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!

September 26, 2011

Hello everyone!!!!

This week was soooo amazing! It is literally like stepping into a completely different world!! A world where there is much different food, language, customs, humor, and just everything! I love being back in the Chinese branch! I feel much more prepared for it because I have a much better outlook on it all, I have a lot better study habits and I am just so excited to be back! This week I was able to teach English class again for the first time in a very long time! I was able to teach a lady who is a friend of a member in our branch. She is from Taiwan and she really likes the church, but she for some reason always puts off meeting with the missionaries, so I was able to spend most of the class talking to her about her previous experience with this church and about having missionaries meet with her, it will happen very soon! I am adjusting to using Chinese again, I am surprised because I really didn't forget too much of it, I understand almost everything they say now and I am trying to work on my responding and conversational skills which are bit more slow than the listening is. The branch members were excited to see me again, and I think one of the biggest changes is that we have dinners with members now (we never had them in the singles ward)!! This Sunday I was able to see 'James Pan' receive the priesthood! He is a man that I found by knocking doors while I was a zone leader in Newport, and he is super prepared for the Gospel, he was taught and baptized within 2 weeks and it just so happens that now I come back so I can participate in teaching him the new member lessons!! He was very excited I am there too :). I don't know what else to say other than I am really excited and I am going to be working and studying super hard! I love you all and am very grateful for everything you have done for me and the examples every one of you have set for me. Until next week!

September 19, 2011

Hello Everyone!

This past week was a great week! It was the final week of this transfer and so it ended today. I am transferred back to the Chinese Branch as a District Leader now. I am very excited to be using my Chinese again. I have my Korean companion Elder Kim again!!! Well this past week I realized that the area has really grown on me and I absolutely love the ward I was serving in. The members were amazing the people were amazing. It was actually kind of funny because I had been there for over 7 months (which is a really long time to be in any area). It got to the point where I had knocked every door in the area over 3 times and people on the street knew me by name. I had multiple people that would say "Hi, Elder Ellis!", one night as we were walking there was a guy who drove by (a non-member) and he said "Go Elder Ellis Go!!" ha ha. It was such a neat experience to be able to work with all of those people and the effect we had on them. We had a miracle right before I left. We found a girl that we had talked to before and she had fallen on hard times, but now she is coming to church every Sunday and going to institute classes, she will be setting a baptismal date soon! It will be a lot different for me being a District Leader. Because I went from having the biggest Zone in the mission, to the smallest District in the mission Ha, with only one other companionship besides my own. My trainer Elder Chang finishes his mission tomorrow! This email is probably all over the place because my mind will need a week to get situated back into this area. But I love you all and I hope everything is going well! Write me! (I will try my best to respond, I am not the best at that). Until Next week!

September 12, 2011

Hello everyone!!!

This week has been a really good week! To start off the week I was able to go on exchanges with the assistant to the president. Elder Soffe. He is one of my absolute favorite missionaries!! He has one week left on his mission, it is crazy to think that he will be done so soon. When Elder Soffe and I were out working we decided to go visit a former investigator that neither of us had met yet, when we went to the door his mother said that Mitchell wasn't home and she didn't know when he would be back. So we said we would come by at a later time and then walked around the neighborhood talking to all the people that we saw. When we were about to get in the car I saw a younger man at the first house we visited and I looked at Elder Soffe and said "That's him". I had never met him before but we went and talked to him to find out he was Mitchell, the one we were looking for. He invited us in and we got to teach him, he is a really nice guy. Halfway into the lesson he had to step into the other room to help his grandfather who he takes care of. He came back about 5 minutes later and told us to come meet Uncle Larry the man he was taking care of. We went in there and talked to Uncle Larry, he was very funny and really nice, he is an older man in a wheelchair and can't walk, and he is legally blind. We talked to him for a little bit and then he asked "Do you know where I got my name Uncle Larry from?" and we asked where and he said "From my buddy Frank Sinatra", we thought at first he was joking, but it turns out he really was Frank Sinatra's personal body guard, along with Dean Martin!!! He said Dean used to call him "Blue Eyes". It was a really neat experience! This week our investigator Elaine ended up having to move back to Brazil to obtain a work visa, that was sad but we will have the missionaries meet her again in Brazil. I was on exchanges again later in the week and we walked into a neighborhood and this lady points at us and said "You are just the two I was looking for!", she then said "I called the number on the card you gave me so I could get the address to go to church with you and I found out the bus routes don't go that way" is there any way you could help me?" We said of course and will have a member pick her up for church! We also found out that April, the sister of our recent convert Michael will be coming back to our ward so she can be with her brother, we are very excited about that!! All in all it has been a great week and I hope everyone is doing well! I love you all!! Until next week!

