每周信函2013年11月25日

This week has been sickly, and I've been sick all week, but today I am finally getting better, taking dayquil, cepacol tablets, and drinking "airborne" twice a day, I think I'm finally getting over the sickness.

The sickness didn't keep me home for too long, just the first day, which was Thursday.

But before that, Monday through Wednesday were definitely really good days, Monday was a good prep-day. We did a lot, and were able to go to costco to buy groceries and everything. We did the normal thing, went to the stake center, played sports and board games. The usual deal for a p-day here in the Saratoga zone. That night we had dinner at 6 with the Stevens Creek elders, I don't remember exactly who it was but it was a good dinner, we went contacting with those Elders at Ranch 99 and got a few phone numbers. That was good.

Tuesday! Tuesday we had a lot of work to do in the area of finding, but that night we had a really busy night. We were in the very far reaches of East San Jose, out by the mountains contacting former investigators and old referrals out that way, and we find someone that actually wanted to listen, that was cool. They live right next to the mountains, we went and knocked on their door on that night (a cold dark and rainy night for the Bay Area) and young gal opened the door and was happy to see us anyway we asked her if Wenny was there (the name we had on the former investigator) she said she was home but busy, and so we introduced ourselves, introduced the message of the gospel, and asked if she would like to meet and learn more about it, she said sure and so we got a phone number, and so we'll call soon and set up a time to meet.

After that we had dinner with the Boyd's, Sister Boyd is from Hunan, China, one of my favorite places to eat from. Hunan is known for their delicious spicy food (along with Sichuan) and so I was looking forward to dinner with the Boyd's all night. They are a really nice family, Brother Boyd is from australia, and he still has a little bit of an aussie accent still. The food was so good by the way. After dinner, we headed off to the church to teach our English class. Our investigator Ellie said she was going to come this week, so our one student Rocky would have an actual classmate for the first time. Ellie did indeed show up, and we had a really good class. We taught Ellie useful phrases like "You go girl!" and the difference between "I believe you" and "I believe in you"

Overall a good tuesday! Now Wednesday was a little bit more active as far as lessons went, we met with 2 non members that we met for the first time on DeAnza's campus, plus helping Helena with her BYU stuff. She's having a really hard time getting the BYU stuff to work. President Watkins offered to help, but he hasn't got back to us yet. We'll see how that works. Wednesday night I started feeling sick, but we worked until 9 pm anyway. We had dinner with the Lin family at 7 and had some delicious Pidan Zhou (皮蛋粥）which basically is really old preserved egg (it's black in color) in Hong Kong style poor mans porridge. It was not the first time i've had this dish, but I enjoy it, it's not really bad, but it's not something to go crazy over. Elder Fisher might have had a hard time with it.

Thursday I was home sick all day with Elder Davis, we stole all the '3rd companions' in the zone from the tri-panionships and I stuck it out with Elder Davis. We cleaned the apartment all day after I had done resting as much as I could. It looks really good now.

Let's move on to Saturday! So saturday we didn't do much work, but we did go to the temple, we have an investigator named Sida that wanted to take the temple visitors center tour, and check it out, so we brought him up there to see. We set it up with the sisters at the temple, there was one Chinese speaking and one english speaking that helped us. Sister Kwok (郭）from Hong Kong and sister stewart from Utah. It was a good tour, and I think Sida and the friend that he brought really enjoyed it. We didn't stay long because we had Stake Conference from 3-8 that day (and I was feeling really sick again) so we left with the member missionary that brought us up to Oakland and hurried off to stake conference. Stake conference this year was really awesome, all about hastening the work of salvation, and being better member missionaries. We enjoyed it, and President Watkins talk was the best as always. He's really funny, I feel like he has a very similar thought process to me. Basically he broke down his day to almost every detail up to that point in which he gave that talk, and talked about how he had 8 meaningful gospel conversation that very day, without even making it hard.

