Countdown

Wah.  Sounds busy there.  President Wade is getting ready to head out too... moving  is always a hassle.  President Wade is having a series of zone meetings with each zone before he heads out this week and then we'll have a meeting with the new mission president on Friday.  I still have absolutely no idea who President Meredith is or what kinds of things he's done in the past... they said we were all gonna get something that said something about it but we still haven't.  Oh well I'm sure I'll know soon enough.

Yeah I'm steeling myself for really hot and humid weather.  I might die from the shock though just because of how nice the weather is here.  It's been really really nice this week too.  Not too hot, not to cool, nice breeze, pretty clouds.  Man. Can't really get much better than this.

So I'm still here in San Francisco emailing at the apple store.  Elder Liu and I will probably eat lunch here and then head back to Oakland on BART since we didn't feel like driving in today.

Congratulations on your wedding anniversary!  I don't know if it's particular to Chinese people in the bay area but I feel like almost every family here is really scattered and full of all kinds of problems.  Or maybe just the people willing to listen to me.  I feel like complete families are hard to come by or are never ever interested in listening to us for some reason.  I can probably count on one hand the number of times I was able to meet with complete families.  We visited this lady the other day who's kind of an investigator but not really that interested.  She was showing me her English notebook which had an example sentence of "marriage is the grave of love".  I was like "wow that's a horrible example sentence"  She was like "What? It's true!" haha.  So horribly wrong and stupid.  It was this really propaganda-esque English notebook printed in China.  Quite an interesting read.

What exactly do they train you on for going to be a DCM?  Just do whatever the ambassador says and give him all the credit for everything good you do.  And also take the blame for anything bad.  Sounds pretty simple to me...

In any case, we had a pretty good week.  Fiona's still being hesitant for some reason.  She just feels she needs more time or something.  Anyways we'll go visit her tomorrow night and hopefully get it sorted out.  She didn't even come to church on Sunday even though he r uncle came.  Her uncle is from GuiYang and really really humble and likes church.  He's preparing to be baptized in July so hopefully he doesn't find a job that requires him to work on Sundays since he usually does restaurant stuff but is out of work atm.  So we called Fiona last night and talked to her for like 30 minutes.  Apparently she was out interviewing for a job yesterday morning and told her uncle she was sick since he was sacrificing his looking for work time to go to church.  So she NOT ONLY didn't keep the sabbath day holy but ALSO lied to her uncle about it.  Aiya.  We told her to repent basically. She was like "oh yeah I didn't think about it like that dang it!"  So ridiculous.

Brother Xing is doing well.  He's getting to know a lot of the other guys his age in the branch and even came to Gao Yuan's birthday party on Saturday since we got him invited.  It started a little after 5 and apparently he didn't go home till like midnight haha.  They all made it to church on time the next day though so... pretty sweet.  He also bought a new car last week so we can probably get more people to church from DVC if we need to.  All we need to do is find more investigators there and we'll be good... 

We have a lot of investigators right now but we just need to be more bold in inviting them to be baptized even though many of them have already expressed reluctance to us.  So we'll hopefully be able to help them resolve their concerns and develop greater faith and what not.

Anyways, I guess that's about it for this week.  I really like this area it's pretty fun.  We're working a lot more in central Oakland lately with the English Class and doing a lot of finding there.  It seems to be going pretty well.  For some reason we're getting a ton of new students lately and a lot of them are pretty promising.

Thanks for all your love and support.  Hope everything goes well for your move!  Love you!

-Ian

Cold

Herrow!  Happy Father's Day!...Yesterday!  Yeah I was gonna call you guys anyway but I don't actually remember your number.  Or my old number I should say.  That sounds like a pretty fun trip Joel's on right now. I want to go!  So unfair!  Can't believe he didn't even invite me...

 

So I have a pretty bad cold today.  Woke up yesterday with a scratchy throat since we opened the window to sleep (which we do almost every night but it must have been blowing in a particularly vibrant brand of virus that night) and it's just been getting worse.  Last night was pretty longggggggg... kept having to get up to blow my nose and my throat felt like it was on fire.  I said a prayer to ask for some kind of cough medicine and then found some literally 5 seconds later haha. Not sure how much it helped but it had at least a placebo effect.  I don't really know about all these Chinese remedies for curing colds though.  Is it true you can just sweat it out?  Anyways, we ran lake merrit around noon and it did seem to help.  Still.  I' haven't gotten sick in a while and it's really not my cup of tea.  Quite inconvenient expect for if you're like 7 and going to elementary school in which case it's actually kind of nice in a way...

 

So Fiona came up with some random concerns that we don't really understand too well.  She actually passed her baptismal interview which we told her means that she's ready to be baptized but she said she doesn't feel ready.  Not sure why.  She might just think it's too fast or something.  She was saying ridiculous things like "I want to read the whole Book of Mormon before I get baptized" and "there are still some imperfect things about myself I feel like I need to change first"... anyways, so she wasn't baptized this weekend.  However, Brother Xing's baptism went really well.  He's super funny but shared a really great testimony at his baptismal service.  He's got a pretty solid testimony and he's just a really cool guy.  The baptismal service went really well too.  Unfortunately Fiona left church early for some reason and so she missed it even though she said she wanted to come.  Very lame of her.

 

We added 11 new investigators this week which was pretty cool.  Two of them are sisters from HaiNan and are preparing to be baptized next month.  The younger sister, Wang Li, is 22 and is a "Christian" although she doesn't know much about Christianity and hasn't been baptized.  The older sister, Wang Yan, is 25 and doesn't really have any set of beliefs but seems really interested in obtaining one.  They've been in the states for 20 something days.  Pretty prepared.  I think they quite enjoyed church yesterday so hopefully they won't get scared off by the inevitable accusation that we're a cult.  Something I've come to realize about that though is that if they know you pretty well and like you as a missionary, other people calling us a cult won't scare them off right away.  They'll at least come for an explanation generally and give you a chance to explain the situation.  I've definitely learned a lot about developing the right kind of relationship with investigators.  I definitely want to stay in contact with all the people I've been able to teach and baptize here in the bay area.  I think a lot of missionaries just kind of cut off all contact or find it hard to get in contact just because of where they served but I'm pretty sure most of my recent converts have facebook... so... it should be pretty easy.

