每周信函2013年10月28月

FAMILY! This week has been SO GOOD. Plus, I am NOT getting transferred. 6 more weeks! By the time I finish here I will have 8 months left, pretty scary. It is going by too quickly it seems.

This week was full with miracles and quite amazing things.

So we met with Helena on Friday of this week, and had a really good lesson with her, we taught her the whole plan of salvation, and she understood it a lot better. On Monday she had told us not to bring up the baptismal date at dinner, and we were wondering why she would say that, she said she wanted to set it on Sunday night, and I told her she really would (I felt like she really was) and so we had dinner with her on Monday night, and she  told us not to bring it up at all with the hessels. I had guessed why, Brother Hessel in his opening prayer didn't acknowledge Helena trying to set a baptismal date like he usually does, so that made me curious, also I asked Helena after dinner (since we didn't even see her text that said "don't bring it up" until AFTER dinner) "Hey did you set a goal yet?" kind of really gently, and she was like "uhhh.... no." and I was like "Will you set a goal to set a goal?" and she responded with a like "uhhhh"... so anyway. I was really suspicious about that.

Anyway the lesson that we had with her was a really good one, she understood the Plan of Salvation a lot more, and we had a really good time with her. At the end I asked her if she had set a date yet, and she said "well I want to know what you think" and I said "Well I think you did you just don't want to tell us yet" and she was like "Yeah, what about you Elder Fisher" and he kind of said the same thing. I asked her if it was the date she had mentioned before November 16th and she got really kind of defensive (little did i know that bringing up that specific date bothered her) so Elder Fisher said "It's that day... isn't it?" and she confirmed it... November 16th. The day has finally come that she has set a firm date to be baptized.

So this weekend, we had a couple of great little successes, but the best was Sunday night.

I'll start with Saturday first though. We had a really good day, we started off with 3 baptisms in the morning, one for the Tongans (Kineo Alfred) and two for Campbell (Bethany and Isaac Trimble) so super awesome that we had 3 baptisms in the zone. After those baptisms we had to go to some service for President Knudsen, where my companion came and picked me up(he went and did some service with Elder Davis) and anyway after that we headed off to SJS, I got a quick lunch and we had a lesson with Sida, this lesson was really pretty good. We taught a little bit more about the Restoration because he had a question about the Apostasy, so we got into the parable of the husbandmen and how the apostasy was foretold, and how it unfolded after Christ died. Explained that this is why a restoration was necessary, and it made a lot more sense for him after we explained it. We told him to do the experiment and to really look for that answer, related it to him by showing how important to everyone if this was the true church.

Anyway after that we had a language study, and had Julianna, the lady that lives in South San Jose that had us doing service for her a few months back. we had a lesson with her about the Book of Mormon and she kept trying to give us scriptures that tried to say "no more scripture" and we were giving her ones that told more about how scripture is so important, and that the stick of Ephraim and Joseph would be joined together. We taught well and made the invitation to find out for herself if these things are true. Our dinner was cancelled so we just went and did more work, went home and ate, and then did a lot of other things, including contacting, until the night was through.

Sunday! Sunday was pretty awesome, it went by too quickly. We had 8:30 correlation with Brother Davis, and that went really well. We got a call right in the middle of the correlation from someone that we on the phone as "Ye Yuan" and we had no idea who it was, I answered the phone and I could have swore he said "Is Yu Zhanglao there?"(Elder Fisher...) and so I was like hmm? Okay here he is, (he had said Wang zhanglao for the record) and anyway he was like can I come to church today? When does it start? So Elder FIsher told him it started at 10:20 and it's three hours long,  plus a linger longer at the end. Anyway he came to church! We had him there the whole time until like 2:30 (soo long... 10:30 - 2:30) anyway he loved it, he loved the members, and it was all great and dandy. All the members think he is hilarious (because he is...) so we have an appointment with him this Tuesday to help him out with some stuff to do for job applications.

Another great success was that we invited Sister Davis' friend to take the lessons with us.

