The Final Note of my Mission, August 18, 2014

Yes, family. It is true. In under 48 hours I will be on a plane heading back to Pennsylvania, this past week has truly been bittersweet, and very much my heart is filled that I have had the opportunity to serve with these people, at this very time. It truly does not feel like two years. These two years have past faster that I could have imagined, but they did past, and new doors are opening. I am thankful for the people here, and when I get home, I'll let you see some of the pictures of the people that really matter in my life. I love the Seven Springs Branch. I served there from May 2013 - Now. With a small stint in Menlo Park in between. I feel apart of them, and apart of the branch. I will deeply miss the people, and the opportunity to speak this language everyday, but I will continue to seek and find ways to come back here and live here. 

I have learned a lot on my mission, so I think it may be impossible to sum it up in just a few words or in a single email, but one of the biggest things I have learned is that change is a real, and that even though it's real, the change is so subtle, and so small day by day that we can get down, and forget that we are changing. 

Some of the bigger changes in my life, maybe a bit trivial but I'll start off with these.

Two years ago, I didn't really like to sing, well I did, but not in public

Now I sing in sacrament meetings, priesthood meetings, you name it.

Two years ago, people had to give me 100 dollars to eat a piece of fish

Now, I eat fish on a regular basis, including the weird stuff, raw fish, sashimi, raw squid, boiled squid, fish roe. You name it, i've probably eaten it sometime in the last two years.

Two years ago, I spoke a few word of Mandarin, a handful of phrases in Spanish such as 

你好，你好吗 etc. and in spanish vamos a comer!, and vamos todos al rancho! (papa rancho for those who are in on the joke)

Now, I speak, read, and test up to Mandarin Chinese on an HSK Level 4 - 5 Level (the highest is Level 6) and my spanish is enough to keep a conversation (I still a bad hispanic)

Two years ago, I could say I was a bit unorganized, and fulfilling tasks might have been hard to me to accomplish as a whole

Now, I feel like organization is really streamlined, and I understand what it means to remember things and just do them. Even though I am not going to continue to use missionary planners (they don't really work as well in 'real life') I have lots of Apps I can use to plan my days so I can be successful.

I have developed patience, through companions I have learned that others just have their own situations, their own things they are working on in their own lives, and that we can be helps for that. No matter what they are going through, we can help, and be patient with them. 

Humility, this is something I have learned at times when I know I cannot fully measure up, that we need to more fully rely on God for some of the things. Chinese is not an easy thing to learn, learning how to deal with people is not easy either. Being a missionary has the highest standards for any person I think on earth, and EVERYONE is watching you, I have learnt how to live up to that standard and be professional with everyone. I have developed so many great relationships, and even professional relationships. This is one thing that I am excited that is coming to an end, is that everyone watching me on the street.

This weekend my heart is full, we had a FHE for my outgoing sponsored by our branch president. I think more than half the branch was there, and it was such an amazing experience to feel all the love and friendship that have been cultivated for the past 14 months with these wonderful people. It was a great experience to be able to share my experiences from my mission with them, and to get photos with them. 

Sunday was also a very crazy day, not only did I only get 3-4 hours of sleep, but I had two talks, one spanning the time of 30 minutes. It was my last week at church, and I tried to pay special attention to how I felt, and just greeting and saying goodbye to everyone. It was bittersweet, but it definitely was a great time. My talk went well, and I was happy with it. I will miss these people.

The outgoing fireside was incredibly long due to the amount of missionaries going home, but it was very spiritual, and the spirit was felt. The last hymn, the whole congregation stood up with us and sang "The Spirit of God" and many tears were shed, as this very tender moment of ending our missions was coming to a close.

I am grateful for all of you and your support while I have been out here such a long way away. I am excited to go home and to see all of you in a few days, I hope my flights go well so that I don't have any delays. 

Love all of you, I still can't believe this day has come. My last email to be sent on my mission. Now it will be a lot easier to communicate.

Elder (soon to be Nathan) Sanchez

 Branch Farewell Family Home Evening

Christina and Me

Sarah and her husband (Investigators)

每周信函2014 8 13

Busy packing today! Sorry not much of an email this week, been really busy! But will see everyone soon. 

Expect a grand email next week.

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年8 4

Hey everyone.

Peter was baptized over the weekend. It was great! He has been a lot of fun to work with and see progress.

We are also working with Li Pan closely, he probably won't be baptized before I leave but that's okay. As long as he continues to progress.

We have seen a lot of the work progressing this week, with a new investigators. Her name is Song Qianqian or Chrissie for her English name. she just moved here from Pittsburgh, PA with her boyfriend. She is really interested in the gospel, and really wants to progress. We meet with her twice a week, one for a gospel discussion, and another for an English class.She has been really great so far, and is trying her best to keep our commitments.

Sherry is also progressing well, and we are hoping that she can be baptized soon. She has been investigating the church for about 6-7 months now, and so she has been to church many many times already. We are trying to set a baptismal date with her.

As I bring my mission to a close, I am still compiling and thinking about the things that I have learned, and I look forward to seeing all of you in a few weeks. Lunch in Houston sounds great!

I hope everyone has a great week and we will see you soon.

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年7​月21日

Hey everyone, another week has passed by and now I am in week 3 of 6 of my last transfer on my mission, what a weird statement that seems to be to say. I got my travel documents in the mail over the weekend.

My flight leaves San Jose on August 20, at 9:04 AM, and I go through LAX, DET, and finally to Allentown ABE.

I get home at 9:14 PM.

In other news Paul, (Li Pan) is doing super well, and we are really excited for him, we went to the temple together this past weekend, he spent the entire day with us and we honestly had a lot of time to get to know him, instead of using the mission car, we rode around in his BMW all day. It was a great day, and he said it was a true turning point in his life. He is also being fellowshipped greatly in church and has made at least 5 new friends at church. I love Li Pan, and he has truly become a friend of mine that I will keep for a lifetime. He wants to come visit us in Pennsylvania when its time go to back home. That would be great, he is a wonderful guy.

Peter postponed baptism a few more weeks again in order to make sure he is ready. His date is August 16 now, which will be my last Saturday in this mission, it's a real hard hit fo me to realize that that is my last weekend here. I can't believe it.

Sherry! She is such a wonderful gal, and we finally had a chance to meet with her this week for the first time for real since April. It was great. She has been coming to church pretty often and regularly but lately she has not wanted to meet with us, but this past week we had a chance to start the lessons over again. I am hoping she can be baptized by the time I finish this transfer up. Please pray for her!

I have been compiling a list of things I have learned on my mission, and some of my most choice experiences, and we will be getting that email from me in a few weeks. I am grateful for all of you.

See you soon,

Love Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年7​月14

This week has gone by quicker than last week, why does this seem to be a trend? I'm kind of boggled that i'm officially on week 100 of my mission out of 104.

This week we worked a lot with our investigators, and everything ended up okay. I'll highlight two of our investigators progress for this week.

PETER! So Peter has his baptismal date moved back once again, just because he feels like to wait a few more weeks. I hope Peter is not my last baptism before I leave my mission, I hope we are able to help one other go into the waters of baptism. He is doing really well despite some of the struggles that he has been having.

SISTER HOU:

She met with us for the first time this week, and it went really great. We had a member present and taught her the first lesson, she agreed to meet with us weekly on Sundays! She is around 60 years old and from Beijing.

LI PAN:

My favorite investigator I've ever had, he is just great. He agreed with meet with us this past Saturday every week, and came to church and loved it, stayed after church for like 45 minutes to talk to everyone.

I find it hard to find things to write about here, but maybe next week I will have better luck.

Love you all, see you in a few weeks.

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年7​月7日

Hey everyone, here's the longer journal entry you have been waiting for.

This week was really quite amazing, I loved it so much, it was the last week of the transfer, not onl did we get a new mission president, we got a totally new way of thinking now since he has come in.

