Hai! Howsit? Happy 30th anniversary! It sounds like it went pretty well! And why Croatia? That seems so random haha. But cool in any case. Why not San Francisco though?!?! Actually, nevermind, I'd go to Croatia too.
Our investigators are all doing fairly well. We added a couple of really good investigators last week from our English class and set a baptismal date with one of them who is very ready to accept the Gospel. Our investigator who is scheduled to be baptized this weekend, Rachel Luo is doing really well. She is incredibly solid and is very excited for her baptism. Hopefully her whole family will be able to attend and support her including her aunt who I taught in San Francisco. We still are running into the same problem I mentioned last week with investigators not being too willing to progress but we're continuing to work with them to help them build faith and gradually develp greater desire to follow Jesus Christ. However, we did have 7 investigators at church on Sunday which is the most I have ever seen come to church since being a missionary. Pretty amazing. Also, we had another man who took a bus to get to church and randomly showed up, but we weren't able to count him because he lives in the San Jose mission and we didn't have a chance to start teaching him anyway. However, we're going to get him referred over to the elders serving in Newark so he can start attending church over there with his wife who he expressed was also interested in converting.
We had a talk given by a sister originally from ShenYang but who's been in America for more than 20 years which was really good on small and simple things bringing great things to pass. Elder Luo said he almost didn't change anything in the translation, which is different from usual where he kind of just loosly follows the talk and kind of reads a lot of the Ensign and sometimes makes up his own stuff haha. He said his translation made one of his investigators almost cry one week before I got here because she was really moved and he said he felt really guilty hahaha. Pretty funny.
We went over to Rachel's house yesterday and taught her the 10 commandments and some other commandments and it was really awesome cause her aunt was there who always makes me laugh my head off just cause she's always like super hilarious and smiling and stuff. I love Sister Luo. So funny. Anyways, she gave us all this really gross food to take home with us which we didn't know was gross at the time but ended up being like this really really stale/moldy bread and these canned foods with suspicious looking labels... haha. Also she gave us this random guzheng music CD that her daughter Candice (the one with like 2 masters and I have like 6 of her business cards that her mom keeps giving us) recorded in 2005. It's not very good but it's fun to listen to just cause it makes us feel super chinese riding around listening to guzheng music haha.Our recent converts are very strong. I really love the retention in this ward. I think it's great that we have the strength of the English ward but also a rather unified chinese group. Our recent converts all seem to have very solid testimonies and we managed to get one of our recent converts to church who hadn't been in more than a month.
Yeah it seems like there are always connections that you find in the church. Like the kwoks in the ward here who I guess used to live in Beijing and know the Torontos et al. Pretty random. Plus there's this one recent convert from Taiwan who grew up in Dubai and went to an international school and so it seems like we have kind of a connection there.
Anyways, I'd better go. Elder Luo is applying for BYU provo since he'd rather go there than BYU Hawaii when he gets home.
But in any case, thanks for your emairrsss! I love you!
-Elder Christensen
P.S. I'd be cool with Taiwan or Vietnam. They both sound like pretty good options. Vietnam would be more fun though...
Monday, June 27, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
Baby Face
Hellow!
Howsit? I can't believe Cory got his mission call already! I thought for some reason that he was like 2 years younger than me... but I guess it's always weird when people younger than you go through big life events like this cause it always seems like they're too young for it... probably a little like how you felt when I got my mission call... Speaking of being too young to do things, I've been getting a lot of snide remarks from American members about how I look like a 14 year old etc etc. I considered going inactive over it... but then I decided just to get back at them so Elder Luo and I are planning some ways to take revenge... just kidding. But it's rather annoying still... especially since it's mostly only white people...
This week went pretty well. We're continuing to help our investigators progress but, rather frustratingly, our only investigator that really seems to be progressing very quickly is our investigator with a baptismal date Rachel Luo. She is fantastic and keeps all of her commitments and her faith seems to grow more and more each date. Unfortunately, our other investigators don't really seem all that willing to progress.
We had a lesson with one of our investigators, Gia, this last week in which we taught the second half of lesson 1 really emphasizing the first vision and the Book of Mormon. It basically just came down to Gia not wanting to commit through baptism and just being completely uninterested whether or not our message was true. Although he is, after all, only 13 and not probably very spiritually mature, it was just frustrating to come up against that kind of stubbornness. In past areas, we seemed to go through investigators pretty fast and it is pretty different in this area where we have a lot of investigators who have been investigating the church for quite a while and it's difficult for me to adapt to teaching people in that kind of a situation. However, I guess we just have to keep trying and help them build their faith and understanding of the gospel because I guess some people will just not commit without a longer process of teaching and resolving concerns.
We also are working with a family from Northern China in which the father is a member and although they come to church almost every week (although only for the first hour and are often late, something we're working on), they never read scriptures and prayer seems sporadic. Something I've been thinking a lot about lately is just how it's possible to change someone's desires to include the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I think a lot about 1 Nephi 19:7 where Nephi talks about how some things people esteem as of great worth, others trample underfoot including Jesus Christ. Sometimes it just seems like such a struggle to help people change their desires and I realize that is something that I still am striving for, although I feel like a lot of my unrighteous desires have already been changed since serving here in the mission field but I feel like there are still a lot that I need to keep working at. And it seems so difficult to get people to desire the Gospel if they don't even have a desire to desire it and the willpower to read the Book of Mormon and pray.
In any case, we had Zone Conference the other day which was fun. We had some good training on how to prepare members to come to lessons, how to work better with the members, and how to make better lesson plans. Definitely will be really helpful.
Anyways, I don't have a whole lot of time to talk more but it sounds like you are doing really well. Sorry I didn't send you a card for Father's day Dad... but your birthday was JUST like... last WEEK... sort of... but anyways, It sounds like you had a wonderful day... and had wonderful bbq leftovers for dinner! Hooray!
