Sunday, November 25, 2012

11/19/2012

HALLOOOOOO! :D

OK, so you rember that one time I told you about the couple we baptized? Well, this week, we were talking to them... and they're hilarious. It's funny because they keep calling my companion fat hahahahahaha. and then my companion asked them what they thought of all the missionaries. it was so funny, because they tried replying in english and it was super fun :D they are still not very good at english, but they try really hard. "What about elder Monsen?" "um... still ok" "hahaha, ok, Elder lee?"  "um... cute" "hahaha Elder Davies?" "Hmmm... big" "bahahahaha Elder Allan" "Fat" "what about Elder Chen?" I won't tell you what they said about me because it was very bad. :D bahahahaha.  I think I'm getting much darker in this sun so it's pretty funny sometimes. Only one person this week guessed that i was from Africa. That's an improvement :D at least it makes shocking them much easier... "WHAAAA?! Why is this African Speaking chinese to me?!"

:D

OK. Well also in other news We eat a lot of eggs. and I don't think the eggs this morning were fully cooked. so I ate some of your diarrhea medicine. :D  I feel good now. though I still have so much of it. please don't send me more diarrhea medicine. I'm quite alright.

Oh. I contacted this lady on the street for the 5th time now, and she really likes us. so we just say hi to her or give her the eyebrow raise. Then she wants to buy something for us but we turn her down because we don't have time. We've been trying to use our time as efficiently as we possibly can.  There's not enough time in the day to go out and work our hardest and everything. We still have a long ways to go.  Because all the elders are working so hard, but not getting the results we'd like, I decided that it wasn't enough just to work hard. We need to work smart, so if you have any organizational ideas that could help us out, please let us know :D

I felt that it was very productive reorganizing our areas.  Bishop wanted to meet with me to organize the correlation between him and the missionary force in his ward, so I was able to spend a long time preparing information about the area and realized that nobody has actually sat down and reorganized anything at all. We have a lot of members taht nobody has ever heard of, but have been floating around the area for ages.I began assigning fellowships with the missionaries and hopefully in a minute it'll all be back to organization.

Something I've really been working on is to put myself int he shoes of the person I'm working with. it's really helped me become much more organized and a little less hectic. :) I hope the missionaries can have a better image so that we can have more member interaction.  With bishop, I realized that the presence of 10 missionaries in the ward can be a great blessing, but it can also be a burden if the missionaries are unorganized.  There are so many things that we need to do in this ward, and it all kinda fell on me for some reason. THough I love brother orth!

SO this week, I spent every night organizing... :( therefore... no really exciting pictures... though I shall attach two of the ones I took.  The first picture should be of me holding up all the pamphlets I handed out. We went out with a challenge to hand out as many pamphlets as possible, and we did very well. We get pamphlets in packs of 25, and that day I only gave pamphlets to people I had a legitimate conversation with... I handed out a lot of them :) I felt really happy. It's become a game because I've been trying to find ways to motivate all the missionaries in our flat to go find. That was one of the biggest realizations I've ever had. NO AREA IS EVER BUILT!!!! Even though ELder Allan and I had a really good teaching pool, we still need to find. the future of the area is found in the work exerted now.

The other picture is of the lightning storm. That was at 10:29 at night, when it was pitch black, but the night was bright as because the lightning was super crazy that night. :) It was really hard to get asleep because the lightning storm was CRAZY!!!!!! hahahah, it was so much fun. When we were biking, we got caught out in the rain, and it was the best! I had so much fun. And then my companion had a bird poop on his gears :D bahahahaha. it was pretty funny.

now back to business.  This week, we had a surprise mission conference from Elder Pearson of the 70.  He was really exciting to have. He would pound on the podium with his fist and scream into the mic. to get our attention and understanding. It was really crazy.  So much happened this week that was crazy and just goes to show taht the work is going forward whether you like it or not. :) In his talk, Elder Pearson said that a few years ago, there was only 1 stake in all of queensland (All of Brisbane Australia Mission) and now, we have 10 stakes!!!!!! look at that! On sunday, they went from 7 stakes to 10 stakes and called new stake presidents and everything. New wards were formed, and it's a massive change in the mission. We have to form a few more zones now and President is scrambling to reorganize the missionaries. It's so crazy to be here right now! 10 STAKES!!! he said that if the growth continued at the pace it is right now, the church would have 100 stakes in 30 years. O.o!!!!!! We need to rise up!

Something really awesome that I learned from his training is to lift up our eyes!  All we need to do is lift up our eyes. It was so incredible! GAH and it's so hard to explain. I was going crazy during the meeting. I'll have to show you my notes when I get home later. which is actually in a very long time, though sister chen doesn't have much time left. anyway.  He said that EVERYTHING BIG starts with a vision. EVERYTHING. and so how can we have a vision if we don't lift up our eyes and see what God really has in store for this work. The creation of these two new stakes was a real eye opener.  The thing is that we baptize a lot, but we don't see too much change in the climate of the church down here. We still go out, nobody knows us as elders and we talk to people who don't ahve any understanding of the church at all.  What has our work done? It's created these new stakes and I think the vision of the mission suddenly broadened. What if... we doubled our baptisms. We could increase the rate of the ward growth and stake growth and everything.  GAH there was so much talk about the growth of the church! LETS DO THIS!!!!! AAAAAHHHH!


well, I love you all!!!!!