We had a chance to do a meet and greet meeting with him on Wednesday and we had a great time getting to know him, he seems like a young buck but in reality he is 56, I thought he was in his 40's to be honest. But he is the big cheese for sure

It was great to get to know him, I won't get to know him all too well as today is the start of my last transfer here in the field, that's right, the sad news is here.

Anyway besides that we had a great week and had an opportunity to pick up a new investigator, her last name is Hou and she is from Beijing, she has come to church two weeks in a row, and has already accepted the missionary lessons from us.  

We also had a GREAT 4th of July. Pres Mella let us stay out later than usual to watch the fireworks with an investigator, so we also invited one of our other newer investigators Li Pan and he is the best, he is a newcomer here to the US and has only been here for about 1 month and is studying here. He is in his early 30's and loves meeting new people, he got acquainted with me over a conversation club that we did at his English Language school, I got his info and we have been in touch since then, he is really prepared. It was totally fun, we stayed at a members house for dinner and fireworks which were pretty much right above their house.

It's pretty unreal how fast these past transfers are going, and how fast this next one will go. I hope it doesn't go too fast. Hope everyone has a good week, still trying to do better on thelength of my emails home. Time is just so precious here.

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年6​月30日

Be ready for a long email next week, I'm working on a compilation of journal entries for the past few weeks to help everyone get up to speed. This week was great, Mason is doing great and coming out with us for mission work. It's been awesome.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Love,

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年6​月23

To update you guys on some of our investigators:

So lately we have been teaching Ellie and Ritta still, lately they have been going through some hard times, and we felt like Ellie had a problem with the Book of Mormon because some of her comments in Gospel Principals class, but in fact she doesnt have a problem with it, but actually believes it true. She just feels like it has a big difference that the Bible. Which is true, they were written in two different places and started at totally different times, but that's okay we understand the questions and doubts she has about it. We met with her right before she goes to China (which is in about a week from today) and she will be there until August with Ritta as well. They will be fine, and they will be baptized, maybe they won't before I leave for Pennsylvania, but I know they will eventually. I'm excited for them.

Angela has been kind of a struggle lately, because she hasn't been able to come to church as much as she used to. She has been doing other things besides church. She also has been delaying baptism a lot, and influencing Sherry a lot too. We are just hoping that she decides that baptism is important for her. She still is really friendly with a lot of the members of the branch and still keeps in contact with all of them.

Sherry has also been kind of a struggle, with sort of negative influences from some people its been kind of difficult. She was so excited at first and had a baptismal date right off bat but now she doesnt want to set a date at all, so it's been difficult to even meet with her because she doesn't understand the importance of meeting with us, so we met with her finally and let her know.

Sorry still applying for classes this week so this week has been busy!

Will post pictures of Mason's baptism next week! 

每周信函2014年6​月17日

Hey everyone!

Mason is getting baptized, he is so excited.

Peter is doing well, he has some things to work on with the Word of Wisdom, but other than that he is trying his best to prepare himself for baptism.

I am writing this as a very short email this week since it's took so long to apply for classes this fall, I have to get off and go to a lesson now. Will definitely write more next week.

So long,

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年6​月9日

This week has been a short one for sure, it just zoomed right on past me. I don't know how it keeps doing this, but I think the good news is is that everything is doing a lot better than last week.

Thank you for the prayers for those people we are having troubles with. Ellie and Ritta are still have some problems, but with Angela and Sherry, we are doing a lot better with them and have set appointments with them as well now, so we're happy about that.

My companion is adjusting well to this new environment here in the US. He is still getting used to American style desserts though, it's pretty sweet for him still, but he will learn to love them ;) anyway we had a week full of great successes because now we have 2 new baptismal dates, one with Mason, which is the 21 of June and another with Peter, which is the same day. Peter has been progressing really well, but we feel like he may need to wait a couple weeks in order to properly prepare for that.

Mason loves the branch and has really been integrated well here, and he has grown to love the gospel, we went to lunch with him in Mountain View, and we got tea and he 'shooed" the tea away  saying we don't drink that. So that was great!

Other successes this week was we were able to go up to the temple with Tiffany and Barrett. She liked it a lot and said she believed the Book of Mormon to be the Word of God and that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. It was a good moment, she didn't want to set a baptismal date quite yet. She is leaving for China for the summer at the end of this month. She won't be back until September, we'll see how Elder Liew handles all these students coming back in September. 

Other than that it's been great, we are in week 3 of this transfer already, I can't really believe that at all, how fast this time has gone. 

I also had my last interview with President Watkins, it was about 10 minutes, and we just talked about school, life, etc. It was good, he said "It's been a pleasure having you here, I haven't had a single problem with you these past 22 months, and I'm glad to be able to say that"

Keep praying for those investigators, and we will talk to you next week!

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年6​月2日

Hello everyone! Welcome Elder Jia Jun Liew to the mission and to California for the first time.

Elder Liew is from Ipoh, Malaysia, and his mother tongue is Cantonese (good for me! I get to learn Cantonese woohoo!)

This first week has been great, and we indeed see miracles.

I think the highlight of this week was Mason.

Mason is one of our most progressing investigators, and is really awesome. I think we have told you a little bit about him before. We took him up to the temple, with the Thompson Family of course, and we had a chance also to go to Christina McQuinn's sealing to her parents at the same time. This experience for me was one of the most important experiences of my mission for sure, it was very moving.

Mason loved the temple, and took lots of pictures up there since he's a reporter and a photographer. Sister Thompson asked him when he wanted to be baptized and he said whenever possible. He is doing absolutely super well.

We didn't meet our specific goals this week, but we did meet our standards of excellence. We are working hard, and doing everything that we can. It's been a lot of fun, he's a fun missionary and we have done a lot of SYL since his mandarin isn't totally native yet, and my Cantonese, well yes my Cantonese isn't that good either. So we're working on it.

Tiffany is also doing well, she didn't come to church this week though, sad day. Barrett our recent convert is working really closing with us and her before he goes back to China for the summer. She is a very spiritually sensitive investigator, as is all of our girl investigators.

If you all could pray for Sherry, Angela, Ellie and Ritta that would great, they are all having a lot of issues right now.

Everything is going well, I can't believe time is running so thin here. It's really kind of crazy.

Have a great and wonderful week!

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年5​月 27 Transfer 17

I am training a new missionary! He comes from the MTC this Thursday. His name is Elder Jia Jun Liew. He is from Malaysia.

In other news, our area is doing great, it's just been so busy lately, that I haven't been able to write a full letter, but I will say this!

All of our progressing investigators are doing super well, especially Mason. He is doing great! He came to church again this week.

Sorry that this is so short, we don't have a lot of time this week!

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年5​月19日

Where has May gone? I'm not entirely sure.

We are at the end of the 2nd transfer back here in  7 Springs Chinese Branch.

I have now been here in this branch for a total of 7 transfers. I will probably finish my mission here, so a total of 9 transfers, that's 54 weeks! 1 year total here in this branch, how awesome is that?

Well anyway, I didn't really write anything last week because I was so totally and utterly happy that I was able to talk to everyone on Skype, I can't believe how time flies, I felt like I just skyped home yesterday, when in fact it was on Christmas, that was 5 months ago. Crazy how fast time flies here in the mission.

These past 2 weeks have been pretty amazing, we have still been really doubling our efforts and doing everything we can in order to find new investigators.

I'll list off all of the new investigators we have found, and all of the cool experiences that we have had with them so far!

1. Alan

Alan is a 17 year old young man whose mom ran into the missionaries, she herself is not very interested in the gospel, but she said her son was very interested in the gospel, and that he has been attending different Christian churches, so we started meeting with him around 3 weeks ago, and ever since he has been really awesome to teach, just really great. He is quite receptive, does our commitments including reading, and has come to church this past Sunday. It was great, and he has been pretty well integrated into the branch/ English ward so far.

