Jan 6 - Week 22 - MoErMen and Wan Hui, Moses Baptism set for 26th, Sore throat, UCR Worker, Iris Surprise

Hey guys!  I never know what to say at the beginning of these e-mails.  It has been an up and down week.  Right now I can't talk.  I got a sore throat on Saturday, and now voice sounds pretty bad.  It makes practicing chinese pretty hard.  I think I have a little cold, but not too bad.  Ok now that's done!  On to the week!

Monday:  We had dinner/FHE at a member's house that night,  We invited Li Rui and another student (Chris, a former investigator that Elder Snyder and I taught.)  Li Rui said ok and asked if she could bring Iris!  She is that one girl that we taught forever; she didn't get baptized.  I thought she left for China, but it turned out she just went to New York and would spend one night in Riverside then go back.  So she came to FHE.  It was cool to see her again.  We taught her a lesson afterwards.  She knows she has felt the spirit and recognizes it, but she still doesn't want to get baptized.... so hard to see her go.

Tuesday: Elder Haslam and Glausi were teaching a lady that was going to China and wanted some advice, so we went on exchanges so Elder Schoonmaker could teach her since he went to China last year.  Elder Haslam and I went to teach Moses.  We brought up baptism and he was totally against it.  Then he said he needed to go, and couldn't meet again till Sunday.  So we invited him to come to church again.  He said yes.  At night we had to be in early for New Year's Eve.  We played basketball in a church gym.

Wednesday: The whole mission got two hours to clean their apartments for inspection.  Ours looked pretty darn good!  It felt nice to get everything picked up. 

Asian Looking Apartments

The Raincross - This symbol is everywhere in Riverside

At night we had dinner/New's Year's party at another member's house with a bunch of Chinese students.  It was a good time, we got some good potentials from it.

Thursday: Schoonmaker was really sick.  He hadn't been drinking any water, so in the morning we studied and did weekly planning.  In the afternoon he was feeling a lot better so we went to meet Alison.  (the girl that we taught last Sunday.)  We invited her to be baptized. She was pretty suprised.  She said she just wanted to learn English, but that if we wanted to teach her we could.

Friday: I saw a huge group of Chinese students so I went to talk  to them and a UCR worker came up and got really mad at me.  He was just taking them from the international village to the campus to give them a tour.   I think he was getting ready to fight me, so I just said hi and hoped that they'd see our free english class signs.  I am excited to get a brand new batch of students this week!

Saturday We had ZDM which always goes way too long.  At night we taught Wan Hui.  He is the guy that I accidently called and he turned out to be a Chinese immigrant who was investigating Christianity and had a kid,  (the lady that I thought was his wife turned out not to be.)  Well we taught them about the restoration, it went pretty well, but when we talked about the Book of Mormon, he said MoMen Jiao?  I think I said this in one of my last letters, but the old translation for Mormon in Chinese was MoMen. It means devil door.  Now they changed the translation to MoErMen because it was scaring people.  When I heard it in the MTC I thought it was funny, but now it is just annoying.  So once Wan Hui found out we were the Mormon church he sort of zoned out and wasn't really interested.  He said he might meet with us again next Saturday.  Keep him in your prayers!

Sunday:  Moses, Alison and Simon came to church.  It was a good testimony meeting.  I think they enjoyed it.  Then we went to Chinese gospel principles.  After the Chinese class they all decided to just walk home.  So I set an appointment that night with Moses.  The appointment went really well.  We got him back on date for the 26th.  We went over the baptismal questions. He is still waiting for his answer about the Book of Mormon.  Keep him in your prayers also.  He is a really cool guy.

Notable Quotables:

As Moses was trying to say the word Tithing (he was reading English)  I went to help him and I accidentally said teething... I was really tired last night, so now he thinks we follow the Law of Teething not Tithing.

Ok that is my week!  I miss you all.  Love you!

-Elder Murray