I'm an adult now and I make my own decisions

안녕하세요 여러분!

Hello Everyone!

How I've spent my first two months as an adult so far:

-Waking up at 6:30 every day

-Studying for exactly half of my day, including sleeping time

-Eating cottage cheese at every meal because I'm an adult now and I make my own decisions

-Loving every minute of it.

My life is definitely different from most people my age, especially eating cottage cheese so often, but I love being a missionary. And on Monday, I'm boarding a plane to spend my next 22 months in Korea. We got our flight plans four days after everyone else, so we were very worried that at least one of us had a visa problem. All turned out okay though, and we now are in possession of the coveted flight plans. We leave the MTC at about 5 AM monday morning, and head to Salt Lake, where we will then fly to Seattle at about 10 am. After and hour layover, we take of to Korea at about 12 pm. After a 13 hour flight and a 15 hour time zone shift, we will arrive in Korea 28 hours later at about 4 pm on Tuesday there. Since we will be extremely discombobulated, we stay in the mission home for a few days before we head to our apartment I believe. 

I was chosen as the flight leader for our group because my last name is earliest in the alphabet, so I'm responsible for making sure everyone gets on the plane, which would be a lot easier if there wasn't 5 native Koreans in my flight group that barely speak English. So wish me luck everyone...

 Other than jumping ahead 15 hours in time, I am also jumping ahead an entire year and a half in age. The Korean age system is completely different than America's. So you are 1 years old the second you are born in Korea. And everyone moves up one year every New Year's day, so you don't wait until your actual birthday. So a baby that is born in Korea on December 31st turns 2 years old on its second day of life. So when I get to Korea on Monday, I will be 19 years old, and will turn 20 on January 1st, 2016. So that means that I will only be 19 years old for 2 months of my life, how strange is that? And when I finish my mission, I will actually become a year younger, going from 21 years old to 20 as soon as I get back to America. Korea is a different world...

As a reminder, my mailing address will change on Monday, and I will try to send it out next time in E-mail, which will be a week from Sunday in American time I believe.

We still do not have our full Korean nametags, which we are very (im)patiently waiting for. One thing that we are enjoying though are the native Koreans that are leaving with us. There are six sisters and two Elders, and they are all hilarious. I've never met a Korean that I didn't like, and they keep us laughing. They call my companion (Elder Santana) "Santa 장로님"  And my other companion (Elder Young) "Minion  장로님" from Despicable Me, I guess they think he acts like one. One of them called me "큰 장로님" which literally means "Elder Big" in Korean. 

I wanted to thank all of you for being so supportive of me and of all the missionaries in the field. Your prayers, packages and letters are very appreciated, so thank you!

I wish you all a good week, and I guess my next e-mail will be from Korea!

수구하세요!

-비글로 장로

Elder Bee-gur-low

Hello everyone! I hope everyone had an awesome week!

The countdown to the plane ride is officially on. I leave to Korea a week from Monday, and I am so ready to go. You just know that you have been in the MTC for too long when you start to think that jeans are immodest... I need to get back to the real world. I should be receiving my flight plans and full Korean nametag tomorrow, and I could not be more excited. My last name for the next 22 months will most likely be  비글로, pronounced (bee-gur-low), I can't wait for people to call me that.

The language is coming, still slowly, but we're getting so much better at teaching. Korean is interesting because when you speak, you really cut the fat. Koreans don't have time to use unnecessary words like you, the, a, etc. For example, the sentence "I do not want to go to sacrament meeting" is 3 words in Korean.

If you don't like my tidbits of Korean language lessons, please also disregard this next paragraph. Because Korean pronunciation blows my mind and I've got to tell you about it. So this has now become an interactive email. Say the words "bad" and "pad" while feeling your throat. Notice that your mouth makes the same exact shape for the "b" and "P" sounds. The only difference is that your throat vibrates while you say the 'b' sound but not the 'p' sund. When your throat vibrates, it is known as a voiced consonant. The same principle applies to words like 'veal' and 'feel'. The 'v' consonant is voiced in the English language and the 'f' sound is not. Now, Korean does not have voiced consonants. So try saying letters like b,bb,d,dd,g,gg,t,n,s without allowing your throat to voice those consonants. Welcome to Korean class.

I do really love the Korean language though, it is so fun to learn. People at the MTC probably think I'm a weirdo because I talk to myself all the time now, practicing Korean of course. A fair warning though, please do not expect me to use "yes" and "no" in English for at least 2 weeks when I get home, I already have a hard time when I speak to non-Koreans.