He talked to us about the Holy Ghost, and the other day he told us "You know I had an impression by the Holy Ghost that I should keep going on the path that I am with you guys" and now he has a baptismal date for the 21 of June. great!

2. Tiffany

This was a member referral from none other than our latest recent convert Barrett who was baptized while I was in Menlo Park. Anyway last week we met her for the first time on a Saturday, and we taught the restoration, and how we can know its true, and she said she usually wakes up around 2 pm on sundays, but she came anyway! our church starts at 10:20.

She loved Relief Society and the sisterhood there, and has made a lot of friends there,

this past week we talked about  the Plan of Salvation, and she had a question about where her best friend went after she died. This was before we even got into the lesson and before she knew what we were going to discuss. It was a great teaching experience for me, because I have had to face different challenges with this in my life, and being about to bear testimony of it was really great. I felt the spirit strongly letting me know that she was able to feel of the truthfulness of our message.

3. Mason

This was a referral from  another set of Elders in the Los Altos stake just above us, they let us know at the Zone Conference in the past week that they have an investigator named Mason that they have been teaching for 3 weeks without much budge, because of the language barrier, so anyway we taught him the first lesson 2 days ago, and he loved it, was glad he was able to understand it fully this time. Mason lives in Mountain View which is quite a ways away from Cupertino, about a 15 minute drive, so maybe 40 minute bike ride.

He came to church yesterday! He came in regular clothes and he asked us all sweaty and tired "where's the bathroom?!" and then he went in and he came out in a white shirt and tie, what a great guy!

He loved it! It was so good. He is meeting with us this Thursday to continue the lessons.

Anyway that's all I can write this week, I may or may not have great news next Monday on the prospects for my last 2 transfers here in California.

Stay tuned.

Love,

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年5月5日

May 5 2014

Happy Cinco de Mayo I suppose? Not sure what this Holiday really means.

Anyway we had a great week this week, and just wanted to highlight some of the higher points we had.

Anyway we didn't reach 40 lessons and doubled our goals like last week, but we did get 37, that was really good, we had a lot (a ton) of first lessons this week. We spent a lot of time at DeAnza getting to know people, so we didn't get any new investigators this week technically, (we need to meet with them twice in order to count them as a new investigator) anyway so we met a lot of new people this week, and this week (probably tomorrow) we will be contacting all of them to set up times to meet with them.

One of the guys that we met on campus, his name was Patrick Li, he is from Tianjin, CH, really great area outside of Beijing, anyway I sat down at a park bench with him on Campus, got to know to him a lot better, and just really nice guy, then I asked him about his views on God, and Jesus, he said he believes God exists and is there, and so I asked him more, got to know his religious background more, and introduced the Restoration and the Book of Mormon to him a little more, it was really good. He was amazed by the story of the restoration, he just was very I would say "Surprised" that it would make sense in that way, anyway it was good, I taught that lesson last last week, the cool thing is is that we saw him again right in front of the bathrooms in the cafeteria on campus and he came up to me and said  "诶，单长老，你好！为什么你还没发个短信给我？" Basic translation is, hey Elder Sanchez why haven't you texted me yet? so that was really cool, supposed his "not girlfriend" came out of the bathroom after we had started talking and her name was Lucia, pretty interesting name for a Shanghai girl, anyway, she started to really get interested in what we had to share as well, that was really cool. We shall see how it goes this week.

Wu Tao, we previously had dropped, but he had been texting and calling us a lot since we "dropped him" so he asked us to come by his house for dinner Saturday, and we felt good about it, not bad at all, so we went. He made us dinner, we had a good time with him, and then at the end we asked him what the real story was, why he was avoiding coming to church and all of that, and why he didn't really keep that commitment, and he explained to us that his family and especially his mother are very superstitious, that they all are belonging to a christian church in Michigan, and they have that belief, and if Wu Tao goes to our church that it will cause 冲突 which basically means conflict in the family, which in turns brings bad luck to the family, and Wu Tao can't afford that bad luck because he green card application is offically in, and if he doesn't get it he can't let his family blame him coming to church and bringing that bad luck to his situation and that he would lose everything that he has if he had to move back to China. We understand that totally, and he promised us that when his family moves here from Michigan we would be able to teach them the gospel, and then come to church. It's a process. We are starting to teach him the lessons starting Tomorrow (May 6) every tuesday at 8, with a member, so that he can gain his testimony so that when his family does come, they don't drag him away to another church.

It's been complicated, but I have hope for him, I am more than likely finishing my mission here, especially after what Pres. Watkins has said to me before. He wants Elder Zollinger to head to English because unfortunately, once again, next transfer we will have 7 missionaries, and 3 areas, despite the 2 elders going home at the end of this transfer. So we shall see.

Another highlight of the week was Allen, he is a new investigator that was a referral from the other missionaries that are serving in the Fremont Chinese area, he is a 17 year old boy that I think I explained quite a bit last week, anyway we were able to meet with him yesterday and have a really great lesson with him on the Plan of Salvation, he pretty much taught it to us for the first half, he seemed to already know it pretty well al the way up until we started explaining about the Spirit World. Anyway he brought up some concerns he had with having "bad" or "evil" dreams often, and we invited him to pray before he goes to sleep, and if he does have bad dreams not to dwell or talk about them, because it would be easier for them to come back again.

Our two Palo Alto investigators are doing super well as well this week, we met with Cindy Hu yesterday, at the Menlo Park building with a member present, Sister Inouye, she is and was a perfect member present, she is a ABC/J (american born chinese/japanese) she's half and half, and she served her mission in Taiwan, and so her Chinese is really pretty good, she even has a pretty thick Taiwanese accent for being American, anyway, she is like 30 working on some sort of Doctorate or something at Stanford, and Cindy is also working on Research there at Stanford since she is an M.D. in China. So we had them together again today, and it ended up being a really really awesome lesson. We coordinated a temple trip up to Oakland for the 30 of May (Happy birthday Mom!) and which just so happens to also be the same day we will be at the temple for Christina McQuinns sealing to her family. We are so excited for that.

After we coordinated that trip, we talked about 2 Nephi 31, and read the whole chapter (just 21 verses) and talked about it as well went verse by verse, and Sister Inouye added a lot of really great input, and Cindy realized that the members of the church are not white weirdo guys that speak chinese that can't give people rides, and wear all this weird attire all day long, that members are actually real people. We talked about the importance of baptism, and asked her if she had been thinking about baptism at all in her life, and she said she has, but she needs to get to know the gospel and church more, which is totally understandable because up to this point she hasn't even been to church yet. So we will work from that point. We invited her to go to church with Sister Inouye there in Menlo park, and it should work out really well. She is progressing really well.

The last person I want to highlight has been kind of an interesting situation, a few months back when I was serving in Menlo Park Spanish, Elder Phillips and I, and our district as well went to Palo Alto to eat at a restaurant thats free for missionaries, and while we were eating, a lady came in that was obviously Chinese with her 2 sons, and so of course taking the option to speak my language, I talked to her, got to know her, and talked to her sons in Chinese (they are about 5 and 3 years old) and it was really great. Well anyway a few weeks later, just before I was leaving Menlo Park, at stake conference we ran into her again, she was there with her husband and her kids, and they had been coming to church for about a month at that point, and they really hadn't met with the missionaries at all at that point, so I asked her husband Yao Puzhong if I could get his contact information and hand it off to the Chinese speaking missionaries, so anyway since then we have been teaching him (his wife isn't interested much now, she's pregnant with her third, and just hasn't sat in with our discussion much) and he has progressed really well. He has no religious background whatsoever, and being a Stanford MBA student, he still makes time to meet with us every sunday. He prays every day and he reads, and he goes to church, and it's just been a very rewarding process to see him progress so well.

That was our week generally, we were going to hiking in Fremont this morning to see the sunrise, but the sisters in my district weren't able to come, so we are planning to go 2 weeks from now.

