November 29, 2010

Continued...

Ok so this is my continuation from the last email on Friday! So lately my companion has been asking me a lot more questions about english grammar so he could learn more english. He was looking at random idioms on his dictionary and he found a couple that he really likes that just crack me up. His favorite new idiom to say is "Put up your dukes" haha. I love my companion and things are going so well out here. We have been cleaning up our area book by visiting a lot of former investigators and potential investigators. We were able to reconnect with a couple formers and taught some of the potential investigators! So not yesterday but then Sunday before that, it was the Chinese branch's one year anniversary! We had an overwhelming amount of non members come (enough to where elder Kim and I didn't even get a chance to meet all of them!) There is one food that the members make a lot out here and I really haven't had it before but it has pretty much become my favorite! Almond Jello! AMAZING! We went on exchanges this week and I got to work with Elder Brown in our district while Elder Kim went to work in his area with Elder Bannister. Elder Brown is an awesome elder. He and I decided to go tracting in a certain area, and as we were tracting we saw two girls on the opposite side of the street also going door to door. At first we didn't really notice but then as we made it to the cul-de-sac (or however you spell it....I have never actually written that word before now that I think about it), we saw the two girls at the door right next to us, then I realized they were Jehovah witnesses. It was pretty funny that we were both tracting the same street and then we both ended up overlapping each others sides that had already been knocked. It was pretty funny, we tried to talk to them but they really didn't want anything to do with us. We had thanksgiving dinner at the Branch Presidents house (President Bayers). I absolutely love the Bayers, I am pretty sure I was completely meant to come serve in the same branch with them! They have a funny tradition where while we eat, everyone in the house has to wear little turkey hats that their kids make. I will send some pictures later. There was one thing that happened recently that I think was better than all of that. We got back in contact with David Ong!!!!!!! He was the man we found while tracting when I first got here, and he had a baptismal date set and was progressing so well and then he just disappeared. It made me really sad, but we finally found him and his son again and I am so happy! We also recently had the privilege of going to the temple!! I feel like it has been so long since I had the last opportunity to go, but it has completely revamped me spiritually and I am ready to get out there and go find more people!! Today is transfer day! Elder Kim and I are staying in the same place but we are getting a new third companion! Presdient Watrous called me as a trainer. I am excited and hope I can do well as a trainer given I have only been out for 4 transfers. This new elder actually served in Taiwan for 4 months and then had a health problem and had to come home and is now being reassigned here. His name is Elder Brae and we will pick him up tomorrow. There are so many things to talk about and so much to say but all I can really say is everything is amazing!! The work is moving forward and I can't believe about 8 months have passed by. The language seems like it is starting to pick up again! It is tough but I can definitely see the improvement and I take absolutely no credit for it. The Lord has given me the help and strength to do it. I love you all and I hope everything is going so well! This is the time of year where the weather is a perfect 70 or high 60's and sunny, while everywhere else is cold and snowy and freezing :). I do miss the cold but I can live with this weather too ;). I love you all!! Please write me! I would love to hear from all of you! Zaijian!

November 27, 2010

Nihao!!

Well I am writing today because our P-Day was moved to Friday because we had the opportunity of going to the temple!! However, since Friday was the day after thanksgiving, the library was closed. So today is the day I can read the emails and reply! I will also get to on Monday of next week because it goes back to our normal P-Day. Well , so much has happened in the past weeks!! So we teach an English class every Tuesday night at one of the church buildings here and it is usually only 2 people that are there. So we decided to make fliers and get them translated and give them to everybody to try and have more students! Well, it just so happens that the night we had English class we still hadn't got any fliers out, but we had 6 Chinese people show up!!! We still have no idea how they knew about this class, but I say it is an answer to prayers! There is a man in our Chinese branch named Morgan Ying. He is so amazing, and such a great example. However he is really funny and is known to say things that catch people off guard. Well......we were in a lesson and we brought brother Ying with us. We were teaching our investigator Kin Tran about the Plan of Salvation and the spirit was really strong and it was a great lesson. I turned to Bro Ying and I asked him "Since you know the Plan of Salvation and you know that you can truly live with your family together forever, what kind of feelings does that give you?" He waited a little bit and then replied saying "Mafan" which in English means about the equivalent of bothersome! I thought he was only joking and then was going to say his real answer but he said nothing else...haha it was definitely not what Elder Kim and I were expecting from him, but later he bore strong testimony and the lesson ended very well. the rest of the weeks having been going so well and the work is amazing. there is so much more to talk about but since the Library closes at 5 I only have 9 minutes left and way too much to still talk about, so this letter will have to be continued on Monday. I love you all!!

