August 25 Email

It's Still Seoul Hot

So first off, I had a crazy awesome miracle this week. I found a Mexican restaurant in Korea!!! I was pretty excited, but not nearly as much as my new companion Elder Westbrook. He took Spanish all through high school and was literally telling me that day how he wished that he could keep it up. We walked in and he found out one of the ladies that worked there spoke Spanish and tried to convince her he was from Mexico, but almost 30 second into the conversation he looked at me and said I can't do it!! I've lost all my Spanish! and had to switch to Korean! We didn't eat there because we didn't have time but we will be going back soon!

So I got to stay in my same area bong choen and got a new companion Elder Westbrook! He is from Alpine Utah and went to the same high school as my MTC companion, Elder Reynolds. We are having tons of fun together so far. He is super outgoing and loves to speak really good Korean to everyone around us! Even though we've only been together for a short time, I've learned a ton of Korean from him! We went into the MTC the same day and we are older in the mission than both of the sisters in our area! Super young missionaries in the ward but luckily we have an awesome ward! my last companion Elder Jenson got to stay here for 7 months so I hope I get to stay the same.

So one thing my new companion learned from one of his Korean companions is that it is totally okay to straight up ask ward members to feed you or buy food for you. In his introduction talk on sunday, he literally said "I'm a really hungry missionary so please buy me food" He told me beforehand he was going to say it and I told him he was crazy and that made no sense! Sure enough right when he said it during his talk everyone laughed and seemed to love it and really will feed us now. Apparently the idea behind it is that your 형 or 누나 (older sibling) is obligated to buy food for people younger than them so since we are pretty much the youngest adults in the ward, we are allowed to say it to anyone and it's totally normal! Fine by me.

The work is going pretty good right now. We are trying to make a big push to make our english class bigger and more professional.

Sorry for the short update! From 봉천 with love. Elder Nixon