Hope everyone has a good week.

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年4​月28日

Wow, where did the month of April go? Feels like it's only been a week since april started, now it's ending and here comes may, May is a good month for missionary work, and for me, I get to call home in 2 weeks time (1 week and 6 days) that will be awesome, and all sorts of good stuff.

This week we set goals that were super duper high, the missions standards of excellence are as follows

20 lessons

140 contacts

3 baptismal invites

1 new investigator

Well this week we hit all of those, at least double for the lessons, that was pretty cool. We got 40 lessons, 33 of which were non members lessons, so it was pretty cool.

We hit up De Anza College for about 12 hours total this week, because it really is a goldmine when it comes to talking to new Chinese students, and it was no exception this week, it was a lot of fun getting all those lessons and talking to everyone that we met. Elder Zollinger and I are really pushing and pushing so we can find new investigators, since we dropped a few last week, we need to make up for it and show The Lord that we are ready for new, so we got 3 new investigators, 1 of which has accepted baptism.

One of the people that I really enjoyed meeting this week was a girl named Mengyin (it's pronounced mung yeen) She's 19 years old from the "Spice belt" of China, meaning the places that love to eat spicy food. So she is considered a 辣妹子 a term that means "spicy gal" in a way, it was a termed coined and made popular by a song in China. Anyway she is really interested in meeting with us, and has been texting us asking where we are and asking where our church is and what time our meetings start. It's really cool. She doesn't have any religious background whatsoever, so that kind of will be an interesting thing to get over.

Another investigator we got was a referral from the Fremont Chinese elders, said this lady had a son that was really interested in the Gospel, and so we set up a time to go over, and this lady let us in to meet her 17 year old son, his name is Allen, and he is a senior in highschool, he seems to be really interested in joining a church, we taught him the first lesson, and he accepted the invitation to baptism, which was really awesome. Like I said, The Lord makes up for the things that we lack.

Angela Wu is doing really well, we finally met with her this week after a 2 week period where she couldn't meet with us, but we met with her, and taught about Temples, and talked about baptism again to keep it fresh in her mind, and she said she definitely wants to be baptized, she just wants to hear other peoples conversion stories and mission stories while they were on their missions, and also she is kind of scared of being baptized just by herself. So we reassured her things would be fine, and asked her to set a date again for a goal.

Sherry is also doing a lot better than a few weeks ago, where she got super upset with pretty much everyone because of the pressure she seemingly feels for baptism, it's something I think is just a combination of a lot of factors, which 15 credits at school with all sorts of other stressors in her life. It's pretty hard for her. Anyway I think she will be fine, she is really trying to figure out her life so that she can get baptized as soon as possible. She is a sweet girl, and has a sincere desire to follow God.

Christina McQuinn is doing really well, we met with her this week, and she is doing awesome! We taught about Priesthood, and how important that was in the restoration of the gospel, she has become really familiar with us missionaries, often she comes up to us at church and pats us on the shoulder and says "你好单先生" or Hello Mr Shan (my chinese surname is Shan) and then in english says in a thick chinese accent "How are youuuu?"

It was a great week, in missionary work, busy-ness is happiness, and this week was sure busy, never been more tired that this.

Hope everyone has a good week!

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年4 21

Hey everyone,

I forgot to write in my journal this morning somehow, so I will have to write everything by hand right now sending to all of you,

This week has been a pretty great week, we set our goal of 23 lessons, and ended up getting 24. That was great, we were really excited about that.

Another goal that we have set this week is being more focused on those who need focusing and 'unfocusing' on those who don't want to progress in the gospel. So we dropped 2 investigators this week to allow us time to make more investigators and help them keep commitments.

We dropped Wu Tao, one of my favorite investigators of all time, it was about time for him to be dropped anyway, he wasn't doing anything about anything. He just enjoyed our company, he had accepted the gospel before and was going to be baptized, but now that his wife and family are against him he just doesn't want to progress anymore. It's sad, we told him if he didn't come to stake conference that we would not be able to come by anymore until he was ready to go to church again. We told him that and we made him promise he was going to come to church, and he said he would.

Sunday morning rolled around, and we called Wu Tao to remind him that we had to come to conference. He answered the phone blatantly pretending that he was sick, and was saying things like "我会一命呜呼" which is a literary term in Chinese that you can compare to the English term of "I am giving up the ghost" found in the bible.. anyway at that moment we knew that Wu Tao was not ready to the gospel to progress anymore, so we decided, and I have not done this much on my mission, we had to drop him as an investigator.

The other one we dropped was Simon Luo, Simon is a 23 year old student at DeAnza, and he has been keeping his commitments (very lightly keeping them I might add) except coming to church, we have been trying to get him to come to church for the whole time I have been serving here, he has been twice before. Anyway Saturday to make a long story short we got to his house in order to talk to him about why he doesn't want to come to church, and basically the spirit told Elder Zollinger and I that he was just making up any old excuse to tell us he didn't want to go "I don't like socializing with people"... "I don't have a job and everyone there has a job, so I don't have anything to talk to them about"/.... "I don't really like the atmosphere that much"..... the list goes on, anyway we felt pretty upset about all of these lame excuses, and we made him a promise directly from the Lord that if he went to Stake conference, he would have a desire to come to church more, anyway, he had told us "no no no" everytime up until we said the promise was from God, and not us. He solemnly agreed to go, and was determined to go, and the next morning, when stake conference came around, he told us he was not going, and right then and there, we dropped him. It was long overdue, I think.

But I know all of this sounds oh so depressing, and bad news, but in the Lord's work, he makes up for it, he never wants us to falter in this work, so this past weekend, we got 6 referrals for Chinese people, including 2 lessons with people we hadn't been able to meet with in a long time, or at all before. Plus we have 2 non member lessons planned for today, both are "first" or "preliminary lessons" so we have at least 9 people that are brand new or are coming out of the woodwork with our area right now, we just need to buckle down, be that much more obedient, that much more hard working, and that much more faithful to show God that we can be entrusted with these people. On top of that we have around 6 investigators that are continuing to progress, namely. Sherry, Angela, Ellie, Ritta, Puzhongyao, Cindy.

To all those that might be doing missionary work right now, refocus your efforts on those who ARE progressing and WANT to progress, and cut off those who don't want to. The Lord really will bless.

This past week has been a testimony to me, that I need to be more obedient, work that little bit harder every day, and continue to improve. I don't have much time left.

Your prayers are requested for this area, and for this work. Especially for Sherry, Angela, Ellie, Ritta, Puzhong Yao, and Cindy.

Love,

Elder Nathan Sanchez

每周信函2014年4​月14日

It's a new transfer, and we got phone calls on Saturday, no one is moving here in the seven springs branch, this past week has been really crazy, a lot of things happened that I didn't expect. Let me explain.

So on this week, Monday we had a lesson with our progressing investigator, Sherry. We met with her and talked to her about the Ten Commandments, and it was really good, we explained all of that, and what we need to do to be happier people in our lives and more love showing to God and of our fellow men. After that we brought up baptism with her, because she had a baptismal date before, at the beginning of March, and now it's almost the middle of April. We talked about how important Baptism is and how it's a commandment, brought up 2 Nephi 31: 6 about how we need to be baptized in this life. We committed her to choose a date and she said she would in the next few days. Anyway, it was a really really good lesson. On Wednesday, she texted us back with "I can't commit to a date right now" and we were really sad because we know that baptism is an exercise of faith, and that unless we put our faith in a date, most of the time things don't work out the way they should.

We got a new investigator on Tuesday, someone that Sister Yu referred to us, he's a waiter at one of her favorite chinese restaurants. His name is Randy, and he is from Mainland China. We met with him before work at Starbucks right next to where he works, and got to know him a little bit better. We taught and explained the Restoration of the Gospel. He had a lot of good questions, and seemed to understand everything we taught when we asked him 'understanding questions' back. So that was really good. He's in his 40's and a father of two children with his wife staying at home taking care of the children. It was a really great lesson, and we have another tentative appointment with him tomorrow morning.

