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
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