2/18/12

SO THIS WEEK WE HAD SOOOO MANY MIRACLES!!!!!!!!!!!!! it was such a fun week. plus I went on trade-offs with Elder Bellingham(my mtc companion and our current AP) which were heaps of fun, but I'll tell you about that later.

FIRST there's a girl that we're teaching: her name is Betty and she is the COOOOLEST girl IN THE WORLD!!!!! hahaha. we set a date with her last week to be baptized. and ehr friend. that she brought. anyway. this ist he finding story.

We were finished tracting and were about to head home for dinner (a little late beacuse we'd really wanted to hit our goal of potentials and were cha yi dian dian) (by cha yidian dian, I mean, we were short one potential) anywho. I saw this girl and we were all tired, but I decided to contact her on the street anyway.  So I went and contacted her and we got her number. we were super excited and stuff. my companions weren't too excited about contacting her becasue they don't really contact girls too much (rant).  back at the ranch.  We met up with her and started teaching her. then she started bringing a friend that was interested in the gospel. At one point, they came to church, and I had to take care of a lot of stuff, so I left my companion in the chapel with another missionary, while I took another missionary to do stuff. At that point, they told her about the law of chastity and that was her TOTAL CRAZY PUSH FOR THE CHURCH! who would have thought. SHE LOVED the law of chastity and since then has been a fireball.  We were planning on teaching her the law of tithing, and as soon as we said tithing she said she had a question: "How do I pay tithing when I go back to china?" :D heeee. anyway. that's the kinda people chinese people are. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!!!!!  :)  She's the coolest. we alll love her hahahaha.

Also, this week, we knocked on a door, and the man said that he wasn't home :)

from Betty's experience. I learned something that has helped me as I've found.  You don't need to be inspired to talk to somebody. :) I've always wondered how it would feel to go out and feel inspired to talk to somebody, but then when I went on trade offs, they said that the spirit only needs to inspire you if you're not going to do it. If you've aligned yoru will with God's will, you will talk to EVERYBODY regardless of inspiration or not. That's a lesson I've learned recently! SO VERINA!!!! This is for you! I know you're going to be fantastic. but don't require yourself to be inspired to go out and find. Just do it!! waiting for command is no fun. :) anywho. i'll get off my soap box. I wish i could just sit down and talk with you for a while, but I think I'll just type you a really long letter every week with tidbits of what I've learned. I feel like I've learned so much out here. the mission is such an incredible place! I don't know that I could have learnred this much by staying at home. Good choice for going on a mission :)

the person next to mee is looking up german stuffs hahahahaha YAH MAN!!!!

OK! so Trade-off's this week. So I went on trade-ffs with our beloved Assistant :) ELDER BELLINGHAM!!!! if you remember that name :) hahahaha. he's my MTC companion. ANYWAY we went on trade-offs and it was super fun. hahaha. :) A lot of the day was teaching and it was crazy! We both still remembered how to teach with each other. it was crazy.  There were no awkward silences (there were silences... LOTS of them, but they were good silences), we asked questions together, double testified! haha. it was so much fun. in our review, we really didn't have any regrets for that day, and we just ended up having a retrospective talk togehter. it was so much fun hahaha. I can't wait for him to come back down into the chinese program. his chinese is still pretty good, but it's a bit rusty hahhaa. I'm glad I didn't get transfered out of the chinese program. :) my chinese is pretty bad still! HOWEVER. I talked to a guy from hokkein and he can speak taiwanese fluently and so he wanted to teach me. unfortunately he's TOTALLY out of my area hahhahaaha.  so I referred him. I've referred so many people to other areas. :( gah. it's so depressing because I want to teach these peopel SOOOOO badly, but they live totally outside of our area and It makes me sad. :P hahaha. oh well.

well this week, I studied a lot out of Jesus the Christ again ( I LOVE THAT BOOK!!!!!!!) I'm at the point of Christ's final parables and stuff where His earthly ministry is winding down. It's always so motivating for me to see how much He was willing to give for His fellow brothers and sisters. and it helped answer my question as to why is missionary works SOOOOOOOOO hard?! Well. missionary work is hard because we've got to taste a token of what Christ had to go through in order to help our brothers and sisters gain salvation. Elder holland said that human salvation never has been and never will be cheap! It will require a little bit of ourselves. not as much as Christ, but it will require a part of us.

LOVE YOU ALLLLLLLL :) I hope this email finds you all happya nd healthy and ready for Verina to go on her mission!!! YEH!!!!!!! JIA YOU JIA YOU!

Elder Chen

this is joy (baptized recently), Jerry (baptized when i was here ages ago) and brother Orth. hahahaha. he thinks he's a ninja.... and he is (just in case he can read my emails :p hahahaha)

this is the fernandez family and I drying to design a dragon head for our dragon dance.... maybe we'll take a picture of the finished product later :) hahahahaha. hint: THe tombstone looking things are actually eyes :)

these are our beloved assistants. in the bottom is Elder Hopoate. the man who sacrificed 2million dollars to be a missionary

Elder Lutui, Me, Elder West. the brown people :) we cooked pancakes... as we cooked the bacon, it was sooo funny hahahaha. the fire was so big that none of us could move it around. EXTRA CRISPYYYYYYY! :)

this is the fire that burnt us :) hahaha. it was big.

EMP! EXTRA MASCULINE PEOPLE!!! hahahaha :)