 

That's great we'll be able to come back for a couple days in August.  That's like right after I'll have left haha.  Leave for a week and then suddenly show up again ha.  It's too bad we wouldn't be able to come on a Sunday so we could go to church in Chinatown but oh well... that's ok.

 

Yeah I'm not sure how much an xbox would be worth these days but I suspect not a lot.  I don't really expect to play any video games when I get back but maybe I can give it to someone...

 

Anyways, I'm really enjoying being here in Oakland.  Apart from being sick.  Oakland honestly has absoutely the best weather of any place I have ever been.  And I think that even includes South Africa... mainly cause I can't remember how nice the weather was there.  But seriously.  Oakland.  Too bad the quality of the people here isn't quite up to standards.  Rather rude of them to "occupy" the area and make it not as nice as it should be.  San Francisco is too cold and north, south, and west all get too hot.  Berkeley's not bad... but it's full of liberals so...

 

In any case, thanks for all your love and support!  I love you!  Have a great week!

 

-Ian

Transfer Time!

April 16, 2012

In answer to your question to when I'll get transferred, I've been transferred already!  To Oakland again!  I feel like I'm just doing a big circuit of the bay area haha.  It's kind of a bummer to be leaving Chinatown but I'm excited for the new area.  My companion is Elder Liu from Taiwan who's a really great missionary and likes to use a bunch of Chinese idioms when he talks which is a good learning opportunity for me haha.  The work here has been going pretty slow though lately.  We've only got 1 investigator basically who is preparing to be baptized on the 28th.  But I have a lot of faith that we can find and baptize a whole bunch more.  Also, the weather here is wayyyy nicer.  I don't need to wear a jacket and sweaters all the time anymore!!! We're actually in the Oakland North area which is really huge.  We cover Berkeley, Hercules, Richmond, Concord... basically a third of the mission.  It seems like the branch here is pretty weak.  I hope we can help strengthen it here.

We took a picture of my last Sunday in Chinatown.  It was pretty epic.  We had a whole bunch of people come to church.  Pretty cool cause most of them are people that we baptized there and the rest were basically investigators we had found. I'll bring it back with me since I'll likely be too lazy to print it out and mail it over at this point haha.  Elder Brown and I did a lot of finding this week since we didn't have a whole lot of investigators as most of them were baptized last week.  We passed out like a billion English class flyers and had a whole bunch of new people show up to English class on Saturday and then church on Sunday. 

That is a pretty sweet article.  It really does pretty much get the gist of missionary work.  The play is coming to San Francisco in November I think... maybe we can find some time to come back and see it!!!  Although I don't know that we'll be able to get tickets.  Aunt Annette was lobbying to have us come back to the bay area on our way to Taiwan and hang out for a day or two.  Might be a pretty good idea actually.  I'm really excited to go to Taiwan actually!  Elder Liu's from TaiZhong.  I asked him if he knew Joel and showed him a picture.  He didn't... But that's ok.

In any case, that's awesome news about Jordan's mission call.  I just looked at he mission boundary map on lds.org and it seems like it's right smack dab in the middle of the state.  That'll be pretty sweet for her. 

Thanks for the package of nuts and stuff mom!  It was and is perfect!  Ever since being companions with Elder Brown, I haven't really eaten too much or possibly any junk food or candy.  It's definitely made a difference.  My pants feel a lot looser than they used to.  I've definitely gotten a ton better at running as well.  I used to run like 2 miles and be beat but now I can run like 4 and still have energy to keep going.  I think it's hard to tell as companions with Elder Brown though since he's so fast and I don't ever seem to be able to close the gap.

Anyhow, I guess that's about it this week.  I'm sure I'll have many exciting adventures about Oakland next week.  We cover west Oakland in the new area which is the most "luan" part... although I'm not sure how many Chinese people there are that would dare live there.  Generally they stay away from places populated with those of african descent.

Love you guys!  Thanks for all your love and support!

-Ian

No Rain on Our Parade (or BBQ)

Herroww!!!

Yeah conference was pretty good although we had a ridiculously busy weekend. We decided to host a barbecue on Saturday afternoon between sessions from like 3-5 at the chapel up here in downtown. So we invited a lot of people and it rained that morning. We were like "dang it... Chinese people hate the rain..." However, miraculously, it cleared up about an hour or 2 before our event was to begin and was bright and sunny the whole time and then it started raining again about an hour or 2 after we finished. Pretty SWEET.... MOM.... Aiya. I can't stop using that expression in my writing for some reason. I'm going to go back to college and sprinkle it throughout all my essays haha. Anyhow, we had a very successful BBQ. We expected maybe like 20 or 30 people but we ended up with 40!!! All these high schoolers brought their friends and we met a ton of new potential investigators. Elder Brown and I got this really ghetto grill from the sunset chapel and brought it over in our car. Unfortunately the top grill was missing so we grabbed some oven racks and bbq'd on them. Very successful activity.

Then we had Annie Liang's baptism yesterday between the morning and afternoon sessions and we were running around getting the program done and making sure there was going to be water in the font and so on and so forth so we missed part of the first session and then couldn't really focus too well on the whole thing since we had a ton of stuff going on. Quite crazy. It went really well however. She bore her testimony at the end and talked about how her mom had expressly told her when they got to the States that she could participate in church but could never get baptized so when we gave her the baptismal record to be signed by her mom she was really nervous and prayed a lot that her mom would let her be baptized. So when she finally asked her mom, her mom was like "umm... ok. For you I think it'd be alright". Annie said her mom could see the change that had occurred in her in the past few weeks and therefore agreed to her joining the church. It was a really great testimony.