One really cool thing that somebody from the older district gave me was a side-by-side English-Korean Preach My Gospel. On one page is the English, then the opposite page is in Korean. It weighs like 10 pounds but it is so worth it. I also somehow acquired a Spanish language learning book, which doesn't quite make sense but I'm going to keep it and maybe even study it if I'm feeling up to using a third language.

Luckily, the MTC is not all Korean, and we get to learn a language here that is much more important than Korean, and that is the language of the Spirit. I think part of the reason I'm learning Korean is because I needed a lot more than twelve days to learn how to be a missionary. I love all of the study and instruction we receive, and the teachers here do a great job of emphasizing that learning a language is not in our Missionary purpose, but inviting all to come unto Christ is. I've learned so much here about having faith in Christ and relying on the Holy Ghost, the MTC is such a special place. Thank you all for your prayers! The Internet at the MTC/BYU has been bad all day, so I was very worried that I wouldn't be able to thank you all this week. All of your emails and prayers give me strength and courage to open my mouth and declare the glad tidings of the gospel.

사랑해요!

- 비글로 장로

Korean word of the week: 침례 (cheem-nay) "baptism"

I love the Gift of Tongues

Hello everyone! I hope everyone enjoyed their General Conference weekend! I missed being able to sit at home with my family on the couch and watch conference, but watching conference in the MTC with 2,500 other missionaries takes a close second. I am very grateful that I did get to watch it here, because it is something that my entire life will revolve around for the next two years. I felt like this conference definitely had a "back to basics" kind of theme. An overwhelming majority of the talks revolved around those precious gospel essentials such as faith, The Plan of Salvation, and putting our trust in the Lord. I loved the homage that was paid to the recently deceased apostles, and the conference of the century with the naming of the three new apostles.

It's very hard to pick a favorite talk, they were all very inspiring. One talk that I especially loved was the one from Larry R. Lawrence of the Seventy. He talked about how she should always ask the Lord, "what lack I yet?" It was a great reminder that just repenting isn't enough, we must always seek to improve our lives and come closer to Christ. Additionally, I have no doubt that Elder Holland's talk about mothers will be quoted every single Mother's day from now until the end of time. I could go on about General Conference for hours, but I only have an hour to email and somebody else is already in charge of writing the Conference issue of the Ensign. 

Anyways, after Conference we went for our weekly Sunday devotional and it turned out to be Vocal Point, the BYU singing group. It was quite the treat, and all of them are Return Missionaries so they took turns speaking. Immediately following that, all the Koreans went to watch the Restoration movie in Korean. I was very surprised of how much of it I actually understood, and having Joseph Smith's First Vision memorized in Korean definitely helped.

After that, we sang an original song written for the Korean speaking missionaries departing the next morning, followed by "God be With You Til We Meet Again" in Korean, as is tradition every time Korean speakers leave the MTC. As for the original song, nobody in our districts had written a song and it was 3 days until we were supposed to sing, so I had to save the day. I wrote a parody of "Part of Your World" from the Little Mermaid. It was about how the MTC is great and all, but we can't wait to get to Korea where we get to teach real people. Luckily the departing missionaries loved it, and I plan to have David Archuleta record a version of my song upon my return.

Yesterday, we got new Korean speakers, making us the oldest Korean speakers here. That leaves us with about 2.5 weeks until departure to Korea, which is terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. All 7 or 8 of the Korean speaking Elders are going to the Seoul South Mission, so my companionship finally has some company around here. However, if only one native Korean reports next week, someone from my companionship will most likely become his companion.

I believe this is my last week as District Leader, so I get to have maximum study time after this Sunday. Also this Sunday, I'm blessing the Sacrament in Korean which I am quite nervous for. Because priests have to repeat the Sacrament prayer all the time when they're speaking English, so I am positive I'm going to mess up in Korean. I do think it will be a great experience though, and it does decrease my chances of randomly getting selected to give a Korean talk in Sacrament Meeting.

