Herrow!
That's interesting news about Scott Bickett. Although I suppose his death, as you mentioned, was not altogether a surprising experience, it's still too bad that his choices led to such a poor health condition. We had a returned mission president in our ward a little while ago (he just moved) and we went over to his house to eat dinner and he was talking a lot about our choices and how they really determine who we are and who we become etc and especially about people who let themselves become obese and are thereby marginalized when they grow older and can't do the same things that a healthy normal person can do. I think it has to do a lot with putting of the natural man. For example, my natural man was really into playing computer games and I've now realized that that is (and don't quote me on this MOM since I KNOW you said it to me like EVERY day!) a colossal waste of time that I could be using to do some more worthwhile things. Point is, that's just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.
Had a great week this week btw. Accomplished almost all of our goals except investigators at sacrament meeting and progressing investigators where we were off by one. We were blessed this week to be able to set baptismal dates with 3 new investigators which was pretty good. 2 of them are looking fairly solid as they made it to church this Sunday and had a pretty good experience however the other, Sister Ren, committed but then didn't show up. Elder Lee and I are still trying to figure her and her husband out since we have pretty good lessons with them, show up with members who would be excellent fellowshippers and then they commit but don't keep their commitments. They didn't even come to the Halloween party we had on Saturday night right after we taught them that same afternoon and they said they would come. So, we'll hopefully be able to get ahold of them and find out what concerns they have. A chapel tour might possibly be in order.
We taught the Word of Wisdom twice on Tuesday. The first time failed rather miserably as our investigator, Brother Lu, told us "I live to smoke. Smoking is the purpose to my life..." Which was an opinion rather shocking to us and we didn't really know how to respond to. Elder Lee was like "that is absolutely 100% wrong." It was an interesting lesson to say the least. However, we've been back after that and he does have a modicum of desire to follow Christ and some slight hope for change, however we're going to have to continue to help him build his faith and have decided to continue working with him to give him a chance to righteously exercise his agency. However, our other investigator, brother Zhang (with a baptismal date for the 27th of November), accepted it right away and didn't even finish the rest of the ice tea he had been drinking and just threw it away right then and there. Pretty great faith. He definitely is having many spiritual experiences as he has been reading the Book of Mormon and praying which is really good to see.
It is kind of interesting to see different levels of preparedness among the people that we teach. For example, some people require pretty much no skill or concern resolving and will just accept everything you say and be baptized whereas others may require quite a bit of time and study and prayer before they'll accept anything you say and then there are still others who no matter what you say will never do anything you tell them. I always find it gratifying when people who already have a pretty good life are willing to accept the Gospel just on the basis that they feel like it's true. Not that that makes the conversion of someone going through trials and accepting the gospel as a way to improve their life any less real or miraculous but I always think of what I would do in the position of my investigators and I'm not sure I'd be as receptive unless I felt a real need or emptiness in my life.
In any case, our recent converts are doing pretty well. Brother Zheng got interviewed for the Aaronic Priesthood yesterday and will be getting it next Sunday after church and we have Sister Sun set up to get an interview for a temple recommend so she can go do baptisms for the dead.
We also have organized a trip up to the temple for our whole English class on Saturday and have about 15-20 who seem interested in coming which is pretty exciting. We hope it will be a great experience which will help us use English better as a proselyting tool. We left our ward mission leader a message saying that we might need his help coordinating rides and he called us this morning and said he'll have 6 people on standby to drive people up on Saturday which was pretty cool and kind of makes me think that we should coordinate closer with him since he really seems capable and willing to help.
In any case, we had a pretty good training meeting last week by President Wade. Talked a lot about raising our vision, getting referrals and a variety of other topics including merging the doctrine of Christ in with everything we teach. Pretty good. Lots of things to do better.
Also our "FHE" I guess is kind of set up for next week after church at Sister Breen's house... which is kind of news to us but we'll hopefully be able to get it done pretty well.
Good to hear Uncle Eric's doing well. And your biking excursions. Always a treat. I'll probably be on exchanges this week in a bike area so I'll let you know if we do any epic bike rides.
Anyways, thanks for your emails! I love to read them. Have a wonderful bunderful week!
Love,
-Ian
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
A Few Stripes...for a Good Cause
Hai!
