October 20 Email

CRAZY WEEK

I don't why, but every time I begin to write,  the first thing I feel like I need to do is report on the weather. It's cold. It is not freezing yet, but it's getting there. I had to throw the overcoat on a few days, but everyone is telling us to enjoy the weather now because come December/January the bone chilling humid freeze comes and that is actually something worth writing home about..apparently. (Cheers to only one Jan/Feb in Korea!) I have lots of cool stuff to report on this week.

First of all, I need to tell you about an awesome mistake I made while talking to someone this week. So, a common phrase we say to people is "If you need any help please, call us! We came to Korea to serve" The problem is that the word for help is 도움(Dough-um) and the word for money is 던 (don).  I said that to a guy on the street this week and he asked me : "If I need any money, I can call you?" uhhh sorry, but we can only give service! He thought it was really funny and understood (after clarification) what I meant. I told it to my Bishopric on Sunday in our meeting and they laughed for a solid five minutes. We have the biggest group of characters for a Bishopric. I love that they are so fun with us.

This week in english class, we talked about Halloween. Turns out it isn't really a thing here, bummer. I explained trick or treating to them and they had a really hard time grasping the idea of kids going up to strangers doors, knocking, and the strangers being obligated by culture to give them free candy. I guess if I didn't have a full knowledge of American culture, I would probably react the way they did, ha. It was almost a little awkward. Things got even more confusing and awkward when I tried to explain the idea behind me being "Fitt"Romney for my costume last year. That being said, we decided to throw a Halloween party for our english class and young single adults a week from this Saturday. Should be good!

One day this week, we were walking home to our house at the end of the night when we saw these 3 high-schoolers jamming out with a guitar in a park. We ran over to them and asked them to play us a song. They said choose any American song and they can play it. We sat there and couldn't think of one on the spot so he just started playing "Baby" by Justin Bieber, which I pretended to just love. I also pretended to know all the lyrics and sang really loud when the chorus came. Then they asked us if they could play one more song so we said sure.There was no pretending needed for what they played next. They played Creep by Radiohead,(my favorite band)! We told them to come to our english class and that later we wanted to hear more songs. It was so awesome.

The highlight of the week came when I exchanged for the night to the 강남(Gangnam) Elders area with Elder Clausen. I just happen to come on the night that they got invited to dinner by some very famous members of their ward. I got to spend a meal with the first person ever baptized in Korea. She is a lady that's in her 70's and the daughter of Ho Jeak Kim. He is the one who basically brought the church to Korea after being baptized while studying in America. He worked for the Government when he came back to Korea and played a huge role in establishing the church here. She was such a sweet lady with so much life in her. You could tell that she has treated the missionaries well for years now and was so appreciative of us serving. We shared a message with her and her husband and we got to feel of their strong testimonies. It was something I won't forget.

That's all for this week! Thanks for all the emails, love, letters, prayers and whatever else you may be sending my way.


From 한극 with love,

Elder Nixon