Also we ran into another weird Falonggong woman yesteerday... right after getting yelled at by this really devout baptist woman who was telling us we were deceived by the devil like she was one time where she thought God told her to buy one type of insurance but then it turned out it was a really expensive kind and there were a lot better deals elsewhere, which, fortunately her son had already bought for her even before she had a chance to buy the devil-inspired expensive insurance... She didn't share that story all up front... but we were talking for quite a while... or rather, getting talked at... Aiya. Rough day contacting yesterday...
Anyways, love you guys! Hope you have a great week!
Love,
-Ian
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Eat, Drink & Baptize!
The BeeeeezzeeE?!?!?!? Oh nooooo!!!! That's too bad.... Bee stings are pretty lame. Although... if you didn't see them... then it could've been anything... like a rat-bee. Or a mutated scorpion attack bee! Who knows... you should probably amputate though just to be safe.
In any case, this week has gone pretty well... Although, even though we do have quite a few investigators and added a few new ones, I feel like there are a lot of investigators in this area which just really aren't progressing very quickly... which is kind of a change from my last areas where if they didn't keep progressing, we kind of just dropped them pretty readily... which I'm not sure is the best thing to do because there are some people that just need time before they will commit to be baptized but a lot of the time I feel like I don't want to keep working with them until they feel prepared enough to at least set a baptismal date. I think I need to work on still keeping a focus on getting these investigators baptized while also being patient enough to realize that perhaps they do need some time before they will commit to taking that step. I just need to remember that that really is my focus and not just go over to talk with them or share a message about the gospel that wouldn't really do a whole lot for their progression.
We still managed to get a fairly high amount of member present lessons which is great although it seems like in this area there's not much excuse not to have them because we have quite a few members willing to come to our lessons who have cars. Also, our church attendance was way better this week which was great (5! Hurrah!). Elder Luo and I really emphasized with our investigators the importance of church attendance which I think really helped.
We do feel, however, that as a companionship and a zone we really need to focus on getting more baptismal dates and being more bold in inviting during the first meeting and having a baptismal date set no later than the second meeting. I went on exchanges with one of the Assistants to the President, Elder Hakim this week which was a really great experience where I learned a lot about missionary work. I think one thing I found that I could really be doing better is teaching for understanding and focusing my teaching on baptism and its importance. Something I really liked about the way Elder Hakim taught is that he really made baptism seem like something everyone should want to do and really seemed to make our investigator and another woman we contacted in English, desire to be baptized which I think was really great because it really is something everyone should desire and I hope to be able to convey that in my teaching. Although Chinese people don't really know what baptism is... but still... pretty cool.
We also have this really funny investigator, who came to church on Sunday incidentally, who's like in her late 70's and calls us about 2-3 times a day to tell us that her daughter isn't answering her phone and that we need to call her to get her to move closer to her here in Union City haha. So random. The other day she called and was like "my nephew is moving to Utah and I don't want him to." And I was like "half my family lives in Utah! Everyone loves Utah! It's the greatest place on Earth!" And she was like "really?! Oh... ok!" Hahaha. It was pretty funny.
Rachel Luo is still doing really well. Pretty golden still. We're gonna try to get her cousin to our lesson with her tonight which we hope works out. Her cousin may not be as interested but we're gonna give it a go and see if we can get him baptized as well.
Anyways, we get fed a lot! Like every night almost. Pretty crazy. Since we go with the English missionaries to dinner appointments so... Also we do have zone conference this week but it's really under the direction of the mission president so we don't really do anything. But we do have to go on exchanges with the district leaders to train them and stuff and I have my first opportunity to do that tonight with Elder Bond, who's the district leader in a Spanish speaking area... so that'll be fun... mostly cause I won't understand what's going on. But I guess we can see if I remember any Spanish from my two years of studying it in South Africa. I'm sure it'll all come back to me....
And Elder Luo does translation during sacrament meeting. Which can be pretty hilarious mostly cause he always brings in the General Conference talks and many times just like reads out of them since the topics in Sacrament Meeting are following the order of the latest general conference and things go pretty smoothly when he uses the talks already writting down haha. In any case, I'd better go now.
Have fun hanging out with Joel this weekend!
Love you! -Ian
P.S. Jogging... is going not so well... So tired in the mornings!!!
In any case, this week has gone pretty well... Although, even though we do have quite a few investigators and added a few new ones, I feel like there are a lot of investigators in this area which just really aren't progressing very quickly... which is kind of a change from my last areas where if they didn't keep progressing, we kind of just dropped them pretty readily... which I'm not sure is the best thing to do because there are some people that just need time before they will commit to be baptized but a lot of the time I feel like I don't want to keep working with them until they feel prepared enough to at least set a baptismal date. I think I need to work on still keeping a focus on getting these investigators baptized while also being patient enough to realize that perhaps they do need some time before they will commit to taking that step. I just need to remember that that really is my focus and not just go over to talk with them or share a message about the gospel that wouldn't really do a whole lot for their progression.
We still managed to get a fairly high amount of member present lessons which is great although it seems like in this area there's not much excuse not to have them because we have quite a few members willing to come to our lessons who have cars. Also, our church attendance was way better this week which was great (5! Hurrah!). Elder Luo and I really emphasized with our investigators the importance of church attendance which I think really helped.
