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")
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