MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM KOREA!

Merry Christmas everyone!!!! I didn't think I would get to email before Christmas, but at the last minute, they decided to change it. So the week for Christmas activities goes like this: Today we are going to a big subway station to do a big proselyting/caroling activity with our whole zone. It should be really fun! This morning, we all wrote our testimonies in a Book of Mormon and are going to wrap them as a gift and give them out at the station. Hopefully, whoever receives mine can read my Korean! If you can remember how bad my handwriting was in English, it is even worse in Korean, hah. I'm hoping they think, "aww some little kid wrote this for me!!!". We will see.. Tomorrow is our big mission Christmas conference with the whole mission. Not exactly sure what we are doing for that other than more caroling! It'll be fun to see old companions, missionary friends and so forth. Right after the mission conference, we have our ward Christmas party which will be awesome! I'm so glad I get to spend Christmas with a ward I've been around for 6 months and know well rather then spending it somewhere I would have barely just been transferred to. Christmas Day! The highlight will definitely be skyping with family! We might go Christmas morning to another missionaries 4 man house and open presents together and have a big Christmas breakfast. We also plan on going to play soccer outside, which sounds freezing, but hey why not? When else am I gonna ever play soccer on Christmas day? I'm hoping it snows again because all the snow has melted since the last storm. It should be a fun first Christmas in the field! I will give you an update on the last week. Some really cool miracles happened. First of all, 2 weeks ago the missionaries in our area were going home from our area from district meeting, they were waiting for their bus and decided to go into the convenience store; While they were in there, the worker out of nowhere asked what ward they were serving in!! He said that a long time ago he went to a ward in another area and had just moved to Bong Choen. After they told us, we went to see him the next day and he was so nice! Hw was just a super humble guy who was just straight up friendly. It was funny because this convenience store is literally no bigger than maybe 100 square feet. He didn't mind if we stood next to him while he worked and talked to him, but if there was even one other person in the store besides the 3 of us it became very crammed, haha. So you can imagine what it was when it got up to 8 people! We invited him to come to church and he said that he had time Sunday, but that he had 8 hours of wedding shoots (Oh, he is also a wedding photographer on the weekends.) on Saturday so he would try and come. He couldn't make it yesterday, but we're gonna keep working with him.

I think I wrote last week about the preacher that runs a car battery store outside of his work on Sunday. I hate to say it, but he doesn't really want to take the lessons from us. He pulled out some scripture in the Bible about how Paul said that preaching any other gospel other than God's was blaspheme or something. We told him that it's the same gospel and same lessons to be learned from both books, but it didn't really change his mind. This morning, I was finishing the book of Acts and I came upon these last 2 verses Acts 28:30-31 "And Paul dwelt 2 whole years in his own hired house and received all that came into him preaching the Kingdom of God and teaching those things which concern the Lord, Jesus Christ with all confidence no man forbidding him" We are going to stop by tonight and I can't wait to share with him what the Lord taught me. That I right now am doing exactly what Paul did 2000 years ago, according to this verse. I am making him seem really scary, but he's actually super nice. He always feeds us and asks about our work. They got a pet hedgehog this week as a gift. That's when it hit me. I'm here in Korea, living with someone from Thailand, staring at a wall of car batteries, listening to a Korean minister's wife tell us about how hedgehogs love Korean sweet potatoes...I guess life just gets weird sometimes..

One last short story. So this was the first week as District leader. I found out on Tuesday that I was supposed to give a training on Wednesday ,so I threw together whatever I could in the time I had. I was pretty nervous about giving the training in that I hadn't ever given one on my mission especially on my own. My district is all foreigners except for one companionship of Korean sisters.. So my zone leader sat in on our district meeting and about 2 minutes before it started said you can give it in Korean right?? He said it kind of jokingly and I sort of laughed and just said yeah hey why not and we laughed and then about 20 seconds later he asked the same question seriously and then said just give it half English and half Korean...ahhhh as if I wasn't nervous enough. So I started in Korean and was telling a story till I got halfway through and notice the foreigners with confused looks and then noticed the Koreans with confused looks and then had to just cut into English. and give it in English. I really hope to get to the point where I can train in Korean, but I am not there yet, hah. At least we could all just laugh over my effort. Lets just say that there is plenty of room for improvement! That is what the mission is all about!

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas! I'm so excited to skype home! Thanks for the love! I love it. I love you too. and you and you and you!

From 봉천. With love Elder Nixon