We have 4 investigators lined up to be baptized on Sunday and hopefully everything will go smoothly. Elder Brown and I will likely have to baptize Alice's mom together since she's half-paralyzed but she's definitely willing and ready to go. We also have Duona, Vincent, and Sister Shen who are lined up and seem pretty ready to go. They all made it to sessions of conference at one point or another (we borrowed a projector from the branch president and broadcasted a session after English class here in Chinatown) and so they seem to still be doing pretty well. It's kind of hard to describe any of these people in intricate detail because of how many people we're teaching at the moment. We found loads of referrals this last week and will hopefully get even more in the coming weeks. President Pearce (the branch president) said success is like mcDonalds french fries. You can eat them when they're hot but you can't let 'em cool down haha. I'd say he's about right.

Anyways, so you finally got your long-coveted macbook pro. Sounds fancy! In fact I'm currently typing on a macbook pro as well. Apple is taking over the world!!! The Dell's not such a dinosaur! Unless you made it one!!! It just looks like one compared to mac, which puts everything in a shiny case and then makes it cost a lot more money. Which seems to work pretty well for them...

That's interesting that missionaries there are counting the number of Book of Mormons they have handed out. We don't really use that to indicate anything. Although the play 'The Book of Mormon" is coming to San Francisco so now there are pictures of a dancing missionary on all the busses... can't remember if I told you about that already. But in any case, it's kind of funny.

Yeah President Wade pretty much gave us a no-go for the whole YMCA thing. Which is a bummer cause I'm sure we could make it work. Oh well... I guess he's the inspired one and stuff so I'm sure he knows what he's doing. Sometimes I think we could do more here even as some kind of youth leaders rather than a missionary though haha.

Yeah I agree about Romney being President. You really can't please very many people as President of this country. I feel like everyone expects everything when there's only so much one person can do. Sounds like Obama's health care gig has been kind of a headache from start to finish... I'd comment more but I don't really understand very much about it. Not sure why that should keep me from voicing a firm opinion since it doesn't seem to hinder the rest of the American population but... I guess I'm not supposed to talk about that kind of stuff anyway.

So.. I guess that's it for this week. Thanks for your emails and support! Love you!

-Ian

YMCA!

Hai

Too bad about the pictures. I was hoping to see some sweet cherry blossom adventure. However, the cherry blossom festival in Japantown is coming up so we'll see if we can't schedule some tracting or something over there during the festival and then happen upon the festivities. I wasn't in SF last year when it was going on.

That's kind of funny about your office burning down dad haha. I think most of the time those ceiling sprinklers end up causing more damage than the actual fire. Kind of like my year at BYU where we had approximately no fires but I think 3 or 4 random sprinkler attacks where entire floors were flooded and all heck broke loose. Including on my floor... fortunately only on the half I wasn't a part of. Those sprinklers are super powerful though.

So things are going pretty well here. We had 2 baptized last week but only 1 confirmed this weekend which was a first for me... Steven Chen failed to show up at his own confirmation. We were thinking about doing a proxy confirmation but then realized you can only do them for the permanently absent. In any case, we still haven't managed to get ahold of him to figure out what happened. Although he really wasn't the only one since we had like 32 people (investigators, members, recent converts and the like) who committed to come to church and then had an actual of 16 who came. It wasn't even raining! Which was probably working against us since one of our investigators had some workers over to her house to fix something who wouldn't have come if it rained she said. Basically kind of a bust. not a total failure mind you but it could have gone better. In any case, we went over to the YMCA this week which is across the street from our English Class here in Chinatown and held a basketball activity for the young ppl in our small group. It went pretty well and we discovered that there are a whole host of other young Chinatown people who go there that we were able to meet. Basically we're thinking of getting a YMCA membership and then playing basketball there everyday instead of street contacting. I think my perception of missionary work has changed a ton in the past little while. We do as little street contacting as possible just because of how much more effectively we can use our time doing other things like setting up lessons with people, participating in random activities in Chinatown and doing stuff like that. I sometimes feel like it would actually be easier to be a good missionary in everyday life as a normal person if that's what I was really focused on all of the time. I can just imagine how many of my classmates I could get to come to church if I went to school at one of these high schools.

We have a bunch of really great investigators right now even though a bunch of them didn't show to church this week for some reason. We have about 4 people scheduled to be baptized on Easter and 1 for April Fool's Day haha between sessions of general conference. We met with Alice's mom yesterday for the first time in a while (the one half paralyzed since December) and convinced her that she needs to be baptized on Easter. So we're gonna be working hard to make that happen. She basically only has to come to church every week till then and she'll be fine. I feel like most people who are ready to be baptized are basically already living most of the commandments and just need to develop faith and commit. Especially these young people. As long as they have desire and a basic understanding, they can join the church and then learn more. At least that's the philosophy we're going with for the time being.

Anyways, thanks for your emails this week. Love you!

-Ian

The Field is White

Hai!

I'm writing today on a really massive 27-inch iMac in the apple store. Despite the fact this screen is bigger than big the font is still really really small and hard to read. Kind of ironic.