Wednesday we went on exchanges with Elder Baldwin, since he's in a tri-panionship, three elders, he just came with Elder Zollinger and I into our own area, it was a kind of weird day, we didn't have much success, and it was hard to get a hold of people and get people to answer their doors. But we ended off with 2 lessons, one with a non-member, and another with an active member.

Thursday was a really good day, I think sanchez loves mcallister and sonenstahl and cant wait to be renuited with us in the hereafter <-- that was other elders, anyway. Thursday we had a great day, we met with our English class after our training meeting, and then we met with an investigator thats moving to Texas named Aimin, his family is the Xiong family, they are wonderful, he is trying to find work in Houston before he leaves here, so I had Elder Zollinger call people I knew in Texas for Aimin on his phone, to help find job opportunities, and so we eventually got a hold of Julee, I didn't talk to her at all, it was just Elder Zollinger. It was funny haha. I couldn't talk to her at all. We got some information for Aimin and then we shared a lesson and left.

The highlight I think of the week was going to the Oakland Temple on Saturday, we went there with our branch, and we got permission to go up with our branch instead of the mission on April 4, so we went and planned, got there around 10, and did an english endowment, then did lunch and initiatories, then we had a chance for a chapel session with  most of the branch members, then we headed up with our Chinese language endowment, it was really awesome, I understood probably 95% of what was said and presented, it was a great great day. Right after we had a potluck in the interstake center next to the temple, and it was just a great day.

The next day we had church and found out that our branch presidency was being reorganized, so that was really interesting. I will miss Pres Law as our Branch President.

That was our week generally, we are starting to see miracles happen, and things are changing rapidly, not only in the work, but in our own lives as well.

Happy 20 month mark everyone, I can't believe it's been this long.

Love,

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年4​月7日

4/7/14

This week has been a little slow, because of Conference all weekend we didn't have a lot of chances to work this weekend, at least to the point that we usually do, so we ended up a little bit short of our goals. This transfer has gone by lightning fast, and I can't believe that we are on week 6 of 6 already. I'm 100% sure I won't be transferred, and also pretty sure that I might finish my mission here in Cupertino. Pretty excited about that.

This past week was my companions birthday on Sunday, and so on Sunday we had an interesting day, our dinner cancelled, the family was sick and wasn't able to have us, so instead after our lesson with Cindy, I asked to see if any of my old ward members from Redwood City could have us over (since our lesson with Cindy was in Menlo Park) so we got our usual dinner on Sunday nights to have us over, and we had a great time up there, and I got to see all of my old missionary friends up there that I worked with in the Spanish ward, that was really great. Our lesson with Cindy by the way was really good. We taught her about the Ten Commandments and it seemed to be pretty natural for her to do. She is hard to get to church because she works sometimes on Sunday with her research at Stanford University. So this next week we are going to get her to come to church, because she wasn't able to watch Conference with us. We have a Chinese fellowshipper from the English ward that she lives in ready for her this next week.

On Monday, we had a great day, it was a rainy rainy p-day, pretty much pouring all day long, but we got everything that we needed to get done, all done. We even had time at the end of the day to go and be at the stake center with all the other missionaries. I said bye to all of the temple square sisters that are serving in our zone, Sister Jarrett and Sister Ranama. So Temple square sisters get to go and serve as a "real missionaries" for 3 transfers. Anyway our p-day after that was good, Elder Zollinger and I didn't have a dinner so he wanted to (and per his parents request) go out to eat for dinner, so we went to a Chinese restaurant called "Nutrition Restaurant" (the chinese name is totally different, the english name is a bit weird) anyway it was really good we got 3 dishes and a noodle, plus rice. It was really great.

Tuesday, we got 2 new investigators, well just about at least. We had a meeting with a referral from our branch mission leaders wife, her name is Jiang Hui 江慧 and it was a really good (but long) meeting with her, she is a 23 year old Chinese gal, she is currently going to DeAnza College for Elementary Education. She lived in King of Prussia before, she had an exchange student or something other program over there in PA. She belongs to another Christian church, that is English speaking. We taught her the first lesson, and she had a lot of off-topic (but relevant) questions that she would ask between the points of the lesson. She really didn't understand the flow of the lesson, and then at the point of the "First Vision" part, then she understood how everything fit together. She said after we had finished that what we had said at the end was really "heavy for her" and that "she needed time to digest it mentally and spiritually" so we asked her if we could meet again, and she said maybe, that she needs a few weeks, and then she will get back to us. She was a little bit scared by the spirit a bit.

Then we met a referral from Temple Square at his house, he lives rather close to us, in San Jose, anyway we met him and he's a 24 year old graduate looking for a new job here, he is from Dallas, and just moved from there, he said it was too boring for him and not enough Chinese people there, so he said that he had friends here, and so he just drove up. Anyway, he toured Salt Lake, and was looking for a church to join, and investigate some, so he gladly let the sisters have his information, and so now he is one of our new investigators! We taught him the first lesson, and he was like "I already knew all of this stuff, I think it's true but I need to pray about it and find my own answer" so he's really awesome. We tried to get him to come to conference, and he said he would, but we totally forgot to remind him to come, so he didn't show up. Our mistake for sure, he got lost through the cracks of having 10 people to invite besides him.

Wednesday wednesday, that was a crazy day, we talked to a lady named Nancy Chung, she doesn't go to our branch, but the English ward that meets in our same building, anyway, she asked me and Elder Zollinger to go and help her with "some help in her garage" is how she stated it, and so we showed up, and there were probably 100+ moving boxes full of clothing, and later we come to find out, boxes full of food as well. So let's do the math here, boxes full of food like spaghetti and cereal, and things like this plus in a garage that is very poorly sealed off from the outside world... what does that equal? Rats.

Yes, rats. The evidence of their existence was ever so prevalent. We did some deep cleaning, and removing each box and item one by one into her driveway, sweeping and wiping down as we went. No sign of an actual rat though. We realized at around 2 pm, after working for almost 2 hours, that we could not finish this project by ourselves, either we got help or we would not even make a dent in this project we deemed and named "Rat Eradication" so we called our good friends and elders. Elders Sonenstahl, McAllister, Featherstone, Ayotte, and Morgan. Elder Sonenstahl is a hunter, and so is Elder Featherstone, so they were more than willing to come out for the 'fight' so we finished one side of the garage without a single sign of any rats. But the other side was a lot more treacherous. We got to the middle of the tower and pile of boxes and realized that there were tons of holes in the boxes as if it were a network of delicious food tunnels for these vermin. One by one we removed and shook and hit eat box as if to provoke them out of their "Ritz Carlton" for rats, or should I say "Rats Carlton"? One by one, they came out in a frenzy, only to meet their demise by the head of a golf club or other blunt device. I know this seems quite morbid, but these vermin were causing much trouble for this single woman who is deathly afraid of vermin of this sort. In total after cleaning, and inspecting each and every box, the count of vermin was 18 in total. Yes 18. We reorganized her garage in such a way that no rats would be able to lounge in the boxes, and also threw away all of the food items. Set about 8 more traps just in case, and called it a night. It was an adventure of sorts, but a little bit too much for an average missionary to handle in one day.

The rest of the week was pretty slow, but we are still working with investigators, we weren't abel to meet with many other investigators, but we had a new investigator (other than who I talked about) come to conference named Sophie, and then also Angela came too! Even though her dad doesnt want her to be baptized.

I think that's about it from this week, I really enjoyed the talk from Conference about "Spiritual Bits" how we need to be willing to change the course of our actions when The Lord moved the "spiritual bits" in our mouth.

Hope everyone has a good week, 

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014 4 1

Hey everyone!

