October 31, 2011

Hello Everyone!

This week was a roller coaster of a week, but I say that all in a good way. There are so many changes happening!! The mission president decided that it is finally time for there two be two Chinese speaking companionship's within the Yale Chinese branch, and to have 4 mandarin speaking elders serving all at once! I am now companions with my old companion Elder Bray who is from Connecticut! And Elder Kim is with my MTC companion Elder Mensink! Elder Bray and I are so excited because we will be two white Americans speaking Chinese, and it always has a huge shock factor to the Chinese people and they love talking to us because of it! The branch here has been growing! There has been a lot of success lately and we are sooo excited for how many more miracles will happen now that we have 2 companionship's serving in the branch!

This past week Elder Kim and myself taught our new investigator Jason. Jason is from mainland china and he has soaked up everything we have taught him. He loves reading the scriptures and he loves coming to church. He and I have a special friendship because when we met, we both felt like we knew each other already ;), his baptism is planned for this upcoming Saturday!! I am a little sad though because since there are now two companionship's, our area was split in half and it just so happens Jason lives on the west half which isn't my area anymore so the other elders will continue to teach him and prepare him for baptism, but I will definitely go to his baptism and see him every Sunday!! We have a few other investigators that we are working with and it is going really really well!! I have been studying the language really hard and it has been improving bit by bit!

I will be the District Leader over our new Chinese district with just the two Chinese companionship's! So I can teach all our district meetings in Chinese! Another funny thing to note is what the assistants to the mission president have named our district. The new Chinese district is named "Xili district" which literally means "Baptism District" haha. Pretty cool!

Well I am lovin' it down here in southern California! The weather is getting into the perfect weather of sunny and 70 degrees all the way until about April :) cant beat that!

Well I love you all! Hope to hear from you! Until next week!

October 24, 2011

Hello Everyone!!

This week was the fifth week of this transfer call. I cannot believe how fast the time flew by this transfer, I think maybe it went by so fast because the Chinese branch is so amazing! This week we were able to find 2 new investigators! We went to go see one of the referrals, his name is Jason. Jason is one the most awesome people I have met on my mission. We taught him about the restoration and about the church being restored and he said the entire time he just felt happy and at peace. He committed to be baptized before we even asked him to pray about the Book of Mormon and the message that we share. I started to teach him about prayer and how important it is in coming to know that the Book of Mormon is true and to know what we share is true and he said "I don't think I have to." and I asked what he meant and he said "Because I believe it already" he then said "I have never felt this much happiness and peace in my life as I have felt in these past few minutes. I believe you. It is true." Elder Kim and I were so happy to be able to have that kind of an experience. Jason came to church and so did our other new investigators and they all loved it! The members loved them and every single investigator got invited to someones house for dinner! The branch here does a really good job at loving the investigators and making them feel comfortable. This week we had a dinner at a members house and they fed us a lot of traditional Chinese food. The also had us eat Octopus...that probably had to be one of the most interesting things I have eaten on my mission. I definitely wouldn't go buy it on my own and eat it but it wasn't as bad as it seemed. I think the Lord knew I have been pretty picky about food throughout my life, so he placed me in a culture where they definitely are not picky with what they eat! I just recently found out that one of the recent converts in the Chinese branch is moving to Portland, Oregon temporarily to try and get his green card there, he has been asking me all sorts of questions about Portland haha but I have forgotten most of it ;).

This week we had our district meeting and one of my district members said his stomach had been hurting pretty bad. When we went to lunch and he didn't eat because he said it hurt pretty bad. I asked him where he felt the pain and what it was like and it made me think he could possibly have appendicitis. So I told him to call the medical adviser and see what he should do, but he was stubborn and said he would fine in a little bit. But I took his phone and dialed the number and then put it back in his hand, so he talked to the Medical Adviser and she said it could very well be appendicitis, but that he would have to wait the day out a little bit to see if certain other symptoms came about the would make it more urgent. They are on bike too. Later that day he called me and said they were at a members house and it had gotten worse so he called the Medical Adviser and she told him to go to an urgent care, so we ended our dinner with a member a little short and left to go pick him up at about 7 or 8pm and then we took him to the Kaiser Hospital Emergency Room because all the urgent cares were closed at that time. He got checked in and took him to the back and Myself, Elder Kim and Elder Munguia stayed in the waiting room. Elder Snyder (the one that was hurt) had their phone so he kept sending us updates. Finally he texted us and said that all the tests they did didn't help in finding the problem so he needed to have a CAT scan! They let us go back to the room he was in and stay with him while we waited. His CAT scan result came back a lot later, at about 3am, and we found that he did not have appendicitis but that he had some kind of infection in his smaller intestine. So we had to get a prescription and then go pick it up at a 24 hour pharmacy....needless to say, that is the latest I have ever been up in my entire mission! The prescription solved the problem and he is doing fine now, but it was an a fun story!

I love you all and I hope to hear from you all soon! Until next week!

October 17, 2011

Hello everyone!!

