Hello!
I decided to reply to you first dad since your letter is very long this week. Although not as long as Joel's blog entry which I just read haha. Pretty funny though. You have all kinds of blogs to check up on these days! I'll try to be as clever and witty as Joel was in his blog but I'm afraid I might fall short. Mainly because it takes much more effort and time than I have or am willing to expend.
However, Tony Zheng is actually from SiChuan and owns a SiChuan not-mongolian-barbeque restaurant. We've only eaten there once since we happened to be there when they were starting lunch for the workers but what they made that day wasn't really that great so I don't think we really got a sample of how their food really is. However, they don't get a lot of business because (Brother Bing Chen, his fellowshipper and our #1 go to fellowshipper man, suggests) their food is too authentic and they don't have enough variety to attract the local general population and certainly not the American population who seek after oily American imitations of Chinese food. It's kind of funny actually since brother Bing Chen is always using our appointments lately to do business... which isn't that ideal... but there you go. He has sort of gone into business with Tony Zheng to write some software to help his restaurant be more organized and help him attract more customers. We'll have to wait and see how it works out. Hopefully well.
In any case, Brother Zheng's baptism went pretty well. We didn't get a huge turnout from the ward which was a little disappointing, but the Spirit was there and it seemed to be a good experience for him. There were a couple things that were really ridiculous though. For example, the person we invited to do a talk on the Holy Ghost, Sister Ren, didn't show up... because... she forgot. So we weren't too happy about that. I ended up giving said talk. Also the person we invited to play the piano said she couldn't play the first hymn and could only play the last hymn... so I ended up playing the piano. Our ward mission leader wasn't too pleased with the turnout either which is understandable... but when he talked about it it felt a little like he was blaming us for that... and I suppose we could have taken a little more initiative in inviting people to come, but at the same time, I don't really feel like it's completely our responsibility that no one was willing to make time to come and we did invite a fair number of people who didn't show up. But that's ok.
I'm really excited about our area and the Chinese group here. Elder Lin and I are working really hard to find more people who are ready to receive the gospel and I feel we are being blessed a lot to find them. Although we didn't have any of those we expected to be to at church actually come, there was another Chinese brother who randomly walked into our meeting and we then were able to begin teaching last night who seems very humble and prepared. He's named brother Zhao and does renovation work in the bay area. There are definitely still some challenges to his progression as he likely smokes and sometimes has to work on Sunday but he definitely is willing to change and I have faith that as he continues to build his faith these things won't be a problem. He also suggested to us that him and a lot of his friends have interest in studying English but only have time at night so Elder Lin and I are thinking of starting a night english class because I'll bet there are a lot of Chinese of a different demographic of the ones we have in our class now who could make it at night. We're also considering making a lot of changes to our English class to make it a better finding tool than it is now which is really exciting cause I think we can find a lot more people through English class.
We also have stake conference next week which is cool. And brother Chen Bing is going to receive the Melchezidek Priesthood! Which is really awesome especially since I thought you had to wait like a year before you could get it but brother Chen was baptized only about 4 months ago. Maybe Bishop Lee is trying to get a Chinese branch established as soon as he can so is trying to get the Melchezidek Priesthood leadership going.
The weather has been very mild and temperate here for as long as I can remember. And that's all there is to report here in California haha.
Sounds like your stake president was a clever clever young man haha. That sounds like the most dangerous thing ever! But I guess you just gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. Boys will be boys. That's just the way it is sometimes. It is what it is! Etc etc.
I'd better go so my companion doesn't have to keep waiting!
Love you! We have a 70 in town to visit our mission named Elder Edwards and for some reason he's doing 1 on 1 interviews with all the zone leaders. Which means me! So we're going up to the mission home tonight at 5... which is kind of annoying cause it cuts off some of our p-day but on the other hand, it should be a pretty unique experience. I've never had a 1 on 1 interview with a general authority before.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Love you!
Have a great week!
-Ian
No comments:
Post a Comment