3-26-12

Hi again! :)

WOAH! Verina had a dream that I was sick?! hahaha, I was sick for a
day or two, but it was just a sore throat and it's all good.  I
probably sweat all the germs out the next day hahahha.  Neck minute.
And don't worry, it didn't make a difference in the work.  I still
went out to find and stuff.  I know the Lord was helping me out.  With
a sore throat, it usually hurts to talk right? but it didn't, and I
know the Lord wanted me to work that day because we found this
vietnamese girl named Emma who is GOLDEN.  Lives right next to the
church, and has never had a chance to learn about religion so she
jumped on the chance to learn about The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints.  :) The Vietnamese sisters we baptize are the
BEST!!!!!!! Three of the recent converts in this area are vietnamese:
Brandy, Stephanie(Sp?), and Michelle are ALL THE BEST!!! Brandy and
Stephanie have been helping us with fellowship SO much, and Michelle
just went to the temple to do baptizms for the dead! (Sorry, we can't
do family names on our mission :( the temple president asked that
missionaries don't do them).  We called Michelle that night and she
said that it was the happiest time of her life! :D she is so sensitive
to the spirit! She's the best!  Hopefully we'll have another
vietnamese sister baptized in.  Michelle wants to bring her friends to
church (referrals! Yeh!) and Brandy and Stephanie gave us a referral
as well.  Emma lives with heaps of other vietnamese people, so we have
high hopes for the vietnamese people! :D  they are wonderful.

Sad story though, the chinese program follows the fluctuations caused
by school events.  Because it's midterms now, we didn't get many
lessons and our fellowship weren't able to help us out very much.  IT
was very unfortunate.  We were kinda sad, but then we found much
harder than we've ever found.  I loved it.  SO MUCH FUN! Missionary
work is the funnest thing in the world.  Hard, but fun.  That's
probably why I got sick, :P hahahaha.  I'm all good now.  Don't worry.
 Disease is nothing! :)  And I love finding.  I think it's one of the
funnest things to do in the world.  Talking to people is the best :D

Speaking of disease! I just got your package.... wow, that souded
weird.  it's not like your package had diseases in it, it just had
those vitamins with lots of vitamin C in it.... ok.  There was a
connection a few seconds ago.  But I got that package with the gummy
vitamins and they are soOOOOO good.  I have to force myself not to eat
more than 2 a day.  ahhaha.  And the fiber bars are perfect! I've been
trying to get more fiber in my diet.... yep. :D hahaha.  MORE
CELERY!!! HOORAH!  I also got a few letters and one with an SD card in
it! THANK YOU!!!! though I think I'm good on SD cards for now. :) I
have 34 gb of memory in sd cards... so :D I'll try to take more
pictures, but it's hard to find a time to take pictures because we're
not supposed to take pictures out on non-p-days when we're in
proselyting clothes.  :D we can if we're not proselyting I think.  But
I don't want to play with the rules :D so, I'll try to take more
pictures.  Sorry no pictures this week.... it was a long week :)
hahaha.  Next week! :D

Fun little adventure for this week.  I went to relief society O.o
*gasp* hahahaha.  it was really weird.  They wanted me and Elder
Hadfield to go and give a spiritual thought on missionary work.  The
relief society... councelor? poked her head into gospel principles and
pointed at me and wanted me to come out.  I thought I was in trouble,
so I grabbed Elder hadfield and went out.  Fortunately we weren't in
trouble, but she wanted us to share something quick about missionary
work in relief society.  We panicked fora  bit, but then I thought of
3 Nephi 11:5.  It was the voice from heaven that people heard the
third time.  Strange one.  BUT!!!! I had an Idea.  I wanted to share
with them the study that the church did.  It takes seven contacts with
the church (missionary, talking about it with a member, etc) in order
for someone to begin the conversion process.  AND SO!!!! we used that
to tell people to invite more people to church.  anyway.  that wasn't
the moral of the story.  The moral of the story is this: We were in
relief society.  For a LONG TIME.  it was really weird for us and they
were all giggling at us.  :(  Elders get to do weird things :).  And
they wanted to drag it out.  I thought they were going to have us
share our thought first and then get out, but NOPE.  Announcements,
hymn, prayer, more announcements, business, callings, THEN we got to
go. GAH!!!!! As we left they giggled at us :( We felt super weird.
BUt it's ok.  It's over.