November 15, 2010

Another fantastic week!!!!!
Ok, well this week has been amazing! I don't know where to begin. So to start out the week we had a general authority "Elder Larry Gibbons" and his wife come speak to us for a mission conference! My companion played the piano in a mission choir they made and I was chosen to sing in it. I can say that I miss singing, but I was glad to have the opportunity to sing in this choir! Elder Gibbons taught us a lot on how to work with members to help them fulfill their missionary work responsibilities! It was amazing and I took so many notes! All of my companions have commented on the many notes I take of things and all the post it notes of quotes and scriptures all around our apartment. It is something I love doing so that I can always keep the right attitude and remember important things while I am on my mission. We also had our companion exchange this week and I got to go work with our new district leader Elder Bannister, he is from Boise Idaho and he and I get along really well! We talked to so many people that day! I have learned a lot of patience with other missionaries and my companion, and especially the language. On Friday Elder Kim and I made some awesome burritos!!....however, they gave both of us the worst heart burn we have ever had and we have both decided we will not eat burritos again on our mission, haha. We went tracting quite a bit this week and I think I am finally learning to love it! It no longer makes me uncomfortable to go up to peoples doors or talk to them on the street. I know how important this is and by all means I will let them know about it! Within in an hour we found 3 new people that we have appointments with to teach! And speaking of "by all means I will share it"....this week we had a Jehovah's Witness come to our door, I got up, grabbed a Book of Mormon and answered the door like I always do when someone knocks on our door. There was a man and a little boy, they talked to me for a little bit and then I asked the man a question that came to my mind and said "What has your religious background been?"....I don't know why I asked that question because it wasn't something I would normally say in that situation but he responded with he has been in pretty much every religion, but he said except The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I asked him if he has ever read the Book of Mormon and he told me he had one a while ago but never had the opportunity to read it. So I bore testimony of it to him and gave him the Book of Mormon, he took it and committed to read and pray about it. I don't think that's what he was expecting coming to our door but the Lord works in many ways ;). I love this work and this Gospel, it is all true! I love you all and hope all is well and invite you to all do your member missionary work!!!! And for those who read this and are not members of the church, I invite you to sincerely read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. I promise you it is true and will bring more blessings and happiness and peace into your life than you know. I love you all!!

