Hi!
I get to stay in Downtown San Francisco for at least another 6 weeks! Transfer #5! Aw yeahhh!
I am so excited to be able to help all the investigators that Elder Wu and I have found to continue progressing towards baptism in this area and I really feel that there are even more people out there who are prepared to receive the restored gospel. Although we had a rather average week, it's actually really above average as I went back and looked at my old planners last night. I can't believe Elder Luo and I actually had a time when we had 6 weeks with only 1 investigator come to church. Elder Wu and I have been so blessed in this area. Also it really is the coolest area in the mission. Downtown San Francisco. Pretty awesome. Although Elder Lee is leaving to go serve in Downtown Oakland next transfer which is a bummer cause it means i'm just gonna be in a district with a whole bunch of people from hong kong... and one other American sister... but who's originally from Singapore... so i'm the only white person basically haha... but that's nothing new I guess.
One thing that's really tough in this area is getting investigators to come to church just because it's so far and we have no members to pick people up and no one in our area has cars. However, it means that the investigators who do come just have to show that much more faith which I guess is good for strengthening it. It's just getting them to take that step that is so hard. Like we have 7 investigators with a baptismal date but only 2 that came to church on Sunday... arghhhh!
Our investigator who got baptized last week Sister Ying, got confirmed this Sunday which was pretty great. She's so solid! I really can see her becoming the Relief Society President or just going back to China and starting a new stake by herself haha. Also her boyfriend, brother Zhou, committed to quit smoking yesterday and fasted for that purpose. We also gave him a blessing yesterday and he really has a great resolve to quit as we set a baptismal date with him last thursday for April 10th which I am really excited to help him meet.
We also found several new investigators this week who have a lot of promise (ok well about 3 of them do) and Elder Wu and I are going to do our best to help them have a baptismal date and commit to come to church.
One investigator we added this week is a 60+ woman from GuangDong which kind of reminds me of when I was with Elder Luo haha but it was kind of frustrating just because of how slow we had to go with her since it seemed like she wasn't even listening when we were talking to her which seems kind of common with older/middle aged folks from guangdong just because of how long it's been since they've been in school (assuming they went) and just a huge change from all the young students that we've been teaching lately who understand a principle after you say it once.
Also one other guy we added was a student from XinJiang who is studying game design at AAU (Academy of Art University... which is basically where pretty much our entire teaching pool is centered right now haha) and he was like "i'll only meet with you if we do it in english cause I want to improve my english" so we were finally like "ok..." But it turns out he's really more interested in learning Bible stories and western religious culture so he can write better script for his video games... which was really annyoing just because of how disrespectful he was being the whole time while we were teaching him... just not really prepared I think. Anyways, we'll keep working with him and see if any miracle happens.
Anyways, sounds like things are going well back in the VA. Although it kind of hurts my pride a little bit to hear Bronwen got a 34 on the ACT haha. That's pretty cool. Good for her. She can just mozy on up and pick up that Monson scholarship that they didn't give to me. But whatever, I didn't want it ANYWAY!
Also it sounds like you're being a super duper awesome Relief Society President mom! I kind of wish that you were our branch's relief society president haha. Not that our relief society president is bad or anything I just think she doesn't have as much energy and gungho-ness as you do. Mainly cause our branch is really not very good at hanging on to recent converts which really frustrates me because we can only really do so much as missionaries but after people get baptized they should really get more attention from the ward. Kind of like how the OuYang family is already inactive and no one really has done anything about it. Not that I can really blame them since their fellowshippers are inactive as well and everyone here is really busy but it's still so frustrating.
Anyways, I'm getting kind of tired of writing, which isn't probably such a good omen since I'm going to be having to do a lot more of it once I get back to school... but I should probably get going.
Thanks for your emails guys! I love you!
-Ian
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