Elder Daniel Jackson Picard : Week 25 December 29, 2014 "Christmas was the best!!! Happy Birthday & Baby to Hanna!"

I am an UNCLE Woo Whoo!!!!!
I can't believe it is almost 2105!! Time flies when you are having fun out here during mission life I guess. In 4 days I will have been on my mission for 6 months! It is crazy to think I have been here for that long. I had a great week this week. Probably one of the best weeks of my mission so far. Christmas as a missionary is great!! You wake up in the morning and it just feels like another day but then you get to call your parents and man is that the best Christmas present I have ever gotten!! It was so nice talking to my family and definitely uplifted me for the rest of the week. I mean it was definitely a hard Christmas being away from my family for the first time and all but I had my mission family and all these Koreans to celebrate with so it was great! We had a mission Christmas conference that was really fun this week. For lunch we got a turkey dinner from the base out here and man was that delicious!!! I even got my favorite, apple pie :) The conference overall theme was that EVERY missionary serves a purpose and that we all need to work together in uplifting each other. It definitely was exactly what I needed to hear because recently I have been wondering why in the world the Lord needed me here in Korea! I still don't know and may never find out but what my mission president shared really hit me. I just got to continue to do my part and rely on the Lord to make up for my shortcomings. We all can be missionaries in all that we do. As a missionary I learned this week from a training we watched President Dieter F. Uchtdorf gave to the new mission presidents that we all have to be fearless missionaries. We must fear no man. All of His sheep must be found and taught of the gospel. God gave us this gospel and knowledge we have so that ALL of His children can be saved through His only Begotten son Jesus Christ. This very message needs to be spread to all. Lucky for me right now, that is what I am here in Korea trying to do. We all can be disciples of Christ even if we don't have a tag on our chest. All need to know about Jesus Christ and His significance. We are all just so happy with the knowledge we have so why don't we just spread it and make others happy? I may not have reached my full potential as a missionary yet and at times can be more lazy than I should be but as long as I keep moving forward that is all that matters. We should never let Satan or the adversary get us down. Like it says in the New Testament we need to just pluck out our sin, cast it into the fire, and keep going!! Christ wants us to be happy and with His atonement we can constantly be moving forward. At the Christmas conference they showed some slide shows of everyone in the mission as missionaries and then as babies so that was pretty fun to watch. You could feel such a sweet spirit there it was great!

On Christmas we woke up and opened our packages from our families the whole house all together so that was fun. After that we went to the church and had a little party where we made pancakes and watched "The Best Two Years." It is crazy how accurate that movie is!! It really is right on the money of how a mission is haha. One of our English class members brought a Baskin Robbins cake that was way tasty. Christmas night we went caroling first to a members house in the English Branch then we went and sang on Gangnam Daero, the main street of Gangnam. We got a lot of weird looks and it was kind of scary singing in front of all those people but who knows maybe some felt the spirit as they walked by. Some foreigners walked by and were like what in the world are these two white dudes doing singing in Korean on the street haha.

On Saturday we went to Dino Golgi, a meat buffet, with our friend Ranee from the English Branch. He is a pretty funny dude. We also went to Costco and I got some muffins!! Not just muffins but that was the best thing I bought haha. I had a good conversation with the taxi driver on the way home and was able to talk to him a bit of why I was here. He was Christian too and a really nice man so we had a nice talk. He said I was handsome and then to make him laugh I responded in Korean of course and said "No. I am uglier than a pig" haha. That poor taxi driver was laughing his head off, he thought I was so funny. Yesterday was rough... I woke up with a terrible head ache and could barely walk without falling over haha. I just had to fight through it all day though with church and all. Last night they had a family history thing at the Stake Center that was pretty cool and everybody kept asking why my dad is brown and I'm white. So that was pretty funny. They had an end of the year music festival afterwards that a lot of the English branch came too. There are a lot more American members in Korea then I thought. It was crazy being around people that weren't missionaries that spoke English as good as I did. Transfer calls are this Saturday so who knows maybe I will go to an English branch or something? I have a feeling I will leave Gangnam since I have been here for 3 transfers but idk. I will go whenever the Lord needs me to be. I love you all and hope you have a Happy New Year!!

Lets make 2015 a good one!!!! :)

Love,

Elder Picard