JIA YOU JIA YOU JIA YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Elder Chen






11/12/2012

WASAI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

VERINA IS GOING TO TAICHUNG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I"M SO EXCITED!!!!!! SO SO SO SO SO SOS OS OS OS OS OS SO OS OS SOSO SO SO Excited! YAY VERINA!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't think I'm able to convey that over the email. When Brother Orth called me to tell me about her call, I started SCREAMING!!!!!!!!!!! It was soooo crazy. I'm glad it wasn't Temple Square :) hahaha, Verina!!!!!!!!!! You're going to do so well in Taiwan!!! I LOVE YOU!!!! YOu are the greatest!!!!! EVER!!!!!!!!!!  You know Marina? She even called up from gold coast to let me know about your call! hahahaha, the members all love you already, and they don't even know it.

We just baptized Two people from taizhong on saturday. It was really funny. We found their friends on the street. While we were waiting for our investigator to come to the bus stop to meet with us, I decided to talk to these people over here and it turns out they were really really cool. Our investigator never came, so we decided to teach them instead :). Later, we invited them over to an activity where they brought their friends Cindy and Leon! :) THEY ARE THE COOLEST!!!!!!!!!! It was so funny. We were really worried about the law of chastity cuz they were living in the same room, but then, it just turns out that they're married :) so it's all good :) YAY! and now they're baptized. When you go to Taizhong as a missionary and you find people baptized in Brisbane :D ask who baptized them!!! :) YAY! it might've been us. I think I've sent three or four people back up to Taiwan. :) We'll baptize more soon! ahhaha

I still can't get over the fact that Verina's going on a mission. you're way too cool for school!

MOM!!! I bet you're so super duper excited about it all! I wish I could've been there to see mom's face. hahaha, that would've been crazy! Mom is so funny. Cindy and Leon thought you looked super smart hahahahaha. That was different. I think it was just because they're from Taiwan as well and understand that old taiwanese people still look really young. hahaha, so they just said you looked smart. :)

DAD is the man! thanks for supporting us all out here. I know it can't be very easy to have three missionaries out at a time, but we're super glad you could help us! I don't know what we'd do without you :)

Jeff is still the man. I wish I could skype every sunday, but i'm glad I get to concentrate on teh work.

Sister Chen is a MONSTER in Taiwan!! She's super cool and my ouxiang.  hahahaha.  I want to baptize somebody from taipei and then send them to Sister chen to say hi, it'l be much easier now that there's going to be two sister chen's (excluding the ones not related to us) in taiwan. :)

VERINA VERINA VERINA, you get enough because that whole first part was for you. :) zhu ni shenti jiankang, Gongxifacai, zao sheng guizi.... bahahahaha. :) I'm learning congratulations from this kid at church ahhaha. so everytime I see him I tell him those three and he laughs :).  He's super fun. I think he's like 6 years old and THE MAN! it's so funny to watch him jibber jabber away in Chinese and then switch into an australian accented english. hahahaha, he likes to play magic tricks and ninja destruction. His mom is super cool because she's super duper active and takes care of all our recent converts taht go into relief society.

JONJON!!!! is he really getting a drivers license?! what in the world?! crazy head. Soon he'll be dating. that'll be crazy. He'll be teaching me some dating tips by the time I get home bahaha.

Well, now our ward has 10 missionaries, and it's crazy. so our bishop wanted us to set down and organize ourselves before we start baptizing like crazy. President really wants so many members in this area that it's funny.  We've been working really hard and baptizing a lot. It's so fun. He's starting to pull al the chinse missionaries from all the areas, and focus them in EMP.  hahahaha. SOOON we shall have a branch up and running. We already have many members, but we just need to activate a lot of them and make sure the rest of them don't go back to China or taiwan or Malaysia. it's super cool.  the malasian members are crazy. they can speak cantonese, mandarin, and malay (SPelling?!)

hmmm... what else has happened? There are a lot of chinese people in this area :) I love it.

OK So the pictures :) the first picture is of Tom, me, Leon, and my Son, elder Allan (his FIRST baptism ever!!! YAY!) Tom is the man, mentioned later, leon just got baptized with his wife, and yeah....

SECOND PICTURE!!!! LEON AND CINDY!!! they are in love :) and married! and they love each other. and are married to each other <(^o^)> YAY FOR ETERNAL MARRAIGE! The lesson this sunday was perfect because it was on the TEMPLE! and we had three married people int he class with us and it was PERFECT! I mean three couples... not three people... no we do no practice odd-numbered marriages... The church is still true.

