Week 63 September 21, 2015 "Families best jam, 21st of September!!!"

     Today marks the day of my families' best jam! I sure do miss dancing and having a good time to that song :( but it is okay because I will be there next year at this time to dance to it! My dancing skills will probably be a little rusty though... I think since I am a Picard and because we are born dancers that my moves will come back pretty quick haha. This coming weekend is Chuseok again so that is pretty exciting. This year we have a two day conference for it so I am guessing it should be pretty fun. I can't believe this will be my last Chuseok, time flies! Next thing I know it will be my last Christmas as a missionary. The Christmas season is the best and I can't wait for cold weather to come. The weather hasn't been too hot lately but the sun is still out and it is still humid. I think come October it should start to cool off so I am pretty excited about that! At night the weather gets nice so that has been quite refreshing. Last pday everyone in my house wanted to go to the zoo so we went. It was my second time at the zoo so it was whatever and nothing special just all the same animals I saw last time. Last time I went to the zoo was back when I was a greenie last September so it was kind of cool going back the same exact time I was there last year. 

     This area didn't have a stickerboard so I made one and we took it out this week. We went out and stickerboarded on Gangnam Daero and talked with a ton of people it was really good. It was the first time I had been back stickerboarding there since last year so it was kind of weird to look back since a few of the missionaries I stickerboarded with last year are already home. We got 3 new English class students out of it so I would say it was pretty effective. While we were boarding we saw a lot of foreigners and talked to a lot of Koreans who lived in America. It is always interesting talking with Koreans in English because you just automatically want to talk to them in Korean. This super nice guy from Australian came up to us and said that we are really good people. He said that he has met a lot of Mormon missionaries in Australian and that they are always the nicest people. He just kind of thanked us for being missionaries and doing a good thing by serving a mission here in Korea so that was super nice to hear and I couldn't help but smile and be happy. 

     We taught Sister Lee again with Brother Choi and we put her on date for November 1 to get baptized!! I am pretty excited because this is the first person I have ever gave a baptismal date to on my mission. She is just the sweetest little old lady and I love teaching her. I really think she will go through on her commitment and get baptized. Since her son is a member we told her that he could even baptize her and she was pretty excited about that. We made a bunch of calls this week because of the party we had on Saturday. We invited a ton of people but only a few came so that was kind of a bummer. On Saturday we had a pizza party at the church where we watched Meet the Mormons. Like I said not a ton of people came out but I think for those that came it was a really good experience. We bought pizza and muffins at Costco and then took a taxi back to the church and we may of bought too much pizza... haha. A lot less people came than I thought would come so we had leftovers and got to take some home. We also got to take muffins home so now our house is full of pizza and muffins haha. My tummy got kind of rocked from eating all that American food so I am kind of taking a break and will just let the other Elders in my house eat all the leftovers. After church yesterday we had Dominoes pizza that a non member bought. The non member is a lady in our wards husband. Someone in there family died and a bunch of people from our church went to the funeral. He was grateful for that and then bought pizza, kimbap, and a bunch of other stuff to throw a meal at church for the ward. After that meal we taught a little girl who is like 10 in the ward and hasn't got baptized yet. Her mom is a member but I dont think her dad is. Her mom told us she had to get baptized so we just started teaching her yesterday. It is really hard to keep kids and to make it fun but I think I did a pretty good job for not having any time to prepare. 

       They had this big parade in our area and we went yesterday to talk with people and man was there a lot of people! They had a bunch of random things in the parade and I didn't necessarily understand the parade in whole but it was still fun. Like they had these kids from China who looked like they were from Avatar the last airbender do this crazy kung fu stuff, some Turkish people dancing, and Korean warrior dudes riding horses. I wish I would of brought my camera with me but I forgot it :( Well what I will end on is a little message about joy. Recently I have kind of been struggling to always be happy and feel joy throughout all aspects of my mission so I did a bit of study on joy this past week. Joy can be obtained through a lot of ways but I want to focus on just one. That way is through the Savior Jesus Christ and this gospel. Throughout all of the Book of Mormon prophets who relied on the Lord always felt joy. Those prophets didn't rely on themselves because they truly knew that they had to rely on the Lord to receive joy. I obviously love my Savior and know He lives but honestly I dont know how much trust and how much I have truly been relying on Him to bless my life with joy. Having a joyful life and mission is what I want so it looks like I have to start relying on the Lord and NOT myself! D&C 101:36 

36 Wherefore, fear not even unto death; for in this world your joy is  not full, but in me your joy is full.

Love, 

Elder Picard