Week 59 August 24, 2015 "The Jesus."

      My new favorite restaurant is CPK, it is so yummy!!!! They have one in Gangnam and I finally got to go. It was the first time I have ever ate there and man was it tasty. It is kind of funny that the first time I ate it was in Korea of all places haha. Our recent convert Femme took us (she was baptized my first week here). In Seocho they have a French town and there is even a French school there too. This week we went over there and saw a ton of French people. It was cool, I like French people they are nice haha. There is this park over in French town we went to with a lot of bunnies. I tried to catch um but only managed to get a pic feeding one because they were way too fast to catch. When we talked to the French people I greeted them in French and man was that not a good idea because then they thought I spoke French... My one year of taking it in high school did me no good haha. I for sure am thinking now that I want to go home and study a bunch of languages because languages are just cool. Maybe I could even become a linguist and do something with that who knows? I for sure want to learn Spanish and French when I get home. I guess we will see if there are any other languages I would like to learn. Maybe Japanese too because I heard after you know Korean, Japanese isn't too tough. We got to go to Yoyoma's Kitchen again for lunch and man is that place the bomb. Last week I was doing some calls and managed to schedule an appointment with this random guy named Mr. Seong that missionaries probably met a long time ago. We met him this past week and he took us to dinner. He didn't have a ton of interest and said he hadn't even met the missionaries before so I dont know how we had his number haha. He did although have English interest and came out to our English class the next day so that was cool!! 

       We met a lady named Lisa on the street a few weeks ago and got to meet her this week so that was way cool. We ate lunch with her and her Finnish friend in Gangnam meaning we got a referral from a random lady off the street. How cool is that? Lisa said that he wanted to learn about "The Jesus." So when we met them we talked all in English which was a surprise. Lisa was alright at English but the Finnish guy was incredible. After lunch we went to their art gallery thing and taught them there. I was able to teach Yan, the Finnish guy, like the whole Restoration while my comp taught Lisa and answered her questions. We are hoping to meet them again so that we can give Yan an English Book of Mormon because we didn't have one on us then. I went on an exchange with Elder Monterrozo this week and that was fun. We went to the Nike store on Gangnam Daero and got into a convo with a guy that was working there about shoes and stuff because as you all know I worked at Champs so I love that stuff. The guy had me try on the Hyperdunks 2015 and they had this little court where I could dribble around and shoot the ball to see how the shoes felt. Well anyways I got the guys number and hopefully this week we can go play ball with him. I didn't start with too much gospel but hey sometimes you just got to have a friendly patient approach to get someone to talk with you. 

         We met with our Bishop and he is the man. He lived in America so his whole family speaks English perfectly. He was able to answer some of our Korean questions so that was cool. We ate Quiznos and chicken with them. I just keep eating all this American food, it is great haha. I just gotta exercise super hard now because I don't want to be a chubby boy when I go home haha. For lunch I am still on that breakfast burrito grind so I ate a lot of breakfast burritos this week. Cooking is fun, I like cooking! Well this email is all over the place sorry haha. We found a place with a ton of basketball courts and played with some guys in our missionary clothes. We are going to try and hit it up this week in pday clothes and proselyte over there. We helped this girl carry stuff up a hill so that was a cool service opportunity we were blessed with. 

          Well to end last night we ate at a members house and the message we shared was on the importance of parents and listening to their council. The mom was a little worried about her son growing up with all the temptations we have in this ward so we talked about from experience how to avoid those things and make it through middle and high school way out of reach of Satan's grasp. I guess simply what we hit on was trusting your parents enough to talk with them about anything and everything. Also instead of having just a good relationship with them having a GREAT one. As I was teaching I was reflecting a lot back on my life and my relationship with my parents. It was a great experience for me because while I taught I truly realized how awesome my parents are and how much they cared about me growing up and how much they still continue to care about me. I may not have been the best at listening to them but for sure when I did I was able to stay far away from temptation. Parents know they have all been in our shoes before so we just gotta trust what they say. So I will just end by saying that I have the greatest parents and God gave us parents to protect us from this evil world and all the temptations within because He loves us. I am blessed to have such amazing parents and I hope to be as good of parents as they are someday!!! 

Love and Prayers, 

Elder Picard