HELLOOOOOOO everybody :)!
This was the craziest week EVER!! ok, not really, but it was pretty fun. hahaha :) I'll start of by saying:
Verina practices for 6 hours a day?! oh my goodness! That is so much time!!!!! holy cow. It's incredible! I wish I had that much time to study the scriptures and stuff. Then things would be so much fun. ahhaha. We had a special training the other time and we met one of the most incredible people ever! Brother Turley is the assistant church historian for the whole church! it's crazy because he has had access to every single curch document since he was 29!!!!!! How incredible would that be?! well. anyway. He taught us about the history of the church and how the restoration all fits in and stuff, and it was soooo cool. I want to learn SO much about it. At the end of the training, we had time to go and ask him questions about how we should resolve concerns with our investigators and stuff. We'd ask questions as to how we'd respond to certain concerns. Most of the time, he'd start with saying: "That is actually a concern of faith, you can bring it back to the scriptures/josephsmith/
Verina practices for 6 hours a day?! oh my goodness! That is so much time!!!!! holy cow. It's incredible! I wish I had that much time to study the scriptures and stuff. Then things would be so much fun. ahhaha. We had a special training the other time and we met one of the most incredible people ever! Brother Turley is the assistant church historian for the whole church! it's crazy because he has had access to every single curch document since he was 29!!!!!! How incredible would that be?! well. anyway. He taught us about the history of the church and how the restoration all fits in and stuff, and it was soooo cool. I want to learn SO much about it. At the end of the training, we had time to go and ask him questions about how we should resolve concerns with our investigators and stuff. We'd ask questions as to how we'd respond to certain concerns. Most of the time, he'd start with saying: "That is actually a concern of faith, you can bring it back to the scriptures/josephsmith/
Anyway, he was such a scriptural scholar it blew my mind!!!! OH MY goodness! it was crazy. We'd ask him a concern, and then he'd do that, AND THEN he'd resolve the concern using scriptures or history! For example, The situation of Laban being slain by nephi was brought up... it's not important if you've developed faith and, like Mosiah 4:19 says, believe in God that he knows all things. Well. anyway, I'll tell you about it when I get home because it's just a really cool thing to overcome with scriptural knowledge. It fits TOOO perfectly. The way that the book of Mormon intigrates the laws into the bible is INCREDIBLE! there is NO way thatJoseph Smith did it himself. ... yeah... anyway... I really enjoyed talking to Brother Turrley. President, Elder Hadfield, and I sat and talked with him after the training for AGES, just asking him questions and stuff. It was really really awesome. President and him would just ask questions and it'd get us thinking a lot!
So moral of the story is: I wish I could study the scriptures for 6 hours a day, the most we can study the scriptures for in a day is: 4 hours. 1 in the morning, personal study, companion study, and night time, but we need to work out in the morning, and companion study is usually consumed with role plays, lesson plans, and calls. And last night, I had to call for numbers so I didn't have a chance to study more scriptures!!! AHH! I want to be a scriptural scholar!!!!! SOOO bad!!!!
It was really cool because the other day, we got to sit in on a lesson where people told us what they thought of missionaries. I want to be like the missionary everybody imagines :D. The first one to go up was: Hungry. hahaha, then they all said outward things like: Handsome, clean, bilingual. deng deng. but then it got to the spiritual knowledge, and they told us that htey thought missionaries had memorized the scriptures and could quote everything, and knew what the profets said. That got me really excited to fulfil their expectations of missionaries! I thought of a talk by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland who said that we as missionaries take the baptismal covenant of taking Jesus Christ's name upon us to a whole new level!!!! We don't have a right to damage the image of the church, or to damage the image of the missionary force!!! SO! now, I'm going to try to maintain that image of being perfect scriptural scholars and STUDY STUDY STUDY!!!!!!!! It takes SOOOO long though, and we don't have enough time!!! JONJON! Start studying the scriptures!!! It's SOOOO much fun. I just wish I had studied them more when I was at home. THEN i could've been so much better of right now than I am. GAH!!!!
Thank goodness the lord is helping me study the scriptures. During sunday school, we had a few investigators, so Elder Hadfield and I had to do splits so I could take care of some while he took care of the others. We had a taiwanese boy go to youth and I went with him. IN the youth class, there was no teacher!!!! O.o! SO they all wanted the missionary to teach the lesson. I wasn't sure what the lesson was supposed to be about, but I was hoping the spirit would guide me. I asked them if they knew what the lesson this week was supposed to be about and they told me that it was signs of the second coming. WHICH was not the real topic, but seeing as it would've been inappropriate for our investigator, I thought it was wrong, and then they told me they just wanted to talk about that, but really it was alma 36! THANK GOODNESS i knew what that was. SO, i was able to follow the spirit and introduce to them, the chapter! It was so cool!!! Before my mission, there's no way I'd know what alma 36 was about, and it was PERFECT for the investigator. It was all about the conversion story of Alma the Younger. Anyway, the investigator liked the parts he understood (because I had to teach in english) We were able to study the chiasmus within the chapter to see how Alma felt before and after his conversion.
