It was Temple day today and it was the greatest! sorry I didn't give you a heads up about that, but... yeah... I forget sometimes. We probably should be more consistent with our emailing, but one out of every three times will not be on a monday. Transfers, holidays, and temple change the day we email :). BUT it's so much fun. I really enjoy going to the temple. Today, at the temple I learned SO many new things. I couldn't believe it. I was more awake than usual today and for some reason, more things started coming out at me. I LOVE the temple. It's such a wonderful place. One of the elders fell asleep during the session. :P hahahaha. Missionaries are always too tired. :) BUT it's good. I love being tired, then falling asleep super fast. and then waking up kinda is not very fun.
Thank you Dad for sending me that email!!!! :) That was so great I really enjoyed it. It really sounds like you're having so much fun. I totally forgot about Fathers day :( I'm sorry, But happy fathers day regardless. I love meeting families where the father is so loving to their children. It reminds me of dad :). The other day, there was a dad talking about the morals of the world because I contacted him. He was from guangzhou, and he was sooo funny. When he said "today society is so ridiculous!" it sounded exactly like the way dad says "ridiculous", and I had to stop myself from laughing hahaha. It was awesome. Anyway, I guess that was my tribute to Papa Chen for this email. Love you lots, and thank you so much for your great example. :) I'm glad you put me in gear and got me to work hard. It has helped me so much on my mission.
WELL!!!! I got a package in the mail yesterday! it was filled with letters and a letter that I think was sent for sister Chen. I think I'll send that to her as soon as I can. :) haha. but you all sound like you're doing AMAZING :) hahaha. Jonjon sounds like the biggest skux delux EVAH! haha. Skux Delux = Stud Muffin = Kanchinam (korean) = Kingka = Shui ge = Jon. haha. Tearing it up at the dances, winning things. Man, I don't even remember how old you are! I still don't accept the fact that i'm 20. Old people are 20. I'm not old. Thus, I am still 18. :) are you 16 yet? oh no! I'm sorry I forgot. I can tell you the ages of my investigators, but I can't even remember your age Jon! :( NOOOOOOOO. Don't get too good at dancing. You'll beat me and then I'll have to find soemthing else to do. haha
Fun fact: Missionaries wear flip-flops in Tonga. :) And Faikangas. JEALOUS
This week, we had a lot of stuff to do. We're starting to get more trust from Bishop ( I think It helps that I've been in this area for... I don't know how long) and we've set up weekly updates with bishop in order to increase the available referals and stuff. We baptize very few australian people here sadly.... I think I've taught two that have been baptized.... yep... two :) YEH!
One of the people we teach though: Chinese man, was so funny. He was a former from the Eight Mile Plain area and so we just picked him up and strted teaching him because he was in our area. We wanted to get to know him, and so we asked him his religious background to see if he had any belief in god or anything. He said: "No, I am Chinese party" (In reference to Politics) Our fellowship, unfamiliar with the use of the word, wgot really excited all of a sudden, and asked: "So... how is a chinese party different from an Australian party"(refering to party parties :)) hahahaha. we all started laughing and the fellowship didn't get it so we had to explain it to him, and then he was really embarassed, and it was funny. I think you had to be there for it to be funny, now that I think about it. hrm.... oh well, I enjoyed it.
ALSO we got blessed by a... ex-muslim anglican priest... who... might have been off his rocker a little bit. I started talking to him in the middle of the QWueen street mall. He responded by saying: "I prayed you here!" and commenced speaking in tongues. It was really awkward, but I didn't want to offend him, but he was attracting undue negative attention, SO I shook his hand, thanked him for his time and started walking away. He followed, unfortunately, and continued to bless me, so I just stopped and acted like I was taking care of a crazy person until his blessing was over. Then he asked me how I felt, and so I I just told him that I felt good, gave him a pamphlet and ran away.... with my companion. He just laughed at me. Evidently this same guy has been praying missionaries to him and blessing them for a while. Elder Tito has seen him. OH NOOOO. Well, yep. So these are the good things of serving in the city. YEAH! we get to meet some interesting people.
We gave a guy named Tyler a Chinese name: Tai La... TOO SPICY
I also met a friendly chinese man named Octavius. :) I thought he was joking, but when I called him, it went to his voice mail, and it told me that his name, truly was octavius gao. fun. SO we are meeting with octavius soon. after his finals are over. GRRRR finals. hahaha. they are so bad for us. it kills me. but it 's a lot of fun finding because they will jump at any chance to speak english. So, I use it as a great finding tool, and WHAM, we have potential investigators. :) hororah. hahaha.
Ok, about the pictures. I'm not sure... once again, which pictures I attached. I know one of them is Elder Malohifo'ou... Verina's protector. But they're all taken at a zone meeting we had. haha. Interviews training was so much fun. We had this thing where we did a bunch of games after we did a role play about how to do them. We tought them like commandments. I wish I could send you a video, but one of the activities was that ElderLindberg (Swedish man) had to put tights on his head. Down one foot of the tights was a tennis ball. The objective in putting these tights on his head was to use the tennis ball to knock over six bottles. It was really funny. hahaha. He did it, which is really impressive. haha.
I promise our zone is doing good work :) we just like to have fun while we're at it :) The mission is the FUNNEST place in the world! YEH!
I realized how heavy and serious the title of missionary is this week. We decided to change an appointement to meet at the temple because we wanted to give that investigator a tour, but he didn't show up. As we were about to leave, we recieved a call from one of the members we had met int he city. She was from burpengary (way out of our area) and wanted a blessing. We agreed and she asked us if we could come to the church in a few minutes. Since we were already there, it was perfect timing. We gave her a blessing. As we gave her the blessing, I couldn't understand why she wouldn't call someone from her ward, but then i realized that being missioanries, we hold a big responsibility! and All the members know it.
We had a really great miracle story this week. There have been so many miralces, I keep forgetting to tell you about them, but I probably should become much better at it. This week, we were supposed to have basically no lessons because all of our investigators are taking their final exams and don't havee time to meet with us. We kept calling people, and everybody just fell through, so we decided to go through some of the former investigators and old potentials. I was going through my potentials sheets when i came across a girl named Yenni. From Hong Kong. We decided to call her, and she had TIME! it was wonderful. we set up a meeting with her, and got fellowship and everything. When we met with her, she sat down and told us that she really wanted to know! that's all she said. She just really wanted to KNOW. I didn't know what that meant at first, so we started teaching her about God. It was perfect for her because she had really wanted to understand about God. Everything she had researched before didn't make any sense until we brought up the fact that he is our father in Heaven. It was such an amazing moment in the lesson when it clicked with her.
I know that there are so many people out there just like her. They're so confused by the many different things they hear about after-livesGod, and other spirital matters. What we have can sate that confusing and that thirst for knowledge. It can fill a hole in their lives! They may not know it, but the gospel can fill anything in our lives. It can comfort us when we are week. It can lift up the heavy hand. Lighten the hearts of the hurt, and encourage the burdened mind. I love being able to see the gospel change the lives of those around me. It is such an amazing and wonderful work!
I love you all and hope you all have a wonderful week this week. Keep praying! The Lord knows where we all stand. If we stand with Him, he will be behind us all the way!
Love you all!
Elder Chen
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