THIRD PICTURE AND LAST!!!! SO... I'm not sure who sent this handkerchief thing to me but I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!! I wear it as my thinking cap (thank you jeff) to keep my hair down when I go out. Everybody says I look like a black pirate :) hahahaha. Too many people here guess that I'm from Africa because my skin is really dark now.. :) just kidding. but not really. Somebody just guessed I was from South Africa AGAIN! stinking Macao people! They always say I'm from africa! I"M NOT FROM AFRICA! so the shelf in the back was put together by the indefegatible me :D bahahaha. Thnks mom for making me make all those furniture sets :) I basically built this house! YEH!!!! hahaha.  So the shelves go from Elder ladd (top), Elder Lee (second top), me :D, and my son, bottom :).  YEH!!! Cleanliness! ps... I'm going to get a haircut soon... I need it. I also need to jian fei.... I've gotten too pang.

OH We just met this chinese guy named Tom, and he's super cool! He's going to go and study medicine! We invited him to come to the baptizm with us, but nobody lived that way, except bishop. :) so we had bishop give him a ride down to the chapel for the baptizm. It was really cool because they're both medical and they both went down the same educational path and both got rejected from teh same school and had to try again. In church, he asked me if he got the priesthood after he was baptized. I told him yes :) hahahaha.  So we're going to baptize him!!!!! I don't even know how we stumbled across Tom. it was really cool though.  The ward LOVES him.  There are two of our investigators that they all really love! Tom, and Bella. Both of them are super nice to the ward and are very sociable.  They're really in tune with the spirit, and so the ward loves them all. we're going to marry them :P hahaha just kidding. we won't... unless they want tooo!!! hahahahahaha.

Bella is super cool because she keeps texting us about how her prayers are going and how her studies of the book of mormon are going. She can't meet with us because she's working and in the middle of Finals, but she told us that it was much easier to understand the book of mormon than the bible and she believes it is true.  She also LOVED church and really wanted to keep coming, but her work schedule with her finals weren't letting her continue to meet with us until the end of this week.  We're really excited because Brother Orth is fellowshiping her because his wife is studying psychology, which is the same subject as bella :).. yay for perfect fellowships everywhere. We're going to baptize her on the same day as their son is getting baptized! Cool huh? And it's the same day taht We have tom set for, as well as hugo.

The more I work in this area, the more I realize that the lord is preparing the way for all of His children to meet his gospel.  I LOVE IT!!! The lord takes average people and turns them into His representatives and sends us on our merrry way to go and find His children. How do we find? I have NO idea. we just sit down next to people and then they give us their address and phone number, then we teach them for a short season and suddenly they're baptized! All of the baptizms I've had in my past were all crazy! I didn't even feel like I did anything. I just opened my mouth and things happened.  I feel so blessed to be put in this area.  I love having the opportunity to meet with all the crazy Beijing people and dongbei with their crazy accents. I love meeting EVERYBODY here! it's fantastic. I don't know what Im' doing, but It seems to work well into the Lord's plan so I'm going to keep doing it. Maybe try to change a few things for the better. :) I have so much to learn. LETS START LEARNING!!! LEARN LEARN LEARN LEARN LEARN LEARN LEARN YEH!!!!

Well, much love and I'm so glad I got to email you guys and stuff. :) it always make me happy to email you all! GREAT SUCCESS!!!!!!!

LOVES AND HAPPINESS!

Elder Chen

I'm still not over the fact that Verina's going to Taizhong!!!!!!!!! HOORAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! her chinese is going to be better than mine... I think God is trying to teach me a lesson here.

Viola: Verina is better
Basketball: Jon is better
Chinese: Verina is better
Math: Jon and Verina is better

TIME TO GO HUMBLE STYLE!!! :D hahaha, don't worry it doesn't bother me. I've set aside my pride and I'm all good now! :) yay for no pride.

ps. (Text recieved from a korean: THANK YOU SO MUCH CHAN!!! I love you! will you marry me?) bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha





10/31/2012

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!

Sadly, australians don't really like halloween and stuff, so I wasn't sure until president gave me a chocolate bar bahahahaha. So happy halloween! :D YEH!!!! I hope you have some fantastic plans all lined up and some adventures to be on.... whenever your halloween is. I don't know about you, but I'm going out and street contacting :D YEH! SO the new trainee is coming in today, so.... a lot of things are going to be changing a lot. hahaha.we have lots of chinese missionaries. I'll tell you that story later :) YAY!

OK! NOW. Sister Chen is a FIREBALL! she's super cool! MAN! she's finding all these golden investigators in crazy ways. I wish I could do that. THere aren't enough people here to go street contacting though.  I tried it one day, and we had a whole fifteen minutes of just walking around and seeing nobody. Anyway.  We just stay at the bus stop now and it's a lot of fun. Tracting is a lot of fun too, however. sometimes awkward things happen at the doors. Anyway. Moral of the story: Sister Chen is THE BEST! I hope I can be a missionary like her. I don't even feel like I've been out longer than her! weird eh?

Dad loves sushi!!! I LOVE SUSHI!!!!! That is the most common food over here. there are so many sushi shops.... all run by koreans..... hmmm.  I still miss dad's sushi a lot. It was really good. hahaha, but we never have time to make that kind of stuff. though my companion just got all the stuff shipped to him from his friend.... who lives over here.... hahahahahaha. it's really good. the members take really good care of us. I have gained more weight again bahahaha.  but I love it.