I'm really excited though.  Our ward is becoming more and more excited
about the missionary work! I can see there's more enthusiasm, more
organization, more help being offered, and more referrals!!!!!!! Next
week They want us to train on a program that they want to start.  It's
going to be really good.  This area may be a "hard" area, but with
God's help, anything is possible.  Hard isn't hard.  It's FUN! :D I
LOVE MISSIONARY WORK!

well today, we met with some of our investigators and they are the
best.  Even though it was our p-day, we want to meet with them, so we
did :D they were in the city for a bit and so we talked to them and
then brought them to the bus stop that they needed to get to. :D it
was fun.  They were all so funny.  There were eight of them from
Taiwan and one guy from Hong Kong.  I told them that there were a lot
of Zhong guo ren over in Sunny-bank(they're new here) and they were
like: NO NOT ZHONG GUO REN!!!! TAI WAN REN!!!!!! hahahahahaha.  then
we clarified and I told them that there really are Da Lu ren there.
And then they were really sad.  I like Taiwanese people.  They are so
funny. hahahaha.

Speaking of Taiwan... did you know that vicky is the BEST!!! she's
even giving me investigators!!! crazy huh? hahahaha.  She just
referred an investigator down here.  I feel like I need to refer
people up there now.  Unfortunately, nobody goes back to Taiwan for
another year or so, so I'll baptize them before they go back to taiwan
>:) hehehehe.  Just kidding.  Everybody down here is from China or Tai
Zhong.  yep. The cool thing is that the area this person lives in is
BARELY within my area.  the area right next to it is in dispute
between the brisbane area and the kenmore area. so it's the best :)
Send lots of love to vicky :)

Well: Kenmore area sad story: we had to give one of our most golden
investigators to the other missionaries in that area. :( the good part
ist hat the missionaries in that area are the BEST! I love them! :D
hahaha, they are these two islanders that are SO funny hahahaha.  (All
islanders are funny)  anyways.  Moral of the story.  They'll baptize
her, and then she'll get married in the temple and then become like
mom!!!!!!! :D YAY!!!!! and have five little potatos that go on
missions.  :D

Isn't it wonderful how amazing this work is.  One person can affect
the lives of COUNTLESS people.  it goes back to that one adage said by
a really wise man.  You can count the seeds in an apple, but you
cannot count the apples in a seed.  IT"S SOOOO TRUE!!!!!!you can count
Mom as one baptizm, but there is NO WAY you can count how much work
has been done as a direct result of her baptizm!!! You're the best
mom! Saving people that lived before and then saving your kids so that
they can go out and baptize people and help them begin their
conversion process. VIcky is such a wonderful missioanry.  Jeffrey was
such a wonderful missionary.  And I'm the luckiest missionary to have
had such wonderful examples like them, and to have the greatest areas,
companions, and leaders.

Yesterday, I met a member from Taiwan named Phoebe.  She is so
wonderful!!!! She has such a strong testimony!  We took her to eat
dinner with us at a members house (don't worry, we didn't drive her
:)) and On the way, I got to talk to her about Taiwan and stuff. She
said that in her area, there aren't that many members, so they
strengthen each other SO much.  When we got to our meal, our member
was having a lot of difficulty, but then Phoebe helped us use
scriptures to explain how to help yourself.  I used D&C 9:8-9 and then
she used D&C 6:16.  The scriptures are so wonderful.  They help us
resolve any concern in such a wonderful way.  It always makes me think
of D&C 29:34 (wow, lots of doctrine and covenants).  God gives us
advice that isn't JUST temporal It's spiritual.  ALWAYS!!!! And it can
ALWAYS help us.  We have investigators that have so many questions and
I like to just use scriptures when teaching people (yes, I do talk as
well, happy mediuM :)).  Amulek You (RM from Taiwan) Told us that when
he ran into investigators like some of the ones we have, we should
just use scriptures so that they can focus on developing their
testimony of the scriptures.

I remember one lesson where my companion and I kept using so many
scriptures for every single one of their concerns.  That morning, we
had looked up scriptures for EVERY possible concern that they could
have thought up of.  Turns out, they thought of EVERY SINGLE ONE!!! it
was really cool to be able to use the words of prophets to answer
their questions.  Alma could definitely explain things much better
than I can :) At the end, our investigator said: "wow... the
scriptures have answers for everything...." BINGO!!!! YES!! OH I love
the spirit.  He is my favorite companion :)

I just read through 3rd nephi (the Savior's visit to America) and I
felt like I started piccking up on things better than I ever have.
It's the best. When you're thinking about your investigators as you
read, more things pop out at you. "That'd be perfect for him"
"Concern, RESOLVED!"  hahaha.  I kept thinking that.  I hope I can
continue to keep thinking about my investigators as I study it helps
me so much.

I hope you're all doing good.  I pray for you all every day... at
least ten times :D  I'm sure vicky does more.  She's a sister.
Sisters are perfect. :) And vicky is the best.   Don't tell her this,
but she is definitely one of my heros.  If you tell her, she's going
to make me regret it lots :P hahaha.

Love you all! Keep your head up, keep smiling, and Keep praying :D

Cheers,

Elder Chen