This week has been so great! We had our temple session this past week, it so great to be able and go into the temple and just feel the peace and serenity. It gave me that extra boost to get back out there and work hard! This week we were able to have a FHE (Family Home Evening) with our Chinese branch president and his family and two of our investigators were able to come! Those two investigators are so fun! It is two younger sisters, one is 12 and the other 11, there mom is a member but was less active for a little while. Anyway, the 12 year old, she already attends the high school for her math class! She and her sister are so smart, they showed us how each of them can solve a Rubik's cube in under a minute, it was pretty cool to see. The English class we teach each week is so good! I love talking to all of the students and being able to help them speak English, at the same time they teach me mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese ;), I have picked up a tiny bit of Taiwanese since I have been out, it such a crazy language, I love it :). This week we were also able to get back in touch with one of our other investigators named Angela. She is not Chinese actually, nor does she speak Chinese hah but she just recently went to China and adopted a baby and she wants her baby to grow up with both cultures so she wants her daughter to grow up in the Chinese Branch. Angela is not a member but her mom was before she died and Angela figured "Well, if I want my daughter to grow up in that good of a church, I might as well be a part of it as well". Angela's husband is a CEO of a medical company of some sort so when we went to their house to help them move some furniture around, their house was probably one of the nicest I have set foot in!

Oh and this week as Elder Kim and I were driving to go pick up some other elders I stopped at a left turn light because it turned red and the girl behind us wasn't paying attention and bent down to mess with her air conditioner and rear ended our car...haha boy that was fun figuring out all the info that I had to get and then taking the car to get an estimate and then filling out an accident report. BUT it wasn't my fault so at least I don't have to worry as much. It wasn't that bad, so you don't have to worry mom ;). This week we had a huge branch activity, it was a Hawaiian Lu'au. Elder Kim and I invited over 40 people to come and they all did! They had an amazing dinner and professional dancers come and perform. It was such a huge success, we had over 40 non-members come and almost all of them were Chinese!! So we have a lot of people we were able to talk to and set times up that we could come and talk to them some more! I guess one last thing is that I have finished my Mormon.org profile!! Please go look at it! It is 'Mormon.org/me/4y9b'

I love you all! Until next week!!

October 11, 2011

Hello everyone!!! Dajia hao!!

This week has been fantastic week as always!! The Chinese is still chugging along! We had a lot more opportunities this week to teach our investigators and to teach the recent converts in the branch as well!! I am so happy to be working with these members again! First off, I met Elder Mike McNeil (I hope that is spelt right), who was in my same seminary class in high school! He is temporarily in this mission while he waits for his Visa to go to Brazil! It is awesome to have another Oregonian...and beavertononian at that! We also have a member in the branch that used to live in Tigard and knows a lot of my really good friends all over that area of Portland! Anyway, just had to start with those two cool fun facts!

This week I have been trying so much harder to learn the language as much as I can. It gets a little better and I seem to have the good days but there are a lot of hard days too. But this mission has helped me find a lot of patience and I have gained some really good study habits from it as well. This week we taught our investigator Yang Xiao Man, who is the one I taught a year ago and was about to be baptized. We had a really good lesson with her and we broguth a returned missionary from Taiwan with us. She has been struggling with keeping certain commitments and it has been holding her back a little, so we focused on getting her to keep all the commitments that we give her especially the reading portion. This week I also talked to this really nice man on the street. I just started talking to him and he said that he has friends who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ (Mormon), and he said that he knows who they are and how good of people they are. I asked him if he wanted to know why they live the way they do and he stopped for a second and then said "well...thanks but no thanks, I have known them for a long time and I have looked into the church before...so yeah I have done my research." So I smiled and politely asked "Well, have you ever read from the Book of Mormon?" and he said "No I have not". So I said "Not even opened and skimmed its pages?" and he said "No not really". So I looked at him and said "Well my friend, then it looks like you haven't done your research." I bore testimony of how the only way he could ever know anything we share is true is to read the Book of Mormon and ask God to know if it is true. The Book of Mormon is the Keystone of our religion, because if the book is true, then it means Joseph Smith was called by God as a Prophet and that there is a prophet on the earth today, it means that the priesthood authority of God which is absolutely necessary to perform sacred ordinances is restored back to the earth, and it means that this church The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is that same and original church that Christ himself established, back on the earth again. He seemed to be taken back by my comment to him but then he said "Well, it looks like I haven't done my research. How can I get a Book of Mormon then?".

I love you all!! I would love to hear form you as well!! Until next week!

October 3, 2011

Hello Everyone!

This week has been a really good week!! I am starting to get back into the groove of things! The Chinese has been sooooo fun to speak again and try to pick back up from where I left off. It is not easy so if you could keep me in your prayers that would be great, but I have been given a lot of help with it. This week Elder Kim and I have been working hard trying to find more people that we can teach. It is pretty fun trying to think of new creative ways that we can find new Chinese people to teach. We have two investigators, the Wu family, and they are the two nicest people in the World. They are an older couple from Taiwan and have been recently studying hard to prepare to take the U.S. Citizenship test. We have been going over there to help them practice for 30 minutes and then we share a message with them afterwards. This last time brother Wu asked us if he could share a little testimony about prayer and it was so good! They said if they pass this test they will be baptized, so we are trying to help them! We have been taking a recent convert with us named Hunter to a lot of our lessons and he has got to be one of the funniest people I have met in my life. He and I get along pretty well, but I have some of the funniest stories to tell about him, I probably won't write them here but if you remember and ask me for some when I am home I will tell you ;). This week I came across a quote that really stuck out to me and I have been thinking about it a lot. It has helped me to stay positive in any situation. It is by Joseph Roux and it says, "When unhappy, one doubts everything; when happy, one doubts nothing." It is so true! This week I got to teach an investigator that I was teaching when I was in the Chinese branch before!! We had a really good lesson with her and we are striving to help her work toward baptism again. Other than all that, everything is going so well!! I can't believe it is already October. I love you all!! Until next week!