23 people at church!!

Hello everyone!

This week was transfers, and I'm now in a trio with Elder Price and Elder 강한빛(Kang), he is Korean and is fluent since he learned English pretty much his whole life, I've only managed to use a few words he doesn't understand in English this week, but I keep trying :)

Now in our house we have 5 people, including Elder Fehoko who also moved in, he's a football player for Stanford University     in California so we go through food considerably faster now...

This week at church was pretty unique because we had 23 people at church! It was the most I've ever seen, most of it was due to a new Branch President being called, and the previous branch president being released. The stake presidency was all there, and it was great to spend time with so many church members. Somebody that we are teaching also came this week! Her name is 이연주s, and we weren't able to meet for a while but she has shown a lot of interest recently and came to church for the first time, she said that she really enjoyed the fact that learning was done in a discussion format where all present were welcome to share their thoughts and discuss, rather than one person delivering a message to everyone else. Also during the meeting, there was a time to sustain(or show approval) the new branch president. In our church, we believe that those who are called to lead are called by revelation, and every member present is invited to raise their hand to show whether or not they approve or oppose every new calling. So the woman turned to me and said, "oh, so is it like a majority rule here?" so I said "no, it's actually based on a unanimous vote, and if even one person opposes, then that person is invited to talk later and explain why they disapprove, and the decision is reconsidered." I think at that time I was again grateful to be part of a church that is full of faithful members and led by divine inspiration, especially in a time where the world can't seem to agree on anything. Anyways, we're excited to keep meeting with her and her daughter, and to bring lots of other people to the church!

The new branch president (leader of the congregation) has lots of great ideas to help the church grow, and one of his ideas was through lots of sports activities, so this week we had a 족구(a sport that is like volleyball except with your feet instead of hands) court set up in our parking lot and invited everyone to come and play, we had over 15 people there on our first week! Then he had ramen prepared, because there's nothing that brings people closer than sitting together and eating ramen and kimchi. It was a super successful activity, so we're looking forward to continuing that as well.

I think that's it for me, sorry for the lack of pictures but I'll send double next week. Have a great week everyone!

Elder Bigelow

Transfer...Just Kidding

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

"You started dating my sister but then she bit you"

Hello everyone!

I hope you all enjoyed your Easter Sunday, if you didn't get the chance to watch this really cool Easter video you can watch it here!

https://www.mormon.org/eng

I would describe our Easter as "simple", our church is 2 hours long and for the first hour, we sat in a circle  (there were 8 of us, 4 members and 4 missionaries) and read from the picture book "Book of Mormon Stories", so that the young boy in attendance would be able to understand the lesson. Then our branch president shared his testimony of the Book of Mormon, and reminded us of the prophets council to read it daily so that we can access its power in our lives. But as simple as this Easter was, the love of the Savior that was felt was just as strong if not stronger. I know that our Savior Jesus Christ died for us and rose again, and I know that through the power of His Atonement that even the darkest tunnels in our lives have a light at the end~

Other things from this week:

-Elder Price's Birthday!: Elder Price turned 19 this week, and we celebrated at the school we volunteer at~

Also during the English class on that day, we made air fresheners that look like 한복, or traditional Korean dresses~

Cool right? It even has a suction cup to stick inside your car, so it'll be even cooler once I have a car to put it in.

-Also here's a picture of the(more densely populated) area where I live, this is taken from our apartment on the 6th floor:

Right in front of our apartment is a park that has a water show that plays at night now that's it's warm, it's really special to watch :)

-English class story of the week: Sometimes we do role plays to help the students apply their English in real life situations, last week we practiced "asking your unreasonable neighbor to watch your cats last minute" and this week was "Ask your old high school friend how he got the giant scar on his arm without hurting his feelings". I played the one with the scar and had some good stories,(drag racing, falling off my bike), but then one student announced that he remembered how I had gotten injured before I even told him. So I let him continue and he proceeded to explain, "I remember now, I invited you to my house and then you started dating my sister, but then she bit you, that's why you have a scar". Who ever said learning a language is boring?

Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Elder Bigelow

Language of the Gospel

Hello everyone!

 Now I'm caught up and have finally watched general conference, it's such a privilege to be able to hear from living prophets and apostles every April and October. I'm especially privileged because I get to see General Conference 5 times as a missionary, the next session in October will be my last Sunday as a missionary! I always have a hard time picking a favorite talk from conference, but one that I really enjoyed this time was called "Language of the Gospel" by Elder Valeri V. Cordon. He talked about how families preserve their native language through several generations even though they emigrate to a foreign country, and how than can be likened to us preserving the gospel in our lives and in our families. I think this talk especially rang with me because I have had a similar thought process while learning the Korean language. Learning this language is very difficult, but during this past year and a half I have learned how to study a language effectively, and the kind of practice and application it takes to achieve progress in learning a foreign language. One thing that has also been very helpful to me as I learn Korean has been creating a language study plan, where you set goals for where you want to be in the language by a certain time, and then you set detailed plans to achieve those goals. This language study plan helped me quite a bit, so I thought that making a gospel study plan might also achieve the same effect, so I set specific goals and plans on my habits of prayer, scripture study, and trying to be more like Jesus Christ, and that plan also proved to be really effective! So Elder Cordon's talk that related language learning and gospel learning resonated well with me, I would highly recommend it to all of you as well! You Can read/listen to it and all the other talks(they're all great) at:

 https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2017/04/the-language-of-the-gospel?lang=eng

