December 1 email

LET'S JUST WING IT! This week brought the first snow of the season for Seoul! it didn't stick, but it came down pretty hard for about 2 hours last Wednesday. My companion was so amazed/confused/thrilled and whatever else comes with experiencing snow for the first time! There was snow piled up on the cars, so I told him to make a snowball. Right after he grabbed the snow, he saId, "ahhh how do you ever have snowball fights?? its too cold!" This week dropped into the negative celsius and stayed there pretty much the entire week so I think winter is here for good! It so fun to see Elder Veerothai get double culture exposure between living in Korea with an American (he's only had kids from Utah as companions). His latest thing is writing in cursive. He asked me to teach him and then I got pretty ashamed when I couldn't do anything outside my name in cursive. He learned from another missionary though and now just always wants to practice it. He wrote on our stats board in cursive:This is so cool I love it. He's already way better than me at cursive after one week, hah. I also made the mistake of teaching him the idiom "Let's just wing it!" Now every time we sit down to plan something and I ask him what we should do he says, "lets just wing it man!" We're having lots of fun together and getting lots of good done.

Speaking of teaching english, we were in english class this week when one of the class members said that he had 2 daughters and one on the way. I was so impressed that he knew "one on the way" and told him that if he wants to be a little funny he can say that his wife has a bun in the oven. Once I explained it to the whole class, they erupted with laughter! They got such a kick of comparing a baby to a small bread snack! We have a few members of english class right now that I really want to start teaching the gospel to. Hopefully in the upcoming weeks, we can pick them up as investigators.

So as you all very well know, last week was Thanksgiving! The day was pretty much just another day of missionary work during the day. It was really cool to talk to people on the street and tell them that it was American Thanksgiving and then ask them if I could tell them what I was thankful for. It was an activity that President Morrise thought up and it was really cool. Thanksgiving night we got to go to an American family's apartment and have Thanksgiving dinner (another first for Elder Veerothai). We ate with the Cutlers and they were so nice, made the best tasting meal and even gave us leftovers, which we ate Friday. Brother Cutler served in our same mission about 13 years ago and is back here working for LG. I think we were one of the few missionaries who ate with a non military family, since that's why most American families come to Korea. They had 3 little girls and the minute we walked in and smelled the turkey, saw the little white kids running around, it was somewhat of a shock, even though I was expecting it, hah. Brother Cutler was really into guitars so we talked about them a ton. Then we went to his room and he pulled out his PRS 22 custom guitar (a super nice expensive awesome guitar) and let me hold it! It was soo cool!!! They only thing I wanted to eat that night was pumpkin pie, but sure enough Sister Cutler came through with a homemade pumpkin pie! I could probably go on for the rest of this email about how awesome it was, but I'll cut if off there. Oh and it was Elder Veerothai's first time ever eating turkey. Both in Korea and Thailand, they never eat turkey. I did not know that. Sister Cutler had to go on to to the base to get the turkey we ate. It wasn't the ideal thanksgiving given that we were away from family, but it was perfect for the circumstances.

So, we've been going around lately trying to give just short visits where we teach something from the missionary lessons to members and invite them to pray about someone they could share the gospel with. We told a couple we would come by for just 20 minutes on Saturday night. We went right after dinner and we walked into their house only to find out they had a huge meal prepared for us. We were already full since we just had a big dinner at our house and had to eat out of faith!!! It was the first time I've ever had pig's foot and it was so good but so hard to eat on a full stomach! This whole 20 minute visit idea is great, but with Korean culture, if anyone walks into your house, you give them food. So, we are still workin on it, hah.

We picked up a new investigator named Huee June this week. He poses as an ancient palace guard at one of the old palaces. He also drives a motorcycle and wears silky scarfs, he's awesome, haha. He doesn't have any religion right now but is open. We taught him about Joseph Smith this week and he accepted it really well! It's hard for him to come to church because he has to work on Sundays, but I'm excited to keep teaching him.

This week I went on exchanges with a new missionary who has only been here for 8 weeks. I really haven't worked much around "greenies" in a while, but the whole time it was crazy because he was asking questions and saying stuff the exact same way I did when I was in his shoes. He would say something like "I want to work hard on the language but I just don't know what to study!" and then I would laugh and tell him I said the exact same thing. The best was when we would talk to someone and have a good conversation and leave them with a good impression about missionaries. Immediately after we were done, he would just say, "that was amazing!! how did you do that??" Oh, it was so weird because I said the exact same thing to my first zone leader when I was on exchanges with him. We had a lot of fun together. It made me excited to train when they need me to. It weird to see how fast the roles switch.

Had a good week here!! hope everyones doing good back home! From 한극, With love. Elder Nixon 닉슨 장로