One of our teacher's name is Brother Driggs, and he is majoring in Korean and he is so good at Korean, the native Koreans that came said that he spoke better Korean than they did. Anyways, he became one of our teachers last week, and he is also an amazing teacher. One thing that he's doing with everyone once while we're here is a quick 20 minute personal coaching session. Both of my companions had theirs last week, so I got to do mine this week. He asked me a question that I never thought I would hear while learning Korean at the MTC... "Is the class moving too slowly for you?" We talked about the Gift of Tongues a lot and how I could further develop it. He talked about being an agent learner, which means that I still choose to learn even if I already know what's being taught/reviewed in class. So he challenged me to write down every word I heard in class that I didn't already know, and then ask what it means. He said that if I did that, I could be able to be fluent in teaching lessons (not fluent in Korean) by the time I leave the MTC. Along with his challenge, I have doubled my daily word memorization to 30 words every day for the rest of the time here at the MTC. If I can keep it up, I'll know over 1000 words by the time I get to Korea. I love learning Korean and I know that I would never be able to learn this quickly without the help of my Heavenly Father. 저는 방언의 은사를 사랑합니다! ( I love the Gift of Tongues!) And even more than that, I love being able to serve the Lord these two years and share this wonderful gospel with the people of Korea.

Thank you everyone for your letters and prayers, they are appreciated!

You can count the number of seeds in an apple, but you can't count the number of apples in a seed

Hello everyone! I hope everyone is doing well! Thank you for your packages, letters, and prayers, they are all appreciated. I am doing very well here, I love being a missionary. The Korean is going well, it's still an insane language but I'm making progress and trying to learn at least 15 new words every day. A lot of the sounds in Korean are similar to English, but English and Korean actually have zero sounds in common. There are a lot of sounds that are similar, but none of them are actually the same. And there are a lot of sounds that don't exist in the other language at all. For example, the k, v, q, l, and f sounds are completely nonexistent in Korean. So we have to learn to make sounds with our mouth that we have never made before, but it is so fun to learn.  
Well, i did it again. For future reference, pressing tab then enter sends your email. But from where I left off:

The elders in my district have the best service in the MTC without a doubt. Most missionaries here at the MTC are assigned to clean bathrooms, rooms, or buildings for at least one of their service days. And from the stories I hear, it's a nightmare. However, our Saturday service consists of setting up chairs for sacrament meetings, which takes about 15 minutes of the 75 minutes of allotted time, so we get to do whatever for the rest. And for our Wednesday service, we get to unload the shipments in the kitchen. It's cool to see the MTC kitchen behind the scenes, and we get to go in the giant freezers they have. And when we finish, the person in charge of the kitchen gives us a Snicker's bar. So you could say that we did not get the short end of the stick when it comes to service. And in Korea, the church offers free English classes at the church building, which is how they get a lot of their investigators. And the missionaries get to teach it, so I am very excited to teach that.

Another part of the MTC that us missionaries cherish is gym time. In my 5 weeks, I have become quite proficient at both volleyball and four-square. The only two points in your life when four-square is cool to play is in 3rd grade and at the MTC, so I'm taking advantage of my 9 weeks here.

Every 4 weeks, the Missionaries from Korea that are going to Korea on their missions show up and stay here for 2 weeks. Last time only one missionary came, but this time there's 10 and they are the funniest people ever. They barely speak English, so they say some of the most hilarious things. However, they learn English swear words in Korea and don't really get that missionaries don't say them, so we help them clean up their English and they help us to learn a little bit more Korean.

For our Tuesday Devotional, Elder Costa of the Presidency of the Seventy came to speak to us. One of the things he said was that  "you can count the number of seeds in an apple, but you can't count the number of apples in a seed." I was confused for a second until I realized how cool of a quote it was. He talked about how though our immediate efforts might now bring forth much fruit, but we will never know how much fruit comes from the seeds we have planted. He was super funny, and he's the most senior member of the Quorum of the Seventy. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets called as an apostle this weekend, he was awesome. And speaking of this weekend, we get to watch general conference this weekend and I'm super excited that I get to be in the MTC for it. And as the District Leader, I have to lead the discussions after the sessions, so it will give me extra reason to pay attention.

I love being a missionary and I'm so glad I get to spend 9 weeks here. I love you all, thank you for the support!

Does luggage exist?

Hello everyone! I hope all is well for you over in the real world. I believe tomorrow marks the exact halfway point of my stay at the MTC. The days and weeks are definitely starting to run together, especially when you do the exact same thing every day. Yesterday was probably the most different day I've had here at the MTC because we got to host new missionaries. It was definitely fun to see the first few minutes of a missionary's journey and to relive that moment of your own, but it was not a walk in the park by a long shot. Seriously every missionary i hosted lived on the top floor of their building, so I was basically a bellhop without an elevator.

