Rain rain go away...
We started teaching two older gentleman this week, one who is about 60 years old and one who is about 70 and uses a wheelchair to get around. We normally teach people from about 18-30 year olds, and it is a very special experience to be able to teacher older people, because their outlook on life is much different. And plus they tend to have more free time, so they read The Book of Mormon much more often haha. We've only met with both of them once so far, but I hope they continue to have interest in learning more.
For Sacrament Meeting this week the Bishop invited me to give a talk. I was super nervous but it ended up going super well. It's a weird feeling that the first week here I got up and could barely say my name and where I was from, and a couple months later I'm able to get up and give a full talk. I was able to take the Language Test to advance from Book A (Gospel Terms) to Book B (Every-Day Terms) 2 weeks ago and passed on my first try! It's about a 45 minute test filled with translating terms from English to Chinese, Chinese to English, and multiple role plays of teaching investigators. The test got much harder recently and everyone I talked to had to take it multiple times to pass it and didn't pass it until they were into breaking (the transfer after training). The Lord has blessed me so much to help me communicate with these amazing people and testify to them of Jesus Christ.
One funny story from this week is that our investigator at church was taking notes (which is amazing) and voice recording the sacrament meeting. We didn't notice until the Bishop looked at us and motioned for us to tell our investigator to stop recording. The investigator felt super bad and just wanted to record the talks so he could study them after! It was super funny but really cool to have him that interested in the talks haha.
Our current most progressing investigator is Harry Huang. I can't remember what I mentioned about him in previous emails, but his family is very poor. As a result, he's worked since he finished elementary school to provide for his younger brother and sister to allow them to go to middle school and high school. He is one of the most humble people I know. He was part of another Christian church before, and is currently loving what we're sharing with him. We met with him again this week and taught the Plan of Salvation. We found out that he read 19 chapters from the Book of Mormon since our last visit and he remembers everything he's read! He's taught me things from the Book of Mormon that I haven't even ever thought about before. He called us last night and said, "Hey, you guys never set up another time with me after our last lesson, when are we meeting next?. For those who don't know...that's the most exciting thing a missionary can ever hear from an investigator haha.
Our baptism from last Monday got confirmed in church yesterday and he bore his testimony afterwards. It was amazing to hear his experience. He mentioned how the weekend before his baptism he was wondering if this was really a commitment he wanted to make, and then he heard Elder Holland's General Conference talk and said it was an answer to his prayer, and that he needed to be baptized. Another super cool thing he said about when he first saw the missionaries, was that at first Elder Jorgensen passed by him on his bike and waved at him, and then about 30 seconds later Elder Jorgensen turned around and came back to talk to him. So often we think that it doesn't matter if we talk to one less person, but the fact that he listened to the prompting of the Spirit and turned around to talk to Braque, and then 4 months later to the day he was baptized, is a super big testimony builder to me. When we open our mouths and talk to everyone, the Lord blesses us and puts those in our paths who are prepared to hear the Gospel.
Elder Smith （施長老）
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