We do feel, however, that as a companionship and a zone we really need to focus on getting more baptismal dates and being more bold in inviting during the first meeting and having a baptismal date set no later than the second meeting. I went on exchanges with one of the Assistants to the President, Elder Hakim this week which was a really great experience where I learned a lot about missionary work. I think one thing I found that I could really be doing better is teaching for understanding and focusing my teaching on baptism and its importance. Something I really liked about the way Elder Hakim taught is that he really made baptism seem like something everyone should want to do and really seemed to make our investigator and another woman we contacted in English, desire to be baptized which I think was really great because it really is something everyone should desire and I hope to be able to convey that in my teaching. Although Chinese people don't really know what baptism is... but still... pretty cool.
We also have this really funny investigator, who came to church on Sunday incidentally, who's like in her late 70's and calls us about 2-3 times a day to tell us that her daughter isn't answering her phone and that we need to call her to get her to move closer to her here in Union City haha. So random. The other day she called and was like "my nephew is moving to Utah and I don't want him to." And I was like "half my family lives in Utah! Everyone loves Utah! It's the greatest place on Earth!" And she was like "really?! Oh... ok!" Hahaha. It was pretty funny.
Rachel Luo is still doing really well. Pretty golden still. We're gonna try to get her cousin to our lesson with her tonight which we hope works out. Her cousin may not be as interested but we're gonna give it a go and see if we can get him baptized as well.
Anyways, we get fed a lot! Like every night almost. Pretty crazy. Since we go with the English missionaries to dinner appointments so... Also we do have zone conference this week but it's really under the direction of the mission president so we don't really do anything. But we do have to go on exchanges with the district leaders to train them and stuff and I have my first opportunity to do that tonight with Elder Bond, who's the district leader in a Spanish speaking area... so that'll be fun... mostly cause I won't understand what's going on. But I guess we can see if I remember any Spanish from my two years of studying it in South Africa. I'm sure it'll all come back to me....
And Elder Luo does translation during sacrament meeting. Which can be pretty hilarious mostly cause he always brings in the General Conference talks and many times just like reads out of them since the topics in Sacrament Meeting are following the order of the latest general conference and things go pretty smoothly when he uses the talks already writting down haha. In any case, I'd better go now.
Have fun hanging out with Joel this weekend!
Love you! -Ian
P.S. Jogging... is going not so well... So tired in the mornings!!!
Monday, June 6, 2011
Behind the Wheel
Hellow!
Howsit going? Sounds like it's going pretty well...
Had a pretty interesting week. Just really getting used to the new area and actually am really liking it. Having a car is a pretty big change and it really kind of changes the nature of missionary work....Mostly makes it way more awesome haha. I'm also really enjoying being back with Elder Luo. I think it's quite different from the last time we were together just because we both have a lot more experience and work and teach in a really unified manner. And being a Zone Leader's not such a huge jump to be honest... although we haven't done any exchanges yet... so I guess that's where the real training and stuff takes place...
We had a struggle getting our investigators to church this week though... Which was weird because we had 6 who promised to come and then they ALL for various reasons, failed to show up. Pretty sad. Elder Luo and I are going to do a better job this week in helping our investigators realize the importance of church attendance and do everything we can to help them attend... The new ward is pretty cool although I did expect that there would be more Chinese members, the population of which, as I understand, would have been almost doubled if all of our investigators and a couple less active members had shown up. I am, however, really excited to get to work in this area with Elder Luo to find more people who are ready for the restored gospel in their lives.
Elder Luo and I had an experience last night which really built my faith that the Lord is preparing people to hear our message. Remember my investigator in San Francisco named Alice Luo who she was always trying to get us over to her house here in Fremont for dinner and didn't quite understand why we couldn't just go although we did tell her about rules quite a few times? In any case, when I got transferred here, I immediately thought of her although after I left San Francisco she didn't really keep meeting with Elder Wu and them mostly cause she's so busy. Anyways, so we went over to her house last night and her father and mother were there along with her niece. Although Alice Luo doesn't have a very strong understanding of the gospel, she has always been really interested, however, last night we decided to focus on her niece, who really showed a lot of interest. As we taught her the first lesson, the Spirit was really strong and she understood it all quite well. At the end when we asked her what she thought about what we had taught she said she believed it and she had felt that it was true as we taught. Needless to say, we set a baptismal date with her before we left for June 26. It was super awesome. Also it was really fun to see Sister Luo again cause she's super funny and awesome.
It seems like every person Elder Luo and I talk to lately is just really interested which is great and a pretty big change from Oakland and San Francisco where it was like 1/50 or 1/100. I think this area has tons of potential and I'm really excited to keep finding and helping our investigators progress to baptism. There's this one supermarket called Marina Foods where there are like tons of Chinese people all the time where we go whenever we don't have a lesson or any other plan and it seems like every time we go there like everyone we talk to is interested. Which is possibly because none of them are from GuangDong haha. I don't know what it is about those GuangDong ren... but I do agree with your decision not to bid on the job there dad.
That would be sweet if you went to Vietnam! Taiwan would be... ok... I guess.. although learning Vietnamese would probably be a bit of a challenge? Think you're up to that? I've heard it's like super hard... although it might be kind of like chinese in some ways since there are a lot of chinese people who live in Vietnam and I think i've heard it spoken before and it's kind of similar... How much Vietnamese do they expect you to speak if you go there though?
Grandma doesn't want to come to California? But the weather is so nice here! And I'm here!
Anyways, I'd better wrap this up so I can go write michelle and joel who both wrote me this week!
Thanks for your emails! I love you!
-Ian
P.S. The 68 woman back in Oakland, Sister Luo, has postponed her baptism indefinitely... which is a bummer and rather perplexes me... but I guess that's the way it goes sometimes... we'll see what Elder Lee and his new companion Elder Ho can do to persuade her to join the church...
Howsit going? Sounds like it's going pretty well...