Had a pretty average week last week. Some good things that are happening are that our recent convert, brother Chen, came back from his trip in southern California and we're now working with him to get a family home evening type activity set up for our Chinese group which we are also coordinating with the Bishop to get in place. I really hope setting up these small family home evening groups will improve unity and fellowship within our groups and help everyone to become more active in the church. There are only about 15 or 16 members in the Chinese group. Although it seems like on a good Sunday we'll have at most about 10 and some of them leave after the Sacrament for work, so there are some struggles...
I went on exchanges with one of the assistants, Elder Webster on Saturday in Oakland again which was a good experience. We had a pretty funny experience where we went street contacting for about 30 minutes and get yelled at by like 3 different people for things like racism against african americans and the like and got rejected by basically everyone we talked to. So we decided perhaps that wasn't the best place to go looking for new investigators haha since half of them were indie hipsters (michelle's friends :D) and the other half were like belligerent older men.
Unfortunately, we lost a couple baptismal dates this week since one of our investigators moved to San Francisco and the other 2 aren't answering our phone calls (brother Zhao and Wang Kun...). However we've been finding quite a few new investigators, especially up at Cal State which I'm fan of since young college students seem to be my forte and Elder Lee and I are going to focus on being more bold in inviting our investigators to set a date and then set plans with them to solidify their resolve and turn it into action.
Our recent converts are doing pretty well too. We accompanied one of our recent converts, brother Zheng, to meet with the bishop yesterday to do a preliminary interview about the Aaronic Priesthood and he's very willing to accept it and serve more in the Ward which is great. I just hope we can find more prepared people like him.
Also, remember Ying Meng? Our super diamond investigator in San Francisco? Well, we didn't attend the funeral of Brother Kwok on Saturday since we had English class but Elder Wu and his companion did and said that she was there playing the piano for the service! So cool! So she's basically still really active and awesome which is great! Especially in a Branch as unlively and scattered as San Francisco's is. Pretty good to hear. Although I wish I could've seen her... oh well. I'll probably be back there at some point anyways haha.
That's great to hear about Uncle Eric's surgery. Too bad his mouth is gonna be a little drier from now on... but that's a pretty small price to pay considering how ridiculously large that tumor was. Did they give it to him afterwards? That'd be pretty gross I guess...
Anyways, love you guys! Thanks for all your support and emairrsss!!! Have a wonderful week!
-Ian
Had a pretty average week last week. Some good things that are happening are that our recent convert, brother Chen, came back from his trip in southern California and we're now working with him to get a family home evening type activity set up for our Chinese group which we are also coordinating with the Bishop to get in place. I really hope setting up these small family home evening groups will improve unity and fellowship within our groups and help everyone to become more active in the church. There are only about 15 or 16 members in the Chinese group. Although it seems like on a good Sunday we'll have at most about 10 and some of them leave after the Sacrament for work, so there are some struggles...
I went on exchanges with one of the assistants, Elder Webster on Saturday in Oakland again which was a good experience. We had a pretty funny experience where we went street contacting for about 30 minutes and get yelled at by like 3 different people for things like racism against african americans and the like and got rejected by basically everyone we talked to. So we decided perhaps that wasn't the best place to go looking for new investigators haha since half of them were indie hipsters (michelle's friends :D) and the other half were like belligerent older men.
Unfortunately, we lost a couple baptismal dates this week since one of our investigators moved to San Francisco and the other 2 aren't answering our phone calls (brother Zhao and Wang Kun...). However we've been finding quite a few new investigators, especially up at Cal State which I'm fan of since young college students seem to be my forte and Elder Lee and I are going to focus on being more bold in inviting our investigators to set a date and then set plans with them to solidify their resolve and turn it into action.
Our recent converts are doing pretty well too. We accompanied one of our recent converts, brother Zheng, to meet with the bishop yesterday to do a preliminary interview about the Aaronic Priesthood and he's very willing to accept it and serve more in the Ward which is great. I just hope we can find more prepared people like him.
Also, remember Ying Meng? Our super diamond investigator in San Francisco? Well, we didn't attend the funeral of Brother Kwok on Saturday since we had English class but Elder Wu and his companion did and said that she was there playing the piano for the service! So cool! So she's basically still really active and awesome which is great! Especially in a Branch as unlively and scattered as San Francisco's is. Pretty good to hear. Although I wish I could've seen her... oh well. I'll probably be back there at some point anyways haha.
That's great to hear about Uncle Eric's surgery. Too bad his mouth is gonna be a little drier from now on... but that's a pretty small price to pay considering how ridiculously large that tumor was. Did they give it to him afterwards? That'd be pretty gross I guess...
Anyways, love you guys! Thanks for all your support and emairrsss!!! Have a wonderful week!
