每周信函2013年7​月30日

Hey family!

So this week has been another pretty crazy week. 21 lessons is a lot for this area, so we've been keeping up. President Watkins is convinced I am "lesson guy" since every area I go to I keep the lessons higher than normal. We're doing well though.

So just to update you on the current progress of our area here.

We have 4 Baptismal Dates, two of which are this Sunday. They are this really golden family named the Yang's, they are from China, but have been living in the US for about 15 years. Walter is a rather nice, but shy guy in his 30's and his wife is super nice, just lovely person. She is carrying her second child now, and is due within the next week. They both have a sincere desire to be baptized and we still have about 3 lessons to go in 4 days time. We'll be plenty stressed out about that. Pictures will come soon!

Deng Lu, is an old investigator that has finally agreed to meet with us again. He is from China, from a place in the dead middle of China. He has one of the most clear concise Chinese accents I've heard. He likes my Chinese accent and said I should keep it. I have a mainland accent, not Taiwan thank goodness. His Baptismal date is September 28. We willkeep trying to meet with him.

Walter and Shasha have been kind of a pain for us, because they told us they lived in Fremont, and attend in another Stake, but we found out they live in Hayward, which is outside of the mission, so we had to make literally 3 hours worth of calls to President Watkins, Oakland mission, Palo Alto ward mission leader, and etc etc. The list goes on, so it was pretty stressful, but everything is totally sorted out now.

Helena has been progressing so well, and we're super proud of her. She received her first 'personal revelation' at church and it was awesome, it helped her to deal with this situation that has been surfacing between her and her mom. She is really afraid to tell her mom that she is going to be baptized so she had this revelation on how to help her know that she wants to be a member of the church.  

It's just been a good/crazy week. We went to Santa Cruz again yesterday, it was fun.

Also a member of the Los Gatos ward owns a optemetry office, and my companion needed new glasses, so I got my eyes checked too, and he asked if I wanted to try contacts, and I asked him how much it would cost, and he said nothing, he got me fitted in contacts, and gave me 6 free month long ones, and solution and everything. I can't get them in, it's too hard for me to get used to, but I just haven't had any time to try. So whatever lol.

Thanks Family!

Love,

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2013年7​月22日

Perfect week this week. We had perfect lessons, 14 Non members lessons with 10 member presents. 20 phone numbers received. It was just good. We worked hard this week.

So we have 3 baptismal dates as of this week as well.

Walter and Shasha are couple from China. Young couple, around 30 or so. The Sisters in Palo Alto referred them to us, and so now we are teaching them, this past Friday we started teaching them, got to know them. They have known the church for a long time. 10 years ago, when they lived in New Jersey they took the lessons from the missionaries and Walter still has the same restoration pamphlet from the missionaries. About 3 weeks ago they just walked into a church in Palo Alto and so the sisters set up a time to meet with them, and Shasha didn't understand them or anything that they were teaching very well, so they had to talk to us about it. Her English is pretty poor, Walters is pretty good. Friday we taught them the entire restoration, and they both understood it pretty well. The Chinese definitely helped. 

We invited them to be baptized on August 10. The wife said she couldn't that day because she was due to deliver her baby then. So they wanted to set it for August 3. We will meet them twice a week until their baptism. They came to our branch yesterday for the first time and loved it. Loved the people, Shasha loved it because she could understand what was going on, and their son liked the primary. It was just a great Sunday. 

Allen got another job, that was good. We are referring him to the Sisters. We have done our job with him, and that's all we could have done for him, we think the Sisters will teach him better than we can as far as being a young single adult goes.

We got a new investigator, 16 year old girl from Cassie. We came home from the beach with Julianna and our friend Adam from the Stevens Creek ward and I asked Adam on the way home "Hey do you have any Chinese friends we could talk to?" and so he pulled up his texts and said okay here you go. So he texted her for me, and I got to know her, told her I was a missionary, and stuff like this, and then Adam this past week came on exchanges with us all of Tuesday and all of Wednesday. It was super good, so we kept in contact with Cassie, and I invited her to take the lessons, and she said Of course! So we met her on Thursday, besides the social awkwardness that she has, it was a good lesson, and she enjoyed it. So we will continue teaching her unless her dad is not interested in meeting with us. He came to the lesson at the library and met us, and liked the idea that we were teaching his daughter about the gospel. 

