February 28, 2011

Hello everyone!!

Ok, well this past week was the first week of the new transfer! If any of you didn't hear, I am now serving as a Zone Leader in the Newport Coast Singles Ward. To start off I have to say that going from the Yale Chinese Branch to a Singles Ward in Newport Coast is a little bit of a culture shock! I had to review everything I had learned all in english because I hadn't been teaching or tracting much in english before now. It is also different because I am now teaching people speaking my native language and a lot of them are the same age as me. I absolutely love it in this new area though, and I still do get quite a few opportunities to talk to chinese people! I have complete faith in the Lord that he will help me retain the chinese that I have learned as long as I put forth my best effort to keep trying to learn more of it everyday. This week I was actually pretty sick and it stayed with me the whole week, I think mostly because I never took time to rest. I would rather be sick and doing the Lord's work than worrying about myself and laying in bed missing missionary opportunities. But today I am not sick anymore!! But anyway, this week we met with our investigator named Lauren, she is probably the most amazing investigator I have ever met! She has the strongest testimony and she is going to be baptized this upcoming Sunday!!! At first she was facing some opposition from her father but through answers to prayers he has completely turned around and says he is very proud of her and her decision! So we are looking very forward to this Sunday! I can also say that being Zone Leader, the work is never done haha. We have so much to do and to keep track of for the entire zone while trying to keep track of our own area and doing our own proselyting, I actually find it really fun though, I like being this busy! This past week we also taught a new investigator named Jay. We had a pretty amazing experience and I have a new found testimony of doing role plays each morning as a companionship. That morning we decided we wanted to role play that my companion was Jay and I was the missionary and we wanted to practice how we think the lesson would go. My companion Elder Whited brought up some concerns that he thought would be good to practice. However later that night when we started the lesson with Jay, it literally went WORD FOR WORD the exact same way as we role played it earlier that morning! I know that the spirit was directing us to be able to help him with what he needed to hear!

One thing about the singles ward here is that we teach a lot of first lessons, but we don't get to many return appointments, we also get a ton of potentials everyday because we literally talk with every person we see. So it is helping me to be a much more outgoing and bold missionary! My companion Elder Whited is probably the best Elder I have met! He keeps the work fun and he is very focused on his purpose as a missionary so I have much to learn from him. Another thing about this branch that I love is that a lot of the members here are returned missionaries and they all have very strong testimonies and they are always willing to come with us to lessons!

This next week I turn 20!!!! I cannot believe it! I am getting so old. I honestly feel like I just started my mission yesterday, but when I look back, it has flown by so quickly! In April I will be hitting my year mark! It just makes me want to work just that much harder and use the time that I have! I love all of you and your constant examples to me! I hope everything is going well!! I would love to hear from you all! Send letters! If you send a letter I will write you back ;), I think that is the way I have to go about it because I have so much going on it is hard to think of who I would need to write. I love you all! Until next week!