At the end of the night we went contacting again for the 30 minutes we had left, and Sunday was here. The last session of stake conference, and the topic was all about Thanksgiving for what we have, it was a huge stake conference, filled the whole place, luckily us Chinese speakers get a room to ourselves for translation. We had 2 investigators come to Stake conference, Ellie (and not Ritta...... >.<) and Angela (we met her at 99 ranch a few weeks ago, she loves church so far, we just need to set up a time to meet with her) Both Ellie and Angela are being fellowshipped so well into the branch.

Had an interesting experience at Stake Conference, there was a man that was asked to share his talk in Spanish since we have a Spanish branch in our stake newly formed. The translator Sister Law didn't know how to translate obviously, so she was like Elder Sanchez you should translate, so I did, I went from Spanish --> Mandarin. Super weird, I didn't even think I could understand spanish that well anymore, but I feel like I provided a decent translation of his talk. The thing that surprised me most was that I knew that Endowment translated into "Investidura" ... hmm. I don't remember ever learning that word before.

We went home after Stake conference, got some lunch, rested some (still a little sick...) and headed out, we ended up visiting a member with a non-member husband to get some translation help on one of Elder Fishers stories... it was good, and we had a good time getting to be better friends with Brother Wang.

After that we visited Xiao Mama (if I haven't explained yet in a previous email, when you get to be super old like 80+ you are called by your last name and "mama" if you are a female and "bobo" if you are a male... by the way it isn't pronounced like bowbow more like bwo bwo)

We got to see her, and share a message of thanksgiving with her, it is hard to fully understand her, because she doesn't speak mandarin fully, her mandarin is filled with words from Taiwanese (not taiwanese mandarin) and Indonesian. I've gotten pretty used to her mandarin and can understand about 90% of what she says, but when new missionaries come into the area, they pretty much have no idea what she is saying.

Our dinner tonight was with the Wu family 吴， and James and Elva. James and Elva are former investigators that met with the Chinese senior couple we had like a year and a half ago. They were going to get baptized and then... tithing struck! and James decided not to go forward. Well anyway they have been coming to church pretty regularly ever since, and I have invited them to take the lessons about 3 times since i've been in this area, and James shuts me down every time. Anyway we tailored the message specifically towards him, but aimed it at everyone so that he didn't put his walls up. It was about living below your standards, and going forth according to the knowledge that you have, and obeying the commandments. It was a great message, and we invited them to look at their lives and find that one principle or commandment they could work on being better at , and take it personally and work on it.

Our last stop of the whole week was up in Palo Alto, Christina! My favorite 13 year old gal ever! We had a really great lesson with her, she is really trying to do her best to learn the gospel as its coming at her, but it's really a step by step process for her. We taught about Christ and his earthly ministry. We watched "Finding Faith in Christ" in Mandarin with her, and she enjoyed it. She commented things through out the movie like "哇，他帮助了好多人" and "他怎么做这些？" so we explained a lot of things to her, we asked her if she wanted to believe that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ were there, and she said "我相信吧" and I responded "你要相信还是你相信？"  and she responded "相信吧" she really is a sweet girl. I will miss her a lot if I get transferred away from here. I will make sure to get some pictures before transfers on the 10th. I told her I would visit her a year from now so that she can talk with me in English because by that time her english will be better than my Chinese. She was happy to hear that, but didn't believe that her English could be good in a year from now.

Great week!

Elder Sanchez 

每周信函2013年1​1月18日

We had a really great week, it started with p-day. We had lunch with Helena, last lunch with her we supposed before she became a member of the church. We went to a place that had a lot of her hometowns favorite dishes.  We had a fun p-day and had some fun play monopoly. Later,

We had the Zheng family for dinner. This family is the best, really. Just a really funny family, Clarabelle was the funniest one there, she found out a trick with her pinky where she could totally straighten her pinky except the joint at the fingertip would bend down, and she was loving it. It was really funny, she said she was an alien. Funny little girl.

We taught Edward the 1st lesson to help him prepare for baptism. It was about a 25-30 minute lesson and he seemed to understand it all really well.

The other highlights of the week were tuesday night being able to teach Rocky again and help him out with his business. He said he wants to come to church, (but) there always is a but. That's his day to rest... ... ok.