Had a pretty interesting week. Just really getting used to the new area and actually am really liking it. Having a car is a pretty big change and it really kind of changes the nature of missionary work....Mostly makes it way more awesome haha. I'm also really enjoying being back with Elder Luo. I think it's quite different from the last time we were together just because we both have a lot more experience and work and teach in a really unified manner. And being a Zone Leader's not such a huge jump to be honest... although we haven't done any exchanges yet... so I guess that's where the real training and stuff takes place...
We had a struggle getting our investigators to church this week though... Which was weird because we had 6 who promised to come and then they ALL for various reasons, failed to show up. Pretty sad. Elder Luo and I are going to do a better job this week in helping our investigators realize the importance of church attendance and do everything we can to help them attend... The new ward is pretty cool although I did expect that there would be more Chinese members, the population of which, as I understand, would have been almost doubled if all of our investigators and a couple less active members had shown up. I am, however, really excited to get to work in this area with Elder Luo to find more people who are ready for the restored gospel in their lives.
Elder Luo and I had an experience last night which really built my faith that the Lord is preparing people to hear our message. Remember my investigator in San Francisco named Alice Luo who she was always trying to get us over to her house here in Fremont for dinner and didn't quite understand why we couldn't just go although we did tell her about rules quite a few times? In any case, when I got transferred here, I immediately thought of her although after I left San Francisco she didn't really keep meeting with Elder Wu and them mostly cause she's so busy. Anyways, so we went over to her house last night and her father and mother were there along with her niece. Although Alice Luo doesn't have a very strong understanding of the gospel, she has always been really interested, however, last night we decided to focus on her niece, who really showed a lot of interest. As we taught her the first lesson, the Spirit was really strong and she understood it all quite well. At the end when we asked her what she thought about what we had taught she said she believed it and she had felt that it was true as we taught. Needless to say, we set a baptismal date with her before we left for June 26. It was super awesome. Also it was really fun to see Sister Luo again cause she's super funny and awesome.
It seems like every person Elder Luo and I talk to lately is just really interested which is great and a pretty big change from Oakland and San Francisco where it was like 1/50 or 1/100. I think this area has tons of potential and I'm really excited to keep finding and helping our investigators progress to baptism. There's this one supermarket called Marina Foods where there are like tons of Chinese people all the time where we go whenever we don't have a lesson or any other plan and it seems like every time we go there like everyone we talk to is interested. Which is possibly because none of them are from GuangDong haha. I don't know what it is about those GuangDong ren... but I do agree with your decision not to bid on the job there dad.
That would be sweet if you went to Vietnam! Taiwan would be... ok... I guess.. although learning Vietnamese would probably be a bit of a challenge? Think you're up to that? I've heard it's like super hard... although it might be kind of like chinese in some ways since there are a lot of chinese people who live in Vietnam and I think i've heard it spoken before and it's kind of similar... How much Vietnamese do they expect you to speak if you go there though?
Grandma doesn't want to come to California? But the weather is so nice here! And I'm here!
Anyways, I'd better wrap this up so I can go write michelle and joel who both wrote me this week!
Thanks for your emails! I love you!
-Ian
P.S. The 68 woman back in Oakland, Sister Luo, has postponed her baptism indefinitely... which is a bummer and rather perplexes me... but I guess that's the way it goes sometimes... we'll see what Elder Lee and his new companion Elder Ho can do to persuade her to join the church...
Monday, May 30, 2011
In the Zone...Leader
Hey Mom and dad! Howsit?!
That's too bad you can't go to Ukraine mom... Luggage handlers are pretty important... What is Michelle thinking going without one!?!... Although I wouldn't probably recommend you... considering the San Francisco fiasco of the past couple days :D. It was good to hear from you though on that day that that airplane flew by and I heard your silent voice saying hi and stuff.
So in other news, I'm being made Zone Leader in Hayward which is exciting I suppose. I actually am pretty excited to go there since I'm gonna be companions with.... ELDER LUO AGAIN!!! Hahaha. Pretty funny. Elder Luo is the man though so it'll be really fun... I just hope I don't fall into trainee mode again after being three transfers of senior companion in charge man. Point is, I've heard there are like no GuangDong people and lots of Northerners there which is really exciting cause, not that I'm racist or anything, but I'm really tired of GuangDong people saying things to me such as "M SAAEEEK! MOU HENK CHOIIIII!!! SEEEN FAT GAOUUU!!!" And people who speak mandarin are just much easier to communicate with and generally much more receptive. Although my Cantonese was coming along pretty well here... not that it was that useful since I could only really contact in Cantonese but... still... pretty funny language.
Had a fairly disappointing week this week... but I think that's just because of how successful the week before was since we still had more lessons than we have had all the weeks this transfer except for last week so I can't complain too much. We did have quite a few lessons fall through this week though which was rather annoying but I guess that's to be expected in missionary work. Although something I've decided to start doing more of is just letting our investigators and those we set up appointments with really have a concept of the value of our time so they don't think they can just not come to our appointments whenever they want. So I guess we'll see how that works out. In any case, we had a disappointing week with regards to our investigator sister Meng. She seems to be encountering a lot of opposition that's really testing her testimony. Which I suppose is good to have before the baptism rather than after but is really frustrating in any case. We're not entirely sure as to the exact nature of the concerns but there are definitely a lot there. Unfortunately we were only able to meet with her once this week since she got really busy all of a sudden but I hope that Elder Lee and Elder Ho will be able to keep working with her in helping her progress towards baptism. And perhaps give her a little more time and not rush her into something she feels unprepared for... which is tough for me to do since I'm generally rather impatient with people who want to put off baptism but I think is probably necessary in her case.