ANYWAY! that was church... mostly. At the end, we got to go to priest quorum to teach him with the priests, and then again, they talked about missionaries. :) YEH!!!!!! Everybody brought up concerns they had about serving their missions and I was really sad. Many of the boys didn't think too much about serving a mission. :( NOOOO!!!!! Remember that one talk given by President Hinkley? He was talking about the missionary force and how the members must get excited to do the work. Even though everybody thinks that the best way to do missionary work is via tracting, the members are the BEST WAY!!!! We just need to get them excited on all the different levels!!!!! so. We're going to get started little by little. I want to go and get the priest-age young men excited about doing missionary work and finding friends! and then they'll be excited to go on their missions! THere is SOOO much work to do here, and we don't have enough people to do it! In Gold Coast Alone we'd need at least 4 more missionaries to do the work, but we don't have that many. So elder Hadfield and I go out and work ALL day till we're tierd, and then we work some more, and then we sleep a little and then we go out. Too much work to do. LIke the gospel standard. The work is not finished until the Lord says it's done. The work is never done. :P hahahaha.
OK, lets see... some funny experiences..... hmmm.... It was Elder Vea's birthday yesterday. He's so funny because his english isn't all that great. We sang happy birthday over the phone to him because he is THE MAN! and I talked to him after, and made sure he was doing alright and that his area was good. He told me: "I feel like baby Elephant.... I grow my teeth." :) he said that in reference to the difficulty of his area. When we got his numbers, the area in which he currently serves isn't the most productive of areas. :( He's always out tracting and finding and working with members and working really hard, but still they have limited amounts of success. It called to rememberance a quote given by Elder Dallin H. Oaks which goes something to this effect: If trials, not consequence of disobedience, occur in your life, the Lord feels that you are ready for growth. When the Lord sees that you are being obedient and have room to continue to grow and develop, he will put trials in your path so that you can climb them!!!!!!
Oh there is SO much out here to learn, and I don't have enough time! I've already passed my year mark and I'm SO old!!! GAH!!! I was talking to Elder Hadfield and told him that if they open china, I'd want to extend my mission another two yearas and serve up there. That would be SOOOO much fun. hahaha. After our missions, we want to go visit Taiwan and China and BAPTIZE CHINESE PEOPLE!!! he has yellow fever :P hahahahahahaha.
But YES! i did get that package from Taiwan and it was AWESOME! thanks so much for the potatoes, cereal, and candy :) hahaha. Multi-vitamines are famous now in our area hahaha. But I have SO many, so you don't have to worry too much about sending me more food. We're ALL goods :) we have plenty of food to eat and plenty of members to feed us. and they really like us so they feed us a lot! :) We have had a dinner EVERY day. And our investigators want to feed us. And sometimes chinese people want to feed us a lot :) hahaha. It's a lot of fun. YAY CHINESE PEOPLE!!!
well let me tell you how cool member fellowship is in this area!!!!! This girl wants to be baptized, but she wants to be baptized when her fellowship comes back from china! hahahaha.. YEH!!!!! She didn't really worry about us being gone, she was worried abou the member being gone!! INTEGRATION!!! YEH!!!!!!!! GREAT SUCCESS!!!!!!
ALso, the ward is super duper cool Bishop Shine is the COOOOOOLEST bishop in the world. I LOVE HIM!!!!!!!!!! oh my goodness. He is the FUNNIEST greatest bishop!!!! He's famous here in gold coast stake because he always goes out and does EVERYTHING. plus he's always trying to work out. We introduced ourselves and told everybody our favourite food. His favourite food is: PROTEIN YEH!!! BISHOP SHINE :).
The youth also want the elders to come and do a mutal night one time. :) I'll let you know how it goes. We're going to teach them to 1. Cook (for the young women) 2. Dance (youngmen: breakdancing/hip hop/etc to church music :P) and so the youth can all bring their friends!!! YEAHYEAH!!!! GREAT SUCCESS!!! Ward mission leaders always tell us to use our talents to go out and find people!!! TALENT FINDING TIME!!!!
well, I hope you have a fantastic week, sorr I didn't take any pircutres this week, I stil have my camera and everything, we just haven't really had a chance to take too many pictures. I should take some pictures with the members in my area.... but we never really have time. it takes too long :P
Wo Ai Nimen!!! :D
(We got the lyrics for ting ma ma de hua for language study. Too bad it's all in jianti :( the characters are so confusing between jianti and fanti... oh well. trials are fun! :D) bie ren dou shi ting wo xie de ge!!! hahaha. favourite line ever :) ting ma ma de hua
Jia You!!!!!!!!
Elder Chen
hey jonjon! I just remembered, I haven't really written letters to anybody recently, so apologize to michon for me :P I haven't written her back for her letter! bahahaha. We always give up p-days to go and teach and stuff, so we never really have time to go and write letters :P hahahaha I feel fei chang bu hao yi si.
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