We are in a hurry today, we couldn't email yesterday because all the libraries were closed due to Cesar Chavez day, it's a state holiday here, so everything was closed.

It's really hard to me to right what has happened this past week in just a few minutes.

Angela our investigator is postponing her baptism for right now, her dad is opposed to the baptism, so we are waiting that out.

Sherry is pretty on track for baptism, she is still trying to figure a day that will be good for her, probably sometime this month hopefully.

Also, Owen is doing well, we are just struggling to get him to church. We met with Simon Luo this week, and we had a great lesson with him on the law of Chastity. It was really good. He is starting to humble himself a lot more.

Sorry that I can't really write much this week, we will talk to more next week.

Until then,

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年3月24日

This week has been really good, I am so tired. It's monday morning and I am just so so tired. We got 24 lessons, a baptism, lots of translation, and everything else. It's been pretty crazy. Just really tiring. We have 4 people in our apartment, and it's pretty annoying to hear "Well you're going home soon anyway" and "Less than 5 months, you're nearly dead"

This week we have been working with Wu Tao again, I think most of you remember him from a while ago. We met him sometime last July or August. Wu Tao dropped us about a month+ ago, but when I came back I didn't care. He said "I moved away, sorry I can't meet with Mormons anymore" so I went back a few weeks and he opened the door and let us in to teach him. We met with him on Monday, and talked to him about his family situation right now, and so we told him we completely understand that his family is in a different church and don't quite understand the church. We talked to him about still being faithful that they will be able to accept the gospel, and keep having faith in his testimony. We met with him the day after and had dinner with him at his apartment, he made us good food, and we talked about fatherhood and how he is doing a lot for his family already.

Wednesday we went to DeAnza to do contacting and we had 2 really good lessons there, both of them were non-Chinese though. We gave those referrals to the respective areas, and it was a good day. We didn't have any dinners signed up from Mon-Wed within the Branch, but we managed to get dinner in one way or another so it wasn't too bad either. Wednesday we also got to meet with Helena, she is just super stressed out. But we shared a scripture about how through the Atonement we can overcome our negative feelings and hardships.

Thursday was a slow day too, only 2 lessons but we had a few English Classes and had a good day, even though on the numbers it was slow. It was good though! We met with one of our less actives Lu Zhou. It was a good lesson, and he may be receiving his Patriarchal blessing soon.

Sherry! We met with her on Friday to talk about the Law of Chastity, it was a really good lesson because she had a lot of good questions, particularly about homosexuality. It helped her to understand everything within the churches view on things and all of that. It was a good lesson. Then that night we had dinner with our other progressing investigator Angela! We met at the Thompson's house for dinner, and it was really good. We had a great lesson with her on the Restoration and watched the 20 minute Joseph Smith movie. She believes it, and reads the Book of Mormon every day as it is. She wants to be baptized with Sherry also on April the 6th, because she is afraid to be baptized alone.

Saturday, was a great day. 6 lessons. We started off our day with meeting with a referral from the Oakland Mission, this gals name was Li Jun, and her mom also came along, her name was Li Ping, and we met in front of the MLK Library downtown (I parked there, downtown, and failed to realize that i didn't pay for parking meter, because San Jose's parking meters aren't like the meters in NYC, they are electronic ones on the end of the road, so I got a 40$ ticket... annoying)

Anyway we met with them, and they are already Christian, we taught about the restoration, and they really enjoyed it, so we invited them to church.

After that we had a member present lesson with Brother Lee, at our other progressing (sorta) investigator Simon Luo, we taught about Tithing, and how we give 10% of our income to building up the Kingdom of God on the earth. Simon had a lot of questions, and he just really doesn't like to follow commandments, so he made up a lot of excuses, but he agreed to follow it.

We went throughout our day, and did the rest of our visits. That night, we had dinner with the Wu 吴 family, Ellie and Ritta were there, they are both pretty much members of the church already, we had a great dinner, it was delicious. Then we shared the plan of Salvation with them, and it opened up into a long drawn out discussion, that unfortunately we couldn't participate in because we had to leave, so we ended, and finished with a prayer, and headed off to visit the last people we had for the night.

Sunday was quite possibly one of the best days of my mission, it was really awesome. We had church like normal but then we had Sacrament meeting. Pres Law asked me to do live translation side by side for our visitor who was President Clark, one of our mission presidency's counselors. He had 45 minutes to talk, and so he would speak a few sentences, and then I would translate. It was crazy. I had some problems with some areas (namely translating an experience about being on an airline, and talking about certain parts of the plane) but it went really well. Didn't think I was to that level yet, but The Lord certainly helps us in our time of need.

After that we had a linger longer, Christina and her family were there, Christina really misses eating Chinese food 中餐 so she was happy to come to our linger longer lunch get together, she was a happy girl sunday and it was fun. After the linger longer we headed to Menlo Park to meet with Cindy, one of our newer investigators, and then afterwards we prepared for the baptism which was in the same building we met with Cindy in, how convenient.

Christina XiaoQiao McQuinn was baptized and confirmed as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was a wonderful baptism, and I will never forget this day. She feels like a part of my family too. I love her like a little sister, such a great little girl. The baptism was wonderful, we had to translate both the talks, and the confirmation prayer, but it went really well.

The rest of the night was just great, we had a great dinner, and one last lesson with Owen to top off the week with 15 non member lessons.

Spiritual thought of the week, 3 Nephi 20:40, it talks about those who publish peace, such as missionaries. This scripture specifically references Jesus Christ himself, but we can all apply this in the same way to us, we can all become good missionaries, in any phase of our life. We have to just have the courage to invite, and I know that as we do so, that how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings unto them of good, that publisheth salvation that saith unto Zion. Thy God reigneth!

Have a great week.

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年3​月18日

19 month mark, pretty crazy.

Okay, well another week to tell. It's been a great week. We had a lot of great success, and are helping our investigators progress!

To update you on some investigators progress:

Ellie and Ritta are doing well, Ellie has been really a bit distraught lately because she feels "internet pressure" to be baptized even though right now doesn't seem like to be the right time for her to be baptized.

Our investigator Owen that we found probably like in July of last year, he is 15, and from China is progressing really well. We had a really awesome lesson with him this past week, and we invited him to be baptized. He said he would! So his baptismal date is April 19.

Angela! So we contacted Angela in November, and our first lesson with her was right after I left Cupertino for Redwood City, so she is progressing so well. Her mom came from China and told her she doesn't need to be baptized, but her testimony is there, and she is so prepared. Her mom finally left back for China so Angela has officially come back to church. We had a lesson with her this past Friday, and invited her to make another Baptismal date. Her date is now April 12 of next month.

Christina McQuinn, the adopted girl from Huainan, Anhui China is getting baptized this weekend, after about 5 months of straight teaching, she is ready to be baptized, and just in time for her older brother to get his mission call. We will see pictures this weekend!

Finally, Sherry Chen, she's the best. One of the best investigators I've had so far. I think I told you a lot about her last week, she's 18 from China, going to DeAnza, she said she wasn't really that happy about a new Elder coming to meet her, but she has certainly warmed up to me in the past few weeks. It's been really awesome. She is progressing towards baptism really well, and she will probably be baptized April 12 as well along with Angela. She's just too nice of a girl. She wears (prescription mind you) glasses that are the lenses with like cat ears on the top. it's really cool.

Those are our more progressing investigators right now. We have a lot lot lot of them coming out of the woodwork right now, we have about 30 people steadily meeting with us, at least once a month. 20 of them are once a week. We pretty much got a new investigator this week named Melvina, she is a formers daughter, she is also 18 years old and just awesome. 

That's about it for me this week.  

