Week 82 January 25, 2016 "I am now in Pyeongtaek"

     I am now in Pyeongtaek. Goodbye Seoul, hello not city! Seocho was super good and I had a really good time in Seoul but Pyeongtaek isn't as bad as I thought it would be. My new companion's name is Elder Andersen and he is from Utah of course. We have so many missionaries in our mission from Utah. So our mission totally fulfills the stereotype that all Mormons are from Utah. It was hard to leave Seocho and my 2 awesome recent converts but we have witnessed a lot of miracles here in Pyeongtaek this past week. They changed a few things up so we will be working with the Korean ward now here in Pyeongtaek. Since we are in Korea and speak Korean President Morrise after receiving counsel from the Area Presidency pretty much closed down the English area. We will still work with the military branches if they have work for us like if investigators are there. We only get like 2 days a week to work with the American or English speakers then all the other days will be spent trying to find youth Korean investigators. The church in Korea really needs youth so we are going to make finding youth one of our big focuses. On Sunday, we went to both the military branch and the Korean ward and man was that a lot of church. We met someone named Simon this week from Nigerian and taught him. He is so solid and accepted a soft baptismal commitment. So yeah this past week was one miracle filled week. 

     I was reading back in my journal from last year and I wanted to share something I wrote in it. I was serving in Gangnam at the time and not too much was happening so it was kind of a tough time. I wrote about faith and compared faith to being a game. If you think about a mission or life period is a big game of faith. Of course having cheat codes in this game would be nice but God doesn't make it that easy on us. Also if you think about it we kind of do have a cheat code or a help through the hard times. That help is Jesus Christ and He will always be there. We do of course have to be diligent, faithful, obedient, etc. to receive this blessing but it is available for all of us. We all can master this game of faith and power up to new levels each and every day!!!

Love, 

Elder Picard