November 8, 2010

Alright!! Well, this past week has been amazing!! We have been working pretty hard and we are starting to see a lot more success through our faith and efforts to find and teach those people that the Lord has prepared! This last Tuesday we had 4 lessons and English Class!!! We were running and teaching all day! It was amazing! This week has been really tough in the language aspect of things, because it is hard wanting so much to talk to these people and help them but then having a huge language barrier, that makes it pretty tough sometimes. But I am continuing to work on my outlook and realize how much the Lord has helped me learn just in a little over 6 months! I have been studying really hard and trying more and more to use Chinese more in my daily conversations. This week we got to go do service for sister King in our branch. We helped her clean up her garden and weed it and take down her possum trap (which elder Kim and I were sad there was no possum caught!). Elder Kim tells me that he is very much a city boy and he really doesn't like to get his hands dirty and I tease him a little bit ;). We had the opportunity of taking an 18 year old boy in our branch named Keoki tracting with us! He wanted to go with us to get prepared for his mission (It is something I wish I would have done!!!!), we talked to a lot of people and got some referrals for the other missionaries and then we were going to leave but as we were about to leave I had the feeling just to knock one more house, I didn't know which but I knew we needed to knock one more. So we kept walking down the street and we walked past a certain house and I had a huge feeling to turn around and knock on that door, so I quickly turned around and told my companion and Keoki that we needed to knock that one. We did and a lady answered the door, she is from Iran and her name was Shela. We started to talk to her and she was an amazing lady and I think it was the first contact I have ever had where I wasn't thinking or worrying about what to say, the words were literally just coming out of my mouth. We ended up giving her a Book of Mormon and committing her to read and pray about it and then we set up a time for the other elders in our district to go back and teach her! The spirit was so strong and I am still amazed at how the spirit really is what does this work, not us missionaries. We are just lucky to ride along ;). We had three investigators call this week and tell us they no longer want to meet with us, that made us very sad but it helped me to know that the Lord is still blessing and preparing them, maybe now is not their time but it will be some day. I want you all to know I love you all and there is always so much I could say in these emails but I can't fit it all or even explain it all. But suffice it to say that I know this work is true. I know that God and Jesus Christ LIVE. I know they know each of us personally and they love us more than we could imagine. They have restored their true church on this earth. We once again have the blessing and power of the Priesthood Authority back on the earth that can seal families together forever. I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God and was written specifically for us in this day and generation. Everyone needs to hear this Gospel and know and understand the Plan that God has given us. I know we have a living prophet of God on the earth today that helps to know how we can live in accordance with Jesus Christ's gospel and lets us know the new guidance from Jesus Christ and our heavenly Father. It is all true! Once again I love you all!! Hope all is well! Zaijian!

November 1, 2010

Hello!!
Another beautiful amazing missionary week in California!!! To start off, I believe in the last email I mentioned that we taught a man named Fang (pronounced Fawn with a g). This week we had the blessed opportunity to go back and teach him! He is quite hard to understand, one because he is old and has a thick accent, and two because he had surgery on his mouth not too long ago so it makes it really hard to understand. But we taught him about the restoration of the gospel and he told us in the middle of our lesson that he could no longer speak to us because he didnt believe in God or Jesus Christ. So we went by the spirit and asked some inspired questions to find out more of his concern and we found out that he doesn't believe because everyone that believes always say they have seen these huge miracles and amazing blessings in their lives and he has never seen any. So we taught him more about who Jesus Christ is and helped resolve the concern that he had. The spirit was so strong in the lesson and he was very excited to read the Book of Mormon he almost couldn't wait till we finished hah. As we were leaving he looked at me and said in chinese, "you speak chinese, I really like you", then he looked at Elder Kim and said "I like you but I like the chinese speaking american more". haha. After we left we realzied that we forgot to give him a specific part to read out of the Book of Mormon, so an hour later we went back to give him that part and when we went back he said he was already reading! We were teaching another lady this week and her father and mother joined us in this lesson, it is very different teaching 3 people at once because you have to make sure to include all of them and make it personal for each but the spirit was there and the lesson went very well. After the lesson the mom asked if we would like water, so we said we would love some. She came back a minute later with hot water in each cup (chinese people love drinking just plain hot water). She told us to be careful because it was very hot, so I carefully sipped the water, however Elder Kim didn't hear that she said it was hot so he grabbed the glass and took a huge gulp of water, and nearly spit the water everywhere haha. I had my first interview with the Mission President this week! It felt funny not having my interview until now, the president said he considers me a veteran out here now. This week when tracting on saturday, it was very very hard becuase there was some football game going on and everyone and their dog was watching it. Yesterday was my first Halloween in the field! We tried to be creative while tracting and at one door we said "Happy Halloween, usually people ask for treats on halloween but we have a treat for you!" it was kind of cheesy but it worked! I am learning and growing so much out here! I have found that when i place my focus on others and there concerns and how I can help them and stop worrying and thinking about myself, then I am so much happier! It gives me no time to be upset or dscouraged because I am focusing on something more important! I love this work so much!!! I love you all so very much!! I hope everything is going very well! Write me letters! ;) Zaijian!