September 5, 2011

Hello Everyone!!
This week was a very busy but very exciting week! We were able to teach a lot of new people. We had a Zone Leader council meeting and we also had a few exchanges. I have found that being a zone leader can be stressful at times but at the end of the day it feels great because I feel like I have done so much. Well this week I went on exchanges with an elder named Elder Nelson. He is pretty new to the mission field and works very hard. He and I had the opportunity to teach one of the craziest lessons I have taught so far on my mission. We taught a man by the name of John. John invited us in and had a table set up for us in his front room. He had a plate with three water bottles there and he had a stack of books and papers right next to his seat. At the beginning of the lesson he asked what our names were and he wrote down each elders name. Throughout the lesson he took notes on everything we said. He would constantly refer to these notes throughout the lesson. We had taught him on exchanges before about 6 weeks previous. This time, he had the notes from the pas two lessons typed up on a piece of paper and he had notes written and marked for each corresponding elder. It was pretty intense. He is a very knowledgeable man and also had printouts from online of the topics we were covering that he had found from various websites, mostly anti-mormon websites. He was asking a lot of questions that he was trying to prove us wrong and was almost bashing. I guess, it is needless to say we didn't get to far in the lesson before I bore my testimony to him and told him that the only way he will know the truthfulness of our message is through sincerity, and that he really wasn't showing that. I told him we will only meet with him if he is willing to keep commitments that we give him and to come to church. He got quiet and said he would do his best. I hope it goes well with those next elders that teach him. I cannot believe how fast time is flying by, I hope everyone is doing well. I don't have much else to add for this week but I hope to hear from all of you!

August 29, 2011

Hello everyone!!!

This week was a good week. It started out with one of the craziest lessons I have taught on my mission. We had a lesson planned for Monday night with our investigator Elaene who is from Brazil. When we teach her we have to go slower because English is not her native language so we usually bring a Portuguese speaking member with us when we teach her. We also have a rule that we need another male present with us if we are teaching a female. So on Monday night the member didn't show up and we tried calling him but no answer, so we were a bit disappointed and made our way to her place to cancel the lesson and reschedule for another day. But it just so happens she had her male friend there named Alijandro (he is from Panama and speaks Spanish) was there. He said he would like to listen so we walked in to teach Elaene and Alijandro, but then her other roommate walked in who is also from Brazil, named Monique, she said she wanted to listen as well. They all have different backgrounds of religion and the English barrier made it crazy to teach all three at once and address each one's concerns. So we got to the portion where we wanted to watch a DVD about the Restoration and we had it play in Portuguese and had Spanish subtitles on for Alijandro. Then halfway into the video their other roommate who is from Saudi Arabia walked in and joined us as well haha. It was a good lesson but boy let me tell ya, it was a tough one, to make sure they all understood at their own level. Anyway, I also had a funny moment this week. We walked into an apartment complex that is gated and locked, after being here for so long I have found which gates are always open and which ones we can easily get in to. We got in and this man I have talked to before (a very rude man) was walking down the path toward us heading toward the pool, with a microwaveable bowl of lasagna in his hand, so I smiled and asked him how he was doing and he said "Do you have a certificate to come in here every stinkin' single day!? Do you have the right to solicit people like this and harass everyone in here!?.....I just smiled and said "Well sir, we have been called by a prophet of God to share this Gospel with the world. However, we do have a certificate that is signed by the Prophet of God that gives us permission to share our message with everyone." He got a little flustered and then angrily said "Try the civic center!!" and then madly shoved a piece of lasagna in his mouth and walked off, so I said "Well, have a good day sir!". There have been a lot of people on my mission that do that sort of thing and it doesn't even bother me anymore, I just smile and love them. We have still been hitting the pavement and tracting all day long, we are on the search for new investigators. I love this work! I love you all and hope everything is going well!! Write me!! Until next week!

August 22, 2011

Hello everyone!!!
Well this week was amazing!! I want to start off by talking about what happened this Friday!! Our recent convert Michael got the priesthood last Sunday and this Friday he baptized his sister April!!!! I can't explain how happy it makes me to see their family growing together and the strength the Gospel is bringing to their lives. Michael told me and my companion that the relationship between he and his sister had been terrible before he met us for the first time. He said he has noticed the peace and the love that the Gospel has brought to his life, and now he and his sister are extremely close and are now both converts to the church and are loving every minute of it!! They are both going to the Temple this Wednesday to do Baptisms for the dead! Our recent converts Michael and Andrew both say they are 100% sure they will serve a mission. It is now only a matter of time!!!!!!!! The rest of this week has gone really well, we are still searching day in and day out for new investigators. We have faith that we will find those that the Lord has prepared. I think missionary work is best once you have been out long enough to realize how much joy you find in the service of others. The days just seem like they are shooting past, and I can't believe that in October I will hit my 6 month left mark...scary! I love all of you and I am just lovin' it down here! The weather has gotten a little bit hotter but that just means it has gotten to about 76-80 degrees ;). Until next week!