Pretty sweet birthday

Hello everyone! And thank you for the birthday wishes, I'm having a pretty sweet birthday here in Korea. I actually just had lunch with my trainer (first missionary companion) Zak Johnson, he has been working in Korea over the summer and heads back to America tonight. I'm 19 in America now, still 20 over here though.

Also, the sister missionaries from our ward surprised me with an ice cream cake yesterday, so I've felt lots of birthday love here in Korea :)

We did quite a bit of things things week, I'll try and cover most of them:

1- Bowling in Korea. On our preparation day, we went bowling with some other missionaries (my first time here), not whole lot to say about it but it was a whole lot of fun.

2- We tried out a new service project this week, which consisted of cleaning up cages at a puppy adoption center, followed by taking them out to play. It was a ton of fun, but we didn't actually get a whole lot of interaction with other people so it will probably be just a one-time activity..

Pretty cute though, right?(especially the dog I'm holding)

3-Interviews. We got to meet with our mission president for a little bit this week and talk 1-on-1 about how we're doing and ways we can improve. President Turner is fairly new to the mission, but him and his wife are fantastic and I've loved serving with them so far. We talked a lot about training younger missionaries, especially with language ability, because there are a lot of new missionaries coming soon who will need someone to teach them.

4-Stickerboarding. Missionaries here often do something called stickerboarding, where we offer people a sticker which they stick on a board that says something like "What's the hardest part of learning English?" Or just any question we want to. We use it often to advertise our free english class, and this week we did it at a very busy train station on a Friday night with 6 missionaries. I think the picture will have to wait until next week though..

5- Baptism. My companion taught somebody about our church when he lived in Seoul last month and she chose to be baptized last Sunday. We were able to attend, and being able to see the joy radiating from everybody present was such a privilege.   

I think that's most of the big events for this week! We had some thunderstorms this week and it's still super hot, but I did actually get a very special birthday present from a church member yesterday. He had a plug-in A/c unit that his family wasn't using anymore, so he brought it over last night and our house is officially A/C equipped *two thumbs up*

Thanks again for the birthday wishes and have a great week everyone!

-Elder Bigelow