Had a pretty good week here. Our Sacrament Meeting attendance wasn't as good as last week but still remained pretty high. We had about 22 attendees and 8 investigators which is pretty good and just enough to keep the feeling of excitement and growth so vital to our small group. Everyone stayed after for literally an hour and a half and just chatted and bonded with one another. It was pretty awesome. We had all of our recent converts there except for JianHua who was baptized in October and is going through a rather rebellious stage, but his brother was there and all his friends who he is trying valiantly to convince not to come hahaha. His mom (also our investigator and a regular at church) said he doesn't really know what to do now cause he's like trying to convince everyone not to come to church and say it's bad and everything but it's totally not working and now he just feels left out because he's the only one not coming hahaha. We had 6 high school guys there, 3 of whom are recent converts, 2 of which have a baptismal date, and 1 who we just need to start teaching. Pretty sweet. I don't really get it though... We've taught like 3 girls at their school and they have like no spirituality and no desire but all the guys we teach are like "I want to be baptized now!" And then come to church regularly. It's pretty sweet but way the opposite from what it usually is since i always thought sisters had more spirituality than brothers. Anyways, we're hoping to get a temple trip organized to take all these recent converts to do baptisms but we're already so busy teaching investigators that it's tough to find time to focus on them as well.

We had a pretty cool experience on Saturday afternoon teaching one of our investigators scheduled to be baptized this coming Sunday. She was being all hesitant about her baptism saying she wanted to change to March etc etc and so finally I was like "alright let's kneel and pray and see what Heavenly Father thinks." Now this is generally an "all or nothing" approach to resolving an investigators concern and in my experience only really works like 70% of the time since a lot of the time they can't really recognize the influence of the Holy Ghost or what it's telling them. So anyways, we kneel and set the expectation that we'll wait and listen for about a minute after she finishes. So after she finishes praying she goes "I think He's telling me I'm OK".... I'm like... uh oh what does that mean?... "I feel like I need to get baptized on the 26th and stop worrying about everything else since it'll all work itself out." Elder Brown and I were like "YEP!" Haha. Really a pretty miraculous answer to prayer. I feel like prayer kind of works like that though. Sometimes it really yields great results and other times it just does not get answered like you want it to. Kind of like how I was praying that the Huang sisters would be able to make it to church this Sunday and then they didn't... Argh!!! It was pretty lame too because we went to the Oakland Temple Visitor's Center on Wednesday and had a really great spiritual experience and set a baptismal date with them for March 3rd which they'll not be able to now meet because they can't come to church 3 times. Really frustrating. Sometimes this Chinese sense of intense filial piety is really really annoying. And their mom's not even like that strongly opposed to them coming to church they're just afraid that she'll be mad they can't be with her on her only day off. Which I suppose I can understand but we've stressed the importance of church with them so many times you'd think they'd have strong enough faith by now to make it there regularly or bring their mom and help her to at least come to an understanding that no, we're not a cult and church isn't a place where we just do nothing and sing songs or something.

Anyways, things are going pretty well. I'm really enjoying serving in downtown San Francisco. I guess I've been in this area for about a year now... man. But honestly I feel like my vision for missionary work has been so drastically changed in the time that I have spent here. I could not even imagine baptizing like 2 or 3 people in one month last time I was serving here and now it's pretty lame if we don't. We have Zhang SiShun pretty solid for next weekend and we're gonna be doing our darndest to get Xia Fan on board since she's already gotten her answer from God. Hopefully she'll have the courage to act on it.

In any case, that cracks me up that Seth was living like that. How stingy can you be? And is that 60 american dollars?! If so then that's a huge ripoff! hahaha!

Pretty impressive about the running madness you two are engaged in. Yeah I don't doubt I could probably run about 10 miles without too much difficulty at this point as long as I kept a steady pace. Elder Brown is running me rather ragged and since it hasn't killed me yet, I think I've become rather stronger as a result. Unfortunately, his application to BYU just got denied which is a huge bummer for him... but I think there are some backups in place so it'll probably turn out alright.

In any case, with regards to my release date, it's technically Sept. 5... but I'm sure I'll have to be leaving a little bit early to make it back in time for school and stuff so I'll talk to President Wade maybe and then get back to you. And can't I sign up for classes in March? I thought that's what you said...

Anyways, Love you guys! Have a great week!

-Ian

There is Sunshine in my Soul

This week was sooo much better! We had like 33 people come to church 12 of whom were investigators and probably like 4 or 5 were nonmembers from english class or just people we invited on the street. It was pretty sweet. We called a ton of people on Saturday and got commitments out of a lot so we were really excited to have a good attendance this week and it went really well. We also moved Sacrament Meeting to the beginning and had a bit of a shorter gospel principles lesson afterwards making the whole meeting a tiny bit over an hour which worked out perfectly. Then afterwards we had a potluck activity which we have once a month (will probably change it to twice a month if at all possible) which was a huge success cause it basically provided a great opportunity for everyone to get to know eacthother and socialize etc. It was a great experience over all. When you have a church meeting like that, it's really easy to keep people coming because they want to be there because of what a positive experience it is. I really enjoyed it anyway. I think I've finally caught the vision of what potential we have here in this area and what to do to keep it up.

Even the Huang sisters showed up! They said their mom got sick so they could do whatever they wanted that day and Elder Brown was like "finally she's being punished!!!" Hahaha. They laughed really hard at that since they knew he was joking (hopefully...) ha. It's not really their mom's decision though ultimately since they are both over 20 and can totally do whatever they want anyway. However they had a great experience yesterday and so we hope they'll continue coming.

In other news, that's cool that John is coming out to visit you. I vaguely remember what he looks like and stuff so that's good. A tour of the state department?... wat? Why? There's like nothing interesting there. Just ask dad! Haha. Pretty lame.

My back feels alright now. I just kind of had a weird knot in it last week or something. In any case, yeah, Elder Brown likes to exercise so I've been doing more exercise than I think I ever have in my life. It's definitely having an effect although I still really don't like to wake up in the morning so I don't know how effective I'll be at keeping it up once we're seperated. But we'll see. Sometimes I have more self discipline than I give myself credit for.