(a little background into this, Brother Davis is our brand new Branch mission leader, and Sister Davis a nativeTaiwanese, and she has been taking singing classes at DeAnza and met this women Ellie a Mainlander, and she has been coming to church for about a month now) She was like oh okay, yeah, this week, what time? So we asked if Friday at 7 could work. She was like cool fine that works. Ellie Liu is the mom, and the daughter is Ritta. I learned her name, its like 刘雨轩, Liu Yu Xuan, xuan is a pretty cool word, not used like at all in modern chinese i don't think, but it works!! woohoo, we got 2 new investigators almost!!

We went contacting for a while and then headed up to Palo Alto for this lesson I have been looking forward to for about 2 weeks now. Sister McQuinn of the Palo Alto 1st ward called us, and said she had just adopted a 13 year old daughter from China, a girl named Christina, she has been in the same Orphanage since she was 2 days old, her parents left her there, and never came back. Now at the age of 13 she has only been in this family for 2 months. She has been to school like normal and had a formal education, but her maturity level is a few years younger that a typical 13 year old girl. Her orphanage is laid out dormitory style with 6 girls to a room, and only 3 beds, so two girls in each bed, and thats how she has been since day 1 pretty much. Her food is generally given to her, no choices, and so she has been used to that. But now she is living with a wonderful LDS family in Palo Alto. More opportunities and more love.

So we met her! We got up to the house and it's a super well off family, 2 biological sons, 1 adopted son from Korea, and 2 adopted daughters, 1 from Korea, and of course Christina herself. They adopted the two korean children when they were 8 months old. So we met her and her voice at first was super hard to understand, I didn't really catch much of what she said. She is a really shy girl, but laughs a lot. She is a sweet girl. We got to know her a little better, asked her random questions and she was willing to answer them. She smiles almost nonstop, you can tell she is super happy now that she is in a new home with a real family. We sat down for dinner, and she ate everything she was given, even the salad (which she said she didn't like that much). She is just happy to have different choices I think. I asked her what her favorite food here was and she said it was Tudou or Potato... she mentioned that her first night in America she had Potatoes and she loves them, it reminds her of that first day in America and all the love that she felt then.

We then taught her, and taught about who Shen2 神(god) ， and 祷告的方式，我们谈谈关于神是谁，关于天父的意思， 和我们怎么可以做家庭祷告和我们自己可以祷告。  We talked a lot about God and who he is, and a lot about that. She didn't understand who God was at first, but she started to understand after we said that her parents knew about her before she knew about them. They loved her before she knew who they were. The way she learned about God was through church and prayer. It was the same with her, she learned about her new family through a photo album that they sent. Her dad started crying when we explained that. She is such a sweet girl, she was holding hands with both her mom and dad the whole time almost. It was just really amazing. She said she is willing to learn about prayer, and do it, but she wasn't comfortable doing it right then and there. We just talked to them about it and prayed to give her a chance to hear a prayer in Chinese. She is just such a sweet little girl. We will go back every Saturday at 10 to teach her more about the gospel.

One of the best lessons I've had, it was so amazing.

In other news with investigators, it's hard to say really. Working really hard with a lot of them. Simon Lu our new investigator with his wife and his daughter are doing well. We have been keeping in contact with Melvina to get to know her better so that she would also be willing to meet with us on a regular basis as well, along with her dad. So we're pretty excited to see what comes of them. Her mom comes home Nov 11, just in time for us to start the lessons formally with them. We have a lesson with Simon this Thursday.

谢谢你们的祷告， 和你们的信心。我最近很努力讲中文，最近和helena说我的中文的口音很台湾的，所以我找得到了一个非常好的中文program叫chinesepod所以最近我们开车的时候听一些这个chinesepod的对话，帮助我培养我大陆的口音。这些对话都是北京的口音，很普通的口音。不错！

单长老

每周信函2013年1​0月21日

Hey Everyone! Forgot to mention last week, but Brenda Gamboa asked me to baptize her (How I could forgot that?) so she was baptized this past Friday, and received the holy ghost yesterday morning!

