Last 6 weeks in Gimpo

Hello everyone!

As of August 26th, I started my mission 2 years ago, and I am happy to announce that I will spend my last 6 weeks in Gimpo. We received transfer calls, I will continue to serve with Elder Barnes, and only one missionary will be leaving Gimpo ward, Sister Woo

She is the first Sister missionary from Hong Kong to serve in Korea (99% of people think she is Korean when they first see her), and we took a final picture with our most diligent intermediate English class students, both of whom we are also learning a little bit about our church.

Other things this week:

-Double baptism!: The other Elders in our ward have been teaching two boys and this week they were both baptized! It has been almost a year since the last baptism in the ward, so having 3 this month was really great.

-Zone 전도: We had a zone proselyting activity in our area this week, so around 20 missionaries all came to Gimpo, switched companions, then split up and shared the joy of the gospel! And of course, we ended with a zone dinner at my favorite restaurant~

-Drills: Some of you may have heard about increased caution with regards to the activity of North Korea. Nothing is going on, but our church makes the safety of its missionaries a high priority, so our mission president got special permission to do a "drill" of sorts. If things do seem to escalate, the missionaries will meet at our headquarters in Seoul, so we woke up to a text on Friday morning that said "This is a drill, grab your 72-hour kits and be at the mission headquarters by 10 am" Since we are one of the farthest away from the headquarters, we had to leave as fast as we could, but we made it~ There we just got more training on what the actions we are to take in different situations are, then we finished by watching a slideshow... It turned out to be pretty fun!

That's it for me this week, we are getting lots of rain here but I know there is some bad flooding in parts of the US, stay safe everyone!

Love,

Elder Bigelow

Bonus round extra 6 weeks

Hello everyone! This is week 104, which would be the last week of my mission had I not gone home for surgery last year, But I can say that I am truly grateful for my "bonus round" extra 6 weeks.

Yesterday I said goodbye to my companion from the MTC, Elder Santana. He will leave next week, leaving me as the oldest (in time since starting the mission) missionary in our mission.

Other things for this week:

-Thumbs: If you look at my right thumb in the picture, you can see the sad little thumb brace I am wearing. I hurt my thumb a month or so ago but it couldn't seem to heal enough before getting hurt again, so I'm trying to protect it for a little bit~

-Broadcast: We had the special opportunity  in all of Korea to watch a broadcast just for Korea. Several General Authorities, including the General Primary President and Elder David A. Bednar did a broadcast from Salt Lake for all the members in Korea, it made us all feel special~ They taught us about the importance of putting God first in our lives, and also principles that can help us raise families in righteousness, super good!

-Bucheon: For that broadcast, we had to go to a church building about an hour away from our home. The broadcast ended at 12, but we had to attend another meeting there at 5 pm and we figured that it wouldn't be worth going home at all, so we spent the whole day there, and did a big stickerboarding activity with several other missionaries. The meeting we went to at 5 was a training meeting for teaching children's English classes. We teach for free as a service, but we want to make sure that the people we teach are actually benefited from our service and that they can maintain a positive view of our church as well, so we learned ways to be better teachers.

-Interviews: Usually when we have our interviews with our mission President, we just do it and leave, but this time we met as a district (10 missionaries) for a few hours, and those who were not being interviewed talked with Sister Turner. We did some fun group activities, and she taught us about how we can become one with our companion. We are focusing on becoming one as a mission and being able to follow the Lord's will, but it is something that has to start in the companionship before it can spread to the mission. Loving others is good~

-Sandwiches: The person that was planning to get baptized this week did not end up doing so, but we are still teaching a lot and having great experiences. One happened several days ago as we met with Brother Yoo. He has been meeting with us for a while, and loves the Book of Mormon. He said "If everyone just lived according to the words of the scriptures, tis world would have no problems!". On the other hand though, he struggles a little bit with prayer. We asked him if we had been praying, he told us no, and I was a little disheartened at first. But then he said "can we talk about prayer today? I want to be able to pray well, but I just never really know what to say. Can you give me some advice about prayer?" So, we taught him about the principle of the "prayer sandwich", because it does not matter what goes on the inside of a sandwich as long as there is a piece of bread on each end. In a similar manner, as long as we address God to begin and end in the name of Jesus Christ, what goes in between is up to the individual. He loved the metaphor and left determined to make his own prayer sandwich~

That is it for this week, have a good one!

Love,

Elder Bigelow

The first person I have baptized

I Hello everyone! 

The weather has started to cool off slowly here, good news for the missionaries!

This week, against all odds, our ward had a baptism! The sisters have been meeting her for several months, she has a mental handicap and has wanted to get baptized for a while, and she showed that she understood the importance of baptism and so she was able to get baptized! I had the privilege I of baptizing her. She was the first person I have baptized, and interestingly enough, it happened exactly 12 years from the day I was baptized at 8 years old~

We are looking forward to several more baptisms in our ward soon, some may have to be postponed, but we will keep praying that they happen!

