Herrow!!!
That's a sweet story about Sister G and her friends! I wish every member was like that! It'd be so great! I watched some video on lds.org that Elder Holland was speaking in where he said that nearly 1/10 of the population of Ulaan Baator are members of the church. Which pretty much blows my mind! Here's a link to it in fact: http://lds.org/church/news/elder-holland-instructs-mongolian-saints-missionaries?lang=eng&query=mongolia+ulaanbaatar.
This week was way better than last week. Our area seems a lot more stable now and kind of more organized in a sense. Also very seldom went to Marina Food, which has become a loathsome and dark place in my heart haha. I really agree with you mom that maybe we need to find a new foodmart... although that's pretty much the one that every Chinese person goes to in the whole area. It seems like people should be a little bit more willing to come to church etc since it's right across the street... sigh... oh well, Cal State is proving to be a pretty cool place to go. Kind of like this area's AAU a little bit. Although not quite as many Chinese people I think. We went there this week and found out that we do have permission to go and talk to people about the gospel without getting arrested or told to leave. Even though someone told Elder Luo to leave when we were on exchanges, but that clearly a belligerent anti-mormon possessed with a dark spirit of rebellion against God. Ok probably not, but now we can wave the rulebook in his face and be like "neener neener we're allowed!!!" And that's really what life's all about anyway haha.
Unfortunately, this comes as kind of a result of the fact we only have 3 really stable investigators. Which is better than none admittedly and it does make it pretty easy to keep up daily contact and plan really well for them. We found one new investigator at Cal State East Bay last week who seems really receptive and willing to believe in Christ which is great. She actually seems a lot like the students I used to work with in San Francisco who were studying at AAU. The only difference here is that it will be a lot easier to get her to come to church which is fantastic. She's only been in the States for about 1 or 2 months and is still studying in the ESL program up at Cal State. She was planning on coming to church this week but then had to prepare for a test that she is taking next week. Hopefully she will be able to come next week. We hope that seeing her a couple times next week will help her come around. We were able to set a baptismal date with her for this month though which is really cool. I just hope we'll be able to help her be prepared in time.
Our investigator who was coming along really well, Brother Jiang, isn't doing too great now just because he's still not willing to be baptized. After two lessons of just trying to resolve his concerns, he's still unwilling, so we decided to back off for now so we can help him prepare for a later date. He's also still out of work and is finding the job search pretty difficult due to his lack of a green card. He does have a fake work card but he said now that he believes in God, he doesn't feel right about using it to find work which I really respect and feel is pretty strong evidence of his faith. He's also still reading and praying and I really believe his faith is increasing. I just hope God can help him find work soon so he doesn't have to become homeless, which I hope is an experience he doesn't have to go through.
Our other investigator, Linda Xu, is actually a new move-in to the area from Toronto, Canada. It's crazy to see how the Lord has been preparing her to join the church. She first had contact with the church in Toronto and had a really good impression of the missionaries. After she moved here to meet her fiance for the first time who she met online, she was introduced to our English class by the neighbors of the people she and her fiance were staying with. Just this last week she moved houses and is now staying with members! Basically the biggest, if I didn't believe that God was involved which he almost certainly was, coincidence ever. So she is coming along pretty well. She seems pretty receptive to our message, despite the fact that she is living with her fiance which is going to be a problem probably since they're not really getting along very well and haven't really set a date for the wedding yet. But I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.Our recent converts in the chinese group here are really great though. Our most recent, Rachel, is doing very well and we went with her to do temple baptisms on Saturday which was really good. She had a good experience and then had us and the other Elders over to her house yesterday for dinner. We're going to have her come along to a lot more lessons now since she's on summer break.
Anyways, I'd better wrap up since Elder Luo is finally finished pretty early today. I guess now that he's done applying for school things are much quicker.
Thanks for your letters and your support! Thanks for being such awesome parents! Have a great week!
Love,
-Ian
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