9/10/2012

WAOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

 

Verina's sophmore recital looks soooooooooo coool!! :) hahaha.  I wish I could've gone and clapped and screamed my head of when she finished, but alas, I shall celebrate in the land where where the weather is flipped. It's really really cold here. but it's warming up. plus, I got this jacket that was supper warm :) so it's all goods. hahaha.  now it's starting to get hot, and gold coast hot is OH MY GOODNESS HOOOOOOOOT!!!! GAH!!! it was like 27 C the other day. yikes, and it's not even summer yet. and it's super humid as well, so we're always sweating and stuff. no good.  Every time i sit on a members' chair or couch, I feel terrible because when I stand up, it's glistening with sweat. bahahahaha.anyway. one time, I started wringing sweat out of my shirt........ awkward. hahahaha, I thought it was funny.

 

JOnjon is the man for helping out so much! you shall be blessed :) I wish I had helped mom and dad more. I could've had more blessings on my mission :) YAY!!!!!!!! Blessings time. Keep up the good work Jon! and keep up studying hard too. High school is the funnest ever :).

 

The food on the table looks delicious! Dad is the man! :) hahaha, thanks for being so cool dad, and making sure we're all happy. the girl we just baptized (suri) always talks about her dad and family and stuff, and then I think of dad and I'm like: Yeh... he's cooler. hahaha, I probably shouldn't get competitive. oh well :)

 

Anyway, this week was CRAZY! hahahahahaha. oh my goodness. it was crazy as! I think there was some kind of festival or something and all the people in the gold coast were drunk out of their minds. I don't know what it was, but htere was a really high density of drunken crazies on the streets.  Australians really don't like us sadly :P hahahaha. Good think I get to teach ASIANS!!!!!!!! YEH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hoorah! hahahahahaha it's so funny because everybody tells us to love the people that we serve. We only have to serve the asians :P bahahahaha. just kidding. I like a lot of the australians. We just never really get a chance to serve them. hahaha. and most of the time they're drunk, so.... yeah... no good.

 

SPeaking of which, we had the funniest experience in the world. hahahaha.  Elder hadfield and I were out on saturday night (bad idea by the way) when we ran into a large group of drunk girls at the bus stop.  They asked us if we were mormon and other gospel questions that didn't really make too much sense deng deng. well. we turned to talk to our recent convert, and t hen they were like: Oh hi (looking at elder hadfield) I'm not going to lie, you're really attractive, how are you still a virgin. sooo... we ran away :P bahahahahahaha. Like Joseph in Egypt from potipher's wife. bahahaha, I was laughing so hard, and elder hadfield was so emberased! I couldn't stand it. It was too funny. hahahahaha.  Anyway, that was the last of a long day of drunken encounters. do not worry, we are safe :) the Lord protects us a lot, plust we're not going to go out on saturday nights anymore. hahaha WEEKLY PLANNING MOVED. if we get to call the assistants hahaha.

 

Ok, also, we were talking to one of our investigators the other day, and were asking if she had had a chance to pray and stuff. yeah. Anyway. we were asking her about her prayer. it was so funny because when we asked her what she was looking for as an answer, she said: Oh... I flipped a coin....... bahahahahahahahahaha. :) She said she made a deal with god that if she passes her EILTS (English test) test, then she'll be baptized. after she made that deal in a prayer, she flipped a coin and it was heads so she thinks it was an agreement...... oh wow... hahahaha.

 

we're teaching a guy from Korea, and he was in the special forces O.o yikes. Lots of koreans here. :)

 

we've had to go abroad and teach heaps of crazy lessons down in lismore, burleigh heads, tweed heads... etc, so we haven't really had a chance to teach too much in our own area, but that's alright because we get to meet super cool people.  The picture with the two chinese people is because we went down to burliegh heads in order to go and teach them. they're really cool. they've bene married for two years and one is a member, the other is not, but they're working on baptizing her. sadly she goes back to adelaide... where there are no chinese speaking missionaries.... :(

 

the other picture is of us in surfer's paradise by this random tiki thing. :) we loved it. hahaha, it's in the middle of all these shops, and stuff, so we wanted a picture by it and so here it is :)  we took pictures with it. there's this one random power cord that runs into the bottom of the tiki, so we were joking and guessing that there's some hidden machinery inside of it which makes it moove!!!! hahahahaha, then we met with our korean investigator. :) He's really cool. He sadit that he used to be roman catholic, but then went to the military andt hen stopped for a bit, and because of his parents went bvack to it, and now he's just hanging out... so we're going to BAPTIZE HIM!!!! YEH!!!! hahahahaha :D

 

Well, this week during studies, I decided to research church history, and so.... yeah. There's so many cool things in church history that I didn't know about! GAH!!!!!!! So many apostles, historians, etc. it's great to keep studying about thsoe!!!!!!!!! WAH!!! Most of the church history is enveloped in discussing the church during the presidencies of Joseph smith and brigham young! it's so cool! The church has such a great history!

 

ONe of the amazing things about church history is the Missionary evacuation during World War II> it was really cool because the missionaries in europe recieved two different evacuation alerts. the first one, they all got out really quickly, but then since a treaty was signed they were allowed to continue their service. the second alert came a little late.  so it was really difficult to make it out of the nations involved with the war! One of the mission presidents wouldn't leave until all of his missionaries were safely out of the german territory.  His wife left and ran into President Smith who said that the war would not start until the missionaries and mission president were safely out of the country.  This was really crazy becuase all of the surrounding countriers had closed their borders and it would take ages to get out of the country.  It DID take ages, but as soon as the mission president was on neutral soil, germany commenced its attack!!!! The prophet's prophecy was literally fulfilled!!!!! But that wasn't the coolest part of the story though.  The prophets had said that the missionary work completed would be extremely productive beyond that of previous efforts.  BUT because of the war, the missionary force dropped from roughly 2000, to 200.  HOWEVER. because of the lack of missionaries, wards became self-sufficient. More local branch presidents were called, and becuase of that, they started doing more of their OWN missionary work!!! They baptized WAY more than the full-time missionaries did.

 

this helped me realize that the mission is a refiners fire! Just liket that chinese proverb that I told you about ages ago: Zhen jin bu pa huo lian!!!! What do we fear! This is the refiners fire.  We should not fear anything at all!!! :) YEH!!! When trials are not an evidence of disobedience, it is evidence that the lord feel that we are prepared to grow more!!! it's time to grow!!!!!!!!!! YEH!

 

well, the computer just told me I'm almost out of time :P SO, I love you guys! keep up the good work. Verina is too popular! :) Jon is too cool, dad is the man, and mom is super cool, Jeff's cool too. and sister chen is on fire!!! keep up the good work!!!

 

Elder Chen

 

ps. I don't remember if I told you but yes, I did get the package from taiwan with the blanket and stuff.... I feel like I already told you, but it's good to double check :)