September 20, 2010

Alright,
This week has been amazing! I had many interesting tracting experiences this week. Being in the trio companionship is working very well, and we have been finding and teaching many people. Lately I have been studying a lot in the scriptures on how I can have the spirit more when I am talking to people about the Gospel, and allowing them to be able to feel that this message is extremely important. I love looking at the examples of the prophets in the Book of Mormon and seeing how much boldness and desire that they had. So this week I took some of those things that I learned and put it into practice! One thing that I have learned is that if you truly believe and have faith the Lord will put people in your path, he will. We taught a man this week and the only place we could teach him at that time was outside of a Del Taco resturaunt, there were a lot of loud people and music playing on the stereo system outside, and I think it is truly amazing how when the spirit is very strong all the influence of things going on around us just seemed to die down. We also taught a lesson to our investigator, that is actually getting baptized this week!! We taught her about the Word of Wisdom and we are always nervous for this lesson becasue when working with chinese people the major hold for them is always tea. Tea in chinese culture is HUGE, they have it at almost everything they do. As we told her about tea she said "Tea??? but all chinese people love tea!" but then she said "Even though that might be a little hard to do, I am going to do it, because I believe that the prophet received that revelation from god and I know I will be blessed for following it", she is such an amazing person and has such a strong testimony. She hasn't even been baptized yet and is talking about inviting her friends to church and to meet with us! We also had the opportunity this week to teach our neighbor! She is an extremely nice chinese lady with two of the most fun little children I have ever met (and they speak circles around me in chinese!) We gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon and she has already been reading it, and when we are walking to our apartment and she sees us she yells "Chuanjiaoshi!! Wo zai du moermenjing" (Missionaries! I'm reading the Book of Mormon!) This week has been such a great and spiritual week for me, and everyday things just get better and better! I am so hapy and blessed to be out here meeting these people! The language is still pretty tough, I can understand a lot more, but a lot I still don't. but I believe the Lord will continue to bless and help me with this language and I will continue to give it my best effort. I love you all and for all the examples you have set for me and I hope everything is going well! Until next week! Zaijain!

September 13, 2010

Alright,
This week has been very busy and very interesting especially since I am now in a trio companionship. We have found that having three people makes it difficult when teaching and contacting because it is hard to switch off talking, but one good thing is that we all get along very very well, so it is extremely enjoyable. We had a lot of referrals to go visit this week so we traveled around quite a bit. We had a really interesting experience one day in the car, as we were stopped at a red light a wasp flew into the car and the light turned green so we had to go, but if you could imagine three elders in a car spazzing out, laughing with a wasp flying around, and we couldn't pull over for about five minutes, luckily no one got stung but it was pretty hillarious. We met with one of our investigators Xiao Yue Hu (Vic) and we taught her about the Plan of Salvation and then commited her to baptism, she accepted! We have been meeting with her often and she has been progressing so much, however she speaks so quickly, she actually came up to me after one of our lessons and she said she is surprised we understand as much as we do because she has friends that were born in china and are fluent that still don't understand her when she speaks because she speaks so fast. We had another investigator this week that we taught, her name is Kin Tran....we hadone of the coolest experiences ever, she speaks mandarin, cantonese, english, and vietnamese (all fluently). When we taught the first lesson my companion used cantonese, I used mandarin, and the brother we brought used english, having the opportunity to be in the lesson where someone is being taught the gospel using three different languages was quite the experience! At our english class after I had finished teaching my assigned portion I sat next to a little boy (his family is in our branch) named Gabriel. He speaks chinese and he had me play a game with him that he called "feiji". He was explaining it to me in chinese so i didn't quite understand all of it but he is so cute. Now I can tell you all the most interesting part of this week. We were taken out to eat by one of the branch members and they took us to a chinese resturaunt. They ordered a fish and they brought out the entire fish....sister chen then scooped out one eyeball of the fish and put it on my plate...she told me in taiwan and china they always give the eyeballs to the guest as a sign of respect....yes I ate a fish eyeball!!!!!!!!! Not the best thing to eat in my opinion, but I did it ;). So all in all this week has been one of lots of first experiences. I am so happy to be doing this work and spreading the Gospel. I know this Gospel is true, and it is the only way to return to live with God again. I thank you all for the continued love and support and hope all is going well! I love you all! Until next week! Zaijian!

August 7, 2010

Alright, well this week was the last week of my first transfer in the field! This week was pretty busy and I had some fun experiences with tracting. I have been realizing lately that we sometimes let people just walk by without talking to them and every time it happens I feel bad because I missed the opportunity to help them hear the Gospel. So this week I decided to be much more bold and didn't let anyone walk by without telling them something about the Gospel. One contact this man was walking by and I tried to stop him and talk to him but he acted like he couldn't/didn't hear me and started to jog...normally I would just Keep on walking to the next person, but this time I all the sudden found myself turning around and jogging with him. I jogged with the man for about 2 minutes telling him about the gospel and then left him with a card...I felt like Kirby Heybourne in "The Best 2 Years" when he chases down the people on bikes. I have found it is hard to talk to Californians because they are always busy going somewhere or doing something, so you have to be quick and bold. That is one thing I have not necessarily been used to doing but it is coming much easier now and I find the more I just act like myself the better it goes and the happier I and the people I talk to are. We have a new investigator and his name is Johnny Kuo, I don't remember if I talked about him in the last email but i will now. He is the most amazing and funny old man. He is from Taiwan and speaks no English, he is extremely hard of hearing so we practically have to yell for him to hear us. He came to church all by himself, we didn't know who he was so we talked to him and he said he lives in the senior housing across the street and this is the closest Chinese congregation so this is where he will go. He is so awesome!!! He loves church and has read the Book of Mormon, Gospel Principles book, Bible, the Church magazines, in about a week and a half. He gets a kick out of me being able to speak and understand him because I am white....he tells me that every single time we meet. We had a language training meeting this week about the English classes we teach every week. They are totally reorganizing how we teach the classes and we were taught by a man named Von Packard. He taught us so much and he focused on letting our body language showing what we want, and how it is the Holy Ghost that invites people to be baptized not us missionaries. Well as of yesterday my companionship is now myself elder Chang and my old companion elder mensink. We are in a trio. It is definitely different but it has been so great just in the few days we have been in it. I love this work! Until next time!

Zaijian nimen. Wo zhende ai nimen.