Anyways, you might be able to find me walking around Chinatown this time dad. We spend more time there than I did last time I was in this area. Also I'm thinking I may not want to take that random bioethics course in the fall so I just changed my schedule a little. Mostly cause I think possibly 15 credits would be enough to keep me busy.

In any case, I guess that's all I have to talk about this week. Thanks for your letters and stuff. And also the magnets... even though I thought it was the ipod shuffle... but that's ok! Magnets are great too! Happy Valentine's Day!

Love you!

-Ian

There is Sunshine in my Soul

This week was sooo much better! We had like 33 people come to church 12 of whom were investigators and probably like 4 or 5 were nonmembers from english class or just people we invited on the street. It was pretty sweet. We called a ton of people on Saturday and got commitments out of a lot so we were really excited to have a good attendance this week and it went really well. We also moved Sacrament Meeting to the beginning and had a bit of a shorter gospel principles lesson afterwards making the whole meeting a tiny bit over an hour which worked out perfectly. Then afterwards we had a potluck activity which we have once a month (will probably change it to twice a month if at all possible) which was a huge success cause it basically provided a great opportunity for everyone to get to know eacthother and socialize etc. It was a great experience over all. When you have a church meeting like that, it's really easy to keep people coming because they want to be there because of what a positive experience it is. I really enjoyed it anyway. I think I've finally caught the vision of what potential we have here in this area and what to do to keep it up.

Even the Huang sisters showed up! They said their mom got sick so they could do whatever they wanted that day and Elder Brown was like "finally she's being punished!!!" Hahaha. They laughed really hard at that since they knew he was joking (hopefully...) ha. It's not really their mom's decision though ultimately since they are both over 20 and can totally do whatever they want anyway. However they had a great experience yesterday and so we hope they'll continue coming.

In other news, that's cool that John is coming out to visit you. I vaguely remember what he looks like and stuff so that's good. A tour of the state department?... wat? Why? There's like nothing interesting there. Just ask dad! Haha. Pretty lame.

My back feels alright now. I just kind of had a weird knot in it last week or something. In any case, yeah, Elder Brown likes to exercise so I've been doing more exercise than I think I ever have in my life. It's definitely having an effect although I still really don't like to wake up in the morning so I don't know how effective I'll be at keeping it up once we're seperated. But we'll see. Sometimes I have more self discipline than I give myself credit for.

Anyways, you might be able to find me walking around Chinatown this time dad. We spend more time there than I did last time I was in this area. Also I'm thinking I may not want to take that random bioethics course in the fall so I just changed my schedule a little. Mostly cause I think possibly 15 credits would be enough to keep me busy.

In any case, I guess that's all I have to talk about this week. Thanks for your letters and stuff. And also the magnets... even though I thought it was the ipod shuffle... but that's ok! Magnets are great too! Happy Valentine's Day!

Love you!

-Ian

The Straight and Narrow Path

Hellow!

We had a pretty good week. We had a goal initially of having 3 people baptized this weekend and ended up with one, which in and of itself was something of a miracle I have to say. Ma, HuaQiang was definitely not even thinking about anything close to baptism about 1 month ago and to see the change of heart that he has experienced is pretty amazing. Unfortunately, his mom, who was also scheduled to be baptized this weekend was forbidden rather strongly by her husband for some reason that we don't fully understand. We did try to convince him otherwise. We tried to strike a deal where we'd teach her English if he let her be baptized, then we tried to convince him it wouldn't affect her ability to find work (which seemed to be his major concern) and that there was absolutely no downside to getting baptized (which there really isn't). In any case, it came down to him being really really stubborn and obstinate in his opposition and there was nothing we could say or do that would change his mind. Really weird since he didn't care about his kids getting baptized. In any case, kind of a tough concern to resolve. She's really ready to be baptized but he is definitely not having it.

Our other investigator meant to be baptized yesterday, Carlyn Chen, was very very close. She's a 16 year old girl in high school and really acts her age, or perhaps younger than her age.
Whatever the case, we were a little pressed for time and so taught her a rather long lesson on Saturday afternoon where we basically taught her almost everything haha. Kind of a mainland China gospel teaching approach. Then she had her baptismal interview where she insisted she wanted to try alcohol and coffee later in life because she wanted to know what they tasted like. Basically a rather ridiculous concern which is probably not the true root of her concern.

However, we'll spend some more time teaching her and hopefully help her cultivate a stronger desire to be baptized and some stronger faith in Christ that will allow her to overcome concerns. Hopefully be able to shoot for the end of January or early February for her date.

Have I told you about our district leader by the way? Elder Jin from XinJiang? I think I probably have... but in any case, I asked him yesterday how big the branch is in Urumuqi and he was like "6 people" haha. Him, his parents, his aunt, his grandma, and his cousin. Pretty sweet ratio of full time missionaries to members now though ha. He's a pretty funny guy and speaks really good Chinese. Hopefully I can use my guanxi with him to get to go out to visit XinJiang again and see some more sights. Pretty cool place.

So we had a pretty crazy day yesterday. First off, yesterday was stake conference so we had to find transportation for our investigators and members to get from Chinatown all the way down to Pacifica. Then, once we got there, we discovered that they hadn't brought any of the translation equipment which I was absolutely baffled at because I had totally thought about it the day before but was just like "nah they definitely have it under control". They didn't. So we raced back to the Sunset chapel, grabbed the equipment, and raced back and I translated for the last hour and 15 minutes. It went pretty well actually. I think my ability to translate has actually improved a lot from all the practice I got in Union City. I'm at least the most qualified to do it here in the Chinese branch in San Francisco anyway.

