January Freeze- January 12

My zone leader told me that January is a good month to be inside the church teaching investigators rather than outside on the street looking for investigators. woof. first hand experience. Apparently, January 6th is the coldest day of the year here and it was soo cold! Think it's safe to say I've never been so cold. Don't worry though, 6 months from now I'll be complaining about how I've never been so hot. It was a good week here in Bong Choen. First I spent the day in another area on exchanges and saw a really cool part of the city right along the river, which cuts the city almost exactly in half (the boundary of Seoul and Seoul South mission). Since it's right on the river, it houses one of the biggest, if not the biggest fish market in Seoul. Talk about crazy fish. I said that I had a appointment to eat hong oh last week but it got rescheduled to this week...but I saw it at the fish market and it is a straight up sting ray! that they ferment and then eat raw! I guess I'm only here once right? No regrets! I'll take pictures this week. After we looked at 10 foot octopus tentacles and other crazy fish, we walked this path along the river and it was an awesome place to talk to people. People just seem more prone to talk to you when your both looking over a sweet view of downtown Seoul. While we were doing that, we saw a grandma who was hard at work trying to separate the wood off this desk and having a hard time so we grabbed a hammer and just started wacking at it. Eventually this other old guy came to assist (with a screwdriver). She thanked us a million times for helping and the old guy took us back to his shop. He was a really cool Korean Army Veteran and a little drunk. We had a good talk and gave him a Book of Mormon. After we gave him the book, he insisted that we take his hand carved walking sticks. I can't say no to that, so we spent the rest of the day walking around the middle of the city with big walking sticks. Everyone over the age of 50 thought they were the coolest things ever and asked where we got them and they all wanted to sit there and listen to us. Everyone under the age of 50...wanted nothing to do with the two white guys with big walking sticks, ha. Good and bad I guess.

We had dinner Saturday night with two of the Grandmas in our ward. They love missionaries sooo much. They gave us this Korean soup that contains an entire chicken so we ate really well. They also insisted that we take all this disgusting food for our health involving giant chunks of ginseng and onion tea. We were talking during dinner and they said that they go to the temple together 3 times a week 8 hours a day!!! That's just what they do. I wish I could put into words the way they acted towards each other. They sort of act like teenage best girl friends in their 80's..that might sound kinda weird though ha. I was sitting there thinking "man once my wife dies and some other old guy's wife dies, I wanna move in together and just be best friends like these two. Bong Choen Ward seriously has an all star line up from the cute kids to the cute old ladies.

So I had a huge miracle happen this morning. At the end of September Elder Westbrook and I had this guy come to English class saying he wants to practice English and learn about the Church. So that night after English class, we happen to have a member meal scheduled and these members told us that anytime they fed us that we were more than welcome to bring investigators to the meal. So, we asked him if he'd like to come to meet our member and learn more about the church. He said sure! We had an awesome meal where we talked about tons of different church topics and all had a really good spiritual experience together. We could tell that he really felt the spirit as he started to get slightly teary eyed towards the end. After that night we were so excited thinking we had a super prepared investigator but after that night every attempt of contact was a fail and we never heard from him again. We were pretty devastated at that time (I read that days journal entry this morning). Then this morning Elder Westbrook calls me, says that these other missionaries asked if he knew who brother Kim was because he mentioned first meeting Elder Westbrook. Apparently, he found the missionaries in his area and started meeting with them and is scheduled to be baptized in the coming weeks!! Ahh that was 4 months ago! Such a cool experience.

Yesterday the Jo family sent their kids to church but didn't come themselves, so we couldn't teach them. I found out yesterday that the dad is still attending his other church that happens at the same time as ours. It's a bummer that they don't come but they are still sending their kids to our church and we are teaching them right now. Yesterday we taught them how to pray and how God is our Heavenly Father. It may not be the ideal family investigators I thought it would be but I'm still happy that I get to teach the kids! Their awesome!, a 15 year old girl and 11 year old boy. Please pray for them and their family.

This week President Morrisse is coming to my District meeting to sit in...Hopefully I give a good training!! We have interviews with President right after so I'm really excited to get some 1 on 1 time with President. I will let you know how it goes next week!!

I love you all so much! especially Ollie! From 봉천, with Love. Elder Nixon