December 26, 2011

Merry Christmas and Happy new year!!

This week was a really good week! This week we had our zone conference and it was amazing! Our mission President had us do a gift exchange, for elders we were to bring a tie that we wanted to trade and for sisters they brought some type of jewelry or accessory that they wanted to trade and we each wrapped one and picked a number from a bowl and got a random one. I got a pretty nice looking red tie, it was really fun! Our Mission President also had us watch a movie "A Christmas Carol" the old version. It was the first real movie I have seen in a long time but it was nice and set the Christmas spirit. This week one of our investigators had to leave town to go take care of her father who recently ended up in the hospital, but we found out that he passed away on Christmas day. If you could keep Vivian and her family in your prayers that would be greatly appreciated. I love this time of year because we were able to do a lot of caroling this week to investigators and members! I don't really know what else to say this week because i talked to my parents on Skype yesterday but I hope all of you had an amazing Christmas! Next week there will probably be more to write about.

December 19, 2011

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

This week has been a really good week! Things have been a little slower lately mainly due to the Holidays and everyone leaving on vacations or being too busy with Holiday parties and things. I was still sick for the first half of the week, I had gotten a really nasty cold but I got a blessing and guess what? It is gone! I think we really take for granted being healthy! But now that I am better my mind is a bit more clear to focus on the work again. Being sick while I am in the Chinese branch was pretty interesting. I got about just every remedy known to man to get better from colds. From regualr cold medicine all the way to Chinese traditional medicine and healing methods. Believe it or not I think it was the Chinese methods and medicine that helped me get better a lot faster. This week we taught our investigator Vivian, she is so amazing. The lessons have been going very well and she comes to church every sunday. This last lesson she started refering to me and my companion as her little angels. Now everytime she sees us or talks to us she calls us her little angels hah. She has recently received opposition from her christian family but she says that she feels what we are teaching is true so she keeps praying for her answer and then she will be baptized. This week was Elder Mensink's birthday, and a member had all four of us missionaries over to their house to have a birthday dinner for Elder Mensink. She asked Elder Mensink beforehand what kind of food he wanted for his birthday dinner and he told her american food such as pizza and hamburgers. Myself, Elder Bray, and Elder Mensink were all really excited and looking forward to the dinner because it has been a while since we have had normal american food. However when we got there it turned out to be the complete opposite of what we expected haha. She decided to just make him a super traditional chinese meal instead to help us all experience the culture...that is the first time I have eaten a whole pigs foot....yummm. Haha needless to say, there were a lot of traditional dishes that I would have never thought people actually ate. For desert we had a really good chocolate cake!

Christmas is this week! Time is flying by way too fast. This will be my last Christmas while on a mission so I am going to enjoy every minute of it! I love you all and I hope everything is going well! I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

December 12, 2011

Happy Holidays!!

This week has been a roller coaster of a week. A lot of success and a lot of non-success, I am sick right now with a pretty bad sore throat. But let me start near the beginning of the week. SO we have been using our phone book that we created and it has been working really well. We found a man named Bruce off of that list and he and his family just moved here from Taiwan and they don't really know anyone around here yet, he is really interested in learning more and also in coming to our English class that we provide every week. He was originally going to try and make it to our Branch Christmas party but he ended up not being able to, but we will be seeing him again soon!

As you could tell we had our Branch Christmas party this week and they created a program that walked everyone through the story of Christ's birth, and I was chosen to be one of the wise men, and we sang "Three Kings of the Orient", it was me, our branch president, and another brother from our branch and it turned out really well! This week as we were tracting in an area we ran into a man who was probably one of the rudest people I have met on my mission, he yelled at us for about 15 minutes and told us to get out of his neighborhood or he would call the Police...even if he called the Police we weren't doing anything wrong so they couldn't do anything to us....the man was probably just having a bad day and used us as a punching bag to vent frustration but it was ridiculous. I just politely told the man that we were allowed to be there but if he really wanted us to go we didn't want to argue so we would leave and then we started walking back to our car and he followed us all the way back to our car screaming and yelling and cussing us out telling us we are a cult....I don't why people have to act like that, but what made it more sad was that he was doing this and saying all of this in front of his little daughter. I hope whatever caused him to be that angry that day will get better so he can enjoy the Holidays.

On the other hand the work in the Branch has been increasing and I am so happy to be working with this Branch mission leader! The members are starting to understand a little more of how they can work together to invite their friends out to church and helping investigators feel welcome. I love this work! I got sick this week, I have a pretty bad sore throat, so if you could all pray that I can get better faster that would be greatly appreciated. I love you all!!

Christmas is coming fast!! Have a happy holiday!

December 5, 2011

Hello everyone!!

This week was a really good week!! We finally finished the project that we have been working on for the past couple of weeks. And by project this is what I mean....So we have been trying to find the best way that we can find and work with all the Chinese people. It is hard for us just to go to neighborhoods and tract because we only talk to a few Chinese and then the rest are all American. A while ago we started to use school phone books and we would just look for the Chinese last names and then go visit the Chinese people that way, but recently we thought of an even more intense idea. We just recently finished our 'White Pages' project. We took the city of Irvine, and went online and used 411.com and white-pages.com, we used about 125 most common Chinese surnames and copy and pasted all of the addresses into one big comprehensive list. We took each address and found the map coordinate to each one so that whenever we are in a neighborhood we know which other people are close by so that way we can work more effectively. We finally finished doing all 125 names for the city of Irvine and then organized it and got it bound. For mine and Elder Bray's area we have a list of over 4,000 addresses. And the other Chinese companionship also has their list of about 3,000 addresses. We literally found the entire Chinese population of Irvine! We have been using it and it has been working wonders! I wish we would have had this a long time ago because now we are speaking to Chinese people literally all day long!!

One of our investigators named Angela has decided to be baptized on the 24th of December! We are very excited, and it will be a memorable Christmas for her! This week we went to a members house to eat lunch with one of our investigators, they asked Elder Bray to make Mexican food for them since he is part Mexican and used to cook it all the time back home. He asked them if they would like it spicy and all of the Chinese people there said "Yes, we love spicy" but Elder Bray warned them that Mexican spicy and Chinese spicy is a bit different, but they told him it wouldn't be too spicy for them. When we ate I thought it was sooooo good! It was pretty spicy but not too bad. It ended up making all of the Chinese members cry and sweat because it was so spicy haha, they said next time they want me to make some kind of dessert instead haha.

I am loving every minute of it out here! I can't believe it is December and still sunny and 70 degrees most of the time, the lowest it gets is in the high 50's. I hope everyone is doing well back home!! I would love to hear from you all!! I love you all! Talk to ya next week!