Thursday, June 13, 2013

6-11-13


HELLOOOOOOOOO from the sunshine coast!!!!!
ok! SO!!!! this is how the area is: The ward doens't know the elders.... There are no investigators.... Jehovah's Witnesses are EVERYWHERE... and WE FOUND TWO CHINESE FAMILIES!!!!!!! but neither of them say they want to join, but we'll work on it :).. hahaha.... faith....
OK! SO when I actually finally got to the flat... the bathroom was soooo gross.... so I spent a lunch cleaning the bathroom. and hten I spent dinner organizing the books and pamphlets... and then I spent the next lunch cleaning out the closet... and then I spent hte next dinner cleaning out the desks.... it wa sa long painful process... but im all finished now..... not yet actually, I still havec to clean the kitchen.... This is hte weirdest flat I've ver been in.... hahahaha. it's kinda creepy.... only the mian room light works and so we shower in the dark... dress in the dark, iron in the dark... it's interesting..... hahahaha. I'll send you a before an after picture of hte bathroom some time... I can't actually locate the picture on my camera so I guess you'll have to wait till next week to get it :P hahahaha. It's kinda really grosss..... the floor is all brown and nobody has cleaned off the calcination on the window for a million years.... and there was red stuff tooo.... AWWW MAAAA HEAD!!!!!
ANYWAY!!!! SO it was raining and we were tracting around in the area with no success and then we saw this chinese lady with a baby walking home so we went over and talked to her... she said she would be interested in learning... didn't know if she would want to join, but like that we were young and out on missions.... so we went and taught her. Her husband is a research guy for batteries or something.... and they don't speak any english so she was super excited when I came over and talked to her.  They're really nice and really easy to set up appointments with but we always want to catch the dad along with them.... so we always wait. :) hahahahahahahaha we hav eanother appointment with them on friday.... so we're going to be doing that... other than that we don't really havce that much going on..
President wants every companionship to baptize in june, and I set up 3 baptisms in other areas... but I don't know if I'll be able to baptize this month in this area.... Elder Tito is a new missionary..( Just trained) and so he' snot very familiar with the area and so we're starting from ground 0 here. I went through all the former investigators and part member families.... contacted them all and not many of them are interested in still meeting with missionaries.... so I went through all their investigators and it doesn't seem like we have much of a shot for a baptism in june or within this last transfer for that matter, but we're scrambling.  I guess I'm here to lay the foundation for other elders.... even though I havne't been an english missionary before, I think I'll be able to contribute at least a little bit to this area.... I started interacting with the Ward more... it seems that our ward mission leader doesn't come to church and avoids all contact with members..... we've visited his house and he always tells us that he's about to head out to do something and then leaves.... so... I decided to go straight for the leaders. (With bishop's permission of course) and so we've been in contact with all of them.  I think the ward hasn't had a very good interaction wtih misisonaries just wanting to squeeze referrals out of them all the time, so yeah........ so I just asked them if they knew of anybody htey wanted us to find, rescue or anything... they seemed pretty surprised because nobody has ever asked them to help I guess... so we'll start from there.
Bishop gave us a list of names to visit so we've been hunting them down. we'vce had contact with all of htem and have had lessons with all of them but one... and htat one jumps over the back fence whenever we get there.... so interesting experience there.... hahahahahaha
Whenever we knock on this door, the mom will answer and go back to get him... and then we'll se him jump over the fence o nthe other side hahahahahahahahahaha. it's sooooo funny. it was kinda embarrassing cuz I was trying not to laugh when she came back... I gues I just grinned the whole time....
Also... on sunday, some members saw me and thought I was a hcinese fob, and so they started speaking slowly to me and ennunciating heaps..... it was an odd day... very very odd. I just told them I was from utah, and htis one lady told me she was from draper... hahahaha. oh gosh... and yeah..... lots of RM's in this ward but htey've all gone inactive because they're all really big surfers. it's a really transient ward.
I'm just trying to figure out why I'm here.... so I can get through this with an objective in sight. If it's just laying a foundatio nfor later misisonaries, that's alright with me..  it seems that that was my mission from the start. I've opened so many areas and revived a few others... so I guess that was my calling... I haven't baptized too much but A lot of the people that I worked with got baptized later.  it's aninteresting misison and yeah... I don't know what it means for the rest of my life, but I'm sure God has a plan for me.
I've studied a lot about parables and Christ's ministry in Jerusalem recently, and There's ALWAYS a purpose in all things. hahahaha. There are a lot of aplications available to those who seek.  I realized that I was a bit erroneous in my attitude towards the mission in that I wanted it to be straightforward and obvious why things happened. I guess it's more of going and doing and trusting that God will show us His purposes in all things... The theory of intelligent design. It's all there. It's all for us. hahaha. It's our show. It's our time! it's SHOWTIME!! BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHa oh I thought that was funny. I don't know about you. but in all seriousness. Many of our investigators ask a lot of questions that are sometimes hard to figure out the answers to... but God always puts it in our mouths in the moment... and it teaches us! There are so many times that I've answered quesitons for investigators that also answer it for me!!!! It's too perfect to be a corollary of random chance.  LIke that, our lives sometimes aren't answered until the moment we need it the most. I may not need to understand all the things that are going on right now... but I'll know later... when I'm old... :)
SOrry for the short email... I had to run to the bathroom quickly... today, I'm going ot be playing rugby... and I hope it rains.. I'll take more pictures then. :) hahahahahah
I LOVE YOU ALLL!!!!! 
Elder Chen