-Ian
Monday, October 17, 2011
Priorities
Hellow! Howsit?
Yes I can send you the memory card for my camera. It may or may not surprise you that I haven't been taking a lot of pictures lately... mainly because the scenery in Union City isn't exactly all that exciting but also because I'm too lazy and you're not allowed to take pictures during proselyting time so... it's hard!
So in any case, this week went much better than last. Although the beginning was still a little rough. We had two of our investigators who were scheduled to be baptized yesterday (Xia Yong and Xia Yu) tell us that they don't really believe in God and don't think it's really necessary to join the church etc etc. Of course, they tell us this only in the last week before their baptism where the whole time they've been telling us that they feel really peaceful as they pray and read the scriptures. After meeting with the younger brother on Friday night, we discovered that their father is also rather opposed to their joining the church, presumably because of the law of tithing which would reduce his son's income for the family. It does make much more sense that their concern would have to do with family opposition rather than the concerns they were telling us about but it's still kind of a bummer because they were doing pretty well and looking really solid before this. But we'll continue to invite them out to activities and hopefully be able to continue meeting with them although their father declined to come downstairs to talk to us when we went over which was rather rude of him and will make it awfully difficult to resolve the concerns that he has.
Our other investigator originally scheduled to be baptized yesterday, brother Zhao, is still doing pretty well. We went by and visited him late on Saturday night and discovered that his lack of communication is not a result of any doctrinal or social concerns but a result of him being very busy with his job lately, which produced the same effect of him not being able to meet with us/come to church/be baptized, does help us maintain hope that he will be baptized in the near future when his work settles down a little. Unfortunately, he did say he would come to church yesterday but then didn't end up showing up which we can only assume is because he was again called into work. This assumption was then solidified as we went by his house later that day and he wasn't there. Still, we pushed his date back to the 30th and are optimistic that he'll be ready to be baptized on that day. Dependent, apparently, on his work schedule.
We did manage to find 6 new investigators this week which was great. We found a pretty cool family from ShenYang who we're really excited to be able to continue teaching. They also speak pretty good English which bodes well for them being integrated into the ward a little better so that's good.
I read again one of my favorite scriptures again today in D+C 131:6: It is impossible for a man to be saved in his ignorance. This scripture really helps me understand the importance of missionary work and why we do what we do. Because sooner or later, everyone's gotta know what we know or they're not going to be saved.
So we had some shocking news yesterday in church. The first counselor in our bishopric, brother Kwok, passed away yesterday morning. I was really really surprised by the news. He seemed to be perfectly healthy although apparently he had been struggling with depression for a while. I don't really know any details but it was pretty sudden and big news. t's really too bad too because he was the only leader in the Ward who could speak Chinese so it's unfortunate to lose him. Apparently his wife, Sister Kwok, was the person who taught Steve Toronto his Chinese, according to what she said. And she has lived in Beijing and stuff and is from Taiwan. Pretty sad for her.
Anyways, I don't really have too much else to report. That's exciting you're going to Taiwan! I met a girl in San Francisco who graduated from TAS haha and we talked about a mutual friend we had there. Small world. Maybe I'll run into her when we go back... unlikely... but you never know!
Love you! Thanks for your emairrs! Have a great week!
-Ian
Yes I can send you the memory card for my camera. It may or may not surprise you that I haven't been taking a lot of pictures lately... mainly because the scenery in Union City isn't exactly all that exciting but also because I'm too lazy and you're not allowed to take pictures during proselyting time so... it's hard!
So in any case, this week went much better than last. Although the beginning was still a little rough. We had two of our investigators who were scheduled to be baptized yesterday (Xia Yong and Xia Yu) tell us that they don't really believe in God and don't think it's really necessary to join the church etc etc. Of course, they tell us this only in the last week before their baptism where the whole time they've been telling us that they feel really peaceful as they pray and read the scriptures. After meeting with the younger brother on Friday night, we discovered that their father is also rather opposed to their joining the church, presumably because of the law of tithing which would reduce his son's income for the family. It does make much more sense that their concern would have to do with family opposition rather than the concerns they were telling us about but it's still kind of a bummer because they were doing pretty well and looking really solid before this. But we'll continue to invite them out to activities and hopefully be able to continue meeting with them although their father declined to come downstairs to talk to us when we went over which was rather rude of him and will make it awfully difficult to resolve the concerns that he has.