  We also on Wednesday met with Helena to go over everything for her baptism, she wanted to go over the rest of the commandments, and the rest of the Plan of Salvation and the interview questions. We were with her for about 2 hours. Pretty long time but it worked out just fine.

Her interview was that night, and she passed without any problem at all. It was one of the shortest interviews i've seen on my mission. It went really well. We gave her a blessing afterwards because she was getting a little sick, and then we walked her home.

Thursday, thursday! Zone conference, I don't know where to begin on this one,  I guess I can share my general thoughts about it. I thought it was super good. I learned a lot about obedience and being that missionary that is obedient for The Lord, and not for other people solely. I learned who I am as a missionary and I learned that constant improvement is possible, and that balance is also necessary on your mission as well. It was a good zone conference. We learned a lot about the numbers of our mission are turning around, and how we are the only mission on the west coast that their baptismal numbers are NOT going down. We are projected to get between 550-600 baptisms as a mission this year. We are the only mission that is going with reversing the trends.

Moving on to the weekend,

So this weekend a lot happened that was pretty awesome. Well first, the wait is over. Helena has been baptized and confirmed a member of this wonderful church. This picture was taken after her baptism.

First to tell you about Ellie and Ritta

Ellie and Ritta are a mother (ellie) and daughter(ritta) that have made good friends with Sister Davis (a member from taiwan who just so happens to be our branch mission leaders wife) they met about a month ago at a singing class. Anyway, this friday we had our 3rd lesson with them, we gave them a reading assignment which was to read the entire Plan of Salvation pamphlet and be prepared to learn the material in it. So we got to the Davis' home that night to teach the lesson, and we were a little caught off guard because Ellie cut her hair really short, a big change from the last week (its very stylish!) anyway we sat down and talked for a few minutes, and then we switched gears and I asked her (and I'm not sure if she just wanted to say it or misunderstood me) "Who would you like to say the prayer?" anyway she didn't even blink and she just started saying the prayer.

After the prayer had finished, we asked them if they had a chance to read it, and they said yes of course, and Ritta who in previous lessons didn't seem super interested in what we had to say got really excited about it and pretty much taught the whole thing in detail to us in like 5 minutes.  It was quite good, they both knew their stuff really well and you could tell that they had really taken time to read it through carefully. We started off with the lesson, and we taught it through and through (not without distractions of course...) and got to the end, talked about the three Kingdoms and briefly covered that (we had to leave for another lesson) and then Sister Davis testified, and then asked Ellie she said in chinese "Hey Ellie didn't you have something you wanted to tell the missionaries?" anyway she said she wanted to be baptized but she wasn't sure how to make a goal and she said she wouldn't be very good as a member to start off with...

She ended up saying "I can't be baptized because when I go to China, I will miss a week of church" and all this (she was being totally sincere, not just making excuses) and so we asked her if she would think about the day December 7th in the next week, and come back with an answer and she said that she would. She later explained that ever since she started coming to church in the beginning of October she doesn't drink alcohol anymore and she doesn't seem to know why she doesn't want to drink it anymore. Pretty interesting stuff haha. We asked her to read our next pamphlet "The Gospel of Jesus Christ" and set a firm goal for baptism for her and her daughter.

After that lesson on Friday night, we had a pretty interesting experience with the infamous Wang Chongqi. He is one of the beloved non-member husbands of the branch (literally, everyone loves him and he comes to church quite a bit) but he is a very difficult investigator. Anyway I knew how he was, and i've been in their home off and on for the past 6 months for dinner appointments and things like this, so I kinda knew what we were getting into when we invited him to take the lessons again. Anyway this had been our second lesson, our first lesson had gone really really and he said that he had never learned anything from missionaries like that before. So we were determined to get to the root of his problem and his reasoning for not wanting to join the church. Elder Fisher and I had talked about it a lot and tried to come to a conclusion on why he wasn't wanting to be baptized. We figured it was the Word of Wisdom, and tea and coffee in specific. Anyway we got there, and we asked him some thought provoking questions like "What are the pros and cons of knowing God exists?" and things like this, and he said none. Anyway we got the point where we knew he didn't want to do personal prayers and we knew he didn't want to do them because he didn't want to receive an answer. So we talked to him about what was keeping him back. He said he didn't want to give up tea and coffee, and that he said he doesn't know whats wrong with it. Anyway we talked to him about trying to give it up and seeing the blessings that stem from it.

