Hello everyone! This week was pretty crazy, so I think I'll just go in order~
Wednesday-
The stake President is focusing a lot on this area, and has decided to come once a week to help with missionary work. So this week we decided to invite lots of other missionaries, and do a big activity where we contacted a ton of school students so that they could get to know the missionaries better, we had almost 20 missionaries here and it was great, the stake president and his wife had even prepared dinner for us when we finished. Everything went well, until one of the sister missionaries that my companion and I were stickerboarding with checked her bag to find that all of her stuff had been stolen, including her wallet and missionary phone. So I tried calling the phone a bunch of times, but the thief didn't answer (go figure), so I decided to send a text to them. I told them that they had stolen the phone of a representative of Jesus Christ, adn that they needed to give it back, and if they returned everything we would not report it but they needed to return it immediately. No response, so we headed to the church to eat the meal that had been prepared. I decided to try calling the phone one more time, and this time someone answered! An elderly man picked up and said that he had found the phone and wallet on the ground, so me, another missionary, and the stake President hopped in the car and went to meet him. Everything was returned except about 30$ cash and some of our church's pamphlets, but it was a relief to get it all back. What happened between the thief taking it and the elderly man picking it up is still a mystery, but I'd like to think the thief read my text and realized he made a big mistake and dropped all the items before he even had time to take all the money out...
Thursday-
We have met with someone who is 84, but probably the healthiest 84 year old you will ever see. He is interested in our church and likes to meet, but he now takes care of his sick wife and doesn't have a lot of time. But he does hike the same nearby mountain every day rain or shine, and has for the past 18 years. So we decided to go hiking with him this week so we could meet him, I think I might call him the grandfather of Anseong. He has lived here his whole life, so he taught us some history of this city, and after we finished hiking he walked us through the city and showed us all the things he had built and the old streets, it was pretty cool and we had a while to talk about church as well
Friday-
We met with Seo Jeong Hun, the person we are working with the give up smoking. He has been taught by missionaries for a long time with not a lot of progress, so we decided to start from the basics again recently, and he has shown a ton of interest, and this week he committed to be baptized soon! We were super excited for him, and it was about this same time that we got a text saying that transfer calls (the call that tells us if we will stay in one area or move the next week) would be pushed forward one day, meaning we would receive them that night. One pattern of my mission has been getting transferred out of the area the week after we work with someone to set a baptismal date, so I was a little worried but my companion and I decided that I had only been there 6 weeks, so we wouldn't have anything to worry about. Then that night transfer calls came, and I found out that I would be getting transferred! My assignment was to go to a place a little bit north called SeongNam, where I would be for only 6 weeks before being transferred again, the wards will be combining there. I was pretty sad to be leaving, but I was glad to have served in Anseong.
Saturday-
MY mom sent me some candy and an egg-dying kit for Easter, so I decided the best way to use it would be to share it, so we visited the family in our branch(the only one with children) and dyed some eggs and ate some candy!
I figured out that explaining the concept of FunDip candy in Korean in harder than you think~
After that, we went to the church and met 최명숙s and 정필래b, a couple that I worked really closely with while I served in Suji. They are amazing church members and they wanted to come help out with the missionary work here, so we talked about ways to help here, and they committed to come every Saturday and Sunday to help out. They also bought us a ton of groceries as well as a meal while they were here, I don't know how to describe them other than angels :) We were all pretty sad that both Elder Chu and I are getting transferred next week, they were expecting to serve with us for a while here. Then the conversation went like this
-Hey can you change transfer calls?
-I don't know, I guess you can but I've never seen it
-I was expecting to work with Elder Chu and Elder Bigelow for a while, but now they're both transferring. Do you think I can ask them to change your assignment? WHo do I have to talk to?
-Well, I guess you would call the stake president and ask him to talk with the mission president
-Okay, I'll ask them to give me two more months with you 2 then
Then, he called the stake president right there, who said he would talk with the mission president about it..
Sunday-
Once a month our ward does church together with the nearby ward, and we don't have church on our own. So we weren't planning to go to the church, but my companion suggested that we try going to the church for a little bit just in case our Laotian friend that was almost baptized (who also doesn't have a cell phone) decided to come to church this week. It sounded a little inconvenient, but I didn't want to get in the way if my companion was getting some inspiration and I agreed, and we went to the church, intending to stay for about 30 minutes before we left to go to the other church. Right before we were going to leave, a Cambodian woman came into the church and asked if there was church today. We unfortunately had to tell her that there was no church this week, but that we have it every other week, and we talked with her for a little bit. She had Book of Mormon in Cambodian with her, and she told us that she has been to church before (not sure if she as baptized). She got married about a month ago and wanted to go to church, but her new husband didn't like it and she has a busy work schedule. But her husband and her work schedule allowed her to go this week, but unfortunately there was no church this week. But she told us(in broken Korean, she doesn't speak English) that she wants to go to the temple but she doesn't know how, so hopefully we can help her out these next few weeks.
Then we headed to church in the other building, I ran into Sister 김민지, the sister missionary who was serving in the same ward as me when I got to Korea, who then went and has returned from a mission in temple square, it was a cool reunion!
Right after we got home, my mission President called and informed me that he talked with the stake President and decided to cancel my transfer to SeongNam and keep me here in Anseong, which was super crazy. HE couldn't leave both Elder Chu and me here because of how complicated that would be to change other missionaries' assignments as well, but he was able to keep me here! I'm super excited to stay here, although I had to unpack all my suitcases right after I had packed them... It'll be exciting though, the missionary that was going to come to replace me will still come, and I will stay in a trio with him and ELder Price, my current companion, so I'll let you know how that goes next week!
That's it for me I guess, have a great week everyone!
PS Also I found a proverb that has never been placed in a more proper location
Elder Bigelow
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