July 20- Webster's Book of Mormon

Well Brother Uncle Bob, (Brother Shin) made some good progress this week! Our problem initially was that he was just sort of a passive investigator who was our friend. So since he was our friend, he was willing to listen. But we got him to open up more this week and find what he really does think about God and religion. We were teaching him about prayer when he posed this question: If a serial killer killed your family and didn't feel bad at all, would you be able to forgive them? It wasn't until then that I realized I've had it easy up until this point when it comes to getting asked super hard questions. He then asked what would Jesus would do, which was a little bit easier of a question. We came back the next lesson and showed him the verse in John that records Jesus on the Cross saying forgive them for they know not what they do and he was able to kind of accept that for his answer. We are really trying to focus on the Book of Mormon and teaching from it but its coming very slow since he's never read scriptures before in his life. We told him the whole story of Ammon converting the Anti Nephi Lehis and how they came back to Zarahemla and the Nephites had to forgive them even though they had been at war together and killed their people. We had him read Alma 27 after telling him the story and his reaction after trying to read was that the Book of Mormon was just like the dictionary. If you want to know a word, you use the dictionary and if you want help with things you look in the Book of Mormon. I wasn't quite sure what to say after that because I never thought of it that way, hah. I half agreed with him and then said it is more fun to read than the dictionary. This week our focus for him is coming to church. We think that if we can help him come to church he'll be able to understand everything better. It is good to see that since we've first me,t we've already made lots of progress.

I wrote last week about meeting those two high school kids while we were teaching Brother Shin. Well, we met them again this week and they became investigators. I told them the first time we met that I would buy them dinner since I was the older brother (It's culture here to buy your young friends food). We had Chinese food together and they said that we could meet on a weekly basis! I'm excited to start teaching them this week!

So I kicked off birthday celebrations a week early, last Monday by going 45 minutes away to get cheap mexican burritos for the first time in Korea!! Wow, I forgot how much I miss burritos! The place is actually a chain called Dos Mas. Now I'm on the hunt for one in my area. I can't say it was authentic mexican style, but it was American style mexican food which was good enough.

The biggest thing that happened this week was our party for the ward we had on Saturday. We wanted to have a night where we taught them American games and made food. Preparing for it became kind of stressful when we brought all our ideas to the ward and they said yeahh we already know about that and yeah we've already played that game before. If there is one thing I've learned its that American influence has hit Korea pretty well and theres not much left to teach them, hah. We had to dig a little deeper and come up with really creative ideas. We wanted to do a dance but spent the longest time trying to think of one that would be simple but still fun. We came up with the chicken dance! I totally forgot about the chicken dance until then! It was a good hit. We also did a can milk toss game where you try to knock the cans down but we had to make it even better so we taped Elder Huffman's and my faces to the cans and the goal was to hit our face! We ended it with a big relay game where they were in lines and they had to move water between two buckets with a sponge. That was what seemed like the most popular. It was such a good chance to get less actives and nonmembers to an activity I would say about 1/3 of the people there were nonmembers and less actives so it was a really good turn out. Lots of stress putting it together, but it turned out really well. My favorite part was playing the Joseph Smith stick game because I had a ton of primary aged kids in my group and they all wanted to challenge me to the stick game and so I got 4 of them together and they pulled me over.

I don't know why but this is the most I ever stressed over transfers. It ended up that I'm staying with Elder Song and Elder Huffman is leaving. Kind of a weird transfer call because we thought Elder Song was leaving Aug 4. President thought we would be here for all of next transfer so if he really does leave Aug 4 then President said he'll figure something else out. We went to the Korea Church headquarters today and they said that he'll most likely leave Aug 4 so we'll see!

Thanks for all the Birthday wishes today I'm going to eat live octopus for my 21st! That is the only thing we really have time for since we had to go to the embassy for Elder Song! I'll take pictures!

From 금천 with love Elder Nixon