Our other investigator with a baptismal date, Sister Luo, is doing very well. Despite the fact she is 68 years old, she is in excellent shape and has a really active mind. We ran into her as we were running around the lake the other day and she seemed to be running faster than we were haha. She is building stronger and stronger faith and although she mentioned some concerns about her baptism this sunday being too soon, I think they are fairly easily resolvable.
We've had to drop a few investigators this week as well just because they aren't very willing to meet with us again which is always frustrating but rather necessary and probably is a signal to me that I need to improve my teaching skills to really get them more engaged. Although sometimes it really is kind of out of our hands since we had an excellent lesson the other day with these two high school students and they have since stood us up and ignored our phone calls so... guess you never know.
On another note, we had a pretty hilarious church meeting yesterday. First off, in sacrament meeting we had this Cantonese speaker give a talk which nobody understood and then there was this return missionary from Dallas Texas who's dad had remarried a ShangHai lady so he was in the Chinese branch giving a kind of homecoming address. I translated for his talk which went pretty well on the translation part (I defnitely have seen the Lord's help in my learning Chinese here, kind of Shenqi actually...) but the talk was just really hilarious. He was talking about charity and shared this hilarious story about how one time he got 60 dollars from home for Christmas and then took his district to lunch at a buffet. And then told the waitress he didn't want his friends to know it was him paying but they found out anyways but it was ok cause he still felt good about it. And through doing this, he learned a valuable lesson about charity. Pretty funny. Then we had this combined relief society/Priesthood meeting for the third hour in which we had a couple from the stake that came and talked to us about the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous which the church has adopted and how it's basically a cure-all for everything. Just such a random meeting that seemed like it would've been more in place at a workshop or something.
Whatever the case, yes I did get that stuff in the mail and thanks for reminding me cause I should probably send that shuffle back to you today I guess. We're going out to eat at this really great ice cream place in Piedmont with the senior couple who is in our district, the Mayos. They are awesome. Don't know if I've told you about them yet but I think I could probably spend paragraphs trying to describe them and still not do them justice.
Alright, well I hope you get the pirate crisis worked out there dad. Sounds pretty HAIRY!
Thanks for your letters!
I love you!
-Ian
That's too bad you can't go to Ukraine mom... Luggage handlers are pretty important... What is Michelle thinking going without one!?!... Although I wouldn't probably recommend you... considering the San Francisco fiasco of the past couple days :D. It was good to hear from you though on that day that that airplane flew by and I heard your silent voice saying hi and stuff.
So in other news, I'm being made Zone Leader in Hayward which is exciting I suppose. I actually am pretty excited to go there since I'm gonna be companions with.... ELDER LUO AGAIN!!! Hahaha. Pretty funny. Elder Luo is the man though so it'll be really fun... I just hope I don't fall into trainee mode again after being three transfers of senior companion in charge man. Point is, I've heard there are like no GuangDong people and lots of Northerners there which is really exciting cause, not that I'm racist or anything, but I'm really tired of GuangDong people saying things to me such as "M SAAEEEK! MOU HENK CHOIIIII!!! SEEEN FAT GAOUUU!!!" And people who speak mandarin are just much easier to communicate with and generally much more receptive. Although my Cantonese was coming along pretty well here... not that it was that useful since I could only really contact in Cantonese but... still... pretty funny language.
Had a fairly disappointing week this week... but I think that's just because of how successful the week before was since we still had more lessons than we have had all the weeks this transfer except for last week so I can't complain too much. We did have quite a few lessons fall through this week though which was rather annoying but I guess that's to be expected in missionary work. Although something I've decided to start doing more of is just letting our investigators and those we set up appointments with really have a concept of the value of our time so they don't think they can just not come to our appointments whenever they want. So I guess we'll see how that works out. In any case, we had a disappointing week with regards to our investigator sister Meng. She seems to be encountering a lot of opposition that's really testing her testimony. Which I suppose is good to have before the baptism rather than after but is really frustrating in any case. We're not entirely sure as to the exact nature of the concerns but there are definitely a lot there. Unfortunately we were only able to meet with her once this week since she got really busy all of a sudden but I hope that Elder Lee and Elder Ho will be able to keep working with her in helping her progress towards baptism. And perhaps give her a little more time and not rush her into something she feels unprepared for... which is tough for me to do since I'm generally rather impatient with people who want to put off baptism but I think is probably necessary in her case.
Our other investigator with a baptismal date, Sister Luo, is doing very well. Despite the fact she is 68 years old, she is in excellent shape and has a really active mind. We ran into her as we were running around the lake the other day and she seemed to be running faster than we were haha. She is building stronger and stronger faith and although she mentioned some concerns about her baptism this sunday being too soon, I think they are fairly easily resolvable.
We've had to drop a few investigators this week as well just because they aren't very willing to meet with us again which is always frustrating but rather necessary and probably is a signal to me that I need to improve my teaching skills to really get them more engaged. Although sometimes it really is kind of out of our hands since we had an excellent lesson the other day with these two high school students and they have since stood us up and ignored our phone calls so... guess you never know.
On another note, we had a pretty hilarious church meeting yesterday. First off, in sacrament meeting we had this Cantonese speaker give a talk which nobody understood and then there was this return missionary from Dallas Texas who's dad had remarried a ShangHai lady so he was in the Chinese branch giving a kind of homecoming address. I translated for his talk which went pretty well on the translation part (I defnitely have seen the Lord's help in my learning Chinese here, kind of Shenqi actually...) but the talk was just really hilarious. He was talking about charity and shared this hilarious story about how one time he got 60 dollars from home for Christmas and then took his district to lunch at a buffet. And then told the waitress he didn't want his friends to know it was him paying but they found out anyways but it was ok cause he still felt good about it. And through doing this, he learned a valuable lesson about charity. Pretty funny. Then we had this combined relief society/Priesthood meeting for the third hour in which we had a couple from the stake that came and talked to us about the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous which the church has adopted and how it's basically a cure-all for everything. Just such a random meeting that seemed like it would've been more in place at a workshop or something.