Anyways, then we had the baptismal service immediately after... or so we thought. We ended up waiting for like 40 minutes listening to prelude while the bishop of the Samoan Ward (we combined our baptism with theirs) made us wait while he was in a meeting or something. It was very ridiculous since we had President Wade and President Pearce (our branch president) in attendance so we totally could have and should have started without him. Very frustrating. However the baptism itself went well and HuaQiang bore a pretty great testimony at the end.
Then, that night we had a missionary stake correlation meeting with President Wade and the stake president Dillinder and then we had a fireside called "why I believe" which we were assigned to organize and conduct this month. It was pretty ridiculous. Fortunately, as is usually what happens when you do your best and pray a lot, it all went very well. Why I believe had a really really small turnout but ended up being one of the most spiritual meetings I've attended as a missionary and just in general. It was pretty sweet.

Yeah pretty crazy finally running into Lynn and Anette at the Daly City Chapel. It was good to see them again.

Good to hear us Mormons are looking up in the whole public media arena. Hope Romney can get elected... although that would probably not be a good thing since I don't think anybody really likes the President no matter who it is haha. Pretty thankless job. Can't please anyone.
I'll send my iPod along today probably. When is the class signup time for the fall semester anyways? Probably not for a while... right?

Anyways, I'm excited for the coming week. We had a bunch of trainings and stuff last week that took up a bunch of our time so we hope to be able to use our time effectively this week and really make things happen. We're gonna start teaching Alice Luo's parents who she's like "get them baptized!!!" Haha and we're gonna teach another one of her friends who is 16 years old here in San Francisco. We have a goal to have 5 baptized in February and definitely have the faith to get it done.

Love you! Have a great week!

Choir of Angels

Hello!

Let me first answer some questions so I don't forget. California is really slow I guess so I still haven't received any word about my speeding ticket... I guess it would be too much to hope that they just forgot about it... more likely would be that it got caught up somewhere in the post service and I won't get it till I'm 45 and it's grown to $500,000,000... which, of course, by that time will be about $50 in our money now when adjusting for inflation so I suppose it's a bit of a win-win here.

Yes I did get the box! Thank you! We have a pretty sweet Christmas corner in our apartment now complete with the mini Christmas tree that Aunt Katherine sent me last year that I found still kicking around in the apartment where I had left it last year. So that was pretty awesome. What are the odds right?

Also for Christmas we could just call... or Elder Brown and I were thinking we could just use Skype since we're allowed to now... so I guess next week you may as well send me your Skype username as well as phone number since I'm pretty sure I've forgotten it... yep... definitely can't remember.

Sounds like your Christmas program was pretty good. We don't really have any plans as a group for Christmas but the whole branch is throwing a Christmas party on the night of the 23rd at the Sunset building so that should be good. Also we're going to have a Christmas potluck party thing at our English class on the 24th... and then on the 25th... we'll just be going out doing service and stuff. Should be pretty fun. The potluck yesterday went pretty well too. The Cheesecake investigator DID show up. We actually went to the restaurant she works at on Saturday so we could make sure she'd come. It's actually this weird Chinese food vegan restaurant and she makes vegan Cheesecakes with Tofu and imitation cream cheese which sounds weird but was actually really good. I might even like it a little better than actual cheesecake just because it's not so rich. Unfortunately, Elder Brown and I think she may have heard something bad about the church and so she only came for like a minute and then was like "I have something to do so I have to go!" and then left... which was really weird cause she was super excited to come... Oh well, we know where she works so we can see what's up sometime later on. Still, it's kind of annoying to have so much random anti-church rumors/propaganda.

Speaking of which, our awesome golden investigator Gregory got pretty much shut down by his dad who apparently is Christian, but according to Gregory, doesn't really practice his beliefs. Elder Brown and I kind of predicted something like this might happen but it seems like a little more intense than we thought since we think they may have taken away his phone since it's been off the past couple days and he didn't make it to church yesterday... but I guess we'll see how it works out. Hopefully we can get the situation worked out. But it is so annoying to have people who don't understand our beliefs at all just come to really erroneous conclusions and then make irrational decisions. And family opposition is so inconvenient.

Also Alice Luo's mom fainted the other day and hurt herself really seriously and so is in the hospital right now and has been for about a week. However she is doing a lot better and Alice is still really enthusiastic about the gospel and being baptized so things are still going really well in that area.

We went to this high school winter concert the other day (with permission) since we had a couple investigators who invited us to go and we went and met loads of their friends there which was awesome. It was a pretty hilariously unprofessional concert where the choir teacher (this super tall black guy) was like calling people out in the audience who ware making too much noise haha. He was like "Hey! You, you, and you - not in the choir, get out of the choir section! You know who you are!" Haha. It was a really hilarious concert though and we got loads of good contacts. Hopefully we can get them all to church. Even and Joseph are two students there who are scheduled to be baptized on the 24th. Pretty awesome. I don't really understand why they like coming to church so much but I guess it really is just easier for some people to feel the Spirit and helps them have motivation to do the right thing. Joseph texts us all the time and is like "hey guys go on Facebook right now and check this sweet video I posted!" We're like "um.... we don't have access to a computer right now... but..." And then follow up on his reading of the Book of Mormon haha.

Anyways, we just got back from Fisherman's Wharf where we ate at an overpriced restaurant with very mediocre food. However the view out the window was pretty nice so it wasn't a total loss.

Yes I am writing in my journal pretty often lately... not too much in Hayward... but without roommates you have a lot more time in the evenings so I'm keeping up pretty well here.

Alright well I'll just go ahead and end there since I don't have a whole lot more to report. But thanks for your emails! Sounds like not having a car is pretty inconvenient... if only the States actually had convenient public transit! Pretty sure it's not really possible to not have a car any place other than San Francisco... and maybe NYC.. but taking the bus in Oakland was pretty darn annoying haha.

Love you!

