Week 100

Hello Everyone!  I think this is week 100, I may have gotten off somewhere along the way but still a big milestone nonetheless~

This week was highlighted by transfers, Elder Luce said his goodbyes to Gimpo, including the members of our children's English class:

Then on Wednesday, I met my new companion Elder Barnes! He is from Boise Idaho and went to college for a couple years before coming on his mission a few months ago, so we are the same age. He's really cool, he likes learning Korean and also knows some Japanese and Finnish, and is also really good at the Rubik's cube. I think it'll be a fun transfer! This is a picture of us eating at Korea's "in-n-out" imitation (Elder Barnes is the blonde one) (fun fact: there has been a blonde missionary serving in this area for 2 years consecutively)

Other things for this week:

-귀환: The Elders that were in the MTC above me are now back at home, including my MTC companion Elder Young and my mission 형brother (because we had the same trainer) Elder 이종혁 

-TY: Fruit flies are everywhere in Korea during the summer, and we had a fair number in our house, we woke up one morning to find that a spider had set up a web in a corner of our house and began to catch fruit flies. So naturally, we named him Ty and allowed him to stay because he is helping quite a bit

-We have been very busy this week teaching, many of the people we are meeting are beginning to show a lot of progress! One person even read the entirety of 1st Nephi in a week~ WE met with 조진용(Jo JinYong), and invited him to be baptized when he felt like the message we are sharing is true. He said "Yeah, I think that would be good. I am already starting to see that there is something different and special about this church". We are working towards having a combined baptismal service towards the end of August with 3 or four people in our ward, I'll keep you updated!

I think that's all for this week, we are having a great time here in the heat, the only respite from the heat is the occasional localized downpour(which is perfectly timed so that we get soaked on our way to church and have to ask the other missionaries to bring an extra pair of socks..), but I couldn't be happier here.

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Bigelow

-- 

The dove is also necessary

Hello Everyone!

This week we have had quite a bit of rain and quite a bit of humidity, I looked at a box of envelopes that I had out on my desk and all of the envelopes had sealed themselves from the humidity...

Also this week we got transfer calls! I will remain in Gimpo, my companion Elder Luce will be going to a different area, and I will be serving will Elder Barnes. I don't know a lot about him other than that he's from Idaho and just finished training.  Both of the Korean sisters are also leaving our district, giving us a district of 10 missionaries and no Korean missionaries.

More to follow next week!

Other things for this week:

-I got robbed: We went with the Young Men in our ward to play 풋살(mini soccer) once more and had a lot of fun despite the humidity. The leader took us all to a restaurant after, and that was when I realized I had left my wallet at the soccer field. The Leader went back to pick up the rest of the kids and recovered the wallet, but it had about 80.000 Won, (about $75) missing, which was really sad but the more important things were left in the wallet, so I guess I consider myself lucky that they didn't just take the whole wallet~

-Service Project: We got to do a really cool service project this week where we help developmentally disabled kids and teenagers hike a mountain, it was a super cool opportunity. My companion and I got to be companions with 병남 (ByeongNam), he was 8 years old and way adorable

His hobbies are eating (he loves to share his food) and learning about washing machines, and also counting in English. We held his hand all the way up, helped push him up the mountain when things got hard, and shared some of our water when he poured all of his out on the ground. It was so fun~

-Ads: I think I've mentioned this before, but Korea has lots of interesting advertisements. To be fair though, it is rather difficult to capture the feeling of "relief from nasal inflammation" in a single photo. The dove is also necessary.

-cooking creations: When you are a Korean missionary and you end up with a lot of eggs and a lot of kimchi, you decide to make kimchi omelettes. And because you are are a Korean missionary, you think they are delicious and you make them again the next day.

-Wind: We had a brief respite from the humidity as a very strong wind came in one day as we were studying, we don't have an air conditioner so we open our windows when we can, except this wind turned out to be stronger than we thought, our mosquito net and my laundry basket both flew across the house, and all papers that were not secure also made their way around the house. I had hung up some shirts to dry, the wind helped a lot with the drying but it did prove to be slightly noisy, you can watch the video at the bottom if you're curious~

-New Investigators! This week we were very blessed as we were able to meet so many new people~

    -Simon 오:  We met him by a bus stop a few weeks ago and he wanted to take us out for dinner. He knows a little bit about our church and is a super nice guy, he wants to keep meeting every once in a while

    -Mr. 준 (June): We met him a few weeks ago while we were sticker boarding, he is a very smart guy and has a voice that belongs on the radio. He met with missionaries like us 20 years ago and wants to learn some English and learn about our church.

