November 7, 2011

Hello Everyone!!

This week has been one of the best weeks of my entire mission! I am so excited for this transfer! My companion Elder Bray is probably one of my most favorite companions so far! He and I have such similar personalities and the same humour! It is also a very different experience just being in a companionship of two white guys speaking Chinese! The Chinese people freak out every time we talk to them! Elder Bray has amazing Chinese! He served in Taiwan for about 5 months but had to get surgery so he was re-assigned here after he recovered. I am learning a lot from him and we have already been seeing a lot of success just in this first week of the transfer! Last night we taught one of our investigators Yang Jiemei. A year ago I taught her all of the lessons and she was interviewed for baptism and was completely ready and good to go, but then an hour before the baptism, she called us and said she needed to cancel it, then from then on she kind of fell off the map. But recently she has been coming to church again and last night we had one of the most amazing lessons with her and she has set a new baptismal goal for this month!! We are so excited and will just continue to help her prepare! The Chinese is getting better, it has been a long process. It has really taught me to have a lot and lot of patience, because studying Chinese in California is definitely not the easiest thing in the world, in fact it isn't easy at all. BUT I have seen such a big improvement and I know it is because the Lord has chosen me to speak this language for a reason and I am going to use all the diligence I have to learn it.

This week we did a lot of sorting. We had to take the original area book for the Chinese branch and split in half so that we have all the names of the people of who are in each of our areas. It is almost finished! This week was the first time we have ever been able to have one of our District Meetings all in Chinese, and since I'm District Leader I was the one who taught it! It was pretty intense preparing for that but it went really well! This week there was a baptism in our branch! The baptism of our investigator named Jason. Jason is one of my favorite investigators that I have taught on my mission! He is from mainland china, and he already has such a strong testimony that this church is true. I can't wait for all the other miracles that are coming! It has really been such a huge blessing to come out on a mission because I have learned so much and have grown in so many ways that I never could have if i didn't go on a mission. It is the greatest! I love you all! Until next week!