February 29, 2016--Week 29

Hey everyone, hope everything is going well for all of you! 

Things are going pretty well here, we found a couple people last week, but only one of them is looking even remotely interested, so the finding continues. Elder Kim and I are both working on improving our contacting skill. If we are doing it for several hours a day, and most people are going to slam the door no matter what we say, then we might as well get better at practicing new things and at getting bold. We have made a decision that we will never walk away from a door, until they have closed it on us. By doing this, we guarantee to ourselves that we were bold enough. Yeah it's obnoxious to all those people, but to me if it means finding someone and watching them change their life, then I don't care how many people I annoyed. 

Elder Kim and I just starting working with a couple who are super nice. Sister Vanderlinden is a recent Jewish convert, and Luke is some religion from India, but I don't know the name. They are super awesome people and we have loved working with them. We are meeting with the today and we will see how it goes.

Yesterday I gave my third talk in the English ward here in 5 months and I gave my talk on the Book of Mormon and how it relates to the bible. I testify that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that through it's reading and study, we can grow so much closer to our Savior, Jesus Christ. I love the Book of Mormon. It truly is a miracle that we have it today to hold in our hands, to read and study the message in it. I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Elder Jacob Nickerl

P.S. Here is a photo of a few of the Korean kids in the branch. They all wanted to download Minecraft on my iPad... But yeah I love Korean kids. They are the best.

February 22, 2016--Week 28

Hey everyone,

Sorry about the lack of weekly emails recently. I have been really busy on P-Days and haven't been able to send one. I'm hope you are all doing well.

Here in New Jersey things are pretty slow. Elder Kim and I have been focusing almost all of our effort on Korean and as such we have had a lot more contacting time. But we are confident there are people here who are ready. Also the members have begun to bring their friends to activities and we are really excited about that because through the members we will find a lot more success. We aren't really teaching anyone who is super progressing right now, but we are looking to be able to find them soon. I feel that my Korean language ability is not moving anywhere quickly. I can't really see rapid improvement or anything, but to be honest I haven't really had the time or mental energy to put a ton of effort into language study. The stresses from added responsibilities this transfer are beginning to set in and hopefully I can put more energy into Korean.

The only really exciting thing that happened this week was on Tuesday at district meeting President and Sister Taggart came randomly to my district meeting (not for my birthday) and so that put a lot of extra stress on the meeting (I would not have chosen to have that happen).

In studies this week I came across this quote from President Taylor, “Come, follow me, as I follow Christ.” This simple statement embodies so much of what we are striving to do here on this Earth. If we are not ourselves striving to follow Christ, we can in no way, invite others to do the same. The best way to teach or lead anyone is to show by example and invite them to do ghe same themselves. This church is true, because Jesus Christ is at the head. He is our example, and he is who we strive to follow. As we do so, we invite others to do the same. I'm so thankful for the example of our perfect older brother, Jesus Christ and for all that he taught, teaches, and will continue to teach.

I hope you all have a great week and that things are going well for you all!

-Elder Nickerl

February 1, 2016--Week 25

Hey everyone,

We have some big changes after this week. Transfers are going on today/tomorrow. Elder Koo is leaving and my new companion will be Elder Kim. Elder Kim came out at the same time as me, and he is in the English program learning English. His English is similar to my Korean, maybe a little better, so there may be some communication barriers at first, but it will be good for both of our language practice. He has been in my zone for the whole time I have been out, is an awesome guy, and I'm excited to be with him. I'm a little bummed to have Elder Koo leave, because we are just starting to really work together well. President did tell me this was just going to be a short temporary companionship with Elder Kim, because he needs to go back to the English program and because next transfer another native Korean is coming to NJ and President made it sound like I would be training him. Looks like I’ll be in the walking area for the rest of the winter. :/ I'm super excited though. 

Outside transfers, not much is happening, we found a few new solid investigators and are looking at some good progress for the area. To all of you who have been praying for me, I truly can feel it and I testify that I can not do it all on my own and I feel and am thankful for the prayers. I know that many times the Lord works in his own way to help build us as people, right as we begin to become comfortable, we are faced with a new challenge that helps build us as people. I'm thankful for change even though it can be hard, I know it builds us as people and helps us grow closer to God. I know this church is true! 

