Jan 21 - Week 24 Christy Sincere Prayer, Frank and Ensign, Wei Wei and Li Progressing, Uncle Chuang's Bakery, Hard to lose Moses, Guo Qing, Katherine

Another week has flown by.  It has been pretty warm here, sometimes it is a even a little hot as we are walking outside at noon.  I'm nervous for Summer. It is going to be an adventure. 

Tuesday was pretty interesting.  Our investigator named Moses dropped us.  He just texted us and told us that he was just having a really hard time and said to give him some peace.  He hasn't responded to any calls or texts yet.  This is where teaching all the lessons at the institute becomes sort of a bummer, because we don't know where our investigators live.  Tuesday we also got to meet the new Chinese Elder!  His name is Elder Heaton.  His Chinese is really good, it will be nice to have another person to practice with. Now we have a total of 5 Chinese speakers in the mission.  Tuesday night we almost got this guy named Guo Qing on date, but he said he wanted to wait for his family to come and meet us.  He also dropped us later in the week.  We also had a really good lesson with Wei Wei and Li.  We taught them the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They totally accepted it and were still willing to be baptized on the 26th.

Wednesday we had our first DDM of the transfer.  My new DL is a Spanish missionary named Elder Jensen.  He is a good missionary, and he gave a really good training on testifying with the Spirit.  We have a pretty good district that also includes our new room mates.  Elder Reber from Enterprise Utah and Elder Gillet from Alpine, Utah.  They are both super cool.  Reber is a farmer and loves tractors, and Gillet is a hardcore hunter.  They get along great.  English Class was better Wednesday night,  We had 2 new people show up, but we still weren't up to the numbers we had before Snyder left.

Thursday we met with an old investigator named Katherine.  She had been out of town for a long time, and finally was able to meet with us.  She told us that she had talked to her mom about baptism.  Her mom is Buddhist and was totally against it,  So she told us she had to stop meeting.  Then the member that we had brought with us talked for 15 minutes straight about why she shouldn't... using English.  Katherine totally didn't understand and looked pretty bored for most of it.  She has also stopped returning calls or texts.  After that rough lesson we taught some potential investigators English.  They told us about their home towns.  One was from a town called Suzhou,  It sounds really cool; it is by a famous lake called West Lake.  After that we went to Uncle Chuang's Chinese Bakery;  I got a lotus cake that was really good.  I will definitely have to get it again.

At night we taught a student named Klaus that we found just by going through and calling all of the people in our phone that we didn't know.  He is pretty interested in the church, but he is really busy with school.

Friday we met with a girl named Echo.  She loves history and even lived in France for two years.  So after a while of letting her practice English, we brought out the Book of Mormon and taught her the history of it.  She was pretty interested.  Friday night we had 17 people come to English class!!!  I was so happy,  I have been praying for help with our English class.  I know Heavenly Father answers our prayers, but we need to review at the end of everyday to recognize how much He has really helped us.  That is something I have been trying to work on this week. 

Saturday Guo Qing dropped us.  That happened a lot this week.   We taught a good amount of lessons that day, most were just helping them practice English, and trying to find who is interested in the gospel.  At night we met with another person that we found just by going through our phone.  Her name is Christy.  She already speaks really good English, but we starting talking about prayer and how it helps us. She asked if she could pray.  We said of course.  We taught her how to pray and she said a really sincere prayer.  It was a really cool lesson, we helped her recognize that the good feelings she had were from the spirit.  Christy's lesson went a little long so our next appointment was just sitting outside in the foyer.  (The UCR institute is basically just our office)    While Frank (our next appointment) was waiting, he picked up an Ensign and started reading it.  He asked us to go over it with him and help him to understand it.  He had read a talk from Elder Utchdorf called Saints for all Seasons.  It was really good, and the coolest part was at the end there was a short story from a member in Taiwan!  So cool.  I think he was really moved.  He agreed to come to church the next day.

Sunday was stake conference.  Elder Anderson and Elder Eyring both spoke in a broadcast to all of Southern California.  It was cool they talked a lot about the importance of families and missionary work.  After stake conference we went to try to find a Chinese person that the YSA ward had records of, but couldn't find.  The address turned out to be a place called International Village.  It is an apartment complex that a ton of foreign exchange students live in.  I'm not quite sure if it is or is not part of the campus.  Regardless we went in.  We found the door, knocked, but no answer.  The phone had a spanish answering machine, so I am pretty sure the member went back to China already.

Yesterday.  We taught Wei Wei and Li the Law of Chastity and Word of Wisdom.  We told them that they need to either get married or find separate homes.  They said they would talk about it. They agreed to live the Word of Wisdom, but only as long as they stay in the US.  In China there is a huge problem with drinking and business culture.  They are our best progessing investigators so keep them in your prayes.

ILY

-Elder Murray