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
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