Elder Daniel Jackson Picard : Week 60 August 31, 2015 "Nummy in My Tummy"

Well this will be my last email in the month of August because it is time for September! This week I hit my year mark in country so that was pretty crazy. I cant believe I have been here in Korea for a whole year! It feels like just yesterday I was being trained by Elder Hastriter in Gangnam. It has been really fun to read back in my journal from last year and reflect on the progress I have made. Back when I was a greenie I couldn't speak Korean to save my life and now I can speak a lot better so woo hoo!!! Since you have to study a lot as a missionary I have been forced to read a lot of things haha. I used to hate reading and would never read at all back home but now I am starting to like it. It isn't so much of being forced anymore now I just like reading and learning new things about cool church stuff. I have been reading a book by Henry B. Eyring "To Draw Closer to God" and it is super good. There is just so much to learn in this life you just gotta read so you can learn more. So everyone join the cool kid club and read a lot of good churchy books.

We got a referral from a member this week so that was a miracle. It is not too often that we get referrals so it was super cool to get one. The guy that got referred to us is a Sister's younger brother in our ward. We met him last week at his sister's house and he was super cool. He seems to have a lot of potential and we will be meeting him again tomorrow. We are going to take him to lunch at our tab and then go to the church and teach him there. He doesn't just seem to have only English interest and seems to have a bit of gospel interest too! The brother in our ward who pays for the tab randomly showed up at our house with a bunch of meet and fruit for us so it was like an early thanksgiving haha. He is the man and always hooks us up with food. I am really blessed here and my belly is never hungry so that is a huge blessing. We went on exchanges with the ZLs and I got to go with Elder Swanson. It was really cool because he was trained by the same trainer as me! When I went over to his area their house had a bunch of random food so I got creative and made us some yummy dinner. Along with reading I am also starting to like cooking. I will probably just become Chef Picard and open a restaurant called "Nummy in My Tummy" or something like that. I still am not sure what I will call my restaurant that is just an idea haha.

We have an older lady investigator who has been coming out to church and doing really good. We have been really trying to find new investigators and are doing alright. Most of the time people just have English interest so we are just trying to figure out how to spark that gospel interest too. We played basketball with some kids at the park who went to an international school and spoke English perfectly. It is always super weird being around Koreans that speak English just as good as we do. After we played with them I told them that we were missionaries and that if they ever wanted to learn English or to learn about Jesus Christ to give me a call. We were going to get all of their numbers but we had to hurry to an appointment. They have this little store with a bunch of imported snacks and I managed to find a sweet deal where I got 18 reeses bars for like 3 bucks! Of course I had to get them because I couldn't turn down that good of a price. We ate Thai food this week with a member and man is that kind of food tasty!! It may be my new favorite. We met this kid playing soccer with the young men a few weeks ago and we met him yesterday after church. We met him at a subway station by our church and then walked up to the church. The kid is in high school and he speaks pretty good English for never studying abroad or anything. He is a super cool kid and we had a good time with them. We told him to talk to his mom about our English program to see if we can get rolling on that. He said his mom already goes to church so I guess we will see what happens.

They had a conference thing up in the Seoul mission for all the deaf members and the Korean sign language missionaries from our mission got to go up there. They called last night and said the kid that we helped with his bike in the subway station was at church and that he is meeting with the missionaries up there!! It was way cool to hear that. I just realized that you can never pass an opportunity to serve someone because you never know what will happen in the end. I didn't necessarily know why I should of helped that kid in the subway station that one day I just did. It was for sure a prompting from the Spirit to help him. What a miracle! If he doesn't get baptized oh well at least now he knows that he has a Father in Heaven that loves Him and that He shows that love by sending His servants (missionaries) to help him.

Love,

Elder Picard