Friday, November 14, 2014

November 9 - Shave Every Morning November!! Whoo

So it got really cold here this week. My companion told me that winter has already started. I really don't remember being this big of a baby about the cold last winter, but I've already whipped out the coat and scarves. This was another week packed full of what felt like random busyness. We had our zone leader council meeting at the mission office and also our zone training meeting last week, so lots of meetings. We actually had a big change in our mission this week. Ever since I've come to Korea, we've kept count of the number of people we contacted each day and set goals everyday and every week and so forth. It doesn't come out of Preach My Gospel, but it is somewhat of an extra stat to track our progress. When President Morrise first came, he placed a huge emphasis on talking with everyone we can and giving all of Korea a good image of our church. So over time, it seems like that became the stat that many missionaries focused on. It is mainly because we have lots of control over it when we don't have as much control over something like lessons or new investigators. It eventually got to the point where everyone seemed to ask each other how many people they could talk to each week and sort of used that to measure their success. So, this week President Morrise decided to take away the contacts stat and replace it with a practice lessons stat that records lessons we teach each week to members or people with little or no interest who are willing to listen for 30 min as part of the English program. I really like the change. I must admit, I fell into exactly what I mentioned above about worrying too much over street contacts rather than lessons. Sorry if that explanation was really boring, but it did kind of change up my attitude towards missionary work.

We got to meet with Brother Jeong last week! He takes his big ACT kind of test this week. After this, we think he will be less stressed. We spent a lot of the lesson this time talking about how were concerned that his parents still don't know about him getting baptized. Everything is okay legally with it, but we just told him that if they find out they might force him to stop coming and we don't want it to be something he hides from his family. Elder Lee told a story of his friend who was in a similar situation as Brother Jeong is. He got baptized and his parents found out and now he can't come to church. Unfortunately, he said that he doesn't think he'll be able to tell them. Upon talking with our ward mission leader, he told us that the majority of young people who get baptized have parents who oppose to some degree. We thought about how he has been coming out to church for a year now and how he wants it for himself so bad. We decided that we'll honor his desire to be baptized. We also met our less active Brother Kim this week. He has taken us out to dinner quite a bit lately. He told me that he is determined to feed me all the weird food I still haven't eaten before I go home. So, he took us out for some spicy fish soup that had carp in it. Let's just say it was an experience. Supposedly next on the list is rabbit stew! Anyway, we're having a hard time progressing with him lately. He hasn't come out to church in a while. He loves meeting with us, but our gospel lessons seem to always end up talking about the logistical things about our church and comparing them with other things in the world. They are really interesting, but it seems hard to feel the spirit. We're going to try this week for more simplicity and solid doctrine based lessons.

Last Saturday morning, we got to go up for part of the day to the young mens' overnight camp out. It wasn't too far outside the city so we went up in the morning to spend some time with them per Bishop's request. It felt like the first time I'd been in nature in forever. I learned that Koreans that camp love camping. Everyone around us seemed to have super nice high tech equipment. It was funny to see the similarities between my young mens' outings and theirs. It really brought me back. The one thing we did that I wish I would have done as a youth on camp outs was cooking meat over the fire. They just set a grill fence over the open flame and threw down huge slabs of pork. It was so good!

Last but not least, this week was the primary program! It was the most wonderful Sunday of the year! I had a ball translating it. The best part was the kid that got up and just started laughing uncontrollably and couldn't get a line in without laughing more. It was for sure a sacrament meeting to remember.

Ok. Preachn-n-blessins, love you and sure do appreciate that support! From 곡반정, with love. Elder Nixon

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