September 27, 2010

Well this week has been a rough week. We have been working extremely hard but it is just one of those weeks that tries your patience and faith. Despite our best efforts everything has been falling through and we lost investigators and it has just been pretty tough. However I am not letting myself get to distracted by it because I know the Lord has his plans and I will just continue to work hard and help those people he has prepared. This week we did have one investigator that we needed to visit, so we arranged a time and came to visit. When we got there she was waiting at her doorstep and we got to talk to her for a little bit. She doesn't have any beliefs but she is extremely interested! The spirit was so strong while we were talking to her, I am excited for our return appointment! We had the opportunity of helping an older lady in our ward named Sister King, she has Lou Gehrig's disease, so she can't do any of the yard work or things around her house. She had us remove a lot of plants and then we went to her backyard, and she asked us to remove a certain vine plant. As we started to remove this vine plant she asked us to close her glass sliding door, so she went inside and we closed her door, we didn't know why she wanted it closed but we soon found out. The minute we started to take down the vine we noticed a ton of wasps that were on it, they started to get angry and were flying around like crazy, we were jumping around swatting and then we could here her laughing from inside! Hah she is such an amazing lady, and very smart ;). We also picked her ripe dragon fruit and she gave some to us, I have never had dragon fruit before but it is delicious! Later this week we went to a very nice chinese resturaunt and there I got to try Octopus for the first time....it wasn't the greatest but at least I can say I have tried it now! A lady in our ward has been in the hospital so we were able to go this sunday and give her the sacrament, it was a very spiritual experience. I had a very interesting/intense experience this week. I was on exchanges with another area and this area was on bike, so i got to ride bike all day (which I prefer way more than riding in a car!). Well, it was late and time to go back to the apratment, so we were riding home and Elder Earl was about 30 feet ahead of me. As we were driving down this street I noticed a car sound very close behind me. Then the lights started to get much closer, I didn't really pay much attention to it, but it kept getting closer and louder, so I quickly looked over my shoulder and the car was coming directly at me and picking up speed, so I swerved to get out of the road but was going to hit the curb so I hit the brakes and in consequence flew over the handle bars and got beat up pretty bad on my hands, knee, and right arm. I tried to see the car, but it took off very fast. I realized I was run off the road on purpose, but I am glad that the Lord protected me. There are apparently some people around here that do that to missionaries. So I can easily say it has been a rough week. But I found a bunch of comfort in a scripture in 2 Nephi 9:39 especially the line "To be spiritually minded is life eternal", so as I was thinking about that, I thought, Satan gives us hard times and temptations every day, it is easy to be upset and feel down and get annoyed withourselves, BUT this scripture gives us the recipe to overcome those feelings! In that line if you take the first letter of each word it says SMILE. When we are thinking spiritually we will smile! WIth the Lord we can always get through tough days and trials. I know this work is true! I know the Lord is constantly blessing each and every one of us. I challenge each of you reading this to go read that scripture and do what it says! Smile! I love you all! Hope all is well! Until next week! Zaijian!