Verina's papers are in!!! WHOOOOOOOO! I wonder where you'll serve.... I think you'll serve in taiwan.  That'd be cool. and you can serve with sister chen!!!! Sister Chen + Sister Chen = TAIWAN BAPTIZED!!!!! YEEEEAAAAH! hahaha. You're going to be such a great missionary Verina!!!! Not many of the Elders really like the sisters, but I'm sure everybody loves sisterchen and Verina :) HAHAHA.  We did a role play the other day to a sister, and it was funny. She was trying to be such a difficult investigators, but since we knew our scriptures we were able to smash all of her concerns really quickly and bring it back to the lesson. the zone was laughing so hard as we did the role play because the sister was trying so hard, but we were able to smash them all :). Yay for preparation!

Jonjon is the MAN! I keep hearing really good things about your life and stuff. I hope you continue doing really well! You're teaching your classmates math?! THE MAN!!!!!!! I was never really good at math. Seems like you're going to be way cooler than me when I get home. Keep up the good work!

Jeff is always the man as well. All I hear about you is that your classes are really hard.... so.... gai yao (my cantonese is horrible, but I still talk about you whenever i talk to a HongKongesereser.... whatever.) hahaha,

MOM!!!! Brother Orth told me that he emailed you and that you responed really quickly. :) We had hot pot and it was really good. We taught our investigator and she really like the hotpot. I don't think she remembered the lesson hahaha. Now in our ward you're famous. Sister Munro knows you and so does Brother orth, and they both talk to people about Elder Chen's mom :) hahaha. They all say you're really cute.

We talked to the AP's the other day about our area. it was really funny because it's the newest area in the mission, but now it's the best area in EMP zone bahahaha YEH for the Lord's hand in all these things.  We set 3 baptismal dates last week, (ALL miracles) and plan to set a few more in the upcoming days.  It was perfect because we got to spend a lot of time finding for the first bit, which is why it was so boring, but now that tests are finishing up, they are able to meet with us. And I was able to set a record for most potentials in an area! YEH! hahaha. my trainee is still learning to talk to people.  All the people that are most progressing are friends of the peopel I talked to!!!!! it's crazy. They all bring friends to activities and then the friends get really interested, and then we teach them :) ayy! sadly, I'll probably be transfered after six more weeks. I don't know where they'll put me, but probably within EMP. :) It's such a fun area. I love the ward.

BIG boundary splits in a minute here.  They're rearranging all the stakes and wards and stuff so that the can accommodate all the asians that we want to baptize :) hahaha. I'm really excited because they'll announce the boundary changes during sacrament meeting next week.  hahaha.  Transfers in a few days, so we'll se what happens in a bit. I'm so glad they opened up this area.  Since it's doing so well, I think president will want to open up another EMP chiense area. hahaha.  YAY for all these chinese missionareis running around. We're almost as well known as the taiwanese missionareis. Anybody that we talk to will know the missionareis that sit at the bus stop and talk to everybody :) YEH! hahahahahaha.  I love it.

We started teaching a guy from china named Moses bahahahahahahaha. I still can't get over it. We just call him Moxi. anyway.  He has a bunch of word of wisdom problems, and so we're helping him with it. When we went to his house one time, he said that he was learning how to dance and stuff. so we asked him to show us, and so he did. it was so funny. he's SUPER skinny and was trying to shuffle. it was really funny. I really liked it. hahahaha. oh man. When I talked to him at the bus stop, he didn't say anything about dance (probably because I didn't ask him) and then BAM he can dance. so now we're really good friends. hahaha. He's so funny.  He used to smoke 10 cigarettes a day, but now he's down to 2. YEH!!!! PRAYERS! Sometimes it's really funny to talk to him though because he tries to joke around, but he's not really good at joking around so it just comes out really awkwardly. hahahahaha. The other day, we were talking about what he likes to do for fun, and then he said: I like to drink my friends.... BAHAHAHHAHAHAHA.  He was intentionally saying that, but it wasn't really funny, but we laughed anyway.

OH YEAH! also, my companion fell asleep during personal and companionship study, so I got Elder Chen and Lee to try screaming at the tops of our lungs to wake him up. it was so funy. we filmed it, and I love watching it over and over again.  His face was so terrified. it was SOOO funny. I'll have to show it to you later.  oh my goodness.  anyway. it was a very spiritually uplifting thing to do. :)

sorry, I jsut was talking to a member from one of my previous areas that I haven't seen for a while, and nothat I'm back, I don't have much time left :( sorry. hopefully next time.

LOVE YOU ALLLLLL!!! Happy halloween! and Jia you!!!!!

Elder Chen

10/22/2012

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD AND SISTER CHEN!!!!!!!!

I continue to brag about both of you everywhere, and then I realized it was your birthday a bit ago when I was talking to an investigator and they said that their birthday was in october :D YEH!!!! YAY FOR ALMOST HALLOWEEN!!! I can't believe it's been so long! I was in Brisbane city last halloween! GAH!!! NOOOOO. I am so old. Didyou know that it's Elder Chens birthday today? (China Elder Chen) SO October seems to be a really good month!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!!! now marks a point in your life where you are closer to heavenly father than you have ever been :) I showed my wallet picture of our family to one of our investigators, and they said that you looked like you were 30.... ish :) It was pretty funny. Then they tried to cover up by saying that taiwanese people age really gracefully. hahahahahahahaha. :)

Mom, you looked raelly young to her too. :) She thought you looked really cute in the picture and said that I was lucky to get good looks from both mom and dad :) YEH!!!!

