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!
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
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