Whatever the case, yes I did get that stuff in the mail and thanks for reminding me cause I should probably send that shuffle back to you today I guess. We're going out to eat at this really great ice cream place in Piedmont with the senior couple who is in our district, the Mayos. They are awesome. Don't know if I've told you about them yet but I think I could probably spend paragraphs trying to describe them and still not do them justice.
Alright, well I hope you get the pirate crisis worked out there dad. Sounds pretty HAIRY!
Thanks for your letters!
I love you!
-Ian
Monday, May 23, 2011
The End of the World...or almost...
Herrowwww! Happy Birthday dad!!!
Man that judgement day thing was publicized really really well. Everyone talked about it this week except mom! At least it didn't actually happen so you can still celebrate your birthday this year... especially since I sent a letter...
I didn't know he was based in Oakland! Haha! That's awesome. There were loads of billboards around advertising the Judgement though. Can't say I was too surprised at the result considering how the Bible says that no one knows or can know... which kind of makes me wonder what Harold Camping is reading... He probably wrote his own book of scripture... I guess this is why we need a restoration of the true church of Jesus Christ. Good thing we had one...
Had a very very excellent week. Probably the best week I have had on my mission so far. At least in terms of lessons taught and finding new investigators and almost every key indicator...except maybe church... I don't even know how it happened but Elder Lee and I just taught so many lessons. Last week we had a total of 8 and this week we had 18. Pretty big increase. I guess I'd have to ascribe it to better planning and more following up. I really believe the Lord is blessing us in this area though. I can truly feel the Spirit working through us as we teach and helping our investigators to progress.
Lately, it has really become apparent to me the importance of commitments like reading the Book of Mormon and praying daily. We visited a less active last night who is the father of a really great member and who's wife is also active. He's also from my hometown Beijing haha so it was fun to talk with him. However, as we began teaching, it quickly became really apparent that he had joined the church for friends and not really for God or out of any actual conversion. Because many of his friends are now less active or have moved away, he's just kind of stopped coming. We invited him to start praying daily and reading the Book of Mormon which he committed to do. I'm confident if he does follow through with it, it will truly increase his faith and cause him to actually become converted. We're gonna follow up with him today and a couple more times this week. It also was kind of a wake-up call to me as to the importance of making sure my investigators really are doing those simple things that will ensure that they develop real faith and experience true conversion because it would appear that that was one point that the missionaries who worked with brother Li overlooked during the teaching process...
We added a whole host of new investigators this week including 2 families, a couple english class students, two high school students who recently immigrated to the States (had a really great lesson with them yesterday), and an older man from Taiwan who's in the states for a year visiting his kids. We also did a lot better finding members to come along to our lessons. Overall, just a very good week.
I think on the whole that being a missionary really has been such a growing experience. I think I really have the confidence to succeed and get things done. Something Elder Lee and I have been working on lately is having more unity in our teaching. In some lessons, our investigator will say a lot of stuff that Elder Lee doesn't really totally understand and so the language barrier is definitely a factor but overall I probably just talk too much. Plus some investigators just really really like to talk and then I feel like I have to step in and take control or the lesson will go who knows where... not where we want it in any case.
We taught this really hilarious guy from PinDong, Taiwan yesterday (which incidentally, was probably both in your's and joels mission dad). He came to church and then we taught him afterwards and he was saying all this stuff like "I think church is too long and you should definitely start off by teaching people the gospel and then have them come to church cause getting them to come to church straight off might just be too much and then they won't understand anything and just be really confused and uninterested... I mean.. for me, I can accept it and I can understand... but this is just a suggestion for other people to try to spread the gospel to..." Of course he was obviously talking about himself but I was like "yeah I totally agree, the only reason we invited you to church right off the bat is because we know that you're a man of deep understanding and that you'd really be able to handle the 3 hour church experience... for other people I definitely agree with your sugestion that we should prep them more (we really should've prepped him better but didn't really have much of a chance...) but for you we knew that you were already advanced enough to be able to handle it..." I basically just had to kind of play off his ego (which is really really big!) the whole lesson so that we could start teaching him... we'll work on humility later haha. Also, everytime we introduced him to another person from Taiwan, he was like "oh you're from the RICH part!!! TAIBEI!!! See!?! I'm not welcome here!!! From poverty-stricken pindong!!!" It was pretty funny. Anyways, we set up another appt. with him for wednesday so it should be alright. Anyways, his daughter owns this frozen yogurt place in chinatown which is where we met him so hopefully we can get some free frozen yogurt out of it... which is the only real reason we're teaching him anyway... Jk!
Anyways, I'd better go write the Joel and Michelle since they both wrote me this week! Well I should say Joel finally wrote me! But it's always really great to hear from you and it seems like things are going pretty well. I hope you have a great fantabulous week! And Birthday!
Love,
Ian
Man that judgement day thing was publicized really really well. Everyone talked about it this week except mom! At least it didn't actually happen so you can still celebrate your birthday this year... especially since I sent a letter...
I didn't know he was based in Oakland! Haha! That's awesome. There were loads of billboards around advertising the Judgement though. Can't say I was too surprised at the result considering how the Bible says that no one knows or can know... which kind of makes me wonder what Harold Camping is reading... He probably wrote his own book of scripture... I guess this is why we need a restoration of the true church of Jesus Christ. Good thing we had one...