     -조진용(Jo JinYong): He is a 20 year old guy that lives pretty close to the church. We kept running into him on the street and decided to meet up. He is looking for a job right now and is really good at drawing. And he came to church on Sunday! He showed up early and stayed the whole time, and really enjoyed the meal after.

-Church: 2 of the missionaries from our ward are leaving this week, so they spoke in Sacrament meeting, which turned out to be really well attended. the 20 year old I mentioned before came, as well as the 2 kids the other Elders are teaching, and the sister missionaries brought someone to church. On top of that, a family of 3 that had been learning about our church moved into the area recently and showed up to church, making 7 new people at church!

This week has been really amazing and I'm excited for the coming transfer~ 

Have a great week everyone!

 Love,

Elder Bigelow

PS Here are the waffles we bought for the last district meeting of the transfer

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~

Do you have a rock in here or something?

Hello Everyone!

This week was great! For our Zone Conference, we hiked around 남한산성 (which means South Korea Mountain Fortress), it was the place where the Korean nation was overrun almost 1500 years ago, and it was quite picturesque 

We were asked to bring a backpack with several items, including a large rock that we were not told the purpose of. I didn't have a backpack that I could use, so I put all my stuff, including my rock in a shopping bag and went on Preparation day to buy an inexpensive backpack that I could use. I picked out a bag, and the worker offered to put the shopping bag I was carrying into the backpack for me. When she lifted my bag to put in inside the backpack, she said, "Wow, this is heavy! Do you have like a rock in here or something??" Rather than spend time explaining why I actually had a large rock in my bag, I just laughed nervously, thanked her, and continued on my way...

The hike was great, we had periodic breaks where we received training from our mission President, his wife, and some of the other missionaries, and towards the end of the hike we finally got to remove the rocks from our backpack. Sister Turner, our mission president's wife, explained that she wanted each of us to think of one weakness that we have, then take the rock out of our backpack, leave it on the mountain, and never come looking for it again, and then asked us to do the same with our weaknesses, it was a really cool object lesson and a really great day overall~

Other things this week:

-Exchanges: I got to go back to one of my old areas this week, Incheon, for one day. We met with a Mongolian father and his daughter who have some interest in our church, and they took us to a meat buffet (one of the wonders of Korea). The husband spoke pretty good Korean, but for most of the conversation he would speak Mongolian and his daughter would translate it to Korean, they were a great family~

-We still spend most of our time trying to find people to teach, and this week we worked especially hard and were able to meet lots of people on the street, but still hadn't been able to find anyone to continue teaching. As we prepared for church on Sunday morning, we got a call from a woman who said that we had spoken to her husband on the bus. She was interested in learning English and also wanted to come and see what our church was like one time. I told her all the information, but it was an hour before church was going to start and we didn't expect her to show up this week. But just as the meeting started, she walked in with her son! Her son is 4, and he loved spending time with the kids his age, and said to his mom "Mom, I like God." The mother also enjoyed all the meetings, there are a lot of misconceptions about our church in Korea because other churches often put false information online and teach it in their churches, but she decided to try it once, and she found that the beliefs and values that she held close were in harmony with what we taught, and she found a satisfaction that she had not found from other churches before. She has been going to church her whole life, and she was tired of all the people in church asking for money to have her questions answered, so the fact that missionaries in our church are not paid initially drew her to this church. During the meeting, she turned to me and said "Is this church in New Zealand too?" (they are planning to emigrate there next year), and when I told her yes, she said "perfect" She wants us to meet with her family, so We will see how it goes!

Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Elder Bigelow

130 copies of the Book of Mormon

Hello everyone!

