Happy Heart Day!

Feb. 14, 2011

Herrow! Happy Valentine's Day!

I was actually gonna send you a card and stuff for it but... I forgot last week... even though I wrote it down... Sorry!!! I did really like the box you sent me though... even though I can't stop eating candy lately... which isn't altogether a good thing....

Whatever the case, had another excellent week this week. The Lord truly is blessing Elder Wu and I in this area. One thing I think we are just getting better and better at is being bold in inviting people to be baptized and make other commitments.

Anyways, I got invited by our mission president to this leadership training conference that was held last week on wednesday-friday which was really really good. We had the head of the church proselyting dept. there kind of running things which was really cool cause he was one of the people who worked on Preach My Gospel so he was telling us all these stories about the apostles receiving revelation for the book. Anyways, the one thing that he emphasized throughout the entire conference was the importance of the doctrine of Christ, that is, faith, repentance, baptism, and confirmation. Pretty much core of everything we do as missionaries. If anything we do is not helping others to a) increase their faith, b) repent, or c) prepare for the ordinances of baptism and confirmation, then it's really not what we should be doing. I really enjoyed the whole thing and it really helped me to change my perspective and become more focused on what I need to be doing as a missionary. Not that I wasn't already kind of doing that, but I think it is pretty easy to sometimes fall into the trap of just going over and sharing a message of some kind and kind of losing sight of the big picture, or what is most important. I also learned alot from the training we had on wed-friday. Elder Wu and I have already started applying it as we tie everything in our lessons back to the doctrine of Christ. I think it really does help us to focus more on what is most important in missionary work. It helps us to keep our purpose at the center of all of our lessons and help our investigators better understand our message.

Another thing I found very helpful from the training was the new method of inviting investigators to sacrament meeting: emphasizing the spirituality of sacrament meeting rather than just the benefits of the church as an institution. I think in a large part it was this new method of invitation that let us to such great success yesterday with 6 investigators at sacrament meeting, which is the most I have ever had come before. Even better, one of our investigators, Sister Ding, who's baptismal date was looking a little rocky since we hadn't been in contact with her for about a week and a half, came to church yesterday and we were able to set up an appointment with her so we can continue preparing her for her baptismal date on the 27th!

I also had an incredibly good lesson last tuesday with one of our investigators Brother Zhou in which we invited him to be baptized and to quit smoking, both of which commitments he accepted. I had to make about 50 phone calls in order to get Brother Yang, one of our members who had previously quit smoking in order to get baptized, to come to the lesson since he needed someone to take his kids to the church for an activity, but I finally found someone to do it and it paid off big time since Brother Yang's experience and testimony were really really helpful. The Spirit was so strong in the lesson and Brother Zhou was talking about how although at first he was only investigating the church for his girlfriend Sister Ying (scheduled to be baptized on the 27th), but that now he really does feel that it's something he wants to pursue for his own reasons and just feels like it's right.

Anyways, things are going really well and I'd write more but I only have 2 minutes left on this library computer!

Thanks for your emails guys! I love you!
-Ian