Had a very very excellent week. Probably the best week I have had on my mission so far. At least in terms of lessons taught and finding new investigators and almost every key indicator...except maybe church... I don't even know how it happened but Elder Lee and I just taught so many lessons. Last week we had a total of 8 and this week we had 18. Pretty big increase. I guess I'd have to ascribe it to better planning and more following up. I really believe the Lord is blessing us in this area though. I can truly feel the Spirit working through us as we teach and helping our investigators to progress.
Lately, it has really become apparent to me the importance of commitments like reading the Book of Mormon and praying daily. We visited a less active last night who is the father of a really great member and who's wife is also active. He's also from my hometown Beijing haha so it was fun to talk with him. However, as we began teaching, it quickly became really apparent that he had joined the church for friends and not really for God or out of any actual conversion. Because many of his friends are now less active or have moved away, he's just kind of stopped coming. We invited him to start praying daily and reading the Book of Mormon which he committed to do. I'm confident if he does follow through with it, it will truly increase his faith and cause him to actually become converted. We're gonna follow up with him today and a couple more times this week. It also was kind of a wake-up call to me as to the importance of making sure my investigators really are doing those simple things that will ensure that they develop real faith and experience true conversion because it would appear that that was one point that the missionaries who worked with brother Li overlooked during the teaching process...
We added a whole host of new investigators this week including 2 families, a couple english class students, two high school students who recently immigrated to the States (had a really great lesson with them yesterday), and an older man from Taiwan who's in the states for a year visiting his kids. We also did a lot better finding members to come along to our lessons. Overall, just a very good week.
I think on the whole that being a missionary really has been such a growing experience. I think I really have the confidence to succeed and get things done. Something Elder Lee and I have been working on lately is having more unity in our teaching. In some lessons, our investigator will say a lot of stuff that Elder Lee doesn't really totally understand and so the language barrier is definitely a factor but overall I probably just talk too much. Plus some investigators just really really like to talk and then I feel like I have to step in and take control or the lesson will go who knows where... not where we want it in any case.
We taught this really hilarious guy from PinDong, Taiwan yesterday (which incidentally, was probably both in your's and joels mission dad). He came to church and then we taught him afterwards and he was saying all this stuff like "I think church is too long and you should definitely start off by teaching people the gospel and then have them come to church cause getting them to come to church straight off might just be too much and then they won't understand anything and just be really confused and uninterested... I mean.. for me, I can accept it and I can understand... but this is just a suggestion for other people to try to spread the gospel to..." Of course he was obviously talking about himself but I was like "yeah I totally agree, the only reason we invited you to church right off the bat is because we know that you're a man of deep understanding and that you'd really be able to handle the 3 hour church experience... for other people I definitely agree with your sugestion that we should prep them more (we really should've prepped him better but didn't really have much of a chance...) but for you we knew that you were already advanced enough to be able to handle it..." I basically just had to kind of play off his ego (which is really really big!) the whole lesson so that we could start teaching him... we'll work on humility later haha. Also, everytime we introduced him to another person from Taiwan, he was like "oh you're from the RICH part!!! TAIBEI!!! See!?! I'm not welcome here!!! From poverty-stricken pindong!!!" It was pretty funny. Anyways, we set up another appt. with him for wednesday so it should be alright. Anyways, his daughter owns this frozen yogurt place in chinatown which is where we met him so hopefully we can get some free frozen yogurt out of it... which is the only real reason we're teaching him anyway... Jk!
Anyways, I'd better go write the Joel and Michelle since they both wrote me this week! Well I should say Joel finally wrote me! But it's always really great to hear from you and it seems like things are going pretty well. I hope you have a great fantabulous week! And Birthday!
Love,
Ian
Monday, May 16, 2011
To Be Obedient or Not to Be
That sounds like a pretty fun backpacking trip, Mom! Backpacking is pretty hard... trust me... the merit badge was waaayyy more trouble than it was worth haha. Especially since I already had swimming which fulfilled the requirement.... but it sounds like you had a fairly wild adventure...a couple of bear sightings and perhaps bear attack.... especially since, if that other guy was to be believed, they were "a runnin'" Which sounds pretty menacing to me... Runnin' bears... which sounds like a movie title or something... Haha Mark told me his mom would always go to sleep at like 9 or 9:30 every night and never ever stayed up so I guess 11pm is pretty crazy.
I can't believe anyone would ever run 100 miles voluntarily. I could see like a forced march where you have the Nazis or the Communists at your tail trying to kill you and you must run over the border 100 miles away to safety before they overtake you and ship you off to Auchwitz... that kind of 100 mile run... but it wouldn't surprise me if those people actually PAID to run that kind of a distance. I get tired enough as it is just running 4 miles every other day.... Pretty crazy. I can't imagine having run 50 miles and then have someone say to me "halfway thereeeeee!!!!!" I'd probably punch them.
That sounds pretty cool about the bookmarks. How did they make them? I guess that'd be cool to hear what they came up with to suggest to members since we haven't been very successful getting referrals lately. Although street contacting chinese people is fairly effective anyways and our english class is just getting better and better.
Elder Lee and I had a pretty great week although we were apart for a lot of it since I got invited to the leadership training conference again even though I'm not really much of a leader aside from being senior companion but I'm assuming they're about to make me district leader once Elder Read goes home in a couple of weeks so I'd better start preparing now. It was a really cool conference where we talked about a lot of different things. We had trainings each afternoon (it was 3 days) on receiving revelation through prayer, the book of mormon, and church attendance and why it is important to get our investigators to do all those things. We also talked about other stuff like the gathering of Israel and how to begin teaching and other skills like that.