Tuesday, June 11, 2013

6-4-13


HI GUYS!!!!!
 
I guess it is a new transfer now and i am currently in...... SUNSHINE COAST for my final transfer with my final companion. His name is Elder Tito.... He's from melbourne and he is THE MAN! hahaha. I'm really excited about spending htis last transfer with him :) hahahah. he's way cool. Well here's the thing with him. He's super duper smart because he is SUPER diligent and stuff. I've never met a misisonary like him. President pulled me out of hte Chinese program for this last transfer and now I'm ou tin the middle of nowhere. SUPER DUPER tired because I've been driving for hte past three hours and yeah..... so now I'm super far from any civilization... haha just kidding. I'm actually pretty close, but yeah... we'll see what happens. I actually still don't know the actual name of the area because it's never popped up on my radar Hahaha. :) it's interesting. hahaha. fun place to be rignt now, but there aren't that many chinese. President heard a rumor that there were a few chinese up here so he sent me here to figure it out. :) hahahaha. I'm not exactly sure how many there will be, but I hope there are going to be HEAPS AND HEAPS AND HEAPS :) otherwise I'll b rather bored here.
 
Anyway. I actually can't remember much of what has happened in the last week. I guess I'll explain the pictures: well I'm not actually sure which pictures I sent because it doesn't really work very well. I'm only kinda surviviing on this thing :P hahahaha. we'll see how it goes...
 
SO yeah... evidently there's a population of 22,000 here... that's a fun fact for this area... also.... hmmmm... I don't know. So yeah. Elder Tsai is also an english missionary right now. hahahaha :) OH MY GOSH!!! WE BOTH FINISH AS ENGLISH MISSIONARIES!!!!! I wish I had time to go through the book of mormon in chinese, but it doesn't look like I will have a chance to because I really don't have that much time hahahahaha :) oh well. IT'll be interesting. :) I asked him about hte area and it looks like we're going to be doing a lot of finding here :) hahahaha
 
Fun fact about this area: THERE ARE NO ASIANS!!!!!!!!! :) hahahahahahahaha
 
SO! I'm going to work my bum off in this area... I asked them about the area and there haven't been any baptisms here since five or six transfers ago, and I'm follow-up training Elder Tito. I'm really excited about it and stuff, but it looks a bit daunting since I only have 6 weeks left. I'm going to work my bum off, but gosh.... it'll be very interesting...... hahahahahaha. President pulled me aside for a special interview to let me know what's going on in the area.. Evidently he's heard reports that the leadership here isn't too supportive of the mission and he wanted me to come and report on 1: asians 2: The ward.... soooooooooo GOSH!!!!!! whatever.
 
OH YEAH! and did I mention that he gave us a full-time car?! I've never been an english missionary before!!! I DON"T KNOW HOW TO WORK LIKE AN ENGLISH MISSIONARY!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA. maybe we'll try and revolutionize the way missionaries work out here :) hahahahahaha. LOTS AND LOTS OF TRACTING and they don't really have any investigators.... yeah... oh well... we'll keep working.... :) gosh. I'm tired
 
So yeah.... :) also thanks all of you for all your birthday wishes!!!! :) I'm not exactly sure how much time I've got on here... because it doesn't really show me a clock.... I'm hoping I get an alert when it gets to a few minutes. Sorry I don't really have too much time on this compouter because we just got out of transfers and we had to come and drive for HOURS!!!!! :( hahahaha. so far away from brisbane. We're in such a strange area. We have a massive zone, but they're so far away from each other that it's pretty ridiculous!!!! :) hahahahaha A lot of the areas aren't even allowed to come to zone meeting. Bunderberg (in my district) is five hours away from our flat... O.o hahahahaha. they had to drive 7 hours to get to transfers and they had to pack all their bags because they got white washed. SO MANY areas in the mission got white washed hahahaha. It's pretty interesting. Because of all the isters ocoming into hte mission, we're not all sure where to put them, so they just replace eldres in the areas. This area doesn't like sisters though for some reason... so they put us in there.... Odd....
 
I love you all! thank you for all the happy birthday wishes!! and good luck with everything :)
 
Elder Chen