6 month mark

Hello Everyone!

This week, I passed my 6 month mark of my mission, which leaves me with only 75% of my mission left and I can't quite believe it, I still feel like I got off the plane last week. But I am enjoying every second of this mission (except the ones where my companion forgets his wallet and we have to walk through a snowstorm instead of taking the subway)..

This week, my companion Elder Bryner goes home, so we had this past week packed with meals with friends and church members, and it's still not over yet since he doesn't leave Incheon until Wednesday. We help give meals to seniors, and the workers there even bought a fancy cake and sang for Elder Bryner since it was his last time there. And we also got transfer calls, and Elder Woolwine and I will continue to serve together in Incheon for at least the next six weeks. It will be weird going back to only having 1 companion at a time, but that is most likely how it will be for the remainder of my mission.

Some other fun instances this week included a verbal attack on the subway, which is not uncommon among missionaries. Anyways, this guy came up to me and told me in half English and half Korean that my nametag was a "glory cross." I'm not actually sure what that means, but this man definitely expected me to know.. And I really have no way of knowing if it was supposed to be a complement or insult, so if anyone has any insight on the matter, please inform me via email.

Another fun thing about talking to people is that they are always very complementary of your Korean. Some people will tell me I'm good at Korean after I say hello to them, which is good I guess... Anyways, usually the complement is just a one sentence, "Wow, you are good at speaking Korean" kind of sentence, but I had quite the different experience with a taxi driver this week. I was sitting in the front seat, so I asked him how long he had been driving a taxi and he said it had been a long time, then asked how long it had been since I came to Korea. I told him 4 months, and this man absolutely lost it. He could not stop laughing, and I was legitimately worried that he was going to crash the taxi. Then through his tears of laughter, he went on and on about how he learned English for 11 years in school like all Koreans but still can't speak at all, and was very surprised at how well we spoke Korean. So the Koreans are very supportive of people trying to learn their language.

And on the English side of my service here, we actually were asked to give a presentation at Chadwick academy, an international K-12 school. This school is located in Songdo, an artificial island off of Incheon that is one of the richest parts of Korea. So this Chadwick academy, tuition runs about 40,000$ a year, and it is nicer than most colleges. And the classes are all in English, so all the students are fluent, and there are several international students. So the librarian there does something every year called "Living Book" where she asks a bunch of people with interesting stories to come and give 15 minute presentations, and the kids walk around and choose which one they want to go to. So we actually got to talk about what it is like to be a missionary in Korea, which was a super great opportunity. And the swimming coach is a member of our church, so we got a free tour of the school after, we definitely lucky to have that opportunity.

That time when we were "the story" at a rich English-speaking school in Korea

And in the island of Songdo, there is also a University of Utah campus that I mentioned before. All of the members of our church that speak English in Incheon meet there for church, and there is about 30 members. Previously they were just known as a group of the Seoul English branch, but this week they actually got to become their own branch, which was super exciting to be a part of the church history here in Incheon. And being able to be a missionary for both the Songdo branch and the regular Korean ward is a great blessing, I definitely consider myself lucky to be serving here in Incheon!

Have a great week everyone!

Korea does have some really cool drinks

Hello everyone!

No complaints from Incheon this week, missionary work is the best! Actually, I think I got food poisoning this week, which definitely wasn't fun but it let up pretty quickly so no worries here.

This week is my companion, Elder Bryner's last week in Korea, so we already have meals scheduled every day this week, and there will no doubt be several more. So we're bracing ourselves to be stuffed for the entire week, and to meet with some outstanding members of our church and others we are teaching. We have actually been making cards to express gratitude to people who have helped us or that we want to get to know better. It took a little bit of time, but we now actually have around 30 of these finished products:

The Late Great Elder Bryner

One fun family we taught this week was a Mongolian family in our ward. The husband has been a member of the church for a long time and the wife got baptized last year, so we visited to help keep teaching them. The problem is, the husband speaks only a tiny bit of English and Korean, so communicating can be pretty hard. The wife is a little better at Korean, but they usually look at Mongolian scriptures or other reference materials while we speak in very simple Korean, and it turns out okay. There really are a lot of foreigners here, I think I've heard the Book of Mormon read in Korean, English, Mongolian, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese since I've been here. It's such a great opportunity to meet people from around the world, I'm so grateful to be able to serve in Korea.

I did try one new Korean cuisine this week that I wanted to share. It was called 동치미(dong-chi-mi) and it is a pink traditional Korean drink made of kimchi and fermented radishes. And it tastes exactly like you would imagine it would, I will just leave it at that.

On the other hand though, Korea does have some really cool drinks, including carbonated milk soda, liquid yogurt, and fruit soda with real chunks of fruit inside, which are all super delicious.

That time when we were "the story" at a rich English-speaking school in Korea

Here in Korea, a lot of the social traditions are pretty different. One, I didn't catch on to until recently, but almost everyone here does it. When a guest leaves a house, most people (since they live in giant apartment buildings) will walk the guest to the elevator and wait until the elevator door shuts until they go back inside, or walk them to the staircase. And some people will even ride the elevator down with you and walk you outside or even walk you to the bus stop in some cases. Koreans are really good about guest hospitality, that's one of the really cool things about their culture.

