Feb 24 Week 29 - Elder Heaton will be NEW Companion! Shell Baptism anticipated for Mar 9, ABC Christopher, Dave back looking for job, BinBin tries to give back Book of Mormon,

Well this week has been really good.  I have been eating WAY too much candy from my birthday gifts, but other than that everything is going really well.   Shell is on date and keeping her commitments and we have a good teaching pool.  Saturday was transfer calls and we got some big news.  I will keep you in suspense until the end to tell you what is going on today.

Tuesday after e-mailing with you guys we went to teach an investigator that we recently picked up named Christopher.  He saw us on the street one night and came and talked to us.  He is an ABC American Born Chinese, but he read our Chinese name tags and decided to talk to us.  He had us come over to his apartment and teach him.  He is already a Christian and was interested in learning more.  Our Zone Leaders told us to still work with him, even though he speaks perfect English.  He is nice and is keeping commitments. He is a senior in college and an engineering student, but the member that we took with us thinks he might have autism.   He is doing well so far. He agreed to be baptized but isn't coming to church because he is really busy, which is a pretty common problem here with all the students we teach.

Wednesday Dave came back!  We walked into the institute and he was just there.  He had been waiting for us to come.  He is applying for Spring Semester at UCR and is hoping to stay till June, but is struggling to find a job, because his family can't support him.  He is still reading and praying, but he missed church again this weekend.  It is really frustrating, he always comes up with an excuse Saturday night.  Wednesday night we met with Sunny and Yudi, a daughter and mother that come to English class and who have come to church the past three weeks.  The mom told me they had been doing research and found out that if they joined the church she would loose her job and her daughter would recieve a lot of pressure to leave from all her teachers.  The communist party is really frustrating.  I don't know what to do.  I guess it is one of those things I can't control.  We are still trying to teach them to help build their faith, but I don't know if they are interested.

Thursday we went to free lunch at the institute then weekly planning.  Then we went to meet with a new investigator that we had named Bin Bin.  She said that she no longer wanted to meet and tried to return the Book of Mormon we had given her; Elder Schoonmaker made her keep it.  Anyway, we think it was her roommates who are already Christian that maybe gave her some Anti-info.  Whatever happened it was sad to see her go.  At night we met with Shell.  She is commited to keep the Word of Wisdom, Law of Chastity, and Tithing.  The only thing she needs to do now is come to church two more times.  She is on date for the 9th of March.

Friday we met with a potential and she brought this cool scroll that she uses to practice caligraphy on with water instead of ink.  She let us try it out.  It was pretty fun.  After we tried to share the gospel with her, she told us she wasn't interested, so we put her in our list of not very interested potentials. It is a big list...  Friday I also ate my first Kumkwat?  I don't know how to spell it.  It is an orange the size of a grape and you eat it with the peel and all.  It was really good.  I tried to find some at the store today, but no luck.

Saturday....We met with some potentials and then gave English class cards to all the Chinese businesses around the campus.  Most of them were really nice and allowed us to leave them in a little card holder, we also hung up some more signs.  I hope we get some more people to come.  It is doing ok, but we need to get some more students.  At night we got in contact with Liu!!!  His phone started working again!  He met with us.  He is really busy and says he has no time to come to church.  He is also struggling to give up coffee.  We need to get him on date, but it is hard.  He says he really doesn't want to be pushed. 

TRANSFER CALL... I am staying here with Elder Heaton and Elder Schoonmaker is going to

Eastvale with Yeung and Clarkson. I am pretty excited. I hear Heaton is really a good missionary, and his Chinese is super good.  So I hope I can learn a lot from him.

Elder Clarkson (Dexter's MTC companion), Elder Heaton (Dexter's New Companion who was previously

 serving in Taiwan before coming to CA Riverside Mission), Elder Yeung (who goes home in Aug)

Sunday was good.  All our investigators left right after sacrament though so our Chinese gospel principles class was small.   Elder Schoonmaker and I tried to answer Li Rui and Shelly's questions about the Abrahamic Covenant in chinese... that was interesting.  At night, Simon texted us and dropped us too.  Getting dropped is really hard. 

Ok that is my week!  I hope you guys had a good one. ILY

Love, Elder Murray

Feb 18 Week 28 - Fastest Week of Mission, Shell meets Shelly, Thanks for Birthday Packages, Exchange with Spanish DL, Eastvale Chinese New Year Party

This week was the fastest of my mission.  We did a lot of things besides our regular routine, so it was nice to have a change of pace this week.  Tuesday was a pretty normal day.  At night we taught our best investigator named Shell.  She is willing to be baptized, we have her on date for the 16th.  She came to church this past Sunday and she got a chance to talk with Shelly about her baptism, so that was really cool.  Keep her in your prayers. 