One thing that hosting taught me was how quickly all of my Spanish is being replaced by Korean. So in Korean, they don't use the verb "to have" like we do at all. If you want to say "i have a question" in Korean you have to say "a question exists" (side note: Korean was created to be a simpler language than Chinese, so everything is condensed into as few words as possible, making it very difficult to learn. So the words " I, a, the, you" do not exist). Back to the story though. So a car pulls up to the missionary drop-off where I was standing. The sticker on their car indicated a sister missionary was inside. There were no sister missionaries available to host right then, so in that case an Elder can host the Sister until she gets to her dorm room. So I approached the car, but nobody got out of it for a solid 45 seconds. The woman driving eventually rolled down the window and said something in Spanish. I didn't understand her so she said it again and I understood she was saying something about a missionary. She then looked at my Korean nametag and asked if I spoke Spanish, because why wouldn't I if I had a Korean nametag? I told her I spoke a little bit, to which she said nothing for another 15 seconds. So, I tried to ask her if she had any luggage. So I started saying it, and then I realized I was in the process of saying "equipaje 있습니까?" which, when translated from both Spanish and Korean means "Does luggage exist?" I stopped myself in time, and ended up just saying "luggage?" And after all of it, there wasn't even a missionary in her car. There must of been some mix-up at the gate, but she was here to see her nephew off and ended up with a sister missionary sticker... The MTC is a whole different world.

As far as other news goes, I have memorized the First Vision in Korean and used it in a lesson yesterday, it was pretty sweet. I was also called as District Leader on Sunday, a calling that will last for 3 weeks. It entails leading an hour district meeting on Sunday and Tuesday, going to meetings on Sunday, and getting the mail. So you could say I wield a lot of power here at the MTC now, nobody gets their letters unless I say so. It was actually funny the timing of the calling though. I was the first to get sick in our district, and then I was called as District LEader once I was healthy. Our first district leader was the last one to get sick, and he got sick the minute he was released the District Leader. So I'm banking on the theory that this position will give me some kind of immunity for these next three weeks because that would be much appreciated.

Oh, I almost forgot about my temporary companion. Elder Macasieb got his call reassigned right after I finished emailing last Thursday, and left the following afternoon. He was reassigned to the Orem Utah mission, and I know he'll do great things there.

I'm glad I get to be here in the MTC for 9 weeks, not just for the language training but for instruction in the gospel. I've answered the questions "How can we apply our purpose to our investigators?" and "why is it important to have the Spirit when we teach?" at least 600 times, but I'm glad that they train us so well here. The spiritual growth that happens here is incredible, and I'm so glad they called me on a mission. Thank you everyone for your support and prayers, I'll make you proud!

P.S. There was a mouse in our bedroom this week and let me just say that I am so glad I'm not going to the Philippines.

Always missionary

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well in your respective places of residence. I've had a great week here in sunny Provo Utah. It has actually gotten a little chilly outside, so I am really appreciating my forethought to bring my winter clothes to Utah.

As far as updates go, the Japanese speakers are still everywhere. One group of Koreans left on Monday morning, and they were part of the summer surge, so the Korean numbers are really dwindling. The number of missionaries surge during the summer, so the group that left had about 30 people. The next oldest group has 31 people I think, and ours has 16. We did get some new Koreans yesterday in a group of 13 missionaries. When new missionaries get here, the Korean hall effectively becomes a zoo. The teachers have to ward off everyone trying to get a glance at the new missionaries. If that doesn't tell you how monotonous the MTC schedule is, I don't know what does.

In other news, I received a temporary new companion. Elder Macasieb is currently awaiting a reassignment of his mission and the rest of his district left on Monday. So since I was in a trio, we are companions until he leaves. It's been great because he's been helping me with my Korean and i get to experience just having one companion for a while. 

One of the first things you learn here is the Korean missionary catch phrases. They are as follows:

친짜요?(cheen-chjai-yo) Translation: Really?         Use: English equivalent of "come at me bro"

삼십삼 (sahm-ship-sahm) Translation: 33              Use: Refers to page 33 of the missionary handbook, which is the page that talks about flirting. Used when an elder and sister are getting a little too friendly

항성 선교사 (hong-soung soun-gyo-sah) Translation: Always missionary         Use: When somebody is acting immature or makes their hand into the shape of a gun, teachers often use this phrase