JEFF!!!! DON"T HONOR IN THOSE CLASSES!! I feel bad all the time because Jeff is going to be the MAN. find the cure for cancer, and then people will mistake me for him. not good. :P hahaha, but I get to brag about him too. Whenever people ask us: "Doesn't these two years slow down your education?" I get to brag about Jeff and how smart he is :).

Sister Chen is TEARING IT UP!!!! Even though I've been a missionary a little longer htan her, she has already doen all the things I'm just barely starting to do! It's so funny because I'll tell her what I'm doing and then she's already done it and has advice for me. I need to do something really exciting that she hasn't done yet hahahaha.  She's the best!!!!!! I've learned so much from her.

Is that the dress that sister Rhee sewed for you Verina?! It looks good! Most of the dresses here are immodest. It's funny because whenever a missionary sees a small number as a price, we always look because we're qiong, but when we notice that it's some tiny piece of cloth, we realize why it's so cheap hahahahaha.  GO VERINA!!! I miss Sister Rhee. She's the best!!! Say hi to her for me :)

Jon sounds like THE MAN!!!! You look like a skuxx wearing that shirt. hahaha.  That's a good one!!!!! He looks like he's going to be bigger than me by the time I go home!!! NOOOO! Keep up the good work! Mom says you're the king!

I would get things for you, but I really haven't had time to go shopping. We just ran from our last appointment. We have an emeritus 70's with us, and so we called him to help with this investigator. It was really cool, because they jsut started going in Cantonese, and I can't really speak cantonese, but I picked upa  few words. :) YEH! I'm so glad both of the languages are so similar. Anyways, it was a hong kong fest, and then they thought I wasn't contributing cause I didn't understand what was going on, so I started speaking my parts in mandarin. ahhaha, it was so funny.They'd be speaking in cantonese, and then I'd pipe in in mandarin and then back to cantonese. hahahaha. Oh I love hong kong people. They are so funny.

I learned a new cantonese phrase, and please correct my spelling: "Lei Ho Lang" (Ps. ElderChen is contacting the guy next to him in cantonese hahahaha. SO MANY CANTONESE PEOPLE!!!!!!) Most of them are from guangdong and so it's perfect for Elder Chen because he's from there as well. I was talking to him the other day and he's so funny. When he contacts cantonese people, he pretends like he can't speak chinese at all hahahaha. and then they tell him that his pronounciation is really really biaozhun. hahahaha.  It works.  Then he points me out and says taht I'm chinese. BAHAHAHAHAHAHA. So they start speaking in cantonese and then I just say: Nei wan bingo a? (Ni zai zhao shei?) bahahaha. and then I can tell them that they are really pretty, I love them, and ask them if they've been to hongkong before (Saying hong kong in cantonese is really difficult)

Anyway, sorry about the guangdong rant. Hong kong people never meet with us for some reason..... oh well. We'll get them later. Guangdong ren are a little bit harder than chinese chinese people, but they're still a lot easier than the australians. :D YEH!!!! MANDARIN!!!  When we were talking to our investigator this morning, she told us that she had slammed the door in the faces of a few missionaries already, but then this time, she decidd to talk to us. She didn't want to come to church last week because she thought all the peopel were young like us hahahahaha. because we're elders, she thought we were the oldest. So we brought Brother Wong (Wong, or Huang I don't know... he's from Hong Kong) and he did fantastic. He's the Emeritus 70's. So we went in and then he completely cahnged the plans and it was FANTASTIC!!!! She told him that none of the religions she had gone to for 8 years were able to answer her question as to what Eternal life was. :) We didn't commit her to baptism yet, because we want to keep working with her. It'll take a bit for her to progress, but We have hope :)

The other day, we were teaching these two girls from Taiwan and I asked them: "What is your favourite food?" and they said rice.......... BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Then they said they really like mixian. Evidently it's like pork's blood and you can buy it in seven eleven? and it's hot? but it looks like a popsicle. Very decieving..... We're helping them with their english so they took us to eat some bing at a taiwanese shop over here. They told us not to get the mango bing, but my companion doesn't like taro, hong dou, or dou hua, so he got mango bing, and it tasted like peaches.... EWWW! I was sickened. I want to go to taiwan and get some of that mango bing. mmmmm :) YUMMEH! But evidently there's a really good mango bing shop somewhere here. There are SOOOO many taiwanese people! hahahaha I love them.  It's so funny. If they can speak english they tell us that missionaries are always biking and really crazy in Taiwan.  If they can't, they pretend like they're biking and then point at us. hahahaha.  Most of them are scared of missionaries in taiwan because they say they're Fengzi's. bahaha Take THAT sister Chen :P just kidding. They do really good work.