Other things for this week:

-SYL: This week I challenged the 10 missionaries in our district to SYL (speak your (mission) language) as much as possible for the entire 7 days. Some of them may or may not have hated me by the end, but regardless we witnessed a lot of growth that came from it~

-Missionary Disease: This week as I was studying my Korean grammar book, it gave an example sentence that was something along the line of, "she is so meticulous that she plans every single day in intervals of 30 minutes, is that not considered a disease?" I read it and thought "wait that's what I and all other missionaries do..." I guess if it's a disease, it's a pretty good one.

-Korean mistake of the week: This one makes it pretty high on the charts I think. We were meeting with someone and talking about the 10 commandments, because we believe that the 10 commandments still apply to us today. We took turns reading the commandments, and when it came to "Obey thy father and mother", it was my companion's turn. As he read, he made a very minor mistake in pronunciation. Instead of saying the word "gong gyeong", which means "to honor", he accidentally said "gong gyeok". Normally small mistakes like this wouldn't make too much of a difference, but the word that he did say means "to attack or assault", so he told the person we were teaching that we are supposed to attack our parents... We fixed the mistake, but made sure to laugh a lot first~

I think that is it for this week, have a good one everyone! I'll try to put some pictures at the bottom..

-Elder Bigelow

-When you go to the airport but you're happy because you don't have to fly home yet:

My birthday

Hello everyone!

Thanks for all of the birthday wishes, my birthday coincided with zone conference, so luckily I was able to spend most of the day in an air-conditioned room, and it also came with the perks of having a delicious meal made by Sister Turner, and the chance to wear a birthday hat~ Pictures are attached at the bottom.. It was a really great training, we discussed making Jesus Christ the center of all we teach, and becoming more unified in doing the work of the Lord :)

In addition, last P-day we made a trip out to one of the islands in our mission (the one with the airport on it), and had a Mud Flats adventure. It's kind of like the beach except instead of sand it's mostly mud, so you go out during low tide and try and find lots of creatures(little crabs, clams), and the idea is that you take them home and cook and eat them. Part of it was that we didn't know how to cook any of these sea creatures, part of it was that we were inexperienced and didn't find them very well, and the biggest part of it was that we had too much fun looking for little creatures, but at the end we didn't really have anything to show for our efforts. I think the staff and everyone else felt really bad for all the foreigners that weren't able to catch any delicious clams, because a man passing by just handed the sister missionaries a giant bag full of clams and told them how to cook it.

Other than that, all is going well here, it's pretty hot and a couple nights ago when we went to sleep, it was 33 degrees celsius in our house (about 90 degrees) with a whole lot of humidity, at that point it's less sleeping and more of just waiting until morning, but we are still happy :) We were trying to work towards 4 baptisms in our ward on the same day, it didn't quite work out but we should have 3 baptisms scheduled throughout August, we are looking forward to it! We are working with some really great people that have come to see the joy that following the teachings of the Savior Jesus Christ can bring.

That's all for me this week, have a great week everyone!

-Elder Bigelow

Choose the rice

Hello everyone! This is the 5th Monday in a row that it has rained here, but it does give a brief respite from the heat so I can't complain.

This week we were meeting with a man who is both learning English and about our church, he saw I was wearing a CTR ring(a ring that some members of our church wear, it stands for "choose the right"), and asked what it meant. So I told him the acronym slowly, he is still a beginner at English so writing down what he hears can be difficult, and there were several mistakes. Once we figured out "Choose" and "the", I said the word "right" and he seemed to understand it, until he finished the phrase by writing "choose the rice". I helped him fix it, but I couldn't help but smile to myself as this man had accidentally given me my new motto as a missionary in  Korea~

This week, we met with Mr. Seo, an older man that has known missionaries for a while, he doesn't have any interest in church but he likes to take the missionaries out to eat every few months to catch up and keep up his English. He is the administrator of a small hospital, and he told that one of the nurses there wanted to practice English, and asked if it would be okay if she texted us every once in a while to practice.We said that would be fine, and soon after we received a text that ended up having a little bit more of a serious tone than the sender probably wished...

-This week we had 12 appointments with those  who were learning about our church, the most I've ever had on my mission! We are continuing to meet with those we have been meeting, and were able to find a couple new people as well. A member in our ward told us that she had a friend that had some questions about our church. They meet up and practice talking in English with each other (because they are both very good), so she invited us to come and meet him this week. He was a super cool guy, he is about 40, and really wants to live a good life, but feels like his normal friends don't help him to be a better person, and if he goes to church, he is worried that he will feel like a bad person compared to all the other churchgoers. But he is searching for a church that will help him be better and is not polluted by greed for money, and he wants to keep meeting to learn about our church. We'll keep you posted!

Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Elder Bigelow

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