Love you all,

(Rachel and Matt, welcome to the best place on earth: Silicon Valley, if you move to the Southern part of Santa Clara, you will see me every sunday in the same ward building, that'd be pretty weird)

Elder Sanchez

每周信函2014年3月10日

3/10/14

I'm baaaaaack! I am now serving in the Seven Springs Chinese Branch, once again. It's awesome. We have a lot of work, and a lot of people to teach. I'm glad to be back. My companion has been out 7 months, his name is Elder Zollinger, he's from Logan UT originally but he has been living in Hong Kong, and other parts of China for the past 10 years or so, so he's cool. His chinese is pretty good for 7 months.

So to detail our week, we had a really good week, with 18 non member lessons in total, the first day we had here we went and visited a less active i'm pretty familiar with named George Wang (Wang Dingzai) and he recoginized and remembered me despite his progressing alzheimers, we taught him the Plan of Salvation, and his nonmember wife was in proximity making food and listening to what we were saying, even commenting on certain points. So that was good, we were able to go and visit people throughout the day, and at 7:30 we had our English class with Ellie. We taught Ellie and Ritta when I was last here, and they were progressing towards baptism, but she is waiting for her to go to China to ask her parents for permission to get baptized, since her dad said "no" over the phone. This is a kind of typical deal in Chinese culture is big things like this, even though Ellie is in her 40's, to get permission from the parents. So we are waiting on that.

On Wednesday, we had some appointments in the morning, one with a new investigator named Ben Luo, we met at DeAnza, and was able to explain the Book of Mormon to him, and explain what we teach to people and how it can help and bless him. We did that and set a return appointment with him. We had lunch, and then at 2 we had another English class with a guy named Mr Fang, he is from Beijing, and he lives right by the church, so right now we are teaching him english once a week at the church. We contacted at DeAnza, had a great dinner with a member in the Saratoga Ward, and then visited less actives the rest of the night.

One of the highlights of my week was we got a call from the mission office to give a man and his wife a blessing that were members of the church, but not from this area. They are called the Azevedo's. They're from San Diego, and Brother Azevedo had a sudden need for a triple bypass surgery while working up here with his wife, and so were able to give them a blessing, both the husband and the wife, and we visited them every day this past week until they were released on Friday evening. The nicest family, they are full of faith and love, and I really appreciated their faith in asking for a blessing.

We have a newer investigator named Sherry that a member brought to church, she is 18, and she has become good friends with Helena, (Helena wasn't the one that brought her to church, but she is friends with her now) she's from Mainland China, and is really loving the gospel so far, she was at church, and even took the bus from West San Jose to get to church. (the person who gives her a ride usually is in utah, but she wanted to come anyway so she took the bus, good faith) So we had a lesson with her this past week, and Helena mentioned that she was nervous about getting a new missionary here (even though she had only been taught for 2 weeks before I came?) so a little more pressure on me for this lesson, but it ended up working out really well, we taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ and I always tell the story about how Granny was driving home one night and how she was prompted to stop on a texas road because there were cows (I think?) Crossing the road. How important the Holy Ghost is in our lives and how we need to heed it's promptings. When I told her that story she said "Wow... that's pretty awesome" in English... even though I told that story in Chinese. She really opened up a lot, and even sat by us at church. It was really good.

Another highlight, was that my companion has a lot of family that lives in the area, distant relatives and people that are 2nd Cousins, or something other. So we had dinner with a family in our stake that the wife is his 2nd cousin, and her maiden name is Zollinger as well, anyway this was absolutely just crazy rich, and the husband was a maxillofacial surgeon for 31 years, and so he just has so much money. But we had a wonderful, (and too long) dinner with them. He told us he wanted to show us something, so we went to his garage and saw this wonderful machine. Ferrari 458 Spyder. With a pricetag of $318,000. He just bought it around 3 weeks ago, and he was explaining to us that you have to sign a contract with Ferrari before you buy it to say that you won't sell the car for at least 2 years, and if you do that you first have to offer the car to sell back to Ferrari because on the black market in certain countries you can buy the car from Ferrari for the pricetag of $3xx,000 and then the next day you can sell it for more than $100,000 more, so somewhere in the $4xx,000 range. Pretty interesting stuff. I wonder if one day I would ever even have the money to afford something like this.

We had another really good lesson with a really progressing investigator named Simon Luo and he is awesome, he's like 23 and from China, studying here at DeAnza College in Computer Science of course, anyway we didn't teach all the way Word of Wisdom last time, so we wanted to go over it with him, and so we did, and we read Doctrine and Covenants 89 with him to help us explain since he was a little bit confused, and it said "hot drinks" and he was like really confused and upset about that, because we told him that meant tea and coffee, and so we kept going back and forth about it, and finally I just felt like to make an example out of the Chinese language. I told him, okay, Simon. What does 冷饮 (lengyin) mean in English? He responded with like it's cold drinks. (that's exactly the literal translation) and then I asked him what it contains in that category, and then he said well... ice cream, slushy, soda, juice etc etc. and I said exactly, in your mind and in the mind of all the chinese people that's what lengyin is, well in the mind of Joseph Smith and all the people that lived in that part of the US, hot drinks, that meant coffee and tea, and all of the modern day prophets have confirmed that. He finally got it and literally spent like a minute just thinking silently and said "I got it, it finally makes sense" and so we invited him to pray about it and also about everything else we taught.

Finally, I gave a talk this week, Elder Fisher, my old companion here in this branch, had the assignment to give a talk on D&C 4, about missionary work, but since he got transferred, and I got transferred back in, I gave the talk, and it was so good to see everyone again, people were so surprised that I had been back, and it was a joyous occasion. My talk didn't go too bad! I did pretty well for not speaking much Chinese in the past 3 months, so it was really cool. I didn't really have to read it off a paper like last time I gave a talk last July. That was really awesome.

I am really happy to be back here in the Seven Springs Branch, and I am happy that I probably will be finishing my mission here, that will bring me to a grand total of 12 months spent serving here in this branch. Woohoo!

Elder Sanchez

Email Semanal 3 de Marzo 2014 (last email in spanish program)

Hey everyone, I'm getting transferred! I've had a great time being here in the Spanish program here in Redwood City! 

I don't have much to write this week besides it was an awesome week. I knew generally I was going to get transferred, and so here I am. Today is my last day here in Menlo Park area, the best zone in the mission. I am off back to my old area (more than likely, there is only one Chinese elder getting transferred, and he is my old companion Elder Fisher in Cupertino.)

We had a week that was really good, and we got a ton done, Elder Phillips my companion really didn't want me to get transferred, he even told President Watkins in his interview 2 weeks ago, asking if I could stay, but I really want to go back to my mission language, my Spanish has gotten decent, it's definitely not perfect or even excellent, but it's okay. It's a good foundation to set for the future. 

I am going to school in Idaho for those who care to know, I will start September 15, so i will be home for almost a month before I go to school.

Anyway, it's been fun, here comes Chapter 4 (probably the last chapter) of my mission: Cupertino once again!

Love,

Elder Sanchez

Email Semanal 24 de febrero 2014

Well we really worked hard this week, it seems to be a recurring theme that we are working hard, and seeing results, and it seems to be a recurring theme our weekly routine too, but we are trying not to get into a routine and just go out and work like we're supposed to. In the words of President Watkins' father "I do what I ought, when I ought"

We did quite a bit on Tuesday, we helped one of our members clean his trailer, he is a member from Brasil and he's been here in the Bay Area for a few years just to work, he is a man of humble roots, and is still humble today. His name is Allan Da Cunha, and he's great. We helped him out for a few hours, and then we got ready and left, (all 4 of us at the time, all of the spanish elders) and went to a funeral, it was a family that we all helped out with with service, and they wanted us to come to the funeral, so we did. They lost the matriarch of the family, the grandmother, and it was a good opportunity to share the plan of salvation with them.