Anyway i'll start with the beginning of the week. We got 2 new investigators, and 1 sorta new investigators. We have another investigator family!!!

Simon is one of our new investigators, he is a family guy, has a wife and 17 year old daughter, he invited us over for dinner on Tuesday night, and it went really well.

Simon and his family we had dinner. We had such a fun dinner, and got to know them a lot better for sure. It was awesome, anyway we found out Simon works with Johnny P, Juliannas (recent convert in Fremont) old boyfriend, and that was weird. Then we shared a message, and they loved it. We invited them to take the lessons, they said of course (but the mom was leaving for Minneapolis this weekend) but yes! I got to know the daughter Melvina (yes kinda weird name) and she asked me to look at her writing assignments for her college apps, she's a really good writer.. like really good. They asked me to come over and help with her college apps this weekend, so we're going over again Saturday. Pretty sharp gal. She's planning on going to school on the East Coast.

On Wednesday:

Eason is like 20 or 21 years old. He said he was interested in meeting with us to learn more about our faith, so we did.

It was a good meeting, and he started out really well, he was willing to learn, and willing to accept some of the things we were saying. He said towards the end of the lesson "Oh I gotta go, I have class at 1:30..." and so we ended really quickly. He said the reason he wanted to meet with us is to get to know our church more and be friends with us. I thought that was pretty cool for sure.

After that we were supposed to have another lesson with a guy named Irving, but we ended up just sitting down with another Chinese guy named Steven from Shanghai, and talking to him for a while and just getting to know him. He was cool, and we weren't sure how interested he was, but we were just trying to develop friendships on campus so that we can teach later as well. So Helena came up to us and talked to us, and so Steven left and Helena sat down and we talked for a little bit, and taught a lesson.

On Friday!! Brenda's Baptism!

This was the highlight, we went at 4:30 today visit Helena since she was also coming to the baptism, and I had studied for her that morning, and I had gotten some answers to some prayers for her, I feel like they were inspired, and I still think they were and are inspired. I read Enos, and then the Institute manual with it about receiving answers to prayers, and I looked and studied, and it seemed like that situation was perfect for her to receive an answer. So we went to the General Conference talk, it was about receiving Personal Revelation in our lives, it was talking about going by previous answers that we had received, instead of just asking Heavenly Father again and again. I bore my witness to Helena of the truthfulness of the things, and how I know she will see a miracle if she sets that date.

We waited for Brother Li to come pick us up, and he eventually did. We headed up and just talked, and we got there, and I got dressed, and was waiting and waiting...7 oclock came, not many people showed up, and Brenda hadn't gotten there yet. 7:15 or so came, President Watkins showed up, and Brenda had barely gotten out from changing, we got picture, and everything else, I practice the baptism twice with her (she was good to go) and we sat in there. They got started, we sang "When I am Baptized" and really brought the spirit there, Darien with the opening prayer, and Sister Montalvo had the talk on Baptism and the Holy Ghost. It was a really wonderful talk, and I really felt the spirit. I know Brenda felt it too. It was a great.

Brenda and I stepped down those steps into the font after that, and she said to me "Do I really go down?" haha. I told her "Just come down" and got in position. Said "Brenda Gamboa" and said the prayer. The water was really a lot lower than usual, and so it was a rather difficult baptism, but I got her the first time. She was so excited, like a kid in a candy store when she got back up. We both went to change, came out at the exact same time, and then the Sisters and Elders Woodbrey and Butcher had a musical number that they wanted to do, it was "Come thou Fount of Every Blessing" it was really really good. Brenda was excited to hear it.