We also found these other two taiwanese girls (sisters) That met missionaries in taiwan when they were 12!!! They already knew how to pray and stuff, and so they already knew us, but hadn't talked to missionaries for almost 15 years!!!!! So when we talked to them at the bus stop, they were like: Ok... we'll see. We ahd a lesson with them and they told us that they like it, the just didn't get baptized because their mom thought that they were too young!!! :D So, maybe we'll send them back as members for Sister Chen to take care of :) maybe verina will get called to Taiwan!! :D that'd be SOOOOOO cool! :D

This week, we also had a ward activity right before the boundary changes. (we're baptizing too many people bahahahahaha).  Anyway, our ward mission leader told us that we need to show the ward that we are working hard and now we need his support, so we got HEAPS of our investigators to the activity. Even though we've only been open for a few weeks, We invited Everybody and had 32 Chinese people at the activity with 28 of them as investigators!!!! We had only planned on having 20 of our investigators there, but then they all brought friends and now their friends are more progressign then they are!!!!! it's really awesome.  The bishop talked to us later and said that he had never seen so many investigators at a single activity ever. Chinese or English.  So now, we've left an impression :).  I like to call it my STI!!!!!!! SHOCK, Touch, Invite. :) If you Shock them, then show them that you have the spirit, you can invite them to do anything.

That was very apparent when we noticed that many of the members were touched by the spirit of missionary work.  When they realized the spirit behind the work, they realized that they were willing to make sacrifices in order to get our investigators to church, teach them, etc. That is how powerful the spirit is! Just like the scripture mastery Mosia 3:19. THrough the atonement of Jesus Christ, We change ourselves!!! Isn't aht so powerful?! What else in the world can change human nature so thoroughly without force?! I love being able to watch the changes wrought int he people taht we work with! It's so wonderful to see them change as their understanding enhances.  The more they understand, the more they're willing to sacrifice! The church is so fantastic!!!! GAH!!!!!!

I love being out here. The district I'm serving with right now knows how to work and we're doing great. We have our new house, and nothing is going to hold us back from doing the work!!!! :) I am so excited for the upcoming weeks. Prepare to hear about brisbane :P just kidding. THough President Monsen did mention it in his talk :) that was really great.

I love you all!!! keep up the good work! happy birthday Dad and Sister Chen!!!!

Thanks for all the great support you've given me! The work is going forward without any hinderances.

Elder Chen

10/15/2012


HALLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OKAY!! SO there really wasn't too much exciting going on this week except for GENERAL CONFERENCE!!!!!!!!! YEH!!!!!!! We have general conference available in chinese, so I sat in the chinese section with our investigators. hahaha, it was really funny because my investigator was watching my face as I was watching conference and she said that I made really funny faces. She knew when I didn't understand a part because my eyes got big and I'd start smiling hahahahaha.  Anyway.  It was still really uplifting. The translator must have stood upa nd left halfway through the sunday morning session because we heard "Qing..... shenme? Oh..." hahahahahaha, our investigators were all like.... ??????? hahaha.  It was good though. I DID have to run to the english section to listen to Elder Holland's talk though. The translator wasn't doing it quite right. I think it'd be really hard to translate for him.  When I got back, A few of the chinese people were alseep. hahahahahaha. OK :) YEH!!!!!

During personal study, I was going through second nephi again, and then stumbled across a verse that talks about fatness hahahahaha. OH NO!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn't stop laughing and my companion was like.... wha? anyway. I thought it was pretty funny. especially because my companion is already gaining weight O.o hahaha OH NO!!!!!!!!!! it was just like me when I first got out here. I put on heaps of weight, now I don't worry too much. Don't worry, I promise I won't come home fat. I don't like being fat. Plus we get to play a lot of sports.

Well today, we packed up all our stuff and MOVED!!!!!! WAHOOOO! to a brand new flat... well not really brand new. It smells like indian food and indian people.... hahaha.  And there's this stain in the carpet and i think it's curry. I didn't want to smell it.... I just hope it's curry. I'm now really worried about it. ANYWAY We spent the whole morning buying tables, and desks, and refrigerators, washing machines, dryers, deng deng.  It was an adventure. I NEVER want to buy furniture for my house.  If I ever have to buy furniture, Ill let my wife do it. Or I'll just live in a box... sit on a box, and work on a box. Thank goodness I don't have to spend much time at home anyway. :)  ANYWAY. so because we've been running arounda ll morning, I haven't had a chance to go home and grab my camera so.... no pictures :( sadly. Soon though :) yeh! that's the one. hahaha.  I promise I'll have pictures soon.

Well things that happened this week........ When we tract, it's really funny, because we talk to EVERYBODY. so, we planned on tracting two streets in a day, but since there were so many people on the street, we took 5 hours to tract ONE street. hahahaha.  My companion and I came home and were going to mark off the tracting map but then we discovered that it had already been tracted BAHAHAHHA so it looked like we actually didn't do anything that day, but in reality we SAVED SOULS hahaha.