Finally, the most spiritual lesson of the week was with Helena on Friday. We met with her, and all I felt like was we needed to talk about prayer and baptism. We had this 2 hour lesson with her at the park near her house, and we talked about talking to her mom about her baptism, and making sure she knows and also about when she wants to be baptized. We comforted because she is really nervous about going home to China in 3 weeks and telling her mom that she wants to be baptized. We talked about it, and we just talked about Jesus Christ. The spirit was felt very strongly, and we invited her to pray. (she has never ever prayed vocally in front of anyone in her whole life) and she said No NO no. I won't do it. I can't. So we kept urging her that this is what she needed to do to receive an answer about what day she should be baptized on.

So we invited her again, and she said "Can I say I silent one first, then i'll pray?" So she prayed silently for about 5 minutes and then sighed and said "Okay..." and prayed in English one of the most sincere prayers I've ever heard. It was quite honestly a miracle. Helena is an amazing young woman, i'm really excited for her to be a member of the church, because she is already an awesome missionary. She'll be a super relief society president for sure.

So Helena received her answer, that she should be baptized in October, shortly after she comes back from China. She set her date for October 12. Elder Anderson has been really wanting her to be baptized before she goes, and so have I, but I think him more than me because I know I have until like December here, and he is probably going to be transferred this next 2 weeks. But we get to email her every week in China. That will be good. We talked on Sunday about always obeying the commandments even though she is away, and how she will find temptation in China, but that if she makes sure she reads, prays, and does everything she should do every day that the spirit will be there to warn her when temptation comes her way. I promised her if she set a date before she left, that everything with her parents accepting her being baptized will work out.

Our week was great, Adam Ure for two days, a baptismal date or three and perfect numbers. Also thank you so much for all the letters, notes, packages, and everything else I received on my birthday. I really enjoyed them very much. 

Love,

Elder Sanchez

here are some photos from some of the girls from Nanjing CH visiting.

Cathy, Erika and Cherry

and  Elder Adam Ure (and yes I am still 6'1")

每周信函2013年7​月15日

Hello Family, another week, another thing to talk about.

So I so very wish that I had my camera cord with me because I have some great photos to show you.

This past week, the Stevens Creek Ward had 20 young chinese students (almost all girls) from Nanjing China staying with them as hosts, and so we made it a goal this week to meet a lot of them and teach them more about the gospel before they leave (which is tomorrow) so we got two appointments, one with the Hessels (who Helena is staying with) that have 13 year old Jane and 13 year old Tracy staying with, and the Jacksons with Cherry (13) Cathy (15) and Erika (16)

So we got to know 5 of these girls really well, some of them just don't care about religion at all, and some of them have their interest piqued a tad. So the most important thing was to get to know them and introduce a little of the Gospel to them while they are here in America for this short time, I really liked all of them, very nice girls, and the best part was learning Chinese from them. Young people Chinese is not something I have been able to learn too much. Cathy has the most odd Chinese accent I have ever heard, it's just very slurred and it at first was very hard to understand. I have all of their email addresses, and all of their QQ numbers (for those who don't know, QQ is basically just the most popular instant messaging service in China/Taiwan/asia/whatever)

So yeah that was plenty of fun, now onto what happened this week, Allen GOT A JOB! AFTER A YEAR! It was amazing, he attibuted it wholeheartedly to the Lord blessing him for learning more about the Gospel. His starting pay is 45k a year which is not bad for a Bachelors in Accounting. Eh? So we are so excited, he is ready to learn more, and the Lord for sure made sure he has no excuses for not learning more.

Howard was dropped as an investigator, he isn't going anywhere, and so we'll keep in contact but we're not making many more efforts to meet with him.

