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!