HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! January 26

Wow! what a week! It really happened. The midway mark has come and gone. Last Thursday night, I decided to dig through the suitcase and re-read all the letters the family wrote me the day that I went into the MTC. It was a really good time to reflect on what happened this year. I wrote down all the things I felt like I learned. One of the biggest lessons I came up with was learning to get back up after I had fallen down. It's not a mind blowing break through or anything, but I can't even tell you how many times I've had to get on my knees out here at the end of the day and just say, "alright lets give it another shot tomorrow".

This was a week that seemed like absolutely everyone wanted to feed us! Monday night we met with our investigator who just got promoted to another office, so we can't meet anymore. He decided we should go out with a bang by taking us to a super nice traditional Korean meal. We had everything from raw octopus to eel to hong oh (sting ray) and a million other things (see pictures). They just kept bringing out dishes! It was one of my favorite meals here so far. On Thursday, we planned on celebrating by going to a meat buffet but instead got invited for a member meal. I guess the member must of received some revelation that we were planning on that because right when we got to his house he asked if it was okay if we just went to a meat buffet! Turns out, it was a more expensive, nicer buffet than the place we were planning on going, so that was an awesome surprise. Oh, and we also went out for a ton of pork with an investigator Tuesday and got invited for pretty much the same meal by an english class member on Saturday. Wayyyy too much meat for one week. I'm going veg for at least the next 6 weeks.

So I talked about getting back up after falling down right? Well this week I took quite the slam. I got ran over by a grandma who was going full speed on her jazzy scooter. I didn't see her coming at all and she got me square in the back of the legs. She wasn't interested in learning more about the gospel.

We have an investigator named Brother Jo who works at a real estate office in our area. I don't know why but no matter what street your on here in Korea there will without fail be these 3 things available 1)a cellphone store 2)a convenience store 3) a real estate office. The first few times we went to visit him he was just there all by himself with no customers so we thought he might be kind of lonely. We learned this week that the entire neighborhood of old men love to congregate in his office and just talk about old guy stuff. So when we last visited he had 3 of his old geezer friends in there and right when we came in. He started telling them about missionaries and about our church, talking about how we don't get any money for this and don't smoke drink etc. It just turned into this huge old man debate about us which was actually really funny. They loved the fact that we could speak Korean and tell them about our church. There's a special place in my heart for the old men here in Korea.

Wow this letter is really all over the place, sorry! Yesterday, we went to the young single adults sunday school. They were talking about the results of the fall of Adam and Eve. Our crazy newly called ward mission leader raises his hand and says "they had to start wearing clothes!" everyone cracked up and he had this look on his face like "no really! i'm serious! they really did!" It has been fun to work these last couple weeks with the new ward mission leader, Brother Yoon. He has so much energy and is really fired up about his calling. He looks at every investigator and says we could probably have them baptized in 2 weeks! It's fun to work with him.

The Jo family hasn't been coming out to church lately not even the kids, they are still coming to youth english class though, so that's still good. We get transfer calls this Saturday. I feel like there gonna keep me here in Bong Choen for another one just for the heck of it. We'll see! hope everyone has a good week!

From 한국 with love. Elder Nixon