January 12 - Week 23 New Chinese Elder Coming!!, Pray for Moses, Dave Mini-mission, Guo-Qing, Elder Gausi and Haslam Left, 1914 Improvement Era, Irene Baptism set for 26

Hey well it has been another week.  I am just going to go over the highlights because I spent too much time looking at the Cahoon's blog you emailed.   So on Monday I was just walking on the street and there were these two people that looked sort of Japanese, but I decided to try anyways and it turned out they were from China.  Not only that but they said they had a lot of interest in learning more about Christianity, and said they wanted to find one to join.  Monday night we got dropped by Alison...  bummer.  She said she is only interested in learning English not more about the Book of Mormon. 

Tuesday was DDM,  It was good, and we found out some really exciting news!  We are getting a new CHINESE ELDER.  He has already been out a year in Taiwan.  For some reason he had to come home, and now he is reassigned to our mission.  He comes in tomorrow, I am excited to meet him, but the bummer news is that he will be going to Eastvale with Clarkson and Yeung not with Schoonmaker and I.  Oh well, I will probably be able to serve with him some other time.

Wednesday we sent Dave (the student Snyder and I baptized in November) on a mini-mission!  We talked to President and he put him in Moreno Valley with some English speaking Elders.  It is just so Dave can see what a mission is like and decide if he wants to go on his own when he gets to his home ward in China.  We spent a long day at the institute teaching some potential investigators and an old investigator that was out of town until this week.  Her name is Irene.  We got her on date for the 26th but we will have to change it because she didn't come to church yesterday.  We even brought sack lunches to eat at the institute library.  In the library I found a 1914 Improvement Era (Old name for Ensign I guess)  It was super cool, it has stuff about world war 1 and an article called "Fatal Flaws in the Evolution Theory"   Wednesday night we did had our first English class of the semester.  It was very poorly attended, so was the class on Friday.  I hope more people will come as the semester starts up again.

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Thursday we did weekly planning and President also gave us permission to go to the library to familiarize ourselves with the Mormons in China website.  It was interesting, but didn't answer our question about if we can baptize someone who is currently a communist party member.  At night we met with the girl and her boyfriend whom I had met on Monday.   It was a pretty good lesson.  We got them on date for the 26th and commited them to come to church!

Friday we taught some potentials, and taught Guo Qing.  He is  an old Chinese visiting researcher, he is cool.  He has come to church twice now and hasn't freaked out when we teach the  gospel so that is a good sign.

Saturday I went on exchanges with our District Leader's comp.  It was a good day.  We finally got to meet with Moses ( our investigator who has come to church 4 times now)  He is really having a hard time understanding the book of mormon.  The Chinese translation is as close to English as possible so nothing is lost, but it sometimes is hard for Chinese people to understand.  He also isn't keeping the word of wisdom. He told me he "had" to drink the coffee at his office or else he would have "died of thirst"  So we are going to read with him to help him understand.  When I brought up his baptismal date, he said no because a minister of a Mandarin Baptist church told him to get baptized in any church but ours. He said he needed to figure out the reason why they said that.  So we told him, that the most important thing is knowing the book of mormon is true.  We asked if he got his answer from the Holy Ghost if he would get baptized no matter what other people say.  He said yes.  Keep him in your prayers.

Sunday it was a good day at church we had 5 investigators there!  Moses came and was asking me why God didn't tell President Monson about a storm in the Northeast,  So we told him about how the prophet had told us to have food storage and I think that helped him resolve that concern.  It was sad because it was the last full days with our room mates Elder Glausi and Elder Haslam.  They have both left already.  I am going to miss them.  The new person moving in is Elder Reber and he will be training a brand new person.

Elder Glausi, Dex, Elder Haslam, Elder Schoonmaker 

Ok that is all.  I love you guys a ton! 

-Elder Murray