So we got to that point, and he likes to push back on the missionaries even when they are trying to bear sincere testimony, so anyway he said "Why don't you try tea and coffee for yourself and tell me that it is NOT bad?" We didn't want to get into that too much, so we bore testimony, tried to commit him to doing it, and left. Pretty hard lesson, but his heart isn't ready quite yet to receive us.

This brings us to Saturday, Helena's baptism.

Let's just say it was an incredible busy morning filled with exchanges with other elders, waiting for another baptism to finish, adding more warm water to the font, exchanging back, and setting up but at 12:30 we got started, we got some really great pictures, and it was a wonderful baptism. We sang "When I am Baptized" as the opening song, and had a great talk by Sister Catanzaro. Helena was baptized, and that was it! We had another  talk on the Holy Ghost by Sister Tiu, and closed with "I am a Child of God" we stayed afterwards to congratulate her. I wrote a note to her bearing my testimony and telling her how proud of her I was and how she has been an influence for good not only for the people around her but for my family as well. She gave me a wallet she bought in china because she knew how much old wallet was falling apart. I've never been given a gift at a baptism before :P... Julianna came to her baptism and a whole lot of other people. It was good to see all of them.

Helena texted us throughout the day saying how thankful and grateful she was. I was happy that she was happy for how her baptism came out. She was very thankful for the note I gave her too. The next day we had her confirmed in Sacrament meeting. Brother Hessel her host father confirmed her, and it was a very joyous occasion. After the confirmation I told her "You made it." and she responded with "I know. I did it" she was so happy.

I am happy, and also sad. The church has gained a faithful member of the church, and we lost the best investigator ever.

Later that day, President Watkins called, let us know how proud of the baptism he was, and asked about the email we sent him about Helena not being able to apply for BYU because she was short a couple credits for transferring. He said he was going to call us back and pull some strings for her to get in this next fall. Isn't he the best mission president ever?

The last highlight of the week was with Christina the young girl from China. I love her so much, she is just the best ever. We had dinner with them once again, and so we had a good time looking at the pictures of her since she has come to America while we were waiting for dinner. Makes me want to adopt! Anyway, had dinner, and then afterwards we talked about what Christ does for us in our lives and how important he is. We talked about how he can heal us, and talked about he can heal her. Christina's left arm is really not very healthy, and hasn't been fully functioning since she was born, she said she doesn't have enough energy in that arm to do much with it. She was pick things up and move them, but nothing that takes a lot of dexterity. She told us a story that was pretty hard to translate at first because it was kind of vague, but as time went on she got more specific. She said that she was visiting a friends house when she was in China, and she was on the second floor area where they have the AC units, and she said she was by a unit and a electrical cord electrocuted her arm really badly. This was when she was 9 years old. It was the same arm that didn't function very well. She told us how for about 3 or so months how that arm was aching and hurt so much and how she had to peel the peeling skin off of her arm for 3 months. Her parents were not very happy to hear this story because they didn't  know this had happened. They asked us to ask her if her arm now is worse or better than it was before that accident. Anyway it turns out her arm is just about the same than it was before that accident. So they were happy that it ended up that way. They are taking Christina to a physical therapy doctor at Stanford on Thursday to see how they can bring back full dexterity to that arm for her.

That was the week, been reflecting a lot on the past 6 or 7 months in this area, and how good a friend Helena has been. I feel like my time here in Cupertino is coming to close with this baptism. It may very well be the end of the time here, but only time with tell. We will know by December 7th.

Thanks everyone, a lot to read this week,

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2013年1​1月12日

So this week was pretty busy..

Helena is being baptized this Saturday!

