A Californian shoveling snow

We got snow this week! This week was super cold and we even had a small snowstorm one of the days (I'm not sure how to measure how many inches it was, I'm from California). But, one of our church members expressed concern that the snow would turn into ice like last year and it would be difficult to enter the parking lot, so the other 3 elders and I went into the freezing night and shoveled our big parking lot. Fancy that, a Californian shoveling snow with 3 Utah natives~

Elder Curtis is doing well, training is almost over and I've enjoyed being able to serve with him. It's truly magical to watch a new missionary because while they feel like they haven't learned any Korean in the 3 months they've been here, you also get to watch their fluency in English slowly but steadily decrease. Elder Curtis laughs at me often for my English mistakes, but I was the one laughing when he tried to say "They will chew me up and spit me out" but instead said "they will eat me up and chew me out."

And teaching Korean is really fun, and so is watching new missionaries give it all they've got, with some fun mistakes in the process. For example: We wanted to visit one of the families

in our ward, and so when we call them I always have Elder Curtis do it so he can get lots of practice making phone calls. So he was introducing himself, but due to a small slip in grammar, instead of saying "Hi, this is Elder Curtis", he said "Woah! This is Elder Curtis!"... Laughing at your mistakes is an important aspect of learning a language too, so I'm glad he is able to do that well. 

PS this is us with our Santa lollipops(thanks mom)

One other interesting thing that is going on right now is that there is a problem with the water in the apartment of the missionaries in the area next to ours, so they are staying with us for a few days, making our apartment a 6-man house. Luckily our house is big and we don't need any bed space because we all sleep on the floor, but we're hoping food won't end up being a problem...

This week we were able to meet with somebody new, her name is 이현숙( Lee Hyeon Sook). She is about 50 years old, and called me a few weeks ago. She had seen our Free English banner on our church for a long time and wondered about our church for a long time, but it took her a whole year to build up the courage to call us. So she came to English class, and also to our post-English class Ping pong activity(I'm getting trained by an elderly ping pong master and it's great), and began to talk with some of the church members. They invited her to church, and she came to church the following day, and expressed interest in reading the book of mormon along with talking about it. So we met her this week with a few of our church members, and the discussion went really well. She has lots of questions, and is really sincere about her search to find a church that is right in a world where there are thousands of churches and even more things vying for our attention. What a great blessing it was for us as missionaries to be able to say, "Your search is finished, you've found it"

Love you all, have a great week!

-Elder Bigelow

PS this is a picture with me and Elder Forthman(the other greenie that lives with us) on exchanges

PPS there's an American family in our ward and their adorable son really likes spiderman so this Sunday I showed him my Spiderman themed Book of Mormon case and he now believes I'm the real Spiderman and now he looks at me with awe but also a hint of fear.