Another cool opportunity we had this week was hearing from Mark Peterson, a professor of Korean at BYU and one of the first missionaries to serve in Korea. He taught us about the religious history of Korea so that we could better relate to the people here and build off common beliefs. It was very interesting, he shared that while about 1/3 of Koreans will identify as Christians and another 1/3 will identify as Buddhists, 100% of the population has core morals and beliefs that stem from both Confucianism and ancient Shamanism. I've already seen a lot of help from his training in the past week, building a foundation of shared beliefs with others has become a lot easier~

This week we helped an older woman do some work around her house(we dealt with a nest of spiders and the very large mother spider...), and as a reward she gave us a carton of eggs that her very own chickens had laid, and after a quick size comparison  with our store bought eggs, we found that her eggs were far superior~

I think that's it for this week, I hope you all enjoy your week and your upcoming easter! Oh, and watch this video, it's really cool:

https://www.mormon.org/eng

Also enjoy our weekly house selfie!

I felt that the Lord was able to do the rest

Hello Everyone! I hope all of you who watched General Conference enjoyed it! We will be watching it next week here because of the time difference, but you can view it anytime at this website if you're curious!

https://www.lds.org/general-conference?cid=HP_SU_2-4-2017_dPFD_fGC_xLIDyL1-B_&lang=eng

We had one day that was really cool this week. We decided to spend some more time at the college finding the Laotian brother who doesn't have a cell phone and had to cancel his baptism last minute(I mentioned him a few weeks ago in my email). We had spent a lot of time there the week before with no success, but we decided to give it one more day there and see what we could do. We involved a lot more strategy this time, my companion couldn't remember exactly what his major was but he knew it was something with engineering so we studied the school map and planned a route to walk that would cover all the engineering buildings, as well as a spot to sit down and look out (while doing studies) while the classes were in session. We did that for a few hours, and we found him! He was in a hurry, but we were able to talk for a second and he said he would be able to talk later and keep coming to church. I think the other days we had tried to find him, and we worked hard but not very smart, so by doing all that we could do this time, I felt that the Lord was able to do the rest. And immediately after that as we were leaving the college campus, one of the professors stopped us and asked if we were Mormons. He is an English professor from Jamaica, and he asked if we had any material English to give him. After looking through all of our stuff, we didn't actually have anything in English, so we told him we were really sorry, and he said said it was okay and said he would see us around. We were pretty sad about that, but on the way home we were talking with a Korean man and my companion handed him a pamphlet, and it was an English one! We had an English pamphlet the whole time but we just didn't notice. So that part was even more sad. Then later in the day we went to the college again to play soccer with someone that we are teaching, and as we were playing we saw the same professor crossing the soccer field! So we grabbed our English pamphlet, ran up to him, and gave it to him. He was grateful, and gave us his office number and said we could stop by anytime! So this week, I've been especially grateful for the second chances that the Lord gives us.

Other things this week:

-There are lots of foreigners in this area, so we end up meeting with a lot of them. We are actually meeting with 4 college students from VietNam, they are really cool. We are helping 3 of them with English and the 4th one is really Good at English so we are helping him learn Korean instead. It's really interesting to try and teach, especially sine their native language is one that I do not know at all, it's kind of like being a brand new missionary all over again and wondering what people are saying all the time :)

-The four missionaries in our house (the picture is kind of blurry but maybe that will give you an insight into how much energy the missionary that is holding the camera has~)

They are really funny and really good cooks and really good at the board game Catan.

-There is a strange population distribution in our area, pretty much everyone we see is either in Middle/High school or over the age of 60, we don't see a whole lot of people in between. So we try to focus on meeting a lot of the students, but the problem is that they go to school at 8 in the morning, get out at 4 pm or so, and then go to learning academies until 9 or 10 pm, so seeing a lot of them is pretty difficult with the time that we are outside. So we have started getting ready very quickly in the mornings and then going out and talking with students on their way to school and telling them about our free English class. It's been really cool seeing all the great people we've been able to meet  getting out of the house just a little bit earlier.

-This week at church there was 4 church members (all from the same family), 4 missionaries, and the branch president to make a church meeting of 9 people. As missionaries, we had several people we have been meeting with that said they would be able to come, but for various reasons none of them were able to come. As I was sitting in church I couldn't help but think, "I know that this is God's true church on the Earth, why aren't there more people here?" Soon after I thought that, something that was said at the very beginning of my mission was brought to my remembrance. I had been in Korea for about 2 months, and we were meeting with a man who had attended Catholic church for a long time (a member of our church was also present). We bore testimony to this man that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was God's restored church on the Earth today, to which he said "If this is God's true church, why aren't there more members? Shouldn't there be a lot more members than there are?" The church member there answered his question by saying this: "My son is also serving a mission right now, and he asked a similar question to my husband in an email a few weeks ago. He did not find a lot of success as a missionary, and he asked his dad 'shouldn't there be people flocking to the church, this is God's true church and I know that, what isn't adding up?' My husband told him, 'It really does not make a whole lot of sense, but we can also know that the true Church will not always have the most members. When Jesus Christ, the very Son of God lived on the Earth and established his Church, not everyone joined it. Yes a lot of people did believe him and followed him, but in the end the majority was against him and they even chose to crucify Him. So we shouldn't be surprised when the same church that is restored today is few in number'" I was able to reflect on that for a while, and I just thought it might be good to share. 

Have a good Week everyone!

Love,

Elder Bigelow