After that, Brenda bore her testimony. It was amazing, she told of a story where she was working one day at Wells Fargo, and there was a lady that wanted 3 thousand dollars in a withdrawal, and so she didn't had enough cash in the drawer to do that, so she bought  10K from the vault, and she was having an off day, so she gave the lady her money, and didn't even blink, the lady was gone. She noticed that she was short 2k on her balance, so she was freaking out, and knew  she was going to get terminated. Later that day the lady came back and handed the manager 2K saying "The Teller gave me 5 thousand instead of 3 thousand. I don't need to extra 2 thousand, thank you"  and so at that point Brenda knew she was in trouble, but her boss said something profound to her which was "God is really watching over you, you must be doing what's right" and so at that moment she really felt like that was true. She felt an overwhelming love that God was looking after her. She said she went home full of thanks, and got on her knees and prayed to thank God for everything she said and in her words "My job, my money, my schooling, my education, my shelter, my family, my life, my smartness, and my beautifulness, I promise i'm not conceited or anything" and she said after she had said this prayer she felt an overwhelming spirit over her. She felt of the peace and joy that it brings, and that ever since that day she had never felt the same. When she woke up in the morning she was happy instead of miserable.

She said she has been so happy to be baptized, and to receive the Holy Ghost, she knows this is the best step she can make in her life, and that she is so excited to go forward. It was an amazing baptism for sure.

President Watkins and Sister Watkins drove Helena and I home after the baptism. President Watkins really likes Helena a lot and had asked her a lot of questions. Helena might have been a tad intimidated, but I think she got used to it. It was just nice being there at the baptism and with Helena too.

 That was the week!

It was an awesome week!

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2013年10月15日 14 Month mark!?

Hey everyone!

This week has been a pretty normal week!

There really isn't too much to tell you about this week, we are still working with a lot of our investigators pretty closely.

Namely, Helena is still trying to set a new baptismal date.

Keep praying, she is getting so close! We had like a mini prayer circle for her with her host family yesterday to help her pick a day, she is still undecided. She asked me to help her with her Microeconomics homework, so I got a little review in that. She's doing well, her mom has pretty come to terms that her daughter is getting baptized, no matter how much kicking and screaming she has done.

I will keep todays email short because I have BYU essays I need to write.

Alice Liu is another investigator that has been progressing really well. She's just a really nice gal, she's 19 from Taiwan studying here at DeAnza and she is Christian, but doesn't really and hasn't ever belonged to a church. So we taught her the Plan of salvation and she loves it, she just has a trouble receiving an answer to her prayers about the Book of Mormon and other things.

Anyway I need to start working on my essays!

Talk to you all soon!

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2013年10​月7日

>.< This week has been so crazy I can't even believe it. This week we have seen great successes and great losses with our investigators. We got two new investigators Simon Lu and Alice Liu. We lost Wu Tao though.

Let me tell you a little bit more about that. We met with Wu Tao on Thursday night, right when we were walking up to his house we got a text from him saying he was still working. We went up and knocked on his door anyway and he was there, he let us in pretty excitedly and said sit sit. We sat down and I had this overwhelming feeling of guilt in the air, not my guilt, but his, just a heaviness of doubt and maybe some deception a little bit. I felt like he had not been 100% honest with us for the first time right then. We talked and talked about how he can bring this up with his wife. We showed him mormon.org to help him to explain things and talked about Polygamy and temple building with him to help clear up those two issues. It still seemed pretty im not sure the word... useless at that point. I left feeling kind of frustrated, so I called President Law, and asked if he could call him, so he did, and it went well. So yeah.

So the next day we wanted to visit Wu Tao, and it was pretty bad. We called and I answered like "Hey Wu Tao, we miss you!Can we visit tonight to say bye bye before you leave for Michigan?" and he responded with "欸，長老，對不起。。。不用來，我將來不會來教會，我的家人他們都不能同意我接受洗禮，所以sorry，bye-bye elder"

 (basically, the translation is... elder, sorry, I will not ever come to church again, my family just is not able to accept me in this church, sorry bye bye)

Right then he dropped us pretty hard. Anyway that was pretty difficult for us.

Alice Liu was a cool experience, Elder Bingham and Elder Fisher while on exchanges contacted into her at DeAnza and agreed to meet with us, so Thursday we met with her, and sshe was super cool, and she loved the lesson, new investigator that is honestly so prepared.

