Sawuddeekub!! (hellooo!) - January 19

Life's good right now sitting here in the internet cafe sipping on my Dr. Pepper that I buy every Monday when I walk in. The weeks are flying by lately! I can't believe winter is almost half over....With that being said, I can't believe my mission is half over! No one is counting right? Yeah, me neither. This week was up, down and all around with good, bad and crazy! Highlights were finally eating Hongoh (the rotten stingray), having some good conversations on the subway, finally getting to meet with our convenience store worker investigator outside of his job, and last but not least interviews with President Morrise. So, we finally got to eat the very hype crazy exotic stingray. It was a great way to start conversations with people on the street. I would tell them I was going to eat it or just ate it and they immediately had a strong opinion that I was either crazy for trying it or that I would receive health and be strong. It seems to be popular among the older people as does all the crazy food. We went with two members of our bishopric. Right when the waitress brought it out, our English fluent 1st counselor said in English "Now Elders we don't trust you....." never something you want to hear from a ward leader especially when you think he's talking about missionary work. Luckily, he just had a really long pause in the middle of his sentence. "We don't trust you.....that you will be able to have more than one bite of this so please don't feel bad when you can't eat all of it" It was then I thought, "what did I get myself into?" but then I ate it and honestly.....it wasn't as crazy as they made it up to be. Sure it was raw fish with the bones still in it, but it wasn't too bad at all! It was actually kind of good. I ended up eating more than both of them to make sure I "gained their trust", haha. Maybe some referrals will come out it, who knows. So, we had an open schedule the last 2 hours of our Saturday night. We decided to talk to people in a busier part of our area. But as we were walking there, Elder Veerothai turned to me and said "there's no way I can be out here all night, it's sooo cold!" I totally agreed but didn't know what else we could do. So I said, "lets just go ride the subway and talk to people!" We got on the subway at one end of our area and rode it to the other end then got off and went the other way for 2 hours. Honestly it is kind of scary talking to people on the subway because everyone is so busy doing something. Last Saturday was a good way to kind of get over the fear of it. Usually we're on there to get somewhere we need to be and it's always good to talk to someone while we are on our way, but yesterday was the first time I got on the subway for the solitary reason of just talking to people and it was really good. It was still hard, of course, but I figured out there are just as many people willing to talk to me as there are not willing. It is just a matter of finding the willing! I always have to remind myself that we as missionaries succeed when we invite. Every time we decide to talk to someone, we offer a Book of Mormon or ask to meet again, we've succeeded no matter what the outcome.

This week was a little rough for us in that all our progressing investigators didn't respond to any of our calls or texts and didn't meet us. We still had a miracle! I'm pretty sure I've already written about our convenience store investigator who has been too busy to meet us. Since we've met him, we've only been able to talk with him while its slow at work. We finally met him outside of work!! We went to lunch together. He asked us where we wanted to go and of course I told him Grandma Bae's Kimchi Stew. I got my usually hotdog kimchi stew and it was just as amazing as it is every week. After lunch, we took him to the church and gave him a tour. He really liked it, he said that he didn't really have any friends in this area. I told him that there are tons of unmarried people like him his age coming to church and that he could make lots of friends this way. He told us how much he really wants to come but how busy and overworked he was right now. He totally sees how it would be good for him but he is working two jobs, one on the weekend. Luckily he doesn't work on weekdays in the morning- afternoon time and he said we could meet for a lesson at that time. I'm soo excited to share in more depth the gospel with him. He needs it so bad. All his family has passed away and he needs the knowledge that he will see them again. Please pray for Brother Kim.

You may or may not know that every Wednesday in the mission, missionaries gather together for a district meeting, where we train each other on how we can be better. Since I'm the district leader right now, I'm in charge of giving the training each Wednesday. I got a call from President Morrise two Sundays ago saying that we had interviews scheduled for our area right after district meet so he would join us for my district meeting...uhh giving a training with President there? I was a little stressed about making sure it was good. About half way through stressing out and preparing for it, I remembered how down to earth President was and how unnecessary it was to over worry about it. It was a really good meeting. Just to make sure I wasn't nervous while I gave it, I started the meeting with the first three lines in Thai that my companion wrote down for me. Geez, I thought Korean was hard! After the meeting, I had my interview with President Morrise and it was so good! I decided that he had known me for 7 months and I still had yet to open up to him about what was hard for me as a missionary and things I struggle with. So that morning I wrote in my study journal some things that are hard and questions to ask him for his advice in order to be better. It was amazing in the interview how he just started teaching me without me saying anything and he answered the questions I wrote down exactly without me even asking! Talk about the gift of discernment. He is really so great. We talked about how we need to be happy out here but never be satisfied, always wanting to be better and continually working towards progress.

This week's year mark celebrations include going to Coldstone Ice Cream and all you can eat meat buffet! Thanks for all the support I love you all! from 한국, with love. Elder Nixon