One of hte funniest things to do is to run into buddhist people because as soon as they see us, they say: OH NO! I'm BUDDHIST!!!! NO! and so we say: "OH good!!!! We're only talking to buddhists today" and then they get really confused and then yeh.... :) Before we did that, most people would just say: Bu hao yisi, wo xin fo. but now, they're like... oh... families!?! eternal?! FOREVER?! YES! and then we get a return appointment. Sadly, all the people in our areas are students so they can't meet up for a while. It's finals season :(. Nobody wants to meet with us. BUT it's ok. We find ways to weasle our way into their little hearts. like offering free dinner (fast breaker) and parties (FHE) YEH!!!! and they really like it, so yeah... It works out in the end.

Our ward mission leader served his mission back athousand years ago in taipei taiwan and keeps telling us these stories about his mission in taiwan. THey scare my companion really bad and so he never wants to go to taiwan, but now I want to go to taiwan ALL THE MORE!!!!!!!!! There are so many cool things to see and do in taiwan and there are so many people that sound prepared. But Australia has a crazy amount of prepared people as well. We just have to go and find them.

I Was talking to elder balmforth the other day, and it aws really funny. I was just joking around with him because there's a talk called: Create success, by russell m. ballard. I was saying: Don't just find a family.... CREATE a family!!! hahahahahaha, It brought me back to the talk which says. there is succes out there to be found, but how often do you hear of people finding a treasure by themselves.  CREATE success!!!!!! We always hear of people creating their own success. Nobody just stumbles on any form of success. YOU MUST CREATE IT! anyway. it was pretty funny in the moment, now that I'm thinking about it right now, I realize that we really will end up creating families.... but that's later.

We started working with one of the coolest members ever! We found out that he was just a little scared off back when he was 16 when his bishop started talking to him about his mission. Anyway. he's now much older, married and has a kid, and he's always wanted to come back to church, he just never knew how, or if the bishop wanted him because he didn't serve a mission.  He was a convert and so we talked to him about the missionareis taht baptized him. HE IS THE MAN! we told him that we'd like to work with him to get back to the temple, and eventually get the melchezidek preisthood! When we followed up later that week, he said: "I want to go to the temple. What do I need to do" so, we're working on it. There's a lot of improvement to be made, but he has the desire and is willing to remake those changes in his life. I'm really excited to be working with him.  The elders quorum president had written him off as lost but then we stumbled across him in front of his home (Which is really close to our old home)  So yeh!!!! NEVER GIVE UP!! I wanted to find some deep way of saying that, but i'm pretty boring.

Lets see... what else happened this week.....we had several investigators give us a call and tell us that they wouldn't make it to church because of being drunk........ finals are happening right now, so nobody really has time to run into us, but we always see them with their friends.... GAH!!!! I AM SAVING YOUR SOULS! hahah :)

I can't seem to remember too much about this week. hahaha.  One of my recent converts called me from gold coast just to tell me that they started paying their tithing because they jsut got a joba nd they were really excited about it. hahahahahaha. Since I jsut disappeared from Gold Coast (we got our call on tuesday, and had to move on wednesday) they were all "mad" at me because I didn't say bye to them bahahaha.  It thought it was pretty funny.  I told them that I wasn't supposed to call or anything and that I didn't have any time to visit people, except for the ones at the church that night. ANWYAY. they were all just wondering if I had done seomthing bad and had to go home hahahahaha. It was pretty sudden now that i think of it. hahaha. oh well.

Speaking of which. it sounds like mom and dad are doing GREAT!!!!!!! hahahahaha. oh my goodness. I love hearing about all the things you're doing.

Jeff is going crazy at medical school! hahaha, the man. I'm sure he'll smash everything. He always does. I'll pray for him anyway though.

Sister chen is my HERO!!!! She's the greatest!!!!! She's having so much success up in taiwan. Sister missionaries can do things elders could never do. It's crazy hahahaha.

Verina is going to Japan?! HOW CRAZY IS THAT?! WOAH!!! Good lucka nd have fun there! we talk to so many japanese people aroudn the place and they're super nice, they just don't like talking about religion. It's ok though :)

JONJON IS THE MAN!!!! YEH!!!!!! you must be SMASHING IT!!!! GO YOU!! hahaha. you're going to pass me up before your mission! what a crazy cat!  keep up the good work! I've got something for you. :) but you'll have to wait a year before you get it.

Lots of Love, I hope you're all doing fantastic! Keep up the good work!


Elder, Chen

10/8/2012

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! VERINA IS SO YOUNG AND GOING ON A MISSION!?!?!???????!?!??!?!?!? WHAT?!?!?!? IN THE WORLD?!?!?!? THAT"S CRAZY!!!! WOAH! 19 Year old Sisters can come out now?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!? WOWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! That's the craziest announcement I've ever heard?!?!?!??!?!??!?!?!? and jonjon is gearing up to go soon!
THAT is CRAZY HEAD!!!!!! I have no idea what in the world is going on with that!!!!! AYO!!!! That's crazy.I don't even know what I'm supposed to do anymore! There are going to be some crazy missionaries running around now! YIKES! hahahaha I waited too long to be a missionary and now I'm going to be one of the oldest missioanreis in the world! hahahaha. that's too much fun.

Jon!!!! you're going to go on a mission soon! How exciting is that?! YEH!!! hahaha. just kidding. You're old though.. Keep up the good work!

Sister chen is A FIREBALL missionary. I'm so excited to hear all about what she's doing and stuff.

