Talking to people you don't know

Hello everyone! 

This week has been really great, the weather has been great and I've gotten to meet a lot more of the people we've been teaching recently. In fact, we met with a man named 서정훈,(Seo jeong Hun) who loved in America for 15 years. He lived mostly in California, and actually lived in Modesto, California for 6 months during the time I lived in Modesto! So who knows, maybe we were neighbors back when I was 7...  We are helping him to try and quit smoking so he can be baptized, it's very difficult to quit but he recognizes that having an addiction can limit the choices that we can make, and he really wants to stop. He has recognized that when he prays for help, it's easier not to smoke, so he is starting to see that change is possible with help from the Savior, and it's been amazing to see.

Other things this week:

-Do you remember our class with the North Korean and Chinese students? This week, we were accompanied by President and Sister Turner (the Mission President), as well as Brother and Sister Robinson, the couple in charge of Public Relations for the entire country of Korea. They were very happy with the interaction that they saw, and they even mentioned wanting to bring 25 or so missionaries to the school to do a big activity day. Here's some pictures that we got~(notice that you don't wear your shoes inside the classroom)

It's a super fun class, I'm excited to keep working with them~

-After the class, we ate lunch in the cafeteria with all those that had attended the class, I sat across from Sister Turner (we call her the mission "Mom"). She turned to me, scooped the tofu out of her soup and dropped it into my soup. Then she said "you're my son, so you have to eat the food that I don't want :)" It's a good thing I developed a taste for tofu on my mission...

-We have been teaching a mom and her daughter both English and about our church for the past few weeks, they are both really great. And the mom found a music video that was made by a missionary somewhere else. It was a parody of the song "Hello from the Outside" by Adele, and she would highly recommend it to everybody :) But someone in Korea had uploaded it to a blog with a description about what the job of missionaries is, and how we want to share our message of happiness even though there may be things that are difficult or out of our comfort zone, and even though there are a lot of times where we face rejection. When the mom read that, she said it really hit here and she said to me "that's not really your personality, huh? Talking to people that you don't know is pretty hard, isn't it?"

So I told her "Definitely, it's hard for everybody and it's definitely not natural for me either. And I knew that before I came on my mission, and I worried about it a lot. But I knew that being a missionary and sharing the happiness that I've felt with others is worth overcoming any doubt or fear that we may have."

Missionary work is the greatest. The end. Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Elder Bigelow

Are you Arabic?

Hello everyone!

Well, I'm here in 안성 (Anseong) now, Monday and Tuesday was spent packing and saying goodbye to lots of church members and people that we have been teaching that I was able to get close to during my time in Suji. I can't fit all the pictures in my email, but they are all on DropBox! Here is one though, this is 최석원, the ex-pastor that we have been teaching for a while, he's the best~

Then on Wednesday I met Elder Price, my new companion in Anseong. I made sure to get a picture this time Mom :)

Elder Price is super cool, he's from a city called Cedar Hills near Provo. He was actually companions with Elder Curtis (my last companion) in the MTC(he's been in Korea for 4.5 months now), and he is also the first companion that is younger than me. He likes singing, all music, and running and he is a killer missionary. I'm super excited to work with him.

We live with a companionship of 2 Korean missionaries, Elder 추지웅 and Elder 김지현, and this is also the first time I've lived with a Korean missionary. They are also both super cool, they are great cooks and it's like a nonstop language exchange in our house.

As far as the Anseong area goes, it is quite the change from all my other areas. It is pretty much all countryside, with a very small section of city near our house. All I can say is that I saw cows here for the first time in Korea, and I saw many cows this week. Most of the people that we meet on the street have talked to us before, so it's definitely a smaller community feel here. 

The branch (our church congregation) had 15 people in attendance on Sunday, 4 of them were missionaries, and another 4 were people that weren't actually members of the branch. Everyone there is so nice, and I'm excited to be serving here. I'll let you know more next week!

-Other things this week:

-"No I am not Arabic": Because I have dark hair and dark eyebrows, there are so many Korean people I meet that think I have ancestors that are Arabic. This is how the conversation goes every time:

"You look like you have ancestors that were Arabic"

-"No, I don't have any ancestors from that area"

"Are you sure?"

