It looks like it will be a Christmas in Bong Choen! I'm staying here for another 6 weeks and Elder Westbrook is headed off to be a zone leader in another zone. I'm sure through reading these emails you've sort of gotten a feel for the kind of guy Elder Westbrook is (isn't afraid of talking to anyone kinda guy). Well his new companion, from what everyone around the mission says, is the exact same way as him! I can't even picture what it will be like for them, hah. As for me, I got hit with quite the surprise! I thought I would be training, but instead I'm getting a newer missionary that got here towards the end of the summer, oh yea and he is from Thailand!!!! His name is Elder Verothai...?(I'm 100% positive I slaughtered the spelling) I've talk to some people who were with him in the MTC and they say he is awesome. He's apparently really good at English, so that won't be a problem. They told me that the first day he showed up to the MTC, he had this huge afro with blonde highlights, hah. They made him trim it down there, but he's still got quite the mop, pictures to come.
So the way we find out this kind of stuff happen on what is called transfer calls night. It's always the Saturday night before transfers right before we go to bed, anywhere from 9:30-10:30. The Ap's or President calls us and lets us know what is happening. Since there's so many missionaries these days, its pretty hard to get everyone called in just an hour. Every time transfer calls night comes around, it can get a little nervewracking just sitting there waiting for the call. It's almost like a miniature version of getting your mission call again. I promise there's a good reason for me to explain this random part of missionary life. So last Saturday, we knew changes were coming in our area, but we had no idea what would happen, so we were pretty nervous. We sat and waited and waited and waited then the phone rang, but it was just another area asking if we got the call yet. That same thing happened two more times and we still hadn't gotten the call. 10:30 bedtime came around and still no call. "Uhh well I guess they'll just call us in the morning". We laid down and tried to go to sleep and eventually did. We woke up Sunday morning to a text that President Morrise sent at 11:45 (we had already fallen asleep) and that's how we found out! It was crazy. He called that morning and apologized a million times and said that they had a crazy night in the office where the phones wouldn't work right and all this stuff. Pretty crazy way to find out that your gonna be living with a guy from Thailand for the next 6 weeks.
This week the Halloween party went off so well!! It was last Saturday as well (Saturday was super stressful between calls and the party). The whole week leading up we were worried that it wouldn't be that successful. It was the missionaries' idea and we took it to the ward saying we want it to be a chance to get lots of nonmembers in the church meeting the members. The ward was totally behind the idea (the ward is so awesome). We committed that the missionaries would bring 15 non members to the party between english class members, investigators random people we met on the street (an Indian lady named Fema Jared). All week and even Saturday morning it seemed like we didn't have hardly anyone committed to come. We thought we were gonna let the ward down since they committed to come and provide tons of supplies we asked them to bring. But we called tons of people Saturday and got so many people there! My guess would be that there was about 40 of us. 20 members. 20 nonmembers! The ward was so good about fellowshipping them too. We did American Halloween games like bottle ring toss, cake walk and pumpkin painting. It was an awesome success and the ward members said that in years passed when the missionaries have done parties for their english class that they never really involved the ward or invited them to come and that this was the first time this kind of party had happened.
One of the pictures I sent this week is of us and my good friend 김진호(Jin Ho Kim) He's been paralyzed from the waist down since 1988 and we have been visiting his house since I first got here in June. He was an investigator at the start, but his live in assistance is supported by the Catholic church so he said that there is no way he could really leave the Catholic church. We were sad when we found this out and realized there isn't really anything we could do, but we decided to still continue visiting him as a service. He loves to read out of the Book of Mormon so we do that every time. He's very Catholic, but thinks there is a lot of good things in the Book of Mormon. I love that I've had the opportunity to serve him and become his friend over the last 6 months. It's experiences like this that make me love what I'm doing right now.
Thanks for all the love, support, emails prayers, letters and anything you're sending my way!
From 봉천, With love.
Elder Nixon
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