Short Week

This week was super short because of P-Day on Wednesday last week. I had the opportunity to sing at the Recent Convert Fireside that takes place every Fast Sunday yesterday! I put together a medley of "When I am Baptized" and "He Sent His Son" from the Children's Songbook. It was super fun to get to sing again!

We had our weekly free English class Wednesday night and it was super fun! I teach the middle class which the by far the most exciting, because they know enough English to love to try super hard to talk with you and they love discussions/role-plays. It's fun to try to figure out what each other is saying because of my broken Chinese and their broken English haha. They also always bring me tons of snacks so I'm always riding home on my bike with a ton of random food and treats! 

We met with Nick after English class, who is a member referral. He's 23 and in college. He's super smart and he reminds me a lot of myself. We've met with him a few times, and this last week we invited him to church. After inviting him he said he'd try to come, but "if I come, you won't try to baptism me right then, right?". We had a good laugh about it haha. We ensured him that even if he didn't want to be baptized, we still wanted to stay in contact and be friends after. 

We met a 21 year old named Harry this week. He comes from a not very well-off family, so he's worked since middle school to help pay for the schooling of his younger siblings. As a result, he hasn't gone to high school or college. He's the most humble guy I've ever met and works extremely hard. He was baptized into another church about 5 years ago, but agreed to meet with us. We taught him about the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the restoration of priesthood authority, and what the importance of that is for baptism and similar ordinances. Often times when we try to explain that, the investigator never really fully understands it or knows when it matters. He completely understood and then came to church this week for the whole 3 hours! He also set a baptismal date for November 11th of this year. He's progressed really fast so far, but our next step is to make sure he really is able to begin to grow his own testimony through personal Book of Mormon study.

Our still most progressing investigator is Zhang Yi Zhang (Braque). We taught him the Law of Tithing this week and said he'd be willing to keep it, but admitted it would be hard to continue doing it if he didn't see blessings come from it, but he'd try his best. He's very open with us about his concerns, which is really good. Often times it's hard to get investigators to really tell us what they're feeling/thinking, but with him we know exactly how he feels. Tomorrow we will be teaching him the Law of Chastity. This is going to be a difficult one for him because he's has a girlfriend for 10 years now and they live together on weekends. He would either have to get married to his girlfriend or not have her live with him on weekends. We've tried our best to build his faith and testimony these past several months and now it's time to see if he's willing to do what it takes to enjoy the blessings of baptism. At church yesterday he said he still wanted to be baptized on October 9th, so if he's willing to obey the Law of Chastity then he'll be ready!

Elder Smith （施長老