December 28, 2015--Week 21

Hey everyone!

Merry late Christmas and happy early New Years! 

We had a pretty interesting week. Because it was raining and because of the holiday season, we haven't had too many people stoked on listening to us, but we had a few good lessons. We are really trying to think of ways "outside the box" for working with the Korean people and to work with the members in the Korean branch. It's unfortunate, but just contacting Koreans on the street does not get very good of results and almost gives us negative results. So rather than street contacting, we are working a lot more with members and thinking of absurd things to try. 

Outside of that, we've done a lot of caroling this week. We caroled to our land lady who let us in on Christmas day. She was super nice to us and gave us cookies and talked with us for a little bit. 

Also, I gave a talk last Sunday in the English ward that we work with. I wasn't one hundred percent sure how to prepare it because it felt weird to do as a missionary, but I think it went okay. I felt somewhat good about it afterwards because I had a few people come up to me after Sacrament Meeting and ask for my notes with the talk.  I had to disappoint them because my notes would have made no sense to anyone else because it was just an outline with a quote and a few points. 

That's pretty much it for this week. We only had one investigator at church, and that was Li. We're hoping after the holidays the work picks up because it's pretty slow right now. 

At this time of year as we are all making goals and getting ready for the New year, I would like to share one of mine. My main goal is to be able to answer yes to this question every night before I go to bed: “Did I do the best I could every single day?" It's a hard goal to measure, but if I ever have to answer no, then I have a sick feeling in my stomach. But I know as I strive to do my best every day, and then let Jesus Christ's grace take care of my inadequacies, I can do much more than I think I can. I love you all!

Have a great week!

-Elder Nickerl

This is the family that we ate Christmas dinner with and also all the missionaries in our area.

This is Elder Kim and me. He is from Korea and in the English program. He came out the same time as I did and so we go home at the same time.  We went on exchanges for some reason, even though we aren't in the same district and neither one of us is in a leadership position. But it was fun. And helpful for both of our language learning.