Jeff is still the man, probably still smashing medical school as usual

And dad bought an iphone 5?! wow.... that's a lot more advanced than when I left for the mision field. I think You don't have to buy me a nice phone when I get back, I'll probably be still happy with my old one, so don't worry about getting me one.... not trunky :P

So verina?! are you excited to go on a mission?! It's so much fun out here. hahaha. I would be so excited if that announcement came when I was in there. hahahaha. I don't even know what to think. We get to watch conference in a bit. Not right now. This saturday and sunday, they allow us to see it. hahaha. I'm excited to see all these different missionaries coming out here to work with us. I think the missionaries are going to start coming in pretty soon. I CAN"T BELIEVE IT!!!!! OH MY GOODNESS! I guess I won't see you for another two years :P bahahaha. that's ok. I'll write you letters and stuff. It'll be all goods :)

Now after hearing that, nothing I've really heard of is going to be very exciting. Oh well. It's ok. I'll tell you anyway. hahaha.

OK. so. this week, I went out and found forever. because we're still a whitewashing area. But that's ok. because finding is the funnest part of missionary work. hahahaha. I like teaching and everything, but I'd rather go out and find for a really long time hahaha. Time files when we're having fun finding.

fun story: I contacted this one girl at the bus stop and it was really funny because I told her about church and stuff, and she seemed interested so I asked for her number so we could contact her later. When we called, we asked if we could meet up some time, and she asked if it was a date..... i said no..... she said no..... DROPPED BAHAHAHAHAHA. AWKWARD!

hahaha, anyway, there really wasn't too much exciting that happened... again. Things go prestty slowly out here when you're in a new area. It's pretty funny because everybody comes home with these stories of their teaching appointments, but we have funny things that happen with crazy people. There's a bridge that runs across the main road between the two sides of sunny bank. Sometimes, when we are at the bus stops, there's a kid that runs up the ramp to the top, screaming at the top of his lungs, runs across, and down again, and then stops screaming and running at the same time, and walks to the bus stop. It's kinda wkward sometimes hahahaha. I want to talk to him sometimes, but I'm afraid he's going to start screaming agatin hahahaha.

Also, this week, we were at KFC for some odd reason, we didn't even end up buying anything. Anyway, while we were there, this guy walked up to us and asked if we were mormons. we obviously said yes, and then he commenced starting to try to attack our beliefs. It was pretty funny because none of the missionaries got nervous or anything and so we just smashed all the concerns that he could've had and then sent him on his merry way. Afterwards, we were thinking about it and none of us were really sure where we had said came from and we were all like: OH WOW! YEH!  We had the spirit. I don't actually remember what I said, but it was good because we said it and he didn't really have a comback. We were not confounded before men! bahahaha.

I just looked up on LDS.org about the new age change and it's true! That's crazy! WOW! Elder Holland said that they'd need more missionaries for the ever-expanding missionary field! WOW! Our mission isn't going to get too much bigger, but I expect a lot of the missions will. THat's insane. Verina might serve in Taiwan with sister chen! how crazy would that be! hahahaha.  Oh my goodness I'm going crazy. hahahaha.

Anyway, this week, I learned about the blessings of prayer! We had to go out and find, and I really wanted to go and find a family, so when i went to sleep, I prayed that we'd find a family, and in the morning I prayed that we'd find a family, and right before I left, I prayed that we would find a family, and so we went out and, guess what!!!! We found three families! AHHH! hahahaha YEH!!!! The first one we tracted into was a philipino family who is now less active as catholics, and downstairs is the church of christ, which is actually the mom's brother. So we're going to give them to the english elders. they're really cool though. I'm so sad we don't get to teach them. The next family is from Taiwan. They've lived in australia for AGES, and it's crazy because the area we tracted has been tracted tons of times, but they've never found these people. Anyway, this family from taiwan, the mom is buddhist, the dad is Christian, and the daughter was somehow lost in translation along the way. It was pretty funny. hahahaha. She wasn't really sure what religion she was, so her mom said that she was buddhist, but then she said she wasn't hahaha.  So we're going to go back.

The mom's first concern was that we didn't honor our ancestors!! I was so happy that I was able to tell her all aobut the family history resources taht the church has and how important it is to us that we do family history. It was perfect! I loved it! anyway. The next family was from Wuhan, china. They're really cool, but I'm nto sure how interested they are because we camea nd they ooked a little busy so we told them a quick message and asked if we could come back when they weren't busy and they said yeah. so we'll see them later. hopefully. and then this couple from singapore, we talked to at the bus stop, and  gave them the address of the church and everything, but we didn't get their contact information. THEN they came to church!!!!! MIRACLE!!! YEH! so we've got a teaching pool which consists mainly of Families, which is the GREATEST!!!!! Our zone leaders called us to see how we were doing and we told them that we were doing fnatastic... becuase we are doing fantastic. And I love being here. It's good :)

Well, my time on the computer is almost up... my emails have been pretty short, sorry :( Hopefully we'll have more to tell you next time.  THe ward is good. The work is hard, it just takes lots of work, and then we see the miracles. :)

Love,

Elder Chen