Wednesday I went on exchanges with my district leader.  His name is Elder Jensen.  He is a Spanish speaking Elder. They cover a huge area, but they don't have a car so they have bus passes.  It was sort of fun to ride on the bus, except at night.  That was sort of weird.  We had a good day in "Spanish Land."  I wasn't much help in lessons.  He serves in one of the poorest areas of Riverside.  It was interesting to see a different side of town besides just the college campus.  Just a few blocks away, it is really poor.  For dinner he took me to an authentic mexican place, and we got some good Horchata. 

Thursday was also pretty normal day.  We did our weekly planning.  Elder Schoonmaker bought a new binder for our area book.  It is pink and has a picture of a pug wearing a sweater.  He named it our P.U.G. binder Progressing Under God.  I'm just rolling with it. 

  

Friday I went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders.  They did it because Elder Schoonmaker and I are hitting the "standard of excellence" every week.  We get about 5 people to church on average, and we get a ton of lessons, but we don't have people getting baptized. So they took us out on exchanges.  They told me I need to be bolder.  So that is what I am working on.  We are now pushing to get every investigator on date, no matter what their excuses are, and I have been inviting everyone I talk to, to get baptized.  It is sort of weird but they said it will help me just get in the habit of being bold and not beating arround the bush.

Saturday!  19 years old!  Thank you for the package!  It was awesome.  All the elders appreciated the cupcake things, I love Fletcher's sign, hearing your guy's voices was great!  except you all sound really tired.  Did you do it in the morning?  Saturday night we went to Eastvale for a Chinese New Year party at the ward in Eastvale.  We had a bunch of investigators show up.  Including Moses!  It was really cool.  They served some pretty decent Chinese food; there were those dragon dancers, and a pretty funny program. It was a good time, and a good chance for our investigators to come meet the Chinese members in Eastvale.  Moses had a good chat with Brother Jiang, (Elder Snyder's recent convert)

Sunday  Moses came to church and we met with him after sacrament.  He knows he needs to get baptized but he can't because as a member of the Communist party he has to say he isn't religous.  He said that in June he thinks they will kick him out because he hasn't been paying the fee.  We tried to see if there was any way he could get out sooner,but he is afraid that if he quits he will get fired from his job. It is a tough situation.

Yesterday, we had a short P-day since we went to the temple  today.  So tell Grandma Cahoon, and Emilie that I will write them next week, I ran out of time.  Tell them sorry.  Ok that is my week life is good.

ILY-Elder Murray

February 10 - Week 27 Good week! Dave extends US stay, Shell accepts baptism invite, Jenny Has Concerns, Girl Scout cookies, LiRui moves into Member home, Explaining Relationship of Women and Priesthood in Chinese, Last letter as 18 year old

Good week this week!  Thank you for all the fasting and prayers it really helped.  I'm realizing I just have to take it one day at a time.  If I think about the 18 months I have left, I get stressed out.  So I just focus on what I need to do now, and I am able to get through days and weeks ok.

Monday we met with our recent convert Dave.  We were trying to help him get in contact with the head guy in China that is over the church.  We got an e-mail reply and he gave a phone number to call, but when we met with Dave it was still early in the morning over there.  Well Dave was supposed to go back to China today, but he extended again on a student visa and has gone to Santa Barbara.  He says he will come back this weekend and say hi.  I hope he does. 

Tuesday we had our DDM district development meeting.  That was pretty good.  I always leave excited and ready to go teach people what we just practiced.  That day we met with a guy named Clark.  We taught him the Plan of Salvation, and he seemed interested, but not really wanting to investigate the Church.  That night we met with Shell (the buddhist girl). We invited her to be baptized and she said yes, but said she needed some time to learn more.  We got her on date for March 2nd!

Wednesday we couldn't find anyone to meet, so I spent 1 hour calling every unknown person in our phone.  There are a lot of contacts in our phone, and a lot of them were put in before we got here, and they have no teaching record.  So I called them, and made a big list of notes on all of them.  It was good to get done, but I don't know if it was an effective use of time since there weren't any really find any solid potentials.  After that we went out and hung up English class signs and met a white lady that spoke Chinese selling girl scout cookies with her daughter.  We talked to her in Chinese for a bit, and she told us about lots of programs that send American students to China to look up when we get home.  We also bought a box of Samoas.  At night we met with a girl named Jenny,  She didn't want to be baptized anymore because of her parents.  She was worried about what they might think.  We tried to help her resolve that concern, she believes in Heavenly Father and we helped her recognize that she has felt the spirit.  So we told her to pray and ask what Heavenly Father wants her to do.  We are meeting with her again on Friday to follow up (that was the earliest she could meet again)

Thursday it rained!  It hasn't rained here in a long time.  I finally got to wear the rain jacket you sent for Christmas!  It was perfect...thank you!  On thursday we weekly planned.  We taught Shell again, for dinner we tried a new Chinese place.  It was pretty bad, but Elder Schoonmaker and I had a nice break together.  

