[ HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013!! ]

The new year is here..ALMOST. It's New Years Eve here and it sure is a cold one!! We have had soo much snow already this year!! It seems like we have already gotten more snow this winter than last and it's not even January! Saturday night was another snow storm. Every time after it snows the temperature drops a lot and gets super cold and it all turns to ice. We got to the church early yesterday and shoveled out the whole parking lot for our members which was quite a bit of work. This morning I had to take my companion to get his foreigner card so he wouldn't get deported. Anyways, I wanted to stop to eat some Subway since there was one in the area. While we were eating we saw 3 car accidents from all the ice on the ground. It's pretty dangerous out there! I'm lucky to not have a car haha!

It's a shorter week to write about since I just wrote on Wednesday, but we still have had quite a bit go on, especially in the lives of our investigators. It just has been amazing to work with them and help them. We set 2 baptismal dates this week, with Jeen Han and Dong Oo. They will be getting baptized on Jan 13th. I am soo stoked for them. Jeen Han seriously is the definition of a golden investigator. He accepts every commitment with a smile and has been reading The Book of Mormon. He already lived the Word of Wisdom so no problems there either :) He is such a shy kid so it's a little tough to help him get fellowshipped by members, but this last Sunday was better than last. And his buddy Dong Oo made it to sacrament meeting and seemed to like it also.

Our other most progressing investigator is Sister Kim and her two children. We are actually with them right now!! Hahah long story. But basically she is just awesome! It's like she is already a member, we just have to get her baptized. I talked a lot with her about it on Saturday and tried to set a date with them for the 20th of Jan but she turned it down. She feels as though she doesn't know enough yet about the gospel and wants to study more. Actually her 2013 goal is to read The Book or Mormon more! Cool!! Anyways, I tried to explain to her we don't need to know everything to be baptized. Life is a learning process. And that's what enduring to the end is all about, learning and growing. And with the gift of the Holy Ghost it is soo much easier to do that. She really liked that and she came to the conclusion of "I will be baptized before you leave just not yet" hahah. So that was great, but just not exactly what we want! We will work on setting an official date with her :)

We had an investigator Mr. Lee and his wife and son take us out to lunch on Saturday which was a blast! They got us pork ribs and it was just a good time. We gave them the General Conference issue of the Liahona in Korean and English and they really liked that. Then their son talked about how he likes basketball so we are going to play sometime and try to introduce our message more with him (that was our first time meeting him).

On Sunday we just us 6 missionaries (since our ward combined there are 6 missionaries in the ward) went and contacted on the street together at a place called 불광 (Bulgwang) subway station. From there we went to visit our bishop and had a really good time. It was supposed to just be a stop by say hello and share a message visit, but it turned in to a dinner appointment. No complaints! Haha. She fed us some delicious traditional Korean food (like seaweed soup, kim chee, rice, pig intestine with noodle, hm what else, Keem which is just like a dried seaweed with oil and salt gosh sooo good it's like potato chips haha.)

I hope you guys have a great new years!! I'll be thinking of you all. Make some great resolutions this week :)

I LOVE YOU!!

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Love,

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Elder Messick

P.S. Happy birthday to my cute little niece Blair :)

P.P.S. I guess happy birthday shout out #2 to you Kellie :) haha. Love ya.