I really don't know what to write here besides we had a good week! We taught 20 lessons like usual, and we had a lot of success. We had an awesome time teaching Christina (the 13 year old girl recently adopted from China)

Thursday we had our first lesson with Alice in a few weeks, we were planning on teaching the restoration again with her and probably hand her off to the sisters, but we ended up teaching about Alma 32 instead because she had some questions on faith. We talked about planting that seed and letting it grow, Sister Yu had a lot of really good things to talk about, it was kind of hard for her to get into it, because she is still really new, so she doesn't quite understand queues yet but she will get there. We read the whole chapter and discussed it, and then afterwards asked him what it means to plant to seed and nourish it, and she seemed to understand it pretty well.

Also on Thursday we got to see Wu Tao again, we established connection once again! We visited on Tuesday and again on Thursday, and he still would like to be baptized but he just feels like it's impossible right now because of his wife being against him in this decision. He felt the spirit again, so he really would like to keep trying to attend church. We invited him to do so, but he is just so worried about his visa, so we will have to see what happens after his visa results come through.

Over the weekend, we saw Helena twice to set up her baptism, and also with Sida Zhong, he is progressing well but doesn't seem to make time to come to church... :(

Really not much else to tell about this week, but we did have a lot of success..

Until next week!

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2013年11月4日

HEY! So all the exciting stuff always happens on the weekend, here's the wrap-up!

We started off that day by having the normal things, lunch, and contacting! Then we had district meeting at the Cera building, the sisters showed up half an hour late and left 30 minutes early. What does that add up to? a 30 minute district meeting. It was kind of annoying but we got over it.

After district meeting we got ready and took campbell back to their apartment, and went to a service with this american taiwanese lady named Jayne that lives on the top of the Seven Springs neighborhood in Cupertino (super rich, super big houses) and so we got there and she was going to help us to move a turtle habitat in her back yard, but instead we went and helped her clean her shed out, eventually the sisters showed up and we were able to serve with the sisters (the three sons are all YSA's) so got to know Sister Yu better (yes we have a chinese sister in our district! awesome!!) so excited to have her here, and to get to know her. She's from Shanghai, went to school in Finland, and got baptized there. Now she's here. So pumped. We had a really good service with them, and just had a good time, after that, we headed off to the church to meet with Rocky, he seems to have a lot of problems, he says he has a terrible life, and a terrible amount of immaturity. We asked him if he would be baptized, but he said a lot of excuses like immaturity, and wanting to be baptized in the Jordan River. Anyway that was that.

After Rocky we headed off to the Davis's home, we thought the appointment was at 7... but it wasn't. it was at 7:30. Oops. Awkward, anyway Brother Davis let us in and asked if we had eaten yet, and we hadn't (we were really starving) and so we sat down at ate leftovers from the night before (stroganoff, yum) and so we waiting for a while and Ellie was late, she called Sister Davis and was like oh man my car died, and I had to call AAA, sorry! Will be there in 10 minutes! So around 7:50 or so her and her daughter Rita showed up and we were able to talk to them about the gospel. The spirit was definitely present and I think both of them had been able to feel it. We talked about Heavenly Father, and Prayer, and also the Book of Mormon, she seemed to really like it. She said a few years ago she really did believe in God, but lately she has been able to read the Bible and the Book of Mormon and really be able to develop her faith in that. Her daughter doesn't seem super duper interesting, but she is willing to listen. Her daughter is 14 years old, so we are trying to find her friends in the branch/stevens creek to help her interest level rise.

It was a really good lesson and we really were able to commit her to reading and praying this week, and we set a return appointment with her.

Saturday!?!

Saturday morning was super good! Contacting at the flea market, got my lucky 1958 quarter (reference to the movie "No Country for Old Men") and was able to get a new 5 dollar pair of sunglasses to wear when I drive (my old pair got broken sort of) anyway got a few contacts, and then we headed up to Palo Alto to teach Christina! Looking forward all week to seeing her again, she is such a sweet heart. She really is. We talked about prayer and Heavenly Father for a while and asked her a lot of questions and translated for her father and mother.  Then we asked her if she was able to pray at the end. This is pretty much her prayer:

天父，高兴两位传教士能够来这边让我学习关于神的事情， 感谢可以有个机会学习福音带来的祝福，奉基督的名，啊门.

quite remarkable that a girl from china that has never really learned about Christ can say a prayer that is that sincere and formal. It was really really good. What a sweet girl.