As far as health goes I am doing much better now! Last week did start of pretty rough though. If you have ever experienced one nostril that was runny while the other nostril was bleeding profusely, then you would have a similar experience to me last Friday. However, I'm feeling much better now, and all that remains is a little bit of a cough. And now I am truly experiencing the blessings of having faith through trials. This week has been so faith-promoting and unbelievable. It started off with my suggestion to my companions that we stop using notes altogether when we teach lessons. So, despite our extremely limited vocabulary, we walked into a lesson with only a Korean Book of Mormon in hand. And it was our best lesson up to that point. When we do all we can and then trust the Holy Ghost to help us with the rest, our requests will be granted. Our fake investigator hadn't been reading the book of Mormon, so we bore testimony of its importance and challenged him to read it. He was really impressed and promised us he would. We have taught two more lessons after that and I feel like my ability to teach in Korean is skyrocketing. I only have a working vocabulary of about 215 words at the moment, but the Spirit brings the words that I do know to my remembrance when I teach, the Gift of Tongues is my new favorite thing.

Rosemary Wixom, the Primary general president, spoke to us this week for Tuesday devotional. She talked about 1 Nephi 4, which details the efforts to get the plates from Laban. She talked about how All of the sons of Lehi were on a mission just like us. And they finished their mission, even Laman and Lemeul did. But she stressed the importance of being a Nephi-type missionary, and not being a Laman-type missionary. Nephi trusts the Spirit of the Lord, and follows its promptings even though he doesn't know what is coming next. #missionarygoals

For all of those who emailed me individually, I will email you in about an hour, but I've got to go get my clothes from the dryer. #productivemissionaryprobs. Love you all and thank you for your prayers!

I to learn Jesus Christ about want

안녕하세요 열으분!

Hello everyone! (my spelling might not be correct, but most of you won't know the difference)

 As of today, I am on day 15 of about 63 in the MTC, and day 15 of about 730 on the mission. As far as updates go, Korean is still very much a difficult language. Korean is actually considered the most logical language in the world, but it's tough for my American brain. If you want to say "I want to learn about Jesus Christ," the sentence structure in Korean would be "I to learn Jesus Christ about want." Our teacher promises that we'll be able to make sentences in our head without thinking eventually, but that day seems to be in the very distant future. On the bright side, my vocabulary is up to about 150 words and I have taught about 5 more lessons in Korean. We also have memorized the missionary purpose in Korean, and are now working on the First Vision.

The MTC serves about 50 different meals, so if you are here longer than two weeks you get to try them all several times.The two things that I'm currently missing about home are my mom's cooking and an iron that isn't 50 years old. Oh, and private bathrooms and showers.

The funniest thing to me about the MTC is the culture that develops among the language speakers, especially the ones that are here for 9 weeks. The English speakers are only here for two weeks, so they come and go pretty quickly, but you can almost tell somebody's language without looking at their tag. I feel like the Korean speakers are a lot closer than the other languages which sounds very biased but we all eat together and play kickball twice a week. The Cambodian speakers definitely believe that their language is by far the hardest in the world on account of their 100+ character alphabet, and they will not hesitate to let you know. The Mandarin and Cantonese speakers have the same mentality as the Cambodian speakers, but they're more quiet about it. And just like in the real world, the Koreans do not like the Japanese. We share everything with them (p-day, gym time, class building, bathroom) so we tend to blame them for all of our problems and the overpopulation (Japanese speakers come in by the boatloads). But the one thing that all the Asian languages agree on, is that nobody besides the Russian speakers likes the Russian speakers. These mini-cultures keep me entertained in MTC.

Remember how I mentioned the Korean sickness and how I thought I might be getting it? I got it in every sense of the word. I have been sick consecutively for the last 8 days, with some days being worse than others. I've had to stay in bed several times during this past week, but for the most part I've been able to make it to class. This week, I wondered a lot why Heavenly Father would allow me to get this sick for so long if I was at the MTC serving him. I got my answer a few days ago during a lesson from our teacher. He was using the story of Alma 14 to talk about the faith required to learn a language. But that day, it had a double meaning for me. As the story goes, Alma and Amulek are cast into prison for trying to teach the gospel. They are questioned and beaten by lots of people, then receive strength from God to break the prison walls. However, In verse 25, it says that they did not receive the strength from God until after the last person had beaten them. Every day, I kind of feel beat up by my sickness. But I know that if I keep up the faith, that God will help me recover. So instead of worrying about when this sickness will end, I now wait faithfullly for the last day of this sickness to "smite me" so that when it ends, I can receive strength from God to do his work.

사랑합니다 그리고 감사합니다

I love you all and thank you for all of your prayers!

Until next week,

Bigelow 정로