-"Yes, I'm sure"

"Oh... where are your ancestors from then?"

-"Mostly from the England, Scotland, Ireland area"

"Are you sure? You've got to have some southern European in there if you're not Arabic. No Spanish or Italian blood or anything?

-"No, I don't have any ancestors from there"

"Are you sure? There has to be some other blood there.."

-"I think there may have been some Native American blood in my family at some point in time"(the only explanation I can give that satisfies them)

"Ahh, that makes sense. Now I understand. You're native American!"

-English class!: Here in this area we have a very special service project, and that is teaching English to North Koreans~ I don't know if you can call them refugees, but there is a school for kids that came over the border from North Korea, or their parents came across the border, or they came from China. Kids that come from China or North Korea are often made fun of or left out by other kids in normal schools, so there was a school created where they can have a healthy environment for their education. And so once a week, we visit their English class and help them practice their English. It's super fun, and I'm excited to keep volunteering there!

-There was somebody in this area from Laos that was planning to be baptized the week before I got here, but then he called the night before and said something about his mom in Laos not wanting him to get baptized, and we haven't heard from him since (he doesn't have a cell phone so it complicates things a little bit). So we are just going to have to go to his college campus and pray that we'll find him so we can talk to him and see what's going on. So pray for us that we'll be able to find him!

That's it for this week, I'll let you know how things are going next Monday!

Love,

Elder Bigelow

Going to Ahn-seong!

Hello everyone!

I guess I'll start with transfer news~ This Saturday we got transfer calls letting us know if we would stay in our current area or move. And as much as I would love to keep working here in Suji, I've been assigned from this Wednesday onward to serve in 안성 (Ahn-seong). This area is the most opposite of Seoul that you can get while still remaining in our mission boundaries. It is at the very southern tip of our mission, and it is primarily a farming city (if you remember the day where I visited an area and cut down sesame stalks with a sickle, it's that place). As far as church attendance goes, there is about 10-15 people at church every week. The stake leaders are considering combining this branch with the ward above it. The problem is that the closest building is an hour away, so if they combine them, the members of the church that haven't come to church in a while have a very small chance of coming back to church because the new building would be so far away. So what they are trying to do is focus missionary efforts there for about a year and try to bring all of those people back to church, and if it doesn't work, combine the two congregations after that year. What that also means is that they are having missionaries serve in the branch presidency, one Korean and one foreigner. The foreigner that has been serving there for the last 3 months is going home, so I am going to replace him there, which may mean serving in the branch presidency but I'm not sure so I will let you know next week~ There's going to be a lot of effort required and I will probably stay there until I finish my mission, but I'm excited to do all I can and see the hand of the Lord revealed in this area~

Other things this week:

-Giant Book of Mormon!: There were missionaries in Japan a while ago that made a giant Book of Mormon out of a door, then took it to a busy subway station and shared with everyone how great of a book it is. It was very successful there, so we thought we would try it out here. This is our finished product:

Cool right?

-More Book of Mormon: There is a woman in our ward that has a doctorate in Korean language and is very celebrated as a blog writer, she even proofreads the Korean translations of the church produced magazines. She just published her second book a few weeks ago, and her first book was her testimony and thoughts on several verses from the Old Testament, New Testament, and the Book of Mormon. In fact, it was the first book that talks about the Book of Mormon to be sold in Korean bookstores. And this week as a parting gift she gave one to the missionaries, personally signed and everything!

-English mistake of the week: I was eating some ramen noodles with my companion a few days ago, and it was a type of ramen with very skinny noodles (many types of ramen in Korea have thicker noodles). So in my attempt to say, "This noodles are really skinny, huh?" I instead said "These noodles are really skinny, honey." Not too long after, my companion's noodles were everywhere because he started laughing mid-bite. I'm going to start living with Koreans for the first time starting this week and I'm a little worried because my English ability has nowhere to go but south...