Our other investigator originally scheduled to be baptized yesterday, brother Zhao, is still doing pretty well. We went by and visited him late on Saturday night and discovered that his lack of communication is not a result of any doctrinal or social concerns but a result of him being very busy with his job lately, which produced the same effect of him not being able to meet with us/come to church/be baptized, does help us maintain hope that he will be baptized in the near future when his work settles down a little. Unfortunately, he did say he would come to church yesterday but then didn't end up showing up which we can only assume is because he was again called into work. This assumption was then solidified as we went by his house later that day and he wasn't there. Still, we pushed his date back to the 30th and are optimistic that he'll be ready to be baptized on that day. Dependent, apparently, on his work schedule.
We did manage to find 6 new investigators this week which was great. We found a pretty cool family from ShenYang who we're really excited to be able to continue teaching. They also speak pretty good English which bodes well for them being integrated into the ward a little better so that's good.
I read again one of my favorite scriptures again today in D+C 131:6: It is impossible for a man to be saved in his ignorance. This scripture really helps me understand the importance of missionary work and why we do what we do. Because sooner or later, everyone's gotta know what we know or they're not going to be saved.
So we had some shocking news yesterday in church. The first counselor in our bishopric, brother Kwok, passed away yesterday morning. I was really really surprised by the news. He seemed to be perfectly healthy although apparently he had been struggling with depression for a while. I don't really know any details but it was pretty sudden and big news. t's really too bad too because he was the only leader in the Ward who could speak Chinese so it's unfortunate to lose him. Apparently his wife, Sister Kwok, was the person who taught Steve Toronto his Chinese, according to what she said. And she has lived in Beijing and stuff and is from Taiwan. Pretty sad for her.
Anyways, I don't really have too much else to report. That's exciting you're going to Taiwan! I met a girl in San Francisco who graduated from TAS haha and we talked about a mutual friend we had there. Small world. Maybe I'll run into her when we go back... unlikely... but you never know!
Love you! Thanks for your emairrs! Have a great week!
-Ian
The Natural Man
Oct. 10, 2011
Hahaha! I was wondering myself why you bothered to include the pronunciations of these places myself... but I read them all out loud just to make sure it wasn't done in vain. So don't worry.
Well that sounds like a pretty cool vacation replete with all sorts of European old world quaintness and beauty but also fused with new world extreme sportiness and excitement!
I was sorry to see Elder Lin go but it's cool being back with Elder Lee. And yes we are both Zone Leaders although I am now the senior companion which is a bit of an adjustment again since I'd been getting used to being junior zone leader for the past 3 transfers and while a zone leader is a zone leader, a junior companion is still a junior companion. But I do kind of like being more in charge as well since it gives more opportunities for growth and taking responsibility. I really like the scripture in 2 Nephi 2 where it talks about how God created things that act and things that are acted upon and it seems to me that most of the time you're either one or the other and it's pretty easy to tell the difference between people that act and people that are acted upon. I feel like it all also kind of ties into the whole putting off the natural man doctrine since I'm pretty sure the natural man is always getting acted upon by Satan and whoever. Also, it's kind of part of the reason why we've run every morning since August. Gotta put off that natural man somehow and it always seems in super good control in the mornings so I gotta beat it down early.
Anyways, had a pretty good week this week. Except for Sunday... which was probably one of the most discouraging days of my mission so far. First off, none of our investigators came to church and about 5 of them promised they would. That, of course, includes our 3 investigators who are scheduled to be baptized this Sunday. Then, we weren't even able to meet with any of them yesterday because they didn't answer their phones. We have managed to contact brother Zhao this morning and hopefully will be able to meet with him tonight, but we still need to continue to try to reach our other investigators with a baptismal date to help them progress as soon as possible. So so discouraging to have them all do that. With no good excuse whatsoever.
I have been thinking a lot yesterday and today about the future of our Chinese group and have really come to realize how important it is that we work with our leaders to determine what we can do to improve the unity and stability of our group. I read chapter 13 of PMG today and it seems like every time I read that I'm reminded again of loads of things I could be doing to work more in harmony with the ward. One thing I was surprised to read about because I've never seen one before is the "convert action list" which definitely seemed like a really good idea. It's more of a challenge in our ward however because most of our leaders don't speak Mandarin so it's pretty difficult for them to feel a real personal connection to those that get baptized into the Chinese group since they can't exactly communicate with them. But we're arranging to set up a time with our bishop this week that we can discuss it a little more with him so hopefully we can get some goals set and plans made since, according to President Hinkley, there is absolutely no point in doing missionary work if you can't hold on to the fruits of that effort...
