이번주갔다왔내요!! - February 16

So I asked Elder Fowler last week if he had any culture shock and he said "Not really feels pretty close to America except for the fact that they sell toilet paper at all the cell phone stores! What's with that?" I may have been here for almost a year, but I still don't have a good answer for that..these cell phone stores always try to spice up their store front with really, really loud music and balloons and yep...toilet paper. There are just towers of it outside all the cell phone stores. I guess everyone needs it.

Elder Fowler and I officially have a full week here in the books! We had lots of amazing stuff happen this week including finding our first investigator!! We found him on former investigator records from when the missionaries taught him last summer. His name is Brother Bae and he is awesome! He is confined to a wheelchair and has a handicap with his speech, but is all there mentally. He speaks pretty good English. (luckily for Elder Fowler) He has a really cool story. He and his younger brother, who is also handicapped, live together and help each other out. He has a full time job working in IT, if I remember right. He said that he doesn't have many friends so just the fact that we are willing to meet with him makes him so happy. The biggest challenge looking forward will be getting him to church. He lives on the entire other side of our area from the church and said he has no good way of getting there and that it is almost impossible. We decided to first build his testimony of the Book of Mormon and once he has that belief, promising him that God will always provide a way to keep his commandments. We are seriously so excited we get to teach him.

The other potential investigator we found this week is this Korean guy who just started speaking English to us after we introduced ourselves in Korean. He is Korean, but lived for 18 years in Moscow, Russia. He speaks English with a Russian accent, which is pretty fun to hear coming from a Korean. He is here doing his military service and plans on staying in Seoul after. His parents are hardcore christians. He saw that our name tags said Elder and he said, " Hey my Dad is an Elder too and my mom is the girl version of an Elder". (maybe slightly different than us?) We're hoping we get to meet him this week.

So i've gotten a little better feel for the area since my last email. It's pretty much lots and lots of apartments and living areas in half the area and the other half are two giant business complexes with just huge office towers everywhere you look and lots of businessmen. Last Tuesday, we were in these business complexes for most the night waiting for our appointment, so we had extra time to talk to people around that area. It was one of those times your not sure if you could even find one person who would even be willing to have a conversation with you let alone share the gospel. It was lots and lots of rejection from lots and lots of businessmen, hah. We finally had our appointment and were at the bus station waiting to go home. I saw a man who I was sure was just leaving the office with headphones in looking the same as every other businessman I tried that day. I honestly didn't want to even try. I thought that is the last thing he wanted after a long day at the office. But, I mustered up the courage and did it and right when I said hello, he was so excited and wanted to hear everything I had to say. We ended up taking the same bus and having a good 20 minute conversation that ended with me getting his number to meet again. I know this story has happened to millions of missionaries before me and there's no wow value of it, but it was really cool. We had set a goal the day before to talk to a certain amount of people just like we do everyday and when we added up our contacts that night it turned out he was number 36 that we talked to when our goal was 35. I didn't know he was number 36 at the moment, but I could've easily (I actually did for a minute) just said "we've done enough for today." From that point on, I decided I'm going to have a "just one more conversation" attitude.

Opening a new area has plenty of challenges and its been pretty hard, but I seriously have a "I refuse to complain about anything" companion which is the best. Elder Fowler encountered his first talking to a drunken man experience. About 5 minutes in I figured out that he wasn't gonna let us say anything and that he just wanted our ears. So at that point, I better do what he wants and started live translating for Elder Fowler. I was surprise,d that despite his drunkeness, I picked up a solid 85% of what he was saying and repeated it back in English out loud. It was quite the scene to say the least. He didn't seem to mind me translating it, ha. Our new area is full of chinese people!! We've approached at least 6 people in less than two weeks who spoke no Korean or English, which had never happened to me prior to coming to this area! Maybe we'll pick up some chinese investigators. My new area has a burger shop that all the missionaries are regulars at and is super good! closest thing I've tasted to an American burger since I've been here. Korea is different in that if its not a fast food burger chain, the only other place that sells burgers are coffee shops. So all the missionaries always pile into this little coffee shop and eat burgers.

I had temple day on Thursday and got to see every one of my companions except for my trainer, Elder Kim. Elder Jenson, Westbrook, Veerothai and Fowler were all there at the same time. It was fun to introduce my greenie to all the people I had talked all about the first week.

Yesterday, it was almost scary during Sacrament meeting how much I was actually understanding. Those kinds of settings are the hardest to understand because you have to focus really hard and just listen, but I got more understanding than ever, which was amazing. Our young mens president talked about how we receive church callings not only for our benefit but for the benefit of others. It made me think about who I'm blessing as a missionary and how everyone in the church blesses so many people around them just by doing their part!

Hope you all have a good week! From 금천, with love. Elder Nixon