Helena watched both sessions of conference with us on Saturday. It was really good, I think she enjoyed the Sunday morning session a lot. It had to do a lot of faith. She is keeping on, she will be baptized soon, she still is just very unsure about that date still. She mentioned Mom's email on FB, she really liked it. Anyway she's doing better.

I'll tell you about Saturday, so we spent all of Saturday morning and early afternoon with President and Sister Watkins. Elder Fisher had a baptism in Pleasanton he wanted to go to, and asked President Watkins last week if he was going because we didn't have a ride, and president called and told him just to come over early in the morning, have breakfast, watch a session of conference with them, head up to Pleasanton, and then come back, watch another session. So we did just that, it was really interesting, he was talking to us frankly about the current missionaries in the Chinese program, and how when he first came in all they did was bicker and complain and how right now none of them do that, that he doesn't have to play hardball when it comes to transfers and everything, he told us that we might be getting the trainee coming in this Wednesday. He is a redhead from Utah, he's in the MTC as we speak, and is coming into the field this Wednesday. So we'll look out for that.

That's it for this week. We have 6 new investigators. The 3 most promising are Alice, Simon, and Ke wei. They are all good. Pray for them. Thanks for the prayers on behalf of us and the work we are doing.

Love,

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2013年9月30日

Happy Almost October!

So this past weekend has been pretty crazy. Super stressful and just not the most fun weekend i've had. We got a lot of work done, and we did a lot of great things, but it was just stressful. This is something that my mission has taught me thus far. How to deal with stressful situations.

So the highlight of the week was our new investigator. We got a referral from Washington Square sisters, through mission peak (the don't know the area boundaries very well) so we went and contacted him last week, and he had to cancel, so this time we met this week. We met and it was right outside of the King Library in downtown San Jose, right near a starbucks, and we sat down and started talking about his questions, he had a lot of questions about religion at this point, things like "If I don't believe will I go to hell?" and "Do you believe in the three bodies being one body or the opposite" kind of just the typical religious questions people ask about Christianity in general. We got over that pretty quickly and asked him about his life and his background. He's a programmer in Fremont, and also works for SJSU as a programmer. He is very scientific, and does not have many beliefs as far as religion go. So we talked more about the Book of Mormon and where it came from, and then we explained all of that. It was a pretty good lesson for sure, but at first he was really slow to believe, but towards the end of the lesson,we showed him how he can get his own answer from God, and not from us.We asked him to pray, and he said he has never prayed before, and if he prayed that it would be a weird feeling because he doesn't fully believe in God, I assured him that it was going to be Okay and that he would feel good afterwards. He prayed, and I think he was greatly influenced by the lesson for sure. Appointment next Saturday at the same time.

Also on Saturday we had two baptisms in our zone, one for the Moorpark/Stevens Creek sisters, and another for the Monta Vista Singles ward sisters, both wonderful baptisms, since I just became district leader,  I had to interview their investigator, so we met with her at 9 am at the stake center the day before, and we had a room and had my first interview. let's say she didn't pass, that she needed to be interviewed my President Watkins.

Saturday again, we had more bad news, Wu Tao said his wife said he could not be baptized, she heard something from a coworker or classmate or something like that that mormon church was bad and that we have multiple wives. So she is pretty scared about that, so we had to deal with that, and he was not baptized this weekend like planned. It was pretty stressful.

Helena is dealing with her mom and its getting more and more crazy by the day, and just not willing to listen to Helena at al about her view or anything. It had been stressful for me even, Helena has been handling it well. We met with her on Saturday afternoon after our appointment with Sida, at the Mitsuwa Japanese market down the street from her to have some 拉面(ramen) and it was good to just talk to her in a casual setting to see how she is doing with everything. She is handling the stress very well, and doing super good. She is just worried about her mom all the time. She feels like her mom is just gone crazy, and she needs to help her keep going in her life.

It has been a super good week. Went from averaging 13 lessons to getting 25 lessons this week, with 300 contacts. Super good.

Keep praying! Thank you all for all your support!

Elder Sanchez