May 11 Week 92 - Basketball Pday, Canadian Converts teach great lesson, Exchanges with Dyer and Sister Xiong agrees to meet each week, DJ comes to Edwin Feng Baptism, Lucy comes to a baptism, Working for Standard

It was so awesome to talk to you guys. I am super tired right now, I played one on one with an elder from our zone. He isn't very good at basketball either, but not horrible. Anyone I barely won. It was fun. I have grown to enjoy basketball a lot more on my mission. So grateful for the court out back and all the money you guys paid for me to play on teams. I probably didn't make the most of either, but now I am so glad that I at least know what to do, and I don't just have to sit on the stage awkwardly. Ok well I onto the week. Monday we had a missionary couple that works in the office come with us to visit a recent convert who relapsed into smoking cigarettes. It was a really good lesson. This couple is super awesome. They are converts from Canada. Their accent is the best, and they are so nice. Tuesday I went on exchanges with Elder Dyer. It was fun to be back with him again. We had a good day, and put someone on date. We saw Sister Xiong that night. We had a good lesson with her finally. She agreed to meeting with us every week! I hope they follow up on that... I will follow up with them. Wednesday we did some service in the morning for this guy in the ward. We leveled out part of his backyard. Then we did our studies and weekly planning since the next day was Missionary Leadership Council. MLC. 

Pictures from Down by Riverside blog

At night we tried a bunch of potentials, but no one answered. Thursday we had the meeting. It was really good. We did get chastised, because the area and zone didn't do very well last month. There was lots of good training form President and Sister Mullen. Sister Mullen talked about how our last couple transfers are the ones where we take everything we have learned and use it to be the very best we can. It was really inspiring. Especially because the attitude of the mission recently has been you sort of "die" at the end of you mission. At night we had a good lesson with DJ. We moved his date to May 31st. He was cool with it. We had a good member there with us. After we had a lesson with Diana (she is the one that is super solid, but needs to get work off.) So she isn't progressing right now. Things will work out, I think she will get baptized before I go home. Friday we had the Zone Development Meeting ZDM. So we basically just repeated everything said in the day before's meeting. It was good though. I think our zone was really excited. We had one struggling companionship, buck up and hit standard this week! That was good. Then we taught Wendy (the lady in the old folks community). She isn't coming to church so we have to stop teaching her soon or "drop" as the English missionaries say. At night we went to our ward mission leader's house and asked for referrals, but that was about it. Saturday we were really behind on lessons. So we had a long day. DJ came and watched Edwin Feng's baptism!!! It was really good, I had to translate for him since it was in Chinese. Then we tried to visit a lot of old potentials we found in the area book. Elder Zeng made us hot pot for lunch at 12:00. It was really good. It is really spicy.

Edwin Feng Baptism from Dyer Blog

Hot Pot by Elder Zeng from Dyer Blog

 Then we went out and tried to visit more people. We got a couple lessons with less actives, and Jonny (the little kid that we are trying to baptized), before we had to go to another baptism for the ward. Lucy came. She really enjoyed it and felt the recognized the spirit. She said she was excited for her own. Sunday we were stressing. We needed one new investigator to hit the Standard and 3 people at church. Well Lucy cancelled because her daughter took her out for Mother's day. DJ cancelled for no reason... big bummer. But we still had 3 committed to come. So we went out early and luckily one of the people from the area book turned out to be solid. His name is Narciso. So he picked him up and thought ok we are home free. However, only 2 of the 3 showed up to church. So after church we still needed to find two. I was really stressed. Luckily talking to you guys calmed me down a bit. Afterwards we cut dinner short, and went crazy trying to visit people. Finally Elder Muir said there was a family they had dropped for not coming to church nearbye. So we went and picked them up again so we got the two new. We had worked so hard so it was nice to meet standard after all. Anyways that is the week! ILY -Elder Murray