每周信函2013年8月26日

August is really gone now. Really is, next week it will be September. So weird.

Anyway family, this week has been very difficult for me. Helena has had a very difficult time with her mom. Her mom is strictly opposed to her joining the church because she feels as if it is an evil church because the church was "founded upon the principals of Polygamy"... Considering China is one of the places where polygamy has been celebrated and accepted for thousands of years and is still celebrated rather liberally in some areas of China. Her mom is pretty much making up any old excuse to get her not to be baptized, and Helena still wants to be baptized. She is trying to find middle ground with her mom, but it's nearly impossible. 

Her mother is trying to be kind of manipulative in the way she is trying to get her not to join the church. She said that if she is baptized she will literally die (if that isn't total manipulation I don't know what is..) and since she dies her husband will die too. Helena at first believed it, but she has started to process that her mom is trying to persuade her not to be baptized (I think the word persuade doesn't fit, but Helena probably doesn't know the word manipulate, or else I think she would have probably used that one instead)

Anyway, we get to call her about twice a week, and she texts us quite often, she is having fun as far as being "normal" with her mom and her friends, but as soon as the church gets brought up with her mom, it turns ugly.

We had Zone Conference this week as well, and it was pretty fun.We learned a lot, and i'm working on being a more consecrated to the work missionary. I realize how much I have changed in the past year, I feel like I haven't changed at all, that i'm still the same Nathan Sanchez from a year ago, but I feel that there might be a difference in me now. It's interesting. Being consecrated is not easy, but it's worth it.

I'm down to about 33 lbs, and it really shows. I'm maintaining my weight too, I wanted to try (since I have a whole other year to lose weight) to see if eating normal portions of everything that people give me will make me gain the weight back for a week, so this past week I started at my weight lets say... 200 lbs (not the real weight...) and I eat whatever was given me all week, and I ended off this week at 200.8 lbs... so I have proven that I can maintain my weight, so tomorrow I am starting again with losing. My goal is 55-60 lbs total.

We have three new investigators this week, the work is picking up, and I attribute a lot of it to organizing our area book and working more closely with the members. 

Number one! Yu mi Lin... Super cool gal from Taiwan, just moved her in February, and was a referral from Sisters working in the Berryessa ward. She's around 40 years old and looking to get into her graduate studies here in the valley. 2 weeks ago I met with her with Elder Butcher (we had to go on exchanges) and we taught her "How to Begin Teaching" point to let her know how this can help her, gave her a book of mormon, challenged her to begin reading it and really enjoy it. So this past week we met with her, sat down with her and she had bookmarks in her book and she even made this little plastic cover for her copy of the book of mormon. I asked her how far she had read and she said "Oh, I've only been able to read to 22... not that good, I haven't had much time this week"... She read from 1 Ne 1 all the way to 1 Nephi 22. Crazy stuff. We taught her the Gospel of Jesus Christ, invited her to be baptized, said she will be willing to commit after learning more and coming to church. Love her!

Second investigator is name is Wu Tao. We had English class on Tuesday, and usually people don't come, since it's at the church, sometimes we'll have 2 or 3 students but for the past month we haven't had any. Anyway we decided to go to the church and wait to see if anyone would come. Well one person did. He is around 50 years old, and his name is Wu Tao of course! He had a book of mormon in his hand with our card in it that he found at the "Ranch 99" supermarket. We go contacting there a lot. He said that he found this book a month ago, and has been trying to get to class, but kept showing up late, so he showed up on time this week, we taught him english and at the end I asked him what he thought of the book, he said in Chinese of course "Oh I think this book is good, helps me learn about God and Christ, and helps me become a better person, I want to learn more about this book, so we can learn english every week with you, but also you can teach me about this book, it is a very correct book" such a funny guy. Funniest thing he said was he said "I keep mixing up 12 and 22 in English so for the past year I have been saying 22 instead of 12" and we were like It's okay! No problem. and he started saying to himself okay 12... shi er (in chinese) and yelled 12! 12! 12!