As far as missionary work goes, we are doing a lot of talking to people on the streets and especially on the subway, where you tend to be able to have better conversations. However, we still haven't been able to find anyone new to teach in a pretty long time. But we're working harder every week, so I know we will be able to find someone who is prepared soon. And regardless of that, I know that this is the work of our Heavenly Father, and that I receive guidance and help from him every day. There really is no greater call than that of a missionary!

Have a great week!

-Elder Bigelow

Seolar

Hello Everyone! 

There was lots of holidays this week, especially here in Korea!

The biggest one was 설날(Seolar), the lunar New Year, which I mentioned before, but it lasts for 4 days so it was about half the week. We spent Monday night at a church member's house, eating Rice Cake soup, which causes you to age one year here, so they always eat it on New Years. Also, we got to have a training/ celebration with about half of our mission, which was a lot of fun, especially seeing all the people that I served with in Mokdong.

Mokdong district reunited

Pictures taken in black and white become at least 15% cooler

We needed these pictures for a very missionary-oriented purpose, taking posed pictures is not the only thing we do..

Tripanionship 2.0

Our very...special companion

Another Holiday this week was Valentine's day, which I completely forgot about until an American mentioned it more than halfway through the day, I guess that shows how out of the loop missionaries really are. But actually, Korea does Valentine's day pretty differently. It's not really celebrated at all here, but they do have something called Black Day and White Day. I don't understand it yet completely, but on white Day, the men buy gifts for the women, and on black day, women buy gifts for the men. So White Day is about a week before Valentine's day, and the streets were filled with people selling flowers.

As I mentioned before, my missionary team covers a small English group in addition to our normal Korean congregation. This week, they had an adult dinner so we got to go with them and eat gourmet American burgers. So with American food and American people, I was about as close to America as I'll ever get here in Korea. 

Also they asked us to speak in their group on Sunday, so I gave probably the only talk I will give in English here last week. At this point, speaking in English is almost harder than Korean because as missionaries spent a lot of time here, their grammar patterns start to get mixed up and they start to say things that just don't make since. But I've only been here for about 4 months, so I think I'm still fluent in English at this point..

Forgive my handwriting, I'm new at this whole "Korean" thing

Another thing the missionaries in our district have been working on is an introduction page to give to people on the street. So it explains a little bit about us and why we're here, just to show others that we're normal people just like them. It also explains a little bit about the message we are sharing, since we often only have a minute or two to talk to people. Originally we typed them, but someone suggested that it would be more attention-grabbing if we wrote it ourselves... and it truly does grab your attention, especially because my Korean penmanship is at about a kindergarten level currently.. But here it is!

Have a great week everyone!

-Elder Bigelow

Fanciest face masks in all of Korea

Hello Everyone! And a happy lunar New Year!

Here in Korea, the lunar new year is the second biggest holiday of the year, so it's like new year's all over again, except it's 4 days long. But We're right in the middle of it, it lasts until tuesday or wednesday. Some of the traditions for this holiday include: Traveling to visit your grandparents( who usually live in the countryside, which leaves the bigger cities virtually empty), buying large boxes of SPAM for your boss, eating rice cake soup, and wearing 한복(Korean traditional dresses/clothes). As a mission, we will do a training/celebration this week, which should be fun!

설날, the only time where missionaries get to wear special clothes. Pictured here is Korean traditional clothing, known as 한복(Han-bok)

Some other highlights from this week included an invitation to a Korean buffet. In America, buffets have kind of a negative stereotype, but it is quite the opposite here. Some of the nicest food is found at Korean buffets, and a member of our ward invited the missionaries and a bunch of others. And this was probably the most confusing dinner I've ever been to, on account of the fact that there were people from 4 different countries represented there, speaking 3 different languages. We had 6 American missionaries, 4 Korean men, then a member from Uzbekistan who would sometimes have conversations with the other member from Moldova in Russian, we were quite the spectacle in the restaurant.

Another cool thing this week is that my companions got to be models. Someone we are teaching is developing super fancy face masks (Koreans wear face masks a lot to block the dust and other pollution) and asked my companions to model them since they have blue eyes. My eyes were too close to brown which I guess isn't interesting enough, but we all got a free fancy face mask, they're valued at around 50$ so we consider ourselves pretty lucky.

The fanciest masks in all of Korea and arguably the world

Our English group in Incheon! I'm the silhouette on the end...

My favorite part of this week though was the people we were able to talk to. We started teaching someone new, and they are progressing really well so far. But we still don't have a lot of people to teach, so we did a lot of talking with people this week. One night, we said a prayer before we started so that we would be able to be led to people who were ready to hear our message, then started walking. The only man we were able to talk to that night was trying to speak Korean and English but was too drunk to do either and ended up just being unintelligible. So we went back to our house that night a little sad, but we tried not to get discouraged. Then the next day, we tried talking to people on the subway after saying a prayer and we were extremely successful. I had two of the best conversations of my whole mission, and we got several phone numbers, along with several people who have already set up appointments to meet with us. We essentially had people just wanting to give us their number or meet with us, it was a little bit out of the ordinary but I know that it was an answer to prayer. Being able to experience the increased guidance from the Spirit as a missionary is an amazing blessing, and I'm so grateful to have this calling.

Have a great week everyone, 세복 많이 받으세요!