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