Competitive Water Pouring

Hello everyone!

This week was predicted to have a lot of rain as the monsoon season begins, but then it turned into a heat wave, and then it turned into a heat wave with a lot of rain. We have had many times where our walk back home turns into a sprint due to sudden showers, it is very humid but we are very happy!

We started meeting with our new friend, 유성진 (Yoo SeongJin). He is about 70 years old, and loves to laugh. He tells us every time he comes to the church that he is always excited to come, and is even happier when he finishes meeting with us. We meet in the early afternoons and play ping pong, then eat lunch together, followed by some English practice and a discussion about the Gospel. He wondered a lot about why so many different churches exist today, and we had a great opportunity to share with him the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Restoration of the Gospel in the latter days.

He was also one of the ones who attended our first ever English Class Talent Show! This was an idea from Sister Kim, a sister missionary in our ward. We originally expected it to be a pretty small event, and the ward members asked what they could do to help. We mentioned that any ward members who wished to showcase a talent or just come to watch were welcome, and that we were planning to have refreshments after so if any members wanted to bring any they were welcome. The ward amazed us with their dedication. Many of the men in the ward came to watch, several of the primary children brought their friends and performed, and the women in the ward prepared some amazing food for after.

Our Enlgish class usually has about 10 people that attend weekly, and our talent show was attended by about 40 people! It was a great event that came together well, we saw talents including dancing, singing, taekwondo, magic, piano, and of course each of the missionaries had to participate. My companion Elder Luce and I were the MCs, so we thought we would be exempt from performing, but it was not so. After lots of consideration, we decided to show everyone "Competitive Water Pouring." The video is attached at the bottom, I don't know if it will work but you are welcome to view. Everyone made sure we were okay after the performance though.

Another highlight this week was the opportunity the ward gave the missionaries. Early this week I received a call from a member of the bishopric, who told us that they would be giving the missionaries 20 minutes of sacrament meeting to do whatever we felt like would help the ward members feel the Spirit of missionary work. After lots of thought, we decided to sing a hymn with all 6 missionaries, then have 3 of the missionaries give a short testimony. It went really well! We sang "I am a child of God", then one of the elders spoke about "faith to see others as our brethren and as fellow Children of God", another Elder spoke about "fellowshipping others", then I finished by speaking briefly about "The Power of Members who seek  to participate in missionary work". The Gimpo ward here has developed a new zeal for missionary work these past few weeks that has been amazing to see~

This week is the last week of the transfer, we have been working hard and have lots of appointments scheduled for this week, it's going to be a busy one and we look forward to it!

Have a great week everyone! 

Love,

Elder Bigelow

PS We got some meat this week as a gift from the members and we decided to try it with some homemade tortillas, the Korean fajita. If you look at our faces you can tell how humid it is here~