Helena is better than ever and progressing better than ever. I attribute this to being her friend, and not just a missionary, I invited her to the beach last week, and I invited her to all sort of things, and she texted us saying how grateful she was to be our FRIENDS. Also Julianna and Helena are becoming friends, that's always good when a RC and an investigator start being friends. She is going to China in 3 weeks, and we are going to ask President if we can call her while she's there and make sure nothing bad happens while she is there. We'll see. She said she will set a date this week (although she said that last week) so I made her a promise that if she didn't set a date, that things with her parents will not work out in China. I think she believes it's a true promise.

What else? Oh, so Sunday we got permission to watch "The Other Side of Heaven" with Helena, her friends Yvonne and Shelly (both from China) and two exchange students Jane and Tracy. They all loved it, and we made a better connection with all of them. Yvonne is interested in meeting with us, and was even comfortable enough to ask for homework help with her humanities class. So that was cool. I would have loved to help, but you had to watch a 10 min TV clip, and I couldn't have done that.

This week has been so fun, today I get to ride in a Nissan GT-R, and next week we may go to Santa Cruz again. We're working hard, having fun and getting things done.

Hope everyone is doing well, prayers on behalf of these investigators are appreciated.

Love,

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2013年7月9日

Hey Family, look who got baptized in Fremont!

Darian Gamboa was Baptized Saturday July 6th at the Scott Creek Building!

This week has been awesome and crazy, tiring and fun.

We had a baptism, working with Darian for so long has brought forth fruit, it was such a great experience to go and see all of my old ward members again, and see Darian being baptized. It was good to see Julianna again, she didn't know I was coming up and she was super excited to see me again. I invited her to come with me monday to Santa Cruz to celebrate my birthday and we did just that!

I'll try copy/paste some of my journal from yesterday. I also have a video i'll ahave to show you soon too that I made from Santa Cruz, but my iPod is not working correctly.

Okay anyway, it didn't work, the thing won't let me copy it to this computer.

Santa Cruz was so fun, we had Julianna Helena and Adam come plus a bunch of missionaries, we rode the bus down, and went with Julianna Adam and Helena back up to Cupertino, we were going to go to eat at a place called Lillians Italian kitchen on the way back, but the wait was too long, so we went back to Cupertino and ate at a resturant called "Elephant Bar" and had a great day!! One of the most fun days i've had for p-day on my mission.

I had a great birthday, plus a baptism. Plus great numbers this past week, plus Helena promising a baptismal date by Friday.

And also helena has 2 friends comign to church with her, and they both are interested in meeting with us. We have an appointment and dinner with all three of them at the Ure's house this Sunday. This week really has been great.

Thank you for all the birthday wishes, and for all the prayers on my behalf. Glad to hear dad is doing better.

Love you all!

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2013年7月1日

This week, well this week has been crazy. Despite I got one of those "dreaded calls from the mission president about a family emergency" we just had a plain productive week, just like one of the best we've had since i've been here.

18 lessons, 213 contacts, 7 hours of service for 4 acts, and 1 new investigator.

It was a great week. We have made great strides in the ways of investigators and less actives.

Some of the highlights this week: We got our old investigator for our branch barbecue on Saturday, and have once again established connection with him. One of the branch members asked: Are you a member? His response. "Nope, not yet." His name is Sho Hoshino (which is a japanese name, but he's chinese I promise) and he's from Shanghai, he's early to late 20's, and a really nice guy.

Another stride was with a Less active member of another ward, her name is Annie Tseng, she's from Gaoxiong, Taiwan, and she invited us over for dinner with her family (her husband isn't a member) so really super cool. Finally our LA finding efforts are paying off!

Another great moment was with an investigator that's chinese that is in the Menlo Park ward... these elders have been trying to teach this woman for about 8 weeks now without any progress at all, Elder Anderson went and taught her. The Ward mission leader in the lesson said "you made more progress in 10 minutes that we have in the past 6 weeks. Goes to show we are called to teach in our language, and it's really frustrating when elders aren't willing to hand over their Chinese investigators over a number... Good thing Menlo Park reached out to us.

Helena is doing very well, still progressing, at her own pace. She really is doing well, and we're helping her work towards baptism. She is about 5-6 weeks away from going to China for a month, so we're really working closely with her. We hope she is baptized before she leaves.

Those were the good moments of this week. Wish me luck with the next week, and get well soon Dad!

Love

Elder Sanchez