Anyways, so that's what's been going on here this week. There was a lot of other things that happened obviously, but I cannot record but a 100th part of these occurrances in this email.
Love you! Have a great trip back to the US of A!
-Ian
Hahaha! I was wondering myself why you bothered to include the pronunciations of these places myself... but I read them all out loud just to make sure it wasn't done in vain. So don't worry.
Well that sounds like a pretty cool vacation replete with all sorts of European old world quaintness and beauty but also fused with new world extreme sportiness and excitement!
I was sorry to see Elder Lin go but it's cool being back with Elder Lee. And yes we are both Zone Leaders although I am now the senior companion which is a bit of an adjustment again since I'd been getting used to being junior zone leader for the past 3 transfers and while a zone leader is a zone leader, a junior companion is still a junior companion. But I do kind of like being more in charge as well since it gives more opportunities for growth and taking responsibility. I really like the scripture in 2 Nephi 2 where it talks about how God created things that act and things that are acted upon and it seems to me that most of the time you're either one or the other and it's pretty easy to tell the difference between people that act and people that are acted upon. I feel like it all also kind of ties into the whole putting off the natural man doctrine since I'm pretty sure the natural man is always getting acted upon by Satan and whoever. Also, it's kind of part of the reason why we've run every morning since August. Gotta put off that natural man somehow and it always seems in super good control in the mornings so I gotta beat it down early.
Anyways, had a pretty good week this week. Except for Sunday... which was probably one of the most discouraging days of my mission so far. First off, none of our investigators came to church and about 5 of them promised they would. That, of course, includes our 3 investigators who are scheduled to be baptized this Sunday. Then, we weren't even able to meet with any of them yesterday because they didn't answer their phones. We have managed to contact brother Zhao this morning and hopefully will be able to meet with him tonight, but we still need to continue to try to reach our other investigators with a baptismal date to help them progress as soon as possible. So so discouraging to have them all do that. With no good excuse whatsoever.
I have been thinking a lot yesterday and today about the future of our Chinese group and have really come to realize how important it is that we work with our leaders to determine what we can do to improve the unity and stability of our group. I read chapter 13 of PMG today and it seems like every time I read that I'm reminded again of loads of things I could be doing to work more in harmony with the ward. One thing I was surprised to read about because I've never seen one before is the "convert action list" which definitely seemed like a really good idea. It's more of a challenge in our ward however because most of our leaders don't speak Mandarin so it's pretty difficult for them to feel a real personal connection to those that get baptized into the Chinese group since they can't exactly communicate with them. But we're arranging to set up a time with our bishop this week that we can discuss it a little more with him so hopefully we can get some goals set and plans made since, according to President Hinkley, there is absolutely no point in doing missionary work if you can't hold on to the fruits of that effort...
Anyways, so that's what's been going on here this week. There was a lot of other things that happened obviously, but I cannot record but a 100th part of these occurrances in this email.
Love you! Have a great trip back to the US of A!
-Ian
Something Old, Something New
Oct. 3, 2011
Hey parentals!
Croatia sounds like a blast. I know all about Diocletian from that Byzantine History class Joel and I took. Pretty cool pretty cool. That sounds like a really annoying keyboard. I remember using crappy ones like that back in China.
Well, it's been a pretty great transfer with Elder Lin. Seems like he just got here and he's now packing out again. However, I'm really excited to be able to serve a new/old companion: Elder Lee! I feel very excited to be working in the Chinese group here just because of all the potential there is for improvement here. We had a pretty good week last week. Unfortunately we were not able to find any new investigators which is a first for the time I've been here in Union City and is not good at all, but we will definitely make that more of a focus in the coming weeks so we can continue to build up our teaching pool.
Our 3 investigators with a baptismal date are looking very solid. 2 of them came to General Conference and the other one really wanted to come but got called into work so wasn't able to make it. We did meet with him last night however and he's excited to watch the conference online perhaps on Tuesday. We actually had a rather upsetting but, in retrospect, slightly amusing experience last night with said investigator brother Zhao. We taught him the Law of the Sabbath and we had invited a member along who had brought along her other member friend. Anyways, as we asked them to share their experiences keeping the Sabbath day holy, it kind of ended up turning into them sharing their experiences violating this commandment and talking about how it was more of a "try to keep it as best you can but if you can't then God will understand" kind of recommendation... It was pretty bad. We did our best to salvage the lesson but may need to reteach that commandment... Turns out it really is important to prepare members to accompany lessons... However not as bad as one time I guess Joel had a member who was like drinking beer or something during a teaching appointment and wouldn't throw it away haha. So I guess it could be worse.