-Pamphlet kid: There are several pamphlets that the missionaries use to help them teach, and the ones in the Korean pamphlets include pictures of Korean people in them, it goes that way for every language. One of the kids that was featured in the pamphlet as a toddler is now a teenager and is in Suji ward! So of course, I had to grab a picture with him before I left~

Little fishies: We found a place where you can put your feet in a little tub and have little fish eat all of the dead skin and other stuff off of your feet, I would highly recommend it~

Well, I think that's it for me this week. I'm off to the countryside to work in the Lord's vineyard, and maybe even some real vineyards. I'm excited for the challenge, I love the Book of Mormon, I love Korea, and I love being a missionary~

Love,

Elder Bigelow

Jang-Yeon-oo

Hello Everyone! I don't know if I've mentioned our favorite restaurant before, but it's called 두끼(doo-kkee) Which translated means "two meals". That's because, after eating a buffet of 떡볶이(rice cakes in a spicy soup?) at a very reasonable price, you put rice into your leftover soup and have fried rice, hence the name "Two Meals". Here's a picture

Anyways, we go there when we can and have a great time. There is also an option to purchase fondue cheese which comes out in a ring around your pot which is delicious, but fairly pricey. However, the manager there likes us a lot so now every time we come, she dares the teenage waitresses to bring us free fondue cheese. We're not complaining~

Other things for this week:

-Fire training: This week in our apartment elevator, we saw a paper that told us we were having a yearly firefighting training and that all the residents were invited to come participate. So of course, me, being both a safety-concerned resident of the apartment complex and proud of myself that I understood the Korean written on the paper, decided that we would go attend the training. After all, it did only happen once a year. So we walked to the courtyard to find that the only people there were the building security guards/caretakers (it's a job for people of retirement age, so they're all 60-75 year old men). As it turns out, I didn't read thoroughly enough and this was actually just a training for them and the residents were just invited to come watch. And we were the only residents in an apartment complex of several thousand people to show up.. But we were already there, so we got to use fire extinguishers to put out some real fires, and we got to watch the caretakers do the same, only to accidentally coat a nearby car in fire extinguishing powder and subsequently give the car a free car wash with the firehose. So glad we went~

-Interviews in our house!: Every 6 weeks, we get to have an interview with our mission president so that he can help us to be better missionaries and reach our potential. Usually they happen in his office or in a church building, but every few years they do them in the missionaries' houses. So, we made sure not a particle of dust remained in our house, and welcomed them into our home, they even brought us homemade lollipops~ And they loved our giant Korean mask

-Lost in translation: We were practicing English with someone that we meet with often, we meet in their home twice a week. I was a little bit sick this week, so she asked if I wanted some lemon tea to soothe my throat. I said "I'm okay thank you", a common phrase in English used to politely decline an offer. But her english-as-a-second-language brain just heard "okay, thank you" and determined that I was indeed accepting the offer. So, she made me some lemon tea of course! I didn't have the heart to correct that English mistake, I just had to let that one slide.

-My Korean name!: A few weeks ago, a family from Suwon that I got close to while living there made a Korean name for me, and this week I got some cool nametags! It's pronounced (Jang-Yeon-oo)

This week we met a nice man that we met on the street a few weeks ago, he invited us into his home. He is a retired Japanese teacher and sells pottery, so his house was full of really cool pottery, needless to say. He likes to learn English and we have a program that we do as missionaries, where we help people learn English for 30 minutes and then teach about our church for 30 minutes, so we told him that we wanted to help him learn English and also share a message that has helped us a lot. He was open to do it, but said, "But what if I don't join your church, what if I don't accept your message? Then I'm the only one benefiting. You would have no results after all your work, what if that happens?" I was glad to tell him, "The work we do isn't about results. The work we do is about inviting. We have grown up and learned in this church and have found happiness that we can't describe, and that's not just because we can't speak Korean. But we don't want to force anyone to do anything, that's not what religion is about. Of course we'll be happy if you accept, but choosing not to accept is fine too because being a missionary means inviting others to come unto Christ, not forcing them" Being a missionary is the best, I love it.

Have a good week everyone!

Love,

Elder Bigelow