I Dream of China

Hello!

The interview with Elder Edwards went pretty well. It was pretty short and simple. Just asked some questions like "is your apartment clean? Do you get along with your companion? Are you obedient? Etc etc..." To which I all answered in the affirmative so I was able to pass pretty easily. I knew all the answers so it wasn't that hard. Haha. Our Zone Conference was pretty good though. He talked a lot about following the Spirit and how the Spirit doesn't work well on demand haha. So you have to create an environment into which the Spirit can flow and help you teach and learn and whatnot.

He didn't mention anything about the covert Chinese mission, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed haha. Last night for some reason I dreamt that I was serving a mission in Beijing but not in the Chinese language cause we weren't allowed to talk to Chinese people about the gospel so I was serving in the Beijing Branch and like teaching foreigners haha. It was pretty weird. I was like "hey it's cool I get to serve in Beijing but kind of weird that I'm serving in my old branch... speaking English... In China..." Haha.

In any case, we had a pretty good week last week. We found 3 new investigators and they all seem to have a lot of promise. We also set a baptismal date with brother Zhao for the 16th of October and he's doing really really well. He said he feels really good every time he meets with us and we shared with him the Word of Wisdom yesterday and he said he would stop drinking alcohol which he used to drink pretty regularly. So he's on the right track.

So, our investigator Linda Xu got baptized in some random Christian church yesterday which was pretty annoying... I guess we weren't able to provide her with what she was looking for, namely: a Chinese speaking social organization that also study the Bible sometimes. It's just discouraging that we would teach her for such a long time to really no avail it seems like. Probably the biggest problem that I feel kept her from being converted was that she didn't read the Book of Mormon regularly and therefore wasn't able to establish her faith in it even though she said she believes it is the word of God... but if she really believed that and understood it then it wouldn't make very much sense for her to get baptized into another church. Although we did explain it very very clearly in a way that she could not understand why our church is the only true one and the others just aren't. I think she's a little less interested in what God thinks and more interested in what she wants to do. I was thinking about this during my personal study today and read in the Joseph Smith history where Joseph talks about how when he was stirred up to all kind of uneasiness and thought over the matter of religion he said in verse 8 I think "although my feelings were deep and often poignant, I still held myself aloof from joining any of the religious sects..." It sort of helped me understand that there could definitely be feelings from the Spirit or from some other source that can result from attending different churches but you can't always discern truth from that. But then again, it is easier to be a member of other churches.

Also I don't know if you had this in Taiwan, but it seems like every educated or uneducated Chinese person who has heard MoMenJiao before thinks we're a cult and it's impossible to convince them otherwise. So obnoxious. Last night we were going to teach a sister and her husband but then they cancelled on us cause her husband called and was like "hey, so what gospel do you teach? Like... the Old Testament and the New Testament...?" Of course, I wasn't going to lie to him, but it was really stupid because there's really almost no persuasion that can be done over the phone....

That's too bad about BYU... I heard they beat Texas though... which makes it kind of funny that we'd get destroyed to bad by Utah. But fortunately, neither Michelle, Joel, or I are going there at the moment, so we are effectively protected from the shameful depression resultant from such a sound thrashing.

Good to hear you got the job in Taiwan dad. Although Vietnam would be more exciting... do you know when they'll be making that decision?

Whatever the case, love you! Thank you for everything!

-Ian