Hellow!
Had a wonderful week! Elder Lee and I were able to accomplish almost all of the goals we set for ourselves this week which is great. We were really excited about that. We hope to be able to continue improving and keep our investigators on the straight and narrow towards baptism. This area is great. I would love to stay as long as I can. I feel things are really moving along and I know that with faith this Chinese group can really reach a larger potential. There are prepared people everywhere.
Our family home evening type activity went really well yesterday surprisingly. We thought there would be like no one there but then like 10 people showed up from the Ward down in southern Fremont which is out of our mission. It was interesting. However, it gives us hope for the next one. Sister Breen hopes to have an activity like this at least twice a month so we're definitely going to get investigators lined up to come to the next one since it really is a very effective fellowshipping tool. Pretty good though... although we only had like 5 members from our group show up. No worries. Next time we'll get it all on lock down.
We put together a bunch of activities this week and it really made me realize how great the members of the Union City ward are. I guess I already knew but really they are amazing. We went to the young single adult fireside with Elder Scott (well not really Elder Scott since he got sick so Elder Wilson of the 2nd Quorum of the 70 stepped in) with three of our investigators who are students at Cal State East Bay and that was a great experience for them to see the temple and participate in an activity like that. One of the members, Ben, a young man preparing for his mission, was able to take us all up which was really helpful. Although at most they probably understood about 70%, Elder Wilson did give a great talk and the Spirit was there which I'm sure was helpful. Also, although only 2 of them previously knew one another, our other investigator from Beijing (Ethan) got along really well with them and so we're kind of using our investigators to fellowship our other investigators, which seems to be working pretty well. Ethan is pretty awesome and went out to Shunyi on the weekends when he was in Beijing haha so he knows exactly where ISB is and all that other stuff, pretty small world eh? Anyways, he asked one of the other investigators that came (Ryan) if he had been baptized and he was like "no" and then Ryan asked Ethan if he had and he answered "no, but I am going to on the 27th!" It was good to hear an answer like that and we're feeling really good about Ethan. He really enjoys church too! So that's a definitely plus.
We also took our English class up to the temple on Saturday which was quite crazy. We had about 17 students sign up and had 27 actually show up. Miraculously, we had enough members there to seat everyone and had absolutely no seats left over once everyone was on board. It was pretty crazy. It could not have gone better than it did though. We went in and listened to the Cristus recording and then watched the 20 minute Restoration movie after which we split into 2 groups and one group we took around the visitor center and the other was taken by the Chinese sisters to the temple grounds. It was a pretty spiritual experience for all involved. We're doing our best to follow up with everyone that went so we can capitalize on this experience and help them begin to learn the gospel. We've already had 1 lesson from it last night and set one up for tomorrow night. We'll continue to make phone calls to set more up. We have some pretty tricky investigators lately with complex concerns having to do with Buddhism and what not so I've been trying to find out ways to straighten that out in my gospel study. It's interesting how many people think that more than one religion can be right at the same time and that they are all right because they all get people to do good things. And I guess they're partially true because all (ok maybe most) churches are good, but only one church is true. Sometimes it's a struggle to get that all straightened out with people though.
One thing I really liked from what Elder Wilson said the other day in his talk that kind of has to do with that scripture you shared mom is he said "the people you meet are those that God has put into your life curriculum. Your job is to learn how to love them." I thought that was pretty profound. It always seems like wherever you go, and we've been quite a few places now I suppose, there will always be people who test your patience or who you don't really get along with or find annoying or are just not very endearing and I'm pretty sure that's how life will always be until you learn to become more Christlike and love everyone. I'll probably still be working on that for a while.
That sounds like a rather insane bike ride mom. Are you sure you want to do that? I would discourage it because I don't want you getting picked up by "cute" paramedic guys. Just have dad drive alongside. Having a car is very convenient. I can't even imagine living in the States without one. But then again, you could probably manage with a bike mom.
In any case, that's about it for this week. We had 3 dinners last night. It was pretty wild. I was a little more conservative but Elder Lee was suffering haha. The first was scheduled. The second was at the FHE activity, and the 3rd was unscheduled but forced upon us. Pretty crazy stuff.
Love you!
-Ian
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