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
