Happy New Year!

Well I have to admit, the biggest disappointment of being away from Christmas this year was missing Grandpa's ever famous Christmas night standing on the footstool speech. I hope everyone had a good Christmas! Christmas on the mission is a good time in life to get the core feeling of Christmas. I feel like every Christmas we all celebrate both the "Santa Christmas" and "Christ's Birth Christmas" and find joy in both. This year was pretty hard to celebrate the "Santa Christmas" being so far away from friends and family, but it made so much more room to think about the Christ's birth Christmas. I was reading in the Ensign from last December where Elder Holland recounted his Christmas experience on his mission. He had just been transferred to a new area with a companion he didn't know to an area with hardly any members. He described both how hard and how amazing the experience it was of being all alone and having nothing to really celebrate but the core reason of Christmas.

On Christmas Eve, we had a mission wide Christmas conference that was so good and helped me feel a lot of what I described above. The biggest, most awesome surprise was getting to hear from President Morisse's Mission President from when he served here in Pusan, Elder Han. He was one of the early members here, being baptized in the 1950's. He talked about the miracles he saw as a mission president and how when he started there were only districts and today there are multiple stakes in the Pusan area. He even told us the story of one of President Morisse's converts, how he was the president of a liquor distribution company when he was investigating and how he had to quit his job and how hard it was. But as a result, that convert's son is now the Bishop of Elder Han's ward here in Seoul.

We went straight from the all day conference to our Ward Christmas party. We had to leave the conference a little early and show up to the party a little late so when we got there we already had five investigators there! It was so awesome yet stressful at the same time. By the end of the party, we had 7 investigators there. I wished I could've enjoyed it more, but it was honestly stressful trying to bounce from investigator to investigator making sure they all felt welcome. That is a problem I will gladly accept any day of the week. The highlight of the party was definitely the primary kids waiting on stage for Santa Claus. The MC would tell the kids to call for Santa and they all yelled together 산타할아버지!! (They call him "Grandpa Santa") Then he came out and they all got a present. The kid of the sisters' recent convert ran up to her with the biggest smile on his face showing her his present. I've never seen a little Korean boy so excited to show his mom something.

We ate at Costco on Christmas, haha. It was just as crowded as any other day, which is really crowded, ha.

So, We have this investigator who is really hard to understand. We visited his house the day after Christmas and he just kept making the action of shooting a rifle while he was singing Joy to the World. I tried really hard to understand what he meant by that but no dice. He also called me at 6:30 this morning and said "Good Morning ㅓㅇ롳쳐다ㅠㅏㅁ" , thats how much he loves us:)

Finally, we got to teach our member referral that has been coming to church the last few weeks. He's been too busy outside of coming to church. But we went to his house last night and taught him about the restoration. I was explaining to him about how we can know Joseph Smith was a true prophet by reading The Book of Mormon and then he told me that he already believes that Joseph Smith was a prophet...alright!!! I hope that his belief is confirmed when he reads it! I'm really excited about him and his family! (his family came to the party and comes to youth english class), so we are hoping to teach them too.

Thats all for this week! Have a good New Years!!

From 봉천, with love. Elder Nixon