One thing President Wade said is that last year, North America out-baptized all the international missions combined! Hooray! Also that California did really well despite the fact that baptisms per missionary went down slightly in 12/16 missions, but went up so much in ours and I guess 3 other missions to outweigh all other 12. Pretty cool. Our mission went from 3 baptisms per missionary to 4 in the last year which is pretty huge. Then we talked about why our mission has gotten so much better lately and came up with 4 things: 1 - obedience. Before Pres. Wade got here, our mission was like apostate city since the mission president here never sent anyone home and I guess was kind of a pushover or just let things go... Also San Francisco wasn't much better apparently. Once Pres. Wade got here there was like a civil war in the mission where a whole bunch of missionaries were like resisting becoming obedient but after a while and some sent-home missionaries, obedience finally won out and now our mission is super obedient and awesome. 2 - focus on baptism. 3 - How to begin teaching. Before Pres. Wade got here, they had this thing called BRT which was "Building relationships of trust" which we've seen in the area book sometimes and looks like the biggest waste of time ever where missionaries just go over and try to become their friends before even teaching anything about the gospel. Basically just a stupid practice that was pretty entrenched in the mission but now we've switched to how they do it in Preach My Gospel and setting good expectations and just setting up a different kind of relationship which really is so much better. It explains why so many former investigators have such weird concepts of who we are and what we're doing when we go to teach them. Finally, number 4 was a focus on the Doctrine of Christ... which only really happened rather recently with the last leadership training but is pretty cool. Anyways, pretty good conference.
We had 3 investigators come to church this week and they all really loved it! We had Sister Meng who is already like the most golden investigator ever and super stable. Also Sister Luo, a 70+ woman from JiangXi, which was her frist time at church. I contacted her last sunday in Chinatown and she was like "I've been to so many different churches already and just can't find one that I think is true." I was like "I think this person is very likely prepared to hear what we have to say" haha. She seems super golden as well and reallly really loved church and even stayed for the baptism afterwards. Finally there was... BRENDA Li.... Although she's not that much like you, she has 2 crazy and very full of energy sons who were rather wild during sacrament meeting but really really liked primary so it's very likely that she will come back which is great. Elder Lee and I were just praying the whole time that she would have a good experience at church and it really paid off. The Lord really does answer prayers.
Thanks for your emails this week mom and dad! I hope you have a great week!
Love you!
-Ian
I can't believe anyone would ever run 100 miles voluntarily. I could see like a forced march where you have the Nazis or the Communists at your tail trying to kill you and you must run over the border 100 miles away to safety before they overtake you and ship you off to Auchwitz... that kind of 100 mile run... but it wouldn't surprise me if those people actually PAID to run that kind of a distance. I get tired enough as it is just running 4 miles every other day.... Pretty crazy. I can't imagine having run 50 miles and then have someone say to me "halfway thereeeeee!!!!!" I'd probably punch them.
That sounds pretty cool about the bookmarks. How did they make them? I guess that'd be cool to hear what they came up with to suggest to members since we haven't been very successful getting referrals lately. Although street contacting chinese people is fairly effective anyways and our english class is just getting better and better.
Elder Lee and I had a pretty great week although we were apart for a lot of it since I got invited to the leadership training conference again even though I'm not really much of a leader aside from being senior companion but I'm assuming they're about to make me district leader once Elder Read goes home in a couple of weeks so I'd better start preparing now. It was a really cool conference where we talked about a lot of different things. We had trainings each afternoon (it was 3 days) on receiving revelation through prayer, the book of mormon, and church attendance and why it is important to get our investigators to do all those things. We also talked about other stuff like the gathering of Israel and how to begin teaching and other skills like that.
One thing President Wade said is that last year, North America out-baptized all the international missions combined! Hooray! Also that California did really well despite the fact that baptisms per missionary went down slightly in 12/16 missions, but went up so much in ours and I guess 3 other missions to outweigh all other 12. Pretty cool. Our mission went from 3 baptisms per missionary to 4 in the last year which is pretty huge. Then we talked about why our mission has gotten so much better lately and came up with 4 things: 1 - obedience. Before Pres. Wade got here, our mission was like apostate city since the mission president here never sent anyone home and I guess was kind of a pushover or just let things go... Also San Francisco wasn't much better apparently. Once Pres. Wade got here there was like a civil war in the mission where a whole bunch of missionaries were like resisting becoming obedient but after a while and some sent-home missionaries, obedience finally won out and now our mission is super obedient and awesome. 2 - focus on baptism. 3 - How to begin teaching. Before Pres. Wade got here, they had this thing called BRT which was "Building relationships of trust" which we've seen in the area book sometimes and looks like the biggest waste of time ever where missionaries just go over and try to become their friends before even teaching anything about the gospel. Basically just a stupid practice that was pretty entrenched in the mission but now we've switched to how they do it in Preach My Gospel and setting good expectations and just setting up a different kind of relationship which really is so much better. It explains why so many former investigators have such weird concepts of who we are and what we're doing when we go to teach them. Finally, number 4 was a focus on the Doctrine of Christ... which only really happened rather recently with the last leadership training but is pretty cool. Anyways, pretty good conference.
We had 3 investigators come to church this week and they all really loved it! We had Sister Meng who is already like the most golden investigator ever and super stable. Also Sister Luo, a 70+ woman from JiangXi, which was her frist time at church. I contacted her last sunday in Chinatown and she was like "I've been to so many different churches already and just can't find one that I think is true." I was like "I think this person is very likely prepared to hear what we have to say" haha. She seems super golden as well and reallly really loved church and even stayed for the baptism afterwards. Finally there was... BRENDA Li.... Although she's not that much like you, she has 2 crazy and very full of energy sons who were rather wild during sacrament meeting but really really liked primary so it's very likely that she will come back which is great. Elder Lee and I were just praying the whole time that she would have a good experience at church and it really paid off. The Lord really does answer prayers.
Thanks for your emails this week mom and dad! I hope you have a great week!
Love you!
-Ian
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