3rd investigator is kind of a mind blower, and you probably won't believe me, but Elder Anderson and Elder Woodbrey right before I came had taught an investigator with a baptismal date that disappeared because her husband hates the church (he's an RM, and everything, but became anti) , her name is Yuan Li, she is a famous actress in China, and is married to a famous Canadian man that is a lawyer in China. Anyway they disappeared, and we found them again, they barely just moved back to the Bay area this past week, and we have an appointment with "Lilly" this friday. She wants to be baptized. Kind of to put this in perspective, it would be like going to China and teaching Reese Witherspoon the missionary lessons. Pretty famous gal.

Anyway, pray for Helena and for these new investigators. There was a lot of cool moments this week but time is up! 

Love you all,

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2013年8​月19日 Where did August go?

So this week has been one of the best and worst weeks.

Best because our branch is progressing SO much as far as being more cooperative and willing to work with us now. It is so amazing the things we have done this week. Ward mission leader loves us, Branch president loves us. We have a dinner with someone in the branch every day this week. It's so great. Our investigator pool will start growing more and more now!

The bad news is that we are on a low for lessons. 11 this week, with only 5 non member lessons compared to the 15 we were getting a few weeks ago. We are working harder, currently we have 0 progressing investigators not including Helena.

Speaking of Helena, she told her mom that dreaded news that she was going to be baptized yesterday, and her mom is not taking it well. Helena is currently in Hong Kong until tomorrow visiting friends and her mom is pretty upset saying how much it is going to ruin her life and how it will ruin the family. But she said little by little she is getting more calm and collected, and so she is doing better. Helena is going to be baptized no matter what on October 12, and so we are happy that she has took such an initiative to try explaining to her parents in China why she is doing this and bearing her testimony. She really is an amazing gal, and has changed so much in the past 4 months since I have met her. Keep praying for her and her mom as she goes through this difficult time in her life right now. She is keeping in touch by sending texts through her email on our phone and we can call her too. She has an American number in china that redirects the call, and it's 2 pennies a minute for her there. So super cool.

I'll copy and paste an excerpt from our branch activity at Lehi Park in Santa Cruz on Saturday morning and more about our branch too from my journal.

"I think the most important thing that came out from this week is what's been happening with Helena. She told her mom yesterday, and today she has been in Hong Kong. She is super worried about her mom now because her mom is freaking out about everything,  but Helena is not worried too much, she is sad that her mom is freaking out, but knows that she can trust in God on this one. She is kind of laughing at some of her mom's responses, Helena has been converted well, she thinks a lot of the things her mom are saying as pretty funny like "We you get back we can find the true God together" and things like this, and that's pretty ridiculous in Helena's mind because she knows she has found that "True God" already... so yes Helena can help with that, it's just a matter of going into Hong Kong and meeting with the missionaries there. So yeah. Helena is doing pretty good for the situation she's in, we got to call her a few days ago, and it was really great, she was really worried about the letter, but she's doing fine now.

Anyway another thing we did this week was go to Lehi Park in Santa Cruz, and have fun with the branch on Saturday morning, it was a pretty fun trip and I think we all had a lot of fun, the trip down was pretty crazy, just too many people in the car, and too windy on highway 17 and up the mountain, we got there and it was like AHH finally...

it was tons of fun, we played capture the flag, and did all these things. I also hit my year mark this week, that was pretty crazy. 1 year to go! Let's make it the best!

On that note, thanks everyone! Keep praying for her!

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2013年8​月12日

So this week has been just as stressful as last weeks, My companion has had a reputation for having a lot of stress, which for me isn't much of a problem, but it's affecting him a lot. So I have to deal with that right now. Our branch is not doing so well as far as missionary work is doing, our WML doesn't know what he is doing and we have had to talk to our Branch President about everything that is going on. He doesn't really want to work with us as missionaries is isn't willing to be a "Preach my Gospel" missionary, he find that his ways of doing things trump it, he thinks Chinese culture doesn't apply to the principals of inviting in it or anything like that.. so we talked to our Zone Leaders and President Watkins and so the stake presidency is working with him right now.

