每周信函2013年2月25日

Hey everyone. 大家好！

How is everyone this week!

It has been a rather interesting week, this area is doing just very well, I am leading this area at this point, and it's been pretty interesting to say the least. My new companion Elder Butcher is really great, he's a pretty funny guy and he takes the work pretty seriously, but doesn't let him stress him out. I think we really need that attitude that we won't let the work stress us out too much because as long as we're doing our best there's no reason at all to feel down.

This week we made great strides with Sophie, she's really developing her own personal testimony, she's been to church twice already, so she's very much on track for next Saturday's batismal date, she will more than likely be baptized into the Milpitas ward since she has friends there, so we are currently coordinating very closely with the Bishop and Relief Society president there in that ward (the good thing is that that ward meets in the same building as our ward, so it's pretty easy) We asked her to go ahead and "try" our ward once to see if she prefers the Chinese translation (and I think it would be better for her to learn in Chinese anyway, but in reality it's her choice) so she may be there this Sunday, but if she does decide to have the baptism in our ward it gives us very little time to prepare for it (6 days, no announcement in Sacrament meeting) so at this point we are preferring that she stays in the Milpitas ward. So yes. I have lost a lot of sleep over this issue because at first I thought she would have to be taught by the Milpitas Elders but I called President Watkins and he told us that she should be taught in her native tongue anyway, so yes. Phew.

Her husband a few weeks ago accepted a job offer in Irvine, CA so they will be moving down there in May/June. Plus Sister P. (her friend) looked it up and there's a really strong Chinese branch fairly close where they may live, so we're excited for that. The downside is that he is not interested in learning about the gospel at this time, so we're really hoping that in the future he will be open to it.

Ryan is moving forward as well, his father has been making him work on Sundays and that's been preventing him from coming to church at all. So we had Julianna with us in a lesson with him, and how she had to totally shift everything in her schedule in order to make it so that she was going to be able to not have anything on Sunday. It was a very good lesson, he's going to sit down with his dad and make sure he doesn't have to work on Sundays from now on.

Other then that, we have a lot of promising potential investigators that we have discovered and are moving forward with this week, one of them being Brenda and Jacob (Brenda is part of the Gamboa family) we invited them to take the lessons and they accepted, so we're excited for that. We have 2 baptisms this next month, and chances are i'll be transferred by mid-may so I'm hoping that I get as much done as possible by then. I think my next stop is the Dublin Branch, I think three Chinese Elders may switch off. We'll see.

I got new cologne today, and I was able to get Jessica 2 little gifts for her birthday coming up so make sure she doesn't open the package I send until 3/13 ok?

Thanks for everything, and thank you dad for the letters this past week, hope you are healing up from your stitches well. 

Love you all, till next week

Elder Sanchez

Craziest week of the mission so far. 每周信函2013年2​月19日

So this week has been pretty crazy, so many changes.

So first of all, i've been really worrying a lot about Sophie, we thought we might have to hand her over to another set of Elders because she wants to attend an English ward with her friends, but since she doesn't really understand much of the doctrine in English, we are going to keep teaching her, the thought of having to hand her over kept me up at night, seriously. But she is progressing so so well, I mean really just amazingly. We meet with her tomorrow and also Friday. Her baptismal date is still March 9. We were able to meet her husband finally on Sunday night! It was good, he is willing it seems to learn more about the gospel so we're looking forward to maybe being able to meet with him soon.

K so Friday night, was the crazy night, my companion Elder Irvine has been having a lot of pain in his abdomen and no one has been able to figure out why so on Friday his doctor ordered him a CT scan in Mountain View. So we got the CT scan done, headed back to Fremont, did the normal thing up until around 7 PM we were sitting down for dinner at a members house and just about to eat and we got a call from his doctor saying he had to go into the ER. So we went to the ER in Mountain View at El Camino hospital, we didn't get admitted until 11 PM, and they found out he needed to get his appendix taken out, so he was left at the hospital with the mission doctor and I was taken to the mission doctors house and finally got to sleep at 2 AM... woke up at 5:30, got ready and got picked up by the ASL missionaries while my companion was recovering from his surgery.  While he was in the hospital he found out he was going to get transferred. So he recovered only on Saturday and forced himself to get up so he could say bye to the ward.

So today was transfers, I got a new companion, and Elder Irvine was transferred to the English program for now, so that was interesting... My companions name is Elder Butcher, he's from Plano, TX and he's a nice guy. I like 'em. I've only been with him for a few hours but he's good. I'll tell you more about him next week.

In other news, I hit my 6th month mark. Happy 1/4th of the way done everyone.

In other other news, I haven't gotten a letter or anything from basically anyone in like 2 weeks, let alone the coveted Taiwan letters, oh well. I'll focus on the work and i'll be blessed with more letters, right?

Love you all, hope everything is well.

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2013年2月11日 (02/11)

每周信函2013年2月11日

Hey everyone.

Hope everyone is well. This week has been pretty good. The thing I learned this week is to plan out our days better.

We had a couple days where we didn't plan out enoug back ups where we were just stuck trying to figure out what to do.

This week we had another lesson with Sophie, we talked about Keeping the Sabbath Day holy and what all that entails, she agreed to abide by it, but she wasn't able to come to church on Sunday because her Sister was still in town from Taiwan. I think she left back to Taiwan today so she said she was going to be there this next Sunday. She is moving forward a lot. It's amazing how much she has changed for the better.

This week also we had 2 lessons with Ryan G., the first lesson was just about why he wants to be baptized. He said he wants to have this gospel with him to better himself and also to set an example for his children, definitely righteous reasoning. Then we had another lesson with members here named the Barnes, they are great couple, we talked about with Ryan why the scriptures are important in conversion. I know he understands how important reading every day is now, and he asked us to remind him every morning when we wake up with a text so he remembers to do it before going to work or to school.

We also last night had a great lesson with an inactive man from the ward Shao Nan, he has been inactive for a while, and he really wants to get back to church, it was just a great thing to see someone really appreciate the gospel and want to come back into the fold.

For Chinese New Year we had dinner at the Chao's home, The Chao's are so great, they used to own a pretty well known restaurant in SLC, so they are amazing cooks. It was a great meal, and we were able to get to know their family more, we even did the little tradition of getting hongbao (those little red envelopes with money) with the kids since we aren't married (you can't be married to get one) so everyone that was unmarried got 3!!! we thought it was going to be only 1$ bills but it was 5's!!! we felt bad we have 30 dollars from them... but it really was a really great night.

It's been a pretty busy week, my letters have really slowed down a lot. No letters from taiwan either for a while I think.

Love you all, have a good week.

Elder Sanchez

Another Week (02/05)

Hey Everyone, another week another email.

This week has been interesting. We had an amazing lesson with Sophie last Wednesday, and she has a baptismal date on the 2nd of March woohoo!!

It was such a good lesson, we taught the plan of Salvation and she just loved it. Her member friend Sis Plumber was there and another Chinese member and the spirit was so strong that all the sisters were just  crying. It was seriously a great lesson, and she agreed to baptism like I said. We are so excited for her, and she wants her husband to take the lessons with her as well. So we get to meet them tomorrow!

Our other investigator Darren has been falling through, so we will see him next week.

Chinese new year is on Feb 10th so you'll see pictures from that soon... sorry this email is so short this week but I had to respond to tons of other emails this week.

Love you all, talk to you next week.