and knocking doors and such, but that hasn't given us much results. On the other hand, we've had some investigators just call us up without ever meeting and tell us they want to come to church. We've also gotten quite a few referrals from missionaries in other areas who have met people that live in our area and found people to teach that way. I think God rewards us in ways we don't expect sometimes.

Hope everyone has a good week! From 봉천 with love. Elder Nixon