February 20, 2012

In case you would like to know...Elder Ellis returns home on April 17th (a mere 57 days)!

Hello Everyone!

This has been a great week! It seems like time is flying by way too fast! I will try to give the best re-cap I can of this past week!

So, this week I was called by one of our investigators (I think she is one of the first investigators that has taken us up on the invitation that if she has any questions during the week she can call us and ask). She called me and said that she has been listening to her Pastor at her other church and she had a few questions for us about our beliefs. She asked me about why we don't believe in the trinity, and so I was able to explain and give her some scriptures to look at and she thanked me. Since then she has called multiple times and asked more questions, and I think it is a miracle that I am able to understand everything she is asking me and being able to answer all of her questions. Especially in the last portion of my mission I have noticed such an immense amount of blessings with speaking the Chinese language. I know God is a God of miracles and he has answered a lot of my prayers. Elder Mensink and i have been tracting a lot up by UCI (University of California Irvine) lately and we had some people saying Happy Valentines day to us, and to be honest I didn't even realize it was Valentines Day until they said that haha. Holidays just blend in when you are on a mission.

This week we taught a new investigator named Ran Zhang. He is a 24 year old guy from China going to school up here. He lives in a HUGE house that his parents bought for him (they live in china) so this house is just his, it is pretty crazy. But anyway It was really fun to teach him because he comes from a background of knowing nothing about God or Jesus Christ so we started very simple and basic as we taught. He has one of the funniest laughs I have ever seen! The lesson went really well and we have another one scheduled for this next week. After the lesson he came up to me and said "Elder Ellis, I want to decorate my house like Americans would. How do I make it American style?" I just started to laugh and told next time we will come teach him, and afterward I would give him some pointers and how to make his house American style haha. This week Elder Kim had to go to a trainer meeting because he will be training the new Elder that comes on Tuesday! So myself and Elder Mensink and Elder Bray went to go eat at a place called Slater's. It is apparently a famous burger place because they make very unique style of burgers. So for my burger I had half Pepperoni Pizza burger and half Peanut-butter and jealousy burger, the pizza one was basically a pizza inside of a burger, it was really good and the other one is a burger that is made with Peanut Butter and Jelly on it as well with some other ingredients. They may sound weird but they were super good! Aside from that we also got to teach a new investigator this week that is attending Fullerton college. The lesson we had with her was amazing and she is progressing very well! On Saturday we had a Branch Party, kind of a spring festival and there were a lot of investigators that came. One of them I was so excited to see, because she is the younger sister of the recent convert I helped teach (Sister Guo). I had met this younger sister almost a year and a half ago with my trainer. I recognized her immediately when I saw her and I said "Long time no see! Do you remember me?" and immediately she said "Of course I remember you!" and then we got to talk for a while about how she has been and then she told me "I have good news to tell you" and I said "What news?" and then she said "I want to be baptized next week." And she will be! We are so excited for her!

This week has been great! It scares me to think I only have about 7-8 more of these emails to write until I come home. I am in single digits of weeks left on my mission. I will keep working hard until the very end! I love you all and I hope all of you are having a great time and doing well!