We had a meeting with President Law (our branch president) and had a really great kind of summit to help the work, things that we could work on being better, and things that the branch could do to be better and to further the work forward. It's going to be great, and i'm looking forward to it. We are getting more in line with our branches needs...

Helena left today, or is leaving now. She's been texting us all morning, she's at SFO right now waiting for her 1:30 flight. It's interesting how someone can become such good friends with someone that they don't want to leave to go home. I'll miss her for sure but 5 weeks goes incredibly fast on your mission, so she'll be back in no-time.

Our investigator pool is kinda dwindling now, we're actively looking for more investigators. There's a new girl from Taiwan that kinda replaced Helena at her host home, her name is Joanna, and she's nice. We'll see if we can spark an interest in her to learn the gospel.

Our other investigator Allen, we're getting close to dropping him. His faith is dwindling, and he isn't really willing to learn anymore. Kind of sad, but we'll go a couple more times.

Who else? I'm trying to think, we're just praying for a baptism this transfer. The whole zone has a goal for 1 baptism this transfer so we're looking for those opportunities a lot. We think the closest one is Helena, but she's going to be in China until the transfer is over.

In other news, we had dinner in Monterey, CA on Friday with LA Chinese members that gave us 6 phone numbers of Chinese people we can visit. It was good, In other news i'm down 30 lbs as of this morning, kind of crazy. I haven't even been sticking 100% full heartedly to the diet lately (English ward dinners are hard...) and I've still been losing weight every week. I think it's just that my portions have been less than before.

Also, going to my favorite place to eat in here in the Bay Area for lunch.... L&L Hawaiian Barbecue. So good!

Well anyway, I shall go on and lament the loss of our best investigator for a whole 5 weeks now.

love you guys!

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2013年8月5日

This week has been super stressful. A lot of unnecessary stress for sure. All because of the baptism that we had.

So we baptized Walter Yang and his wife Shasha Lu. They are a couple from China with a little daughter. They were baptized into the Palo Alto 2nd Ward.

It was stressful because there was an issue that came up from going over the baptismal interview questions that needed President Watkins to interview her. Pres Watkins was gone nearly all week because of a family emergency and the only time he could interview them for baptism was 1.5 hours before the scheduled baptism.

Here is an excerpt from my daily journal

"The baptismal day... it worked.

We got to Menlo Park at around 9. The baptismal font was already filled. Huh? The Tongan Sisters had a baptism at 10 so we had to deal with that, President got there with Elder Matheson and Elder Lewenilovo. They were all about to go up to Oakland for Elder Hyde (not anymore) and his wife's sealing. It was at 11 and they showed up at 9:30 for the interview. Walter and Shasha had participated in an abortion in China so we had to have President Watkins interview them. Walter was first with no interpreter, and he took about 15-20 minutes. Then Shasha went and had hers with an interpreter. Shasha's took around 35 minutes. It was really long... Sister Watkins was really nervous about being late to his 11:30 sealing. But eventually they passed! They both made it through the interview."

The Tongan sisters baptism ended so late, and we had to deal with filling the water more. It was a good baptism though.

On sunday we dealt with Walter and Shasha not coming to church. They  DIDN'T get confirm... at least Shasha didn't She was having severe morning sickness and just couldn't deal with it. Walter showed up really late, and got confirmed during priesthood opening exercises. It was just a stressful week.

Helena is leaving in a week, i'm super sad about that. I don't want her to leave but she has to.

She is doing well, by the way. She told us this week (and this is a big change from before) that no matter what her mom says, that she is going to be baptized into the church. She is also going to BYU (with her approval though... she controls the money) so I told her that she can get a scholarship and I told her that there are people willing to help her out even if her mom isn't willing to pay for her to go.

She'll be fine for sure.

Anyway, i'm so tired. I finally get the hang of contact lenses, and today we are having a water balloon fight at the church.

Have an excellent week!

-Elder Sanchez

Walter and Sasha

Contact Lenses