-Ian

The Gathering

We had a pretty good week. We met a guy named Gregory Huey the other day on the bus. He's a 16 year-old kid who was born here but who's parents are from Guangdong. We taught him yesterday after he came to church and had a really great lesson. He has a really strong desire to follow Christ. On the bus he was like "I think I'm going to join the Catholic church because I want to be closer with God." I was like "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a second! Come to our church first!" haha. It was pretty cool. He had a really great experience although he doesn't really speak Mandarin very well... but that's ok. We speak Taishanese... ok just kidding, but he speaks English so that works too. So as of right now, 3 of our 4 investigators scheduled to be baptized on the 24th are in high school. It's interesting to me how interested they are in the Gospel despite the fact they're so young. Pretty cool.

Our other investigator scheduled for the 24th is Alice Luo and she's doing pretty well. Yesterday was her second time at church. We taught her on Saturday and she was like "sorry I can't come tomorrow, I need to go register for classes..." Elder Brown was like "no. You need to come to church." She was still being a little resistant so finally, I was like "just get someone else to do it!" She paused for a second and was like "hmm... you're pretty smart. I could do that." Haha. She cracks me up. Especially since she brought a notepad and paper to Sacrament Meeting so she could take notes and stuff.

I love church here. It's usually stressful and people don't have a good experience but our group here in downtown is really great. We had an awesome fast and testimony meeting yesterday where we had our recent convert Ian Yan (moving to Provo at the end of the month haha), a member who had been less active for 35 years because church was so far away but who is active now because of the new group, and a couple other really awesome members share their testimonies. It was so great. And then afterwards everyone just kind of hangs around and chats with one another. Church is awesome here. Also we have a potluck activity every second Sunday of the month after church which is coming up this weekend which Elder Brown says is awesome so I'm excited for that. We met a woman on the bus coming home yesterday who we invited to church and it turns out she works for this place that makes all kinds of cakes and pies and she said she'll bring 2 cheesecakes to church next week. I told her "looks like us meeting you really WAS arrainged by God!" Haha. Pretty sweet.

Anyways, the new movies about Jesus' life look really sweet. I'm excited for when we can start using them as proselyting tools and stuff. I guess some of them are already up on LDS.org. Also, I don't have much time left so I'd better go write a quick letter to President Wade. Zone Conference this week. Hoorah!

Love you!

-Ian

Standing Room Only

Hello!

How are you? Sound pretty good! Sorry I missed thanksgiving this year. But we did stay up for the midnight Black Friday sale though... they had a great sale on... um... scripture cases!... so... In any case, I really like that talk by Ian Ardern also. He had a great accent and an even greater name. I just wish I could get the general conference issue of the Ensign... for some reason the mission office is being really slow getting it out to us...

Anyways, I had a pretty interesting week. First off, our two people scheduled for baptism fell through. Bummer. One had a problem with the Word of Wisdom that came out only during the baptismal interview, and the other didn't like the idea of tithing which, in hindsight, we should have probably taught him earlier. Still, kind of frustrating. Fortunately, we'll still get to be able to continue teaching them hopefully and I have faith that we'll be able to help them work past these barriers.

We had 12 investigators at church, which was pretty ridiculous. Church went really well yesterday. Everyone stayed after it ended and chatted which was really great. We had about 25 people in total so the room looked a lot more full. We have more people at church than at English class! Which is kind of strange and probably means Elder Brown and I need to spend more time passing out flyers, which we did actually do for a couple hours this week... However, we're not really having any problems finding since we found 7 more new investigators this week...

Lately, we've been discussing how we can help all of the investigators we are teaching and who are coming to church set baptismal dates. We're going to redouble our efforts this week to set a baptismal date with every one of our investigators and help them progress towards that. We feel that with the sheer number of investigators we have in our teaching pool right now, if we're planning correctly, we should have very little time to find and loads of time teaching them and helping them to build their faith in Christ and progress towards baptism. We've decided to set more clear expectations with our investigators for more frequent meeting and also daily contact.
Elder Brown and I went on exchanges with a couple elders in the filippino ward here this week which went very well. I went on exchanges with Elder Salazar seems like a very good elder. He was telling me all these crazy stories about his conversion back in the Philippines which were really hilarious. He was talking about how he was baptized when he was 12 without his parents' permission and then he was inactive for like 5 years because the branch in the area where he lived like dissolved. Then after five years the missionaries came back into his area and he like kicked them out of his house and was like "I'm Catholic now. Don't come back." Except one of the Elders told him to read and pray about the Book of Mormon so he did like a couple months later and was like "if it's true, give me a way to go back to church." So the next day, the Elders went back to his house even though he told them not to and he was like "dang it..." since he said all his friends would make fun of him if he went back. Anyways, to make a long story short, he ended up moving and was like "yes the missionaries won't be able to find me anymore!" Except he moved right accross the street from one of our chapels in another city and then proceeded to run into both one of the missionaries he first kicked out of his house and then one of the other missionaries who had tried to reactivate him who both got transferred to that area hahah. So random. It was pretty funny the way he told it. I guess if God wants you to join his church, he'll find a way haha.

In any case, I got my first ticket last night which was a real hoot. We were coming back from the baptism of one of my investigators in Union City: Ethan Wu... and I wasn't really paying attention to how fast I was going and got pulled over for speeding... I had no idea our Toyota Corolla could even go that fast: 150 mph... Ok just kidding. Only about 80. But knowing California traffic police, they'll probably charge me for an 150 mph speeding ticket...

Anyways, my time is almost up here on the library computer here so I'd better sign off. However, I hope you ahve a great week!

Love you!

