February 10, 2011

Hello!!

OK, well I am writing on a Thursday today because we got to go to the temple today, so it became our P-Day for the week. So this past week we were supposed to have a baptism of our investigator Yang Jiemei. She is so amazing and was so ready, but she called us an hour before the baptism and told us that she no longer wants to be baptized. So we tried to talk with her but she wouldn't answer her phone and we didn't know where she was so we couldn't go personally try to talk to her. So I have to say that these past three baptisms falling through at the last minute have been a little tough. But I think they have definitely helped me to turn more trust and faith to the Lord. We found two new investigators while we were tracting up by the UCI campus. They invited us in and we taught them about the Book of Mormon, it went very well. One cool thing is that one of the girls had the same surname in Chinese as me. Now, I say that is cool because my teacher at the MTC gave me one of the rarest surnames out there and till that day I had never met anyone with the same surname. When we were teaching we talked about pondering to know whether the Book of Mormon is true or not, and one of the girls turned to the other because her friend was being really quite and asked "What are you doing", the other replied "Pondering". It was an amazing experience because the whole lesson she kept asking very good questions and kept saying she felt something special about the book. One of the branch members had us over with his family for a Chinese new years eve dinner. I don't think I have ever seen or eaten that much food in my life. I ate duck for the first time in my life! We had exchanges this week and I got to work with Elder Tensmeyer in my district, he is such an awesome elder!! I was working in the English area for that day but we actually found a ton of Chinese people and every time I saw them I would say hi in Chinese and then ride my bike quickly across the street to talk to them. There was this one lady we talked with that was especially funny, I rode along side her and asked her "Do you speak English" she said in Chinese "bu dong (in English it means "I don't understand"), so I said in Chinese "well i speak Chinese, do you?" and she said "bu hui (which means 'I can't'), then i looked at her funny and said in Chinese "Well you just said you don't understand and you don't speak English in Chinese, so you probably speak Chinese" and she gave up and said yes. ha ha I never get tired of the different kinds of reactions I get once Chinese people realize I can speak Chinese. We have been doing a lot of trying to find new investigators this past week and I can't believe that next week is the last week of this transfer! Time is going by so fast. Well I want you all to know I love you all! Keep smiling! Until next week...Monday! Zaijian!