Chinese Potluck

Sept. 26, 2011

Herrow!

So we had a pretty good week here! One thing Elder Lin and I are really considering lately is improving the fellowshipping power of our Chinese group. Really, aside from meeting together every Sunday for church, they don't really have much other outside contact that builds their friendship and unity. So we've been talking with our members and are starting to work with them to start a kind of Chinese group potluck family home evening activity where our Chinese group members could meet together at least twice a month and that we could bring investigators to and use to build more unity in our group. We talked to the bishop and he's really supportive so we're really hoping to get that in the works so we can help improve retention.

I'm really beginning to understand more and more that scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants that talks about being actively engaged in a good cause and that it's not enough to just obey commandments in a robotic fashion but that we need to get going and take initiative to build the kingdom. Our great recent convert Chen Bing really understands that. He does have shortcomings of his own but he is definitely very enthusiastic about getting our Chinese group more established and unified so we can build up to eventually the level of a branch. I think it would be great if we could get that vision instilled in all of the members of the group. We talked about it with a couple of the older group members and didn't feel like they really had much of a grasp of it... but that's ok, we can keep working on them.

Meanwhile, we are definitely seeing some great success in this area. We seem to be adding more and more really quality investigators who have potential to progress. We took Brother Zhao to the Visitors Center last night and he had a really good experience and is looking very solid for his date on the 16th of October. He's also doing well on his commitment to give up alcohol.

We are also teaching the nephews of brother Zheng and they have a lot of potential. One of them has a baptismal date for the 16th and we're going to try to set that goal with his older brother tonight when we meet with them. Unfortunately, they did not make it to church yesterday which was really frustrating because they just woke up late and didn't tell their uncle they were coming today. Guess that was kind of our fault as well since we should be planning for that kind of stuff to make sure we're doing all we can to get them there.

One of our older investigators, brother Jiang, is back in the picture since he just lost his job again. He does like to meet with us and I believe he has had a witness of the truthfulness of our message, but he's kind of still being held back by the old concern of "his lawyer told him not to get baptized". We had a pretty intense lesson with him yesterday where we told him his lawyer has absolutely no authority to advise him on things like this... but he still insisted that he needed to wait to be baptized. Pretty frustrating, but we'll keep working with him. Hopefully by building his trust in the reality of God's power, we can get him moving forward since he still seems a little shaky on that point.

We had a great sacrament meeting yesterday where the speakers talked about how God will accept nothing less than a complete sacrifice of everything we have. We must be willing to give everything for him including our will and desires. It was pretty good. One of the speakers said "If you don't read scriptures and pray, it's not because you don't have time but because you don't think it's important." So true. I just wish I could use a priorities straightener-outer machine to get everyone on track so they'll stop "laboring for things of no worth" etc etc.

Anyways, that's pretty exciting that you're getting to go to Croatia this week. I wish I could go with you!

A bunch of other missionaries just came into the room though so it's really hard to concentrate haha. But I'd better go anyway.

Love you! Thanks for the letters and support!

-Ian