Friday:  We met with a girl whose name I found in our phone a few weeks earlier.  We invited her to be baptized.  She started crying and said she did not know if she could trust God.  She said that she really wanted to, but that she didn't know if she could.  Well what ended up happening is that our member that came with us totally freaked out and talked to her straight about 15 minutes trying to comfort her.  Which was nice but he didn't give us a chance to talk to her or ask more questions then she had to leave really fast to get to class.  So that was a bummer.  I hope we will see her again.

Saturday:  We helped Li Rui move into a member's house.  It was a really short move.  Her bed was easy. It is just a piece of plywood with four 4X4 as legs.  She said that she really doesn't like mattresses; she just lays on that with a thin little mat on it.  She said a lot of chinese people sleep like this.  It doesn't look very comfortable. 
(This is a picture of Li Rui and Dexter and Schoonmaker.)

Saturday night we met with that kid named Leo or Liu.  He is really cool.  He said that he hasn't felt anything as he has been praying everyday.  Well Elder Schoonmaker talked to him about how he feels the spirit and Li Rui shared an experience about how the Holy Ghost helped her know where to find her car after she got in an accident.  It was a cool lesson.  Then he said talked about how he felt peace when he went to temple square.  I told him that was the spirit.  He agreed to come to church the next day, because that feeling of peace is what he wants more of.

Sunday we had Liu, and four others come to church!!  Two of them were a mother and daughter (Sunny and Yudi) from English class.  It was a really good sacrament meeting.  Afterwards we had our Chinese gospel principles class.  The class was on the priesthood,  Then mom (Sunny) asked about why women couldn't have the priesthood.  Shelly was teaching and asked me to explain.  It was hard to figure out how to say it all in Chinese, but I think I got my meaning across.  That class is hard.  It is all in Chinese and the students always bring up crazy questions.

Ok well that is my week. This is the last letter you will get from me as an 18 year old!  I love you guys.  Brothers thank you so much for your letters sorry I haven't had time to respond.  I will try when we get home.  Oh today I ate a ghost chili that a spanish Elder gave me.  It was dried so it wasn't as hot, but it was still pretty bad.  Alright that is all!  Happy Valenitines Day.

-Elder Murray

Feb 3 - Week 26 Liu and Word of Wisdom, Running into less Active Senior, Dave leaves on 10th, Taiwanese Starting Chinese Church warning people away from missionaries

Not really much to report.  It felt like a really unproductive and uneventful week.  Monday we taught Liu (the super cool guy I talked to on the street).  He asked about the word of wisdom so we taught it.  He hasn't been able to meet with us since.  I really hope we don't have to drop him, but we might.

 

Tuesday we has a lot of time to fill.  We got some new English class signs printed off and went to hang some up at a park.  At the park we saw a Chinese guy shooting hoops by himself so we went to shoot and talk with him.  He wasn't interested.  We met with Dave, he extended his stay in America till the 10th so we still have him for a while.

 

Wednesday we had a bunch of people cancel, so we went out to talk to people, and we found a less active Chinese kid.  He was born in China, and he and his family immigrated here where they met the missionaries.  He joined the church when he was young, but recently he has stopped coming.  We have tried to meet with him before but  he hasn't had time, so it was cool to just run into him as he was walking home from school.  We went to his house and talked.  He is really cool.   He is only 16 but is a senior; he is hoping to go to Berkley next year.  We talked to him about a mission, he said he isn't sure.  We invited him to church and he said yes.  Then Sunday came and he actually showed up!  Sweet!!

 

Thursday:  Weekly planning day.  Not very fun, but it is important.  At night we met with a potential to  practice English.   When we started to try to teach her the gospel she told us she is devote buddhist which is rare to find.  She said she is still interested in learning more, so we will see.

 

Friday we had ZDM.  It was good, but went a little long.  Afterwards we all went to... IN' N OUT.  It was my first time in my mission.  It was good. Friday was also the Spring Festival.  No one came to English class that was Chinese.  We had two Mexicans and one Indian guy.  So that was a bummer.  On Friday we also met with a girl named Christy that I found in our phone.  She has good potential.  Her uncle lives in Arcadia and he has talked with the Chinese missionaries there and even took Christy to church with him there.  She really liked it, and at the end of our lesson she said. "I think God is directing my path." 

