NiMen Hao!
Hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving! We definitely did over here in the Bay Area!
Before we get into that, we had some disappointments at the beginning of the week...Unfortunately, one of the Church Headquarters referrals we received (a woman named Donna Wu) finally returned some of our calls, and told us she wasn't interested in meeting with us...that was fun.
But, regardless, the good definitely outweighed the bad this week! We have been trying to achieve a mission goal of helping 200 people be baptized since June of this year, and we only have 33 to go! In an effort to more fully achieve this goal, we have been asked to set 4:00-6:00pm everyday to go our and find new investigators! This can be done by tracting, street-contacting, whatever, all in an effort to find those truly prepared! We are already seeing great blessings from this initiative!Thanks to this new finding time, we have been much more diligent in trying to locate those prepared, especially closer to our apartment. Elder Li and I have tracted into several potentials these past few days, so we hopefully will get to add anew investigator soon!
I went on exchanges with Elder Fernandez this week, and he is a totally fun Elder. He goes home on Wednesday, so it was the last exchange in his mission! We did yard work and cleanup at Golden Gate Park, which I love, and had an incredible lesson with the Sunset Elders' current investigator, Glen. Glen shared with us his concerns about the difference between revelation from church leaders and personal revelation. Elder Fernandez pulled out a scripture from D&C 58 quite literally out of thin air, and it provided the answer to Glen's queries perfectly! I was in awe of the power of the Spirit during that lesson. It was a great motivator to me to keep up my studies and to more fully try to remain worthy of the Spirit.
Speaking of studies, I have learned some AWESOME things this week! Especially after the experience with Glen, I felt kind of down on myself and the current situation of our work. I was jealous of and coveted the opportunities English speaking missionaries have to teach and share meaningful testimony compared to a Chinese missionary such as myself. I read in Alma 20:29-30 the next day, which tells us that the Lord gives us specific trials and challenges individual to each of His children. It made me realize that my mission will have different struggles, but that those struggles were ones that the Lord intended for me to receive personally. Further studying the parables of Christ's life has really confirmed to me how personal the Gospel is to each of us, both in the way we chose to live it and the specific plans Heavenly Father has for each of us.
I am very proud of our District this week! Not only were we able to have a fun Thanksgiving together, but we were also able to achieve our District Baptismal Goal of three baptisms! We are all very excited about that effort and the blessings the Lord has given us. I hope we can further contribute to the 200 goal as it comes to a close over these next few weeks.
I went on exchanges with Elder Fernandez this week, and he is a totally fun Elder. He goes home on Wednesday, so it was the last exchange in his mission! We did yard work and cleanup at Golden Gate Park, which I love, and had an incredible lesson with the Sunset Elders' current investigator, Glen. Glen shared with us his concerns about the difference between revelation from church leaders and personal revelation. Elder Fernandez pulled out a scripture from D&C 58 quite literally out of thin air, and it provided the answer to Glen's queries perfectly! I was in awe of the power of the Spirit during that lesson. It was a great motivator to me to keep up my studies and to more fully try to remain worthy of the Spirit.
Speaking of studies, I have learned some AWESOME things this week! Especially after the experience with Glen, I felt kind of down on myself and the current situation of our work. I was jealous of and coveted the opportunities English speaking missionaries have to teach and share meaningful testimony compared to a Chinese missionary such as myself. I read in Alma 20:29-30 the next day, which tells us that the Lord gives us specific trials and challenges individual to each of His children. It made me realize that my mission will have different struggles, but that those struggles were ones that the Lord intended for me to receive personally. Further studying the parables of Christ's life has really confirmed to me how personal the Gospel is to each of us, both in the way we chose to live it and the specific plans Heavenly Father has for each of us.
I am very proud of our District this week! Not only were we able to have a fun Thanksgiving together, but we were also able to achieve our District Baptismal Goal of three baptisms! We are all very excited about that effort and the blessings the Lord has given us. I hope we can further contribute to the 200 goal as it comes to a close over these next few weeks.
By way of Thanksgiving, we had an incredible dinner with Hermana Betty herself. She is an incredible woman, who invites all of the missionaries in the San Francisco Zone over to her house every Thursday night for dinner. About 10 of us went over last week to spend Thanksgiving with her. She is such a good lady, and so lovely to provide such a wonderful memory for all of us.
It is definitely good to be grateful! I am grateful for the Gospel, and this chance that I have to strengthen my relationship with my Savior. I am grateful for all the blessing that I receive through this work. It's been hard, but its doable.
Love to you all! Have a great week!
Elder Butters/Bao ZhangLao
No comments:
Post a Comment