I love you all, if I can do anything for you, let me know. If not, have a great week! 

-Elder Nickerl

P.S.  Here is Elder Kim, my new companion, this is from exchanges a little bit ago.

January 25, 2016--Week 24

Hey everyone,

Well if anyone was wondering, we sure did get snow here. This week has been absolutely crazy. With too much happening to even talk about half of it, so I'll just mention the weekend. On Saturday, we woke up to about two feet of snow and a constant blizzard throughout the day. By the end of the storm, I think we had about 3 feet of snow. But yeah, Saturday we were told not to go out and proselyte unless we had good snow clothes and really wanted to. So we went out and helped all of our neighbors shovel their driveways. They all were a little weirded out because they were wondering why we were helping them when our own driveway was covered in snow. But after insisting that we wanted to help they were really friendly. We created a lot of good relationships and many of them offered us money or dinner or all sorts of things. That took most of the day and by the end of the day, everything was covered again with another two feet of snow. Sunday morning, we repeated the process because church was cancelled. And in the afternoon, we walked an hour and a half through snow to get to our investigator Monique’s house to shovel her driveway. Then she fed us dinner and we went home and went to bed. After two days of shoveling snow, I don't like snow anymore.

Anyways, I just want everyone to know how real the power of the priesthood is. This week, a lot of really crazy things happened. Things I didn't even know actually happened. But the power of God overcomes all. And truly, I can't say much more than to assure you after things I have seen this week that God is real. His power, is real. He loves us and nothing will or can overcome that. I know this and I promise this. I hope you all have a great week!

--Elder Nickerl

This was Saturday morning before half the snow fell!

This photo doesn't do it justice!  This pile is 8 feet tall!

I'm really glad that we don't have to shovel that!

January 11, 2016--Week 23

Hey everyone,

This week we put Li on baptismal date! It's super far away, so we are looking to change the date, but it is for his birthday so he doesn’t want another day. We will be continuing to work to get it closer, but in the mean time, he is happy and moving forward. We resolved A LOT of his concerns this week regarding his membership if he gets baptized when he goes back to China. That really is the only update for this week. Nothing much else to report, but it's been a good week and it went by super fast. We have been really busy. 

This week, I'm thankful for the opportunity that we have to repent and start new. Because no matter how hard I try, I will never be perfect in this life. And I am very aware of that this week as we have had a few disastrous lessons that almost got Li and one of our other investigators to drop us because we did not prepare as well as we should have for the lessons. Fortunately, both are giving us second chances and we have the ability to try again. I know that in this life, we will mess up. It's just a simple fact. But that is part of the plan. Without mistakes, I know personally I would never learn. I'm not thankful for the mess ups, but I am thankful for the lessons we learn from them and for the forgiveness that we receive so that we can move on and become better.

I love you all, have a great week!

-Elder Nickerl

January 4, 2016--Week 22

Hey everyone,

It's been a quite week again with the finishing up of the holidays, and a few people dropped us, so we are back to a ton of contacting.  The only thing we really did out of the ordinary this week was on New Years day. We went and had lunch with our investigator Monique (이원경). She fed us a traditional New Years Korean meal and it was super super good as usual. This investigator has been dropping off food at our apartment two or three times a week for like 2 months. She thinks of

us as her children kind of. She's awesome! She even gives us referrals (the other day, we randomly got a message from her saying[in Korean] she wanted to take us out to lunch with her friend). But yeah other than Monique, Li is still chugging along.

This week, I was studying a lot on spiritual gifts and I thought a lot of things were cool, but I wanted to point out something I found. God wants to help us, he has given us the opportunity to become like him. And so, if we seek for these gifts from God (with a righteous intent) he will bless us with these gifts. To me, this means a lot of things, because I am a very imperfect person, and I can not do anything on my own. I can't speak the language of the people I love and want to serve, I can't teach people perfectly, English or Korean, and most of all, I struggle to be outgoing. All of these are things that as a missionary, I have to overcome and I can't do by myself, but God has promised that after doing my best, he will make up the difference. I know that this promise not just applies to me, but to everyone.

Thanks for all your support,

-Elder Nickerl

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.