After that we had a lunch, and then headed over to have a lesson with Liu Dixing and Sida.

We got there, and they were both sitting near each other, but not next to each other, because I don't think they suspected it. Anyway we introduced them to each other and turns out that they live on the same floor in their apartment building. How funny. We talked about the Gospel of Jesus Christ with Sida, and read 2 Nephi 31 with them (he had read the whole thing in his personal reading already) and he came up with the typical 3 questions that people ask from that Chapter which are "The Lamb of God" "The form of a dove" and "Baptism of Fire" and so we talked about how important these 5 steps of the gospel are, and what it means to him.

Liu Wenlan really helped a lot and was able to help Sida understand better the view of the member and everything. It was really good. After we finished with Sida, we headed over did some more visits with people in South San Jose and then rushed home, got our suits on and headed over to a child of record baptism.

We had invited the McQuinn family to the baptism since it was going to be in Chinese so that Christina could come along and watch a baptism in Chinese, so we showed up, and Brother McQuinn rearranged everyone so that we could sit next to Christina. He feels its pretty important for her to get to know us better. She likes us just fine, since last week she has opened up and talked to us a lot more. It’s really great. I was asking her questions to see what she was understanding and not understanding. She seemed to understand what was going on very generally. It was a good experience for her I think. She has grown more accustomed to me and Elder Fisher. It has been good getting to know her better this past week. Her parents are convinced that her success in learning the gospel is directly tied to how much she trusts us.

Anyway after the baptism! We headed over to a referrals house that invited us over for dinner. We showed up, and Chenxin (the guy we had been talking to over text for about a week) and two of his roommates were there. Both of them were around our age, 21 or 22. Something like that. Anyway one of the roomates was Christian and went to another Chinese Christian church, and Chenxin and this other roommate (his name is JK) are atheist/agnostic, anyway so the Christian one was like just come to our members house to have this potluck, it’ll be good. You can talk to more Chinese people and all of this stuff. We kind of responded like “well if you insist but I feel like this won’t be the best idea since we are representing another church” so anyway we end up going anyway and it’s this apartment in Cupertino, and we go in and people are pretty welcoming, but kind of thinking how weird it is that we are there, and so we just sit down with the two guys agnostic and start talking, and they are asking us questions about God and how to know him and things like this, and they are both genuinely intrigued, and so we talk for about 20 minutes, and then more people start piling into this apartment, and theres the pastor, and he comes in and is like freaking out he comes up to us and says “根我出来，好吗？so we go out with him and he says to us “我请你们离开“ but he says it pretty rudely, and so the two atheist guys were like freaking out thinking why in the world would they kick us out? But we had to leave, and they just came with us. We got to our cars and they were saying “Lets just go out to eat, we can treat you” so we got in our cars, and followed them to a place called 刘家香 which is a Shanghainese restaurant kinda close to our house, it has shanghai style dimsum and regular dinner dishes things like this, so we ordered, and we just talked about the church the whole time, they loved it. We ended up getting a return appointment with both of them. They were astonished quite literally.

We finished dinner, headed to Helena’s house, and had a quick “planning session” with her on her baptism. She just wanted to set a time and things like this. It was good. 12:30 on November 16^th.

SUNDAY!

So yeah all the exciting things happen on the weekends. The weekdays are pretty  normal and we have the usual finding and teaching but all the new invesitgators and things like this happen on the weekends.

Sunday was good, we had a good time at church, and Christina and her dad showed up for Sacrament meeting at 12:30 with us too. So she had her first all Chinese sacrament meeting. She had a lot of questions, and was intrigued by the weird accents that she heard (a lot of the congregation is Taiwanese..) and so anyway it was really good. We had a lesson with Chenxin’s friend JK and it was really good. Not much to say about it. Dinner, trying to visit people, and contacting wrapped up our weekend.

Really nice week, start of a new transfer, crossing my fingers for 11 more weeks here, we'll see.

Elder Sanchez