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