As promised, here is a picture of our district~

There are 4 missionaries in Cheongna and the 6 of us missionaries in Gimpo~ We have 5 Americans, one Filipino, one Filipino/Canadian, 2 Koreans, and 1 sister from Hong Kong, and they're all great~

Recently in our mission we have been focusing on the story of Enos from the Book of Mormon and how we can be closer to God and receive answers to our prayers, as well as caring for the welfare of our brethren. So we have studied and discussed it quite a bit in Companionship studies and in District meeting, and we will actually have a special Zone conference tomorrow to discuss it. Tonight we will sleep in our mission headquarters, then in the morning tomorrow we will hike a mountain with our mission President and conduct Zone conference there, we're super excited!

Other things this week:

-Our apartment is right next to a really big sports stadium(this is a picture from our apartment window)

In this sports complex, the Gimpo soccer team plays games most weekends, so every once in a while, we hear a roar of applause and we silently cheer for our Gimpo team that just scored a goal~

-Snickerdoodles: One thing that I've done for the larger part of my mission is make lots of cookies at once and give them to those we visit, teach, or have helped us in some way, just so that we can show our appreciation in some small way. Our ward mission leader bought us some eggs last week (which is really special because there is some chicken disease going around so they're killing all the chickens and eggs are really expensive now), so we gave him some cookies after church on Sunday, to which he said "thank you so much. You know, if the sister missionaries make some cookies it's pretty normal so you just say thank you and move on, but the fact that the elders made cookies.. this is no small occasion.. thank you so much"  One thing I was told to do when I came to this area was to try and improve the ward relationship, and so far things are going very well! In priesthood meeting during church this week, we spent a good amount of time discussing how we can focus ward missionary efforts on the youth, the ward here is starting to take a new interest in missionary work, it's exciting!

-BuPyeong: This week we had a combined missionary activity on top of the largest underground market in Korea where we shared over 130 copies of the Book of Mormon!

That's it for this week I think!  We are still working to find people to teach, we've been really good so far at finding people who cancel :) We'll keep looking~ Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Elder Bigelow

Kimbab and fried chicken

Hello everyone!

This week was great, it started off with Korean Memorial Day, everyone in our apartment put flags on their windows to show respect~

And since Tuesday was my last day in Anseong, the Branch President, his wife, and a member of the stake presidency came down and we had a meal consisting of kimbab and fried chicken, a lot of fried chicken(for anyone who has eaten 네네치킨, this was 6마리 for 8 people plus a large serving of 김밥)

Then on Wednesday Morning, I packed my bags and headed to my new area, Gimpo~ This place is pretty great. We live on the top (18th) floor of our apartment, and there's an airport nearby so we get a plane flying right above us every few minutes

My new companion is Elder Luce, he's from Ohio and he likes music and he's super cool. He has been in Korea for 3 months and works super hard, I think we're going to get along well~

There are now 4 missionaries in our house, and I was asked to serve as District Leader for the 6 missionaries in Gimpo and the 4 missionaries in Cheongna, the area right below us. All the district members are really amazing, so I think the next 6 weeks will be great~

The ward here is also really great, there's about 50 people that attend weekly, which isn't a ton but it's a whole lot more than Anseong so I really enjoyed meeting all of the church members here. And we have enough people to do all 3 hours of church :)

We don't currently have anyone to teach, so we're spending a lot of time getting to know the area, talking to lots of people, and getting to know the members.

I'm really excited to be serving here for most likely the remainder of my time in Korea (I only have 4 months left now ㅜㅜ), I'll let you know how things are going next week!

Love,

Elder Bigelow

Gimpo-the only area in our mission that touches North Korea

Hello everyone!

As it turns out, I will be transferring this week- I will be going to an area called 김포(Gimpo). My current area, Anseong, is the very southeast end of our mission boundary, and Gimpo is the very northeast edge of our mission boundary,so I'm going about as far as I can. Gimpo is also the only area in our mission that touches North Korea~

I'll leave this wednesday and let you know how the new area is next week!

Luckily My mission President gave me a few weeks advance notice of my upcoming transfer,so I had enough time to say goodbye to everyone~

This is the stake President and his wife, they are super busy and live really far away but they came to visit us every week to buy us lunch and help us with missionary work, they are the greatest~

These are some members of our Saturday English class group, I think our English class is the most multiracial in all of Korea~

And this is one of our most faithful English students, Brad. Every day after class he took us to the convenience store and bought us some drinks~

Sorry there's not a lot for this week, but I'll let you know how the new area is next week. Happy Korean memorial day!

-Elder Bigelow