August 30, 2010

Well this week has been absolutely amazing! The work has been going great, not necessarily by big things happening but I have learned to enjoy the small successes and those have made me happy and see God's blessings in my life. This week I had the opportunity to go on two differed exchanges, one on Wednesday and one on Saturday. The exchange we had on Wednesday I went over to the West park area and worked with Elder Earl again. We talked to a lot of people and helped some move but there was one thing that was especially cool. They have an investigator named Olivia Geller, the minute he said that name I recognized the name. Turns out that she is from Beaverton, Oregon and was in my classes and my friend all the way elementary school through high school at South ridge and she moved out here a couple years ago. We had a lesson planned to teach her and she recognized me when we met. I think it is so interesting that the lord placed me in this mission in that area at that time to teach an old friend of mine the gospel! It was an amazing experience and she has a baptismal date set and is very excited! This week we had dinner with a Chinese family that I absolutely love! They took us to a Chinese restaurant, as we sat down the mom (shu-qi) is her name, told me "Well, since you are in California you probably won't get to experience certain authentic Chinese foods unless we have you experience them"....as she said that i said to myself "oh no". Well I ended up eating "Stinky Tofu", which is quite possibly the most horrid smelling food on this earth, hence the word stinky already in the name. Then they had me eat "Fish Cake"....which does not taste like cake haha. Finally she had me eat two squid. Thos are things i probably never would have eaten, but it was fun to experience them at least once. The squid which I was most scared actually wasn't all that bad, go figure ;). The second exchange during this week was with the Zone Leaders. I got to work with Elder Wilcock (zone leader) and Elder Nielsen. They are such huge examples to me about the missionary work, they are very spiritual with what they do and we had much success because of it. One thing I learned from Elder Nielsen was not to be afraid to talk to people and just be yourself, as I watched him he is definitely not afraid of going up to people or talking to them, it is one thing I decided to try and incorporate more this week and it has been going very well. In the back of my mind while i try to be bold is always my brother, because that is his personality and it has been fun to think of me following in his footsteps. One fun experience was a man I taught with them called Jeron. In the morning while we were planning Elder Wilcock and Nielsen told me they felt we should teach the word of wisdom, when we arrived at his house we saw some used cigarettes and beer cans outside. So we went in and talked to him about the word of wisdom and he was a really nice man and he really wanted to stop but he said he needed help, so we told him how God has promised us if we try to live the word of wisdom we will added strength and blessings in our life and the ability to overcome. He had us take the beer and cigarettes out his house and we threw it all away for him. This upcoming week we have a baptism scheduled for our investigator Jerry, so i ask for all of your prayers for him to have strength and the desire to still be baptized. I love you all and thank you so much for all that you do for me! I am learning so much out here and I love meeting new people everyday! I know that this Gospel is true, without a doubt in my mind. I know Jospeh Smith saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I know this Heavenly Father has created a plan for us, to live with him and our families forever. Until next time! Zaijian!