Baby Face

Hellow!

Howsit? I can't believe Cory got his mission call already! I thought for some reason that he was like 2 years younger than me... but I guess it's always weird when people younger than you go through big life events like this cause it always seems like they're too young for it... probably a little like how you felt when I got my mission call... Speaking of being too young to do things, I've been getting a lot of snide remarks from American members about how I look like a 14 year old etc etc. I considered going inactive over it... but then I decided just to get back at them so Elder Luo and I are planning some ways to take revenge... just kidding. But it's rather annoying still... especially since it's mostly only white people...

This week went pretty well. We're continuing to help our investigators progress but, rather frustratingly, our only investigator that really seems to be progressing very quickly is our investigator with a baptismal date Rachel Luo. She is fantastic and keeps all of her commitments and her faith seems to grow more and more each date. Unfortunately, our other investigators don't really seem all that willing to progress.

We had a lesson with one of our investigators, Gia, this last week in which we taught the second half of lesson 1 really emphasizing the first vision and the Book of Mormon. It basically just came down to Gia not wanting to commit through baptism and just being completely uninterested whether or not our message was true. Although he is, after all, only 13 and not probably very spiritually mature, it was just frustrating to come up against that kind of stubbornness. In past areas, we seemed to go through investigators pretty fast and it is pretty different in this area where we have a lot of investigators who have been investigating the church for quite a while and it's difficult for me to adapt to teaching people in that kind of a situation. However, I guess we just have to keep trying and help them build their faith and understanding of the gospel because I guess some people will just not commit without a longer process of teaching and resolving concerns.

We also are working with a family from Northern China in which the father is a member and although they come to church almost every week (although only for the first hour and are often late, something we're working on), they never read scriptures and prayer seems sporadic. Something I've been thinking a lot about lately is just how it's possible to change someone's desires to include the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I think a lot about 1 Nephi 19:7 where Nephi talks about how some things people esteem as of great worth, others trample underfoot including Jesus Christ. Sometimes it just seems like such a struggle to help people change their desires and I realize that is something that I still am striving for, although I feel like a lot of my unrighteous desires have already been changed since serving here in the mission field but I feel like there are still a lot that I need to keep working at. And it seems so difficult to get people to desire the Gospel if they don't even have a desire to desire it and the willpower to read the Book of Mormon and pray.

In any case, we had Zone Conference the other day which was fun. We had some good training on how to prepare members to come to lessons, how to work better with the members, and how to make better lesson plans. Definitely will be really helpful.

Anyways, I don't have a whole lot of time to talk more but it sounds like you are doing really well. Sorry I didn't send you a card for Father's day Dad... but your birthday was JUST like... last WEEK... sort of... but anyways, It sounds like you had a wonderful day... and had wonderful bbq leftovers for dinner! Hooray!

Also we ran into another weird Falonggong woman yesteerday... right after getting yelled at by this really devout baptist woman who was telling us we were deceived by the devil like she was one time where she thought God told her to buy one type of insurance but then it turned out it was a really expensive kind and there were a lot better deals elsewhere, which, fortunately her son had already bought for her even before she had a chance to buy the devil-inspired expensive insurance... She didn't share that story all up front... but we were talking for quite a while... or rather, getting talked at... Aiya. Rough day contacting yesterday...

Anyways, love you guys! Hope you have a great week!

Love,

-Ian