General Conference is over... once again. It always seems to go by so quickly. It was very good this time though. The only drawback was that I had to watch 3/5 sessions in Chinese because our investigators came and we needed to sit with them... but it's still true in Chinese... And the translators seem to be getting better. Last time they had like no expression but this time seemed to be more emotional. It was kind of funny actually I think there was one point where one of the female translators was kind of choking up and the speaker wasn't at all haha.
I'm kind of warming up to the idea that you're going to be in Taiwan when I get back. That's pretty cool. Even though they have a girly Taiwanese accent. As opposed to my MANLY Northeastern Chinese person accent. Seriously, everyone I talk to is like "How do you have a dongbei accent?..." I'm like... "well... it's like this..." And talk about how I was born and raised in ShenYang... just kidding. But I don't think it's THAT obvious. However everyone else seems to think I speak Chinese exactly like a Dongbei Chinese person. Which, admittedly is better than a white American person. Plus, they speak pretty biaozhun Chinese anyways so... take that!
So I don't have that much more to write now but still have quite a bit of time since Michelle and Joel didn't write me and this is the only email I got... but that's ok, I'll just go look up some of the conference talks in English and see if they were any different than the meaning I got out of them in Chinese haha.
Love you! Have a wonderful bunderful time in Croatia! I wish I could go...
-Ian
Hey parentals!
Croatia sounds like a blast. I know all about Diocletian from that Byzantine History class Joel and I took. Pretty cool pretty cool. That sounds like a really annoying keyboard. I remember using crappy ones like that back in China.
Well, it's been a pretty great transfer with Elder Lin. Seems like he just got here and he's now packing out again. However, I'm really excited to be able to serve a new/old companion: Elder Lee! I feel very excited to be working in the Chinese group here just because of all the potential there is for improvement here. We had a pretty good week last week. Unfortunately we were not able to find any new investigators which is a first for the time I've been here in Union City and is not good at all, but we will definitely make that more of a focus in the coming weeks so we can continue to build up our teaching pool.
Our 3 investigators with a baptismal date are looking very solid. 2 of them came to General Conference and the other one really wanted to come but got called into work so wasn't able to make it. We did meet with him last night however and he's excited to watch the conference online perhaps on Tuesday. We actually had a rather upsetting but, in retrospect, slightly amusing experience last night with said investigator brother Zhao. We taught him the Law of the Sabbath and we had invited a member along who had brought along her other member friend. Anyways, as we asked them to share their experiences keeping the Sabbath day holy, it kind of ended up turning into them sharing their experiences violating this commandment and talking about how it was more of a "try to keep it as best you can but if you can't then God will understand" kind of recommendation... It was pretty bad. We did our best to salvage the lesson but may need to reteach that commandment... Turns out it really is important to prepare members to accompany lessons... However not as bad as one time I guess Joel had a member who was like drinking beer or something during a teaching appointment and wouldn't throw it away haha. So I guess it could be worse.
General Conference is over... once again. It always seems to go by so quickly. It was very good this time though. The only drawback was that I had to watch 3/5 sessions in Chinese because our investigators came and we needed to sit with them... but it's still true in Chinese... And the translators seem to be getting better. Last time they had like no expression but this time seemed to be more emotional. It was kind of funny actually I think there was one point where one of the female translators was kind of choking up and the speaker wasn't at all haha.
I'm kind of warming up to the idea that you're going to be in Taiwan when I get back. That's pretty cool. Even though they have a girly Taiwanese accent. As opposed to my MANLY Northeastern Chinese person accent. Seriously, everyone I talk to is like "How do you have a dongbei accent?..." I'm like... "well... it's like this..." And talk about how I was born and raised in ShenYang... just kidding. But I don't think it's THAT obvious. However everyone else seems to think I speak Chinese exactly like a Dongbei Chinese person. Which, admittedly is better than a white American person. Plus, they speak pretty biaozhun Chinese anyways so... take that!
So I don't have that much more to write now but still have quite a bit of time since Michelle and Joel didn't write me and this is the only email I got... but that's ok, I'll just go look up some of the conference talks in English and see if they were any different than the meaning I got out of them in Chinese haha.
Love you! Have a wonderful bunderful time in Croatia! I wish I could go...
-Ian
Monday, September 26, 2011
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
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
Monday, September 19, 2011
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
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
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