March 23- GUM CHOEN

I think Cum Choen is actually a closer pronunciation that Gum Choen, hmm.

Hi! We had had a pretty okay, good, nice little pretty week here. Kind of ups and downs this week. We got to meet with lots of our potential investigators this week and such, but all our investigators have just been too busy lately..we still had so much cool stuff happen though!

First of all, we were sitting at the city office waiting to meet with one of these potential investigators, who had already rescheduled our appointment once, when he called us right when we were supposed to meet and cancelled. We were pretty bummed, but as a backup plan we decided to go visit a less active we had only briefly met once and see if we couldn't get to know him better. Whenever we tried to visit before, he would always be gone, so we were doubtful that we would catch him on a Friday night, but he was there! We walked in and even though we only met for about 10 seconds the first time, he was so excited to see us this time and totally opened up. We connected really quick because we're the same age (which is a huge deal here) and have the same major, advertising/design. He took me through all these ad book he has studied and showed me projects he's done. It was so cool! He said that he wants to go abroad and work, but needs tons of help with English. I started to ask about his baptism and he said he got baptized when he was 12 and at that time he just did it cause he liked the missionaries. He said he doesn't have any faith but he agreed for us to meet once a week to serve him through teaching english and teach him the gospel. I really hope we can bring the gospel back into his life! Yesterday we had yet another miracle with a less active. We were on the far end of our area when a member called us asking where we were, I said we were far away looking for a less active's address but couldn't find it. His immediate response was, I'm coming!, and then after let's eat! He came and picked us up and put the address right into his navigation system and turns out we weren't even close, hah. He drove us there and we got to meet this guy who has been away from the church for a few years and has since moved and gotten married. He was a little shy, but we had a good talk and agreed to a similar program as Brother Lee (the first less active) to him and his nonmember wife!! I'm really excited for these 2! Even though we couldn't meet with investigators this week, we still had awesome opportunities to share the gospel.

I got two phone calls this week that made me jump up and down all over saying "YEA!!!" The first call was from Elder Westbrook. Back when we were together in Bong Choen, we met this American named Will (I may have mentioned him in a post a long time ago). We met him and he was just the nicest guy. We had an awesome conversation the first time but weren't able to get his contact info then. From then on we always talked about how awesome we thought Will was. We would always joke that when we went out street contacting we weren't looking for just investigators we were looking for Will!! Well long story short, the sisters also had a Chinese investigator named Lee who was Will's co worker at Seoul National University. So they both went to the English branch here and had a really good experience. The last thing I heard this week is that both of them were going to Russia for a month of doing research and that Will would try to read The Book of Mormon while he was there. Well the sisters called Elder Westbrook this week and told him that he got back to Korea and told them that he read it and believes Joseph Smith was a true Prophet and the book is true!!! ahhh! I was beyond happy.

The next call came from Elder Veerothai who called to tell me that Brother Kim, who works in the convenience store, that I wrote so much about has read up to 3 Nephi and came to church for the first time yesterday!!!

These two things made me step back and see that it really, really, really isn't about me. If I have so much hope for people to receive these things and I don't get to see it, it doesn't mean that it won't happen and doesn't matter if I'm there to see the end. Elder Westbrook and I were talking about how we didn't see much direct success together but how people we met during our time together have still worked out. This week we were streetboarding and a guy came up to me with a big smile on his face saying that we had met before. I couldn't get his number the first time, but I did this time. That "2nd missionary encounter" is almost always with another missionary and we sometimes go without knowing what we did. It's so cool! Thanks and love, Peace and blessings.

From 금천, with love. Elder Nixon