We then went to lunch, got my favorite food, L&L Hawaiian Barbecue, and then we headed off to work. We got in to a few homes to teach, including Juan and Jenny, the Alfaro Family, and finally for dinner, the Ruiz's of course. Nariko is the oldest daughter, and she has been gone from our Tuesday dinners for almost 5 weeks, and so this week she was there, and she was happy to be there so I could tutor her in Chinese. She's taking Chinese in school, and her teacher gives her long story's to read, and she doesn't understand the sentence flow in Chinese that well and how words 'interact' with each other. It's the best language out there!

Wednesday was a long day, because we spent some time in the morning cleaning, because we had a hunch that President and Sister Watkins were going to be coming to inspect the apartment and do interviews. So we did just that, and did our studies as normal, had lunch, and did some more studies and he finally arrived (with notice, yes) at 2:20 PM. It was a short interview, but we got to talking, and he said "There's a good chance you're going back to Chinese next transfer, so let me see what I can do"... and then he went on to talk about how there is a chance to stay here another transfer but that is what he has to say in order to keep missionaries focused on the work. So I'm more than likely to be transferred it looks like. Fremont again here I come. He told be at the end  of the interview "Thank you for being flexible, I mean... ambidextrous, you're borderlining trilingual, so keep it up"

He thanked me a lot in the interview and that meant a lot, but it is really him that I should thank.

After that, we didn't have much time before dinner to go out and work, but we hit the streets, and went contacting, and talked to everyone we met. We were able to have dinner, and correlation at the chapel. After correlation we stopped by to visit a less active family, and they were actually home for once, they invited us in, and we shared a message, and they invited us to come back the next monday for dinner. They are from Mexico, not sure where, but they make good food.

Thursdays mean district meetings and district lunches, so we had our district meeting in the morning, and then we headed off to Indochine for lunch, this place is super good, and it's free for missionaries, so you can't beat it. Here in the picture in the white shirt is Bill, he's from Shanghai, and he waits on us every time we come here. He gives us double desserts and double candy to take for the road, he's awesome, and he always gets a good tip haha.

That night we had dinner with the Alfaro's again, and they made this soup, and I don't even remember what it was called, but it was nice, it was like bean base, with pinto or black or both, then it had tiny bits of steak and bacon, and you garnish it the way you like with cilantro, onion, salsa (homemade habanero, it was nice) and anything else you want, with corn tortillas of course. We shared a message, invited Josue (the 17 year old son)  to come with us to our next appointment which was down the road with the investigators Juan and Jenny. We were planning on reteaching the Word of Wisdom, because they have a big problem with it, they aren't willing to give it up so easily, so we retaught it, and promised blessings to them, and I went even as far as writing up a fake contract for them, to help them feel more committed. They agreed, and we will need to support them even more in getting to the point where they are free of the addictions that they have.

The weekend was kind of slow this past weekend, but we did get some lessons and were able to invite many people to come unto Christ. Sunday we did contacting in the morning in "mini mexico" went to church, and then went off to do visits. We visited Juan and Jenny again, and taught about temple blessings because they have questions about it. We are going up to the temple this Saturday to help them see more of the blessings that stem from it.

It was a good week, we could have pushed a little harder and done a little more, but we had a good week. The biggest thing I learned this week from my studies was in 3 Nephi 4, when the Nephites were preparing themselves for a battle with the Gadianton robbers, how their faith in God overcame the fear of these evil men conspiring against them, and how we have people coming against us every day, the forces of the adversary and constantly over us, but when we have faith we can overcome that, and be richly blessed. You must not forget that in order to reap the blessings, you need to first have opposition, because without the opposition, namely the bad that we sometimes face, there will never be the good.

 Love,

Elder Sanchez

Email Semanal 17 de febrero 2014

Hey this weekly letter I forgot to send last week. Sorry about that everyone.

We dropped the car off in EPA and rode up the Redwood City as fast as we could because we were late to our dinner with Cesar and his family, they are part-member, Cesar is not a member of the church, we had pollo that was seasoned in like a chorizo seasoning, and rice and noodles with tortillas of course. We got to know Alma his wife better, and talk to Cesar more about this past week. Cesar asked us if we could come back the next day for our "class" and so we respected his request and shared a message on repentance and removing the dark cloud that's over us by repenting.

Elder Phillips and I then went on Middlefield Road and just talked to people for the last 20 minutes of the night, and then finally we went to Los Manguitos to buy a paleta, I got Chamoy and he got Pistachio, and they were 2$ each. It was really good, we headed off home, and we got the keys off the roof  of our apartment (which I accidentally threw up there) and everything was good in the world. I was happy last night to get to sleep in a nice cold semi-humid room. Not dry not overly humid, and it was cooold. I liked it, but my companion didn't. I had a great sleep.

Man, today was pretty great and crazy. First of all Helena is not going through very good times, she met with the Bishop last night to clear up and figure out what she will do about her mother and father, they are both very against the church, and are asking her to come home back to China. So been keeping her in my thoughts. You should too.

Today we had service at St Anthony's Catholic Church, that was cool, it's just peeling and cutting vegetables for a few hours to prep for their lunch the next day, it's really a good place to serve as missionaries. After we had served there we ate lunch for the Redwood City 1st elders, Elders Porter and Jones and then we had our language study.

After language study we went and visited Daniel Paiz, he is a recently coming back from less activity, and he is pretty awesome, he is getting his patriarchal blessing this Thursday, receiving the classes for receiving the Melchizedek Priesthood and going to the temple now. He is pretty golden. He was asking us about what we think he should do with his life, because right now he is 32 and no job, no money, and no education, and how he needs to be more patient with God and with his life, but he is coming to conclusions himself on what he needs to do in order to do what he needs to do. We shared about spiritual and temporal blessings that come from being obedient, and then he headed off to do some 'odd jobs' with another member of the church.

After that we went and visited a couple people, and on the way we pulled over and talked to a young man on the street, and ended up teaching him the restoration, his name was Ricky, and he was really cool and receptive. We have a time to go back and bring him a Book of Mormon.

We kept going around RWC talking to everyone, and it was great. We eventually ran into Cesar our investigator in front of the Chavez supermarket and he asked us not to come at 6 because he was busy with things, so we went into Chavez to use the bathroom and he bought us candy and drinks... I think he just felt bad that he cancelled on us. We went and kept doing the work, and kept talking to everyone. We went to our ward mission leaders house to visit him, update him on our investigators and shared a message with him.

After we did that, we ran into a guy named Elmer, he's from Guatemala, and he was really interesting, he kept repeating the things that we said when we taught him, and we taught him the whole restoration on the street. We went and invited him to meet with us, and he didn't remember his address? So we got his cell phone number and we think it might be fake. But we did pray with him. We then headed off to dinner in Menlo Park with the Ruiz Family of course (every tuesday!) It was pretty amazing, as usual. Great day, 5 lessons. 

We started cleaning our house for interviews at around 9 oclock and got our laundry in, there isn't really much to write about today besides we cleaned our house for like 5  hours and then went shopping and got groceries.

The rest of the week was pretty interesting. We have had a hard time getting into the doors of our own investigators this week, and for sure in other peoples homes, but we still managed to get our standard 20 lessons this past week. We really pushed this weekend to find and teach people. I am coming down to my last 2 weeks of my time here in Redwood City 2nd Ward as President Watkins told me i'll be here for 2 transfers.

We have really had some trials this week of our faith, but we are come off conqueror. We made our 20 lessons. I am feeling a longing to go back to my mission language, I had a lesson in Chinese this past sunday because the Cupertino elders weren't able to go, so they had me go, and my mind was pretty set on the Spanish language, but as soon as I got into the groove  of the lesson it ended up working out really well. Her name was Cindy and she's 29, it was the first lesson she had with missionaries. She is from Hubei China and she has only been in the US since the beginning of January. She looks younger than me, but that just comes from the youthfulness of Chinese people. 

Anyway, don't know much else to write this week, but it's been a good week. 2 weeks left in the transfer already.

Elder Sanchez