-Ian

Return to Chinatown

Nov. 21, 2011

I'm loving being back in Chinatown. Our area is really really great. We have loads of investigators and our English class is doing really well. I really notice a difference when we have that kind of an awesome free service to offer people rather than just having to chat them up on the street about the Gospel... which works sometimes, but English class is so much more effective for stuff like that. Elder Brown and I are working really hard to get the group going here. It rained yesterday which was a bummer because Chinese people are not fans of the rain and when it rains they aren't as willing to go places. Despite that fact, we still had 9 investigators at church which was really good. Especially considering the fact we only had 9 members there including the two of us and the 2 speakers from an English ward. Pretty interesting. It was a funny Sacrament meeting. I like it alot though. Kind of reminds me a little of meeting in China or overseas in a place where the Church is pretty small and not super established. I was playing the piano (really really horrible keyboard hahaha), blessing the sacrament, and translating for one of the speakers. Fun stuff.

Also we had a baptism yesterday. Our investigator, also named Ian incidentally, Ian Yan, was baptized yesterday. He's a 28 yr-old guy from Taiwan. He's seriously hilarious. I like him a lot! He's super nerdy and draws comics for a living. Not the funny kind but he is really really funny in an awesome nerdy way. His baptism was really great and another brother from the Daly City chinese area was also baptized at the same time. Next week we have another brother, Jason Lei, set up to be baptized. We have a goal of baptizing 5 people in December which is definitely achievable. We also started teaching Alice Luo again and she is planning on being baptized on Christmas which is exciting. This time she definitely will be since our church is so convenient to where she lives. She came yesterday and seemed to have a tolerably good experience haha.

Our awesome PeiKe Wang (member present lesson king... or in this case, queen), took our whole district out to eat lunch at this sweet Sushi buffet called Kome over in Daly City. So I'm basically very full right now and rather sleepy. We're here at a public library on a road called Ocean Avenue. Which I think there's a song about... but I can't remember any of that Babylonian nonsense now that I'm a missionary... so...

Sorry I can't make it back for Thanksgiving this year. I'm sure it'll be grrrrrrrreaat! We're going to eat at a member's house that night so... don't worry, we'll still be fed. I think Sister Ma has been the states for a while now so it'll probably be pretty good.

In any case, it's fun being back in the same district as Elder Luo. He cracks me up so much. So hilarious. Unfortunately, we're not in a three person companionship since he's with some English missionaries in Sunset, but that's ok. We see enough of him anyway haha. Incidentally, Elder Brown's Chinese name is also Luo... so... pretty close!

Anyways, my time is almost up so I'd better wrap things up. Thanks for your letters mom and dad! Love you!

-Ian

Old Stomping Ground

HERROW!

The big news here is that I'm being transferred! To.... guess where?!?! DOWNTOWN SAN FRANCISCO! AGAINNNNN!!!! Hahahaha! I didn't think I was going anywhere cause if you get released as a Zone Leader you usually get called in the morning by President Wade... but I didn't get a call... and then at night when the Assistants called us they were like "Elder Christensen has been transferred to be the Zone Leader in the San Francisco West Zone..." I was like... "wat? Engrish?!" And then they were like "also President Wade's made kind of a fun change in the San Francisco West Zone, now it's a Chinese speaking area in downtown San Francisco." Hahaha. I am actually really excited to go back though because they recently started a new Chinese group in downtown San Francisco in the middle of Chinatown. So basically it's going to be great to work with all the people who were baptized while I was serving there and help lots of people get reactivated since I think most people in downtown San Francisco were just unable to attend church because of how dang far away it was in Sunset. But now they have no excuse not to come since it's A) Only Sacrament Meeting! and B) Right in the most convenient location ever. It's apparently held in the place where they teach a new English Class there in the An Lao Zi Zhu Chu right through the tunnel as you head into Chinatown. I'll still be senior companion and my new companion is Elder Brown who I knew in Oakland so that should be good. I'm excited to get to work and really help the group there grow like crazy. I have the feeling that we can really just baptize tons of people and get a branch going in no time. Apparently they already have about 25-30 people who attend the group on Sundays including the OuYang family and the Tan family (formerly very less active).

President Wade is so inspired. Ever since I heard about the new English class and Sacrament Meeting services in San Francisco downtown I really wanted to go back and get involved... but I always thought it would not be possible. So awesome though. ALSO, since we're Zone Leaders, we have a car now. A brand new Toyota Corolla. But we'll also still keep our bus passes... so basically when it's inconvenient to use a car, we can take the bus and when the bus is inconvenient, we can drive. Win win. However the best part is that Elder Luo is going to be in my district as district leader AND since he's going to be training for the last transfer of his mission, and his new companion will be 2 weeks late into the field, he's going to be in a tri-panionship with Elder Brown and I for the first 2 weeks hahahaha. So basically this will be my 3rd time becoming companions with Elder Luo. So that's what's new on the missionary front. Pretty exciting.

Apparently, aside from the OuYang family beginning to attend church, Ying Meng is still super active and awesome in the group there and Sister Zheng, who has been inactive because church is so far away, will definitely have loads of potential to start coming every week since it's so near her house. Basically salvation for everyone! I'm excited to go back to the area. It'll probably be pretty weird though... plus i'm a little sad to be leaving so many awesome members behind. Fortunately, one of them is treating our whole district to lunch at their restaurant and then another member is taking Elder Wu, Albretson, Lee, and I to dinner at the Texas Roadhouse... so basically I will not be hungry today. In fact very likely quite the opposite ha.

Anyways, I hope you are having a wonderful birthday. Sounds like you had quite the crazy bike odyssey over the weekend. And for dad, a crazy Taiwanese arrested woman odyssey in Kansas City. I hope they don't arrest you just out of spite when you move there next year... just try to play a low profile and blame everything on your subordinates dad. Better them than you! Right?!

Love you! Hope you have a great week! Next email I send will very possibly be from a library or apple store in San Francisco!

Bai bai!

-Ian

Jam Packed Week

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