 

Saturday More cancelled lessons.  So we went to these apartments really close to campus and knocked on all the doors that had Chinese New Years decorations.  It is cool because to scare away the new years monster they put red paper with symbols on the sides of their doors and they place an upside symbol on the middle of the door to bring good luck.  So we

knocked on all the doors that had that, and we talked to a bunch of people.  The problem was is that there is a...

 

Ok we have to go early I just found out so I will have to cut this short.  Can you send me mom's letter?

ily Elder Murray

"A few minutes later he told us he was able to stay on longer on the email.  We asked him about the problem above.  He emailed "there is a Taiwanese guy that has started a Chinese church up there, and it sounds like he is warning them about us, because they all said stuff like... why do we need more Bible."

Jan 27 - Week 25 - Chinese New Year Festival, Li Rui, Seeing Moses Again, Remembering that people we help is reason to be there even on hard weeks

Well since this week was not very eventful I will only go over the one exciting day and then I want to write about some people I have met.

The only day that was eventful was Saturday.  Riverside City held a Chinese New Year festival downtown and President Smart gave us permission to go.  It was a long/really hot day, but we talked to a ton of Chinese people, and got to see some cool stuff.  In the morning there was a parade through downtown.  There were a bunch of dragons, drummers, and firecrackers (really loud.)  It was fun to watch.  Then the rest of the day they had a bunch of tents set up selling Chinese food and souveniers.  I got some green onion pancakes, which sound really weird, but are actually my new favorite.  The place was swarming with people (students and families)  from Mainland China.  It was great to talk to so many of them.  We invited people to meet with us and/or go to English class.  (we need English class students!  On Friday our numbers were down to 3, but on wednesday (our superbowl night) we had about 15)  Lots of people totally rejected us, but we also found out it was a great place to find all of our former investigators who have stopped responding to our texts or calls.  For example we saw Moses! Finally! He was really friendly, and we invited him to come to church.  HE CAME!!!  It made the whole day worth it.  I hope we can pick him back up again. 

Something funny about the festival is that a lot of people decided to come dressed up as their favorite Japanese cartoon character.  In the afternoon there were hundreds of really strangely dressed teenagers.  Elder Clarkson came too and he told me it is called Cos Play.  It reminded me of how you described comic-con.  I thought of Conner when two people dressed as Doctor Who came up behind us and asked us to get a picture with "representatives from the religion of the time-lords"  Is Doctor Who LDS?  All in all it was a good day.

Well now I thought I would just talk about the recent converts we work with.  They are all really cool, and I just want to let you guys know how they are doing.

Li Rui:  Li Rui came to American 2 years ago, just as she was finishing high school.  Her parents both came, but now they are divorced. Her mom lives in Florida, and she lives with her Dad here in Riverside.  She was walking on the street one day and got lost.  She asked the missionaries for directions since they spoke Chinese.  They helped her out and invited her to English class.  She came and the missionaries offered to help practice English with her and teach her more about the gospel.  She accepted.  From what I've heard the missionaries helped her a lot, she was going through a really hard time in her life, her parents were divorced, she had no friends, and could barely speak English.  The missionaries helped her realize she could rely on Jesus Christ.  He will always be there for her and help her.  After some cool experiences with the Book of Mormon that really gave her a strong testimony, she decided to be baptized in April 2013.  Li Rui is awesome!  She helps us so much.  She gives our investigators rides to chruch every week and helps us teach lessons all the time. She has recently enrolled in BYU-Idaho online pathway program, next year she will be able to transfer up there.  She just got a job at DI this month and next month she is moving into a member's house.  She is also teaching our Chinese gospel principles class at church.  She has a really strong testimony, the gospel has really helped her change her life. I love talking about this because this is the reason why I want to be out here.  To help people like Li Rui (pronounced LEE RAY) know that we have a Father in Heaven who has prepared a way for us to have peace in this life, and eternal happiness in the world to come. To help people know that through Jesus Christ and his atonement we can overcome our mistakes that we all make, that we can learn and grow without being cut off forever from God.  So even when weeks are hard I think about Li Rui and all the other people (looks like I only have time for one this week) that I have been called to serve.

I Love you all so much.

-Elder Murray

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

Pictures Added to all Posts - These are from California Riverside Mission Blog Dec 19 Zone Conference

Mt. Rubidoux Zone