"It's True"

This week went super quick! We had a ton of lessons all week which kept us running around all day. It's tough because we're still only on foot, but it makes for some fun planning! Between Friday and Saturday alone we had 12 different lessons. Safe to say, on Saturday night after we got home I never wanted to teach another lesson again haha. Just kidding, it's super fun to teach lessons but it gets exhausting. We had Zone Conference this week and were taught about how to create a 'vision' for our area and our entire mission. It really helped me focus on the sort of missionary I wanted to be! We also found out that our mission is getting smartphones this month! It was crazy news because our mission only used a Nokia for each companionship before. We're moving out of the Stone Age!

One awesome thing that happened this week is a couple in our family invited Braque (my recent convert) over for dinner along with the Bishop's wife and BoYa. It was amazing for Braque because he was able to get more comfortable with those in the ward and start to make some close friends.

Our most progressing investigator is Huang Hong Rae (Harry). We taught him The Word of Wisdom this week and we were worried it'd be a problem because he loves to drink, but he was willing to stop drinking right away! And then he even brought up tithing himself after that so we shared that commandment too! He's been taught all of the lessons now and he said he's willing to get baptized on any date. The only issue is that coming to church every week for him is tough because his family is rather poor and he works to support them. He's only 23 but his mom left is family and his dad is handicapped. He works to pay for his younger sister's and brother's schooling. If he has a chance to work on Sunday it's hard for him to turn it down. We are going to continue to try to help him have the faith that God will provide if he makes the sacrifice to come to church before he gets baptized. 

Our next most progressing investigator is Huang Yi Zhong. We've really been focusing him on receiving his own answer about whether or not The Book of Mormon is true. He loves equations and so on Tuesday we wrote about an equation that explain how if The Book of Mormon was true, God really restored priesthood authority and his full Gospel through Joseph Smith and everything else falls into place. He loved it and it really helped him see why a testimony of The Book of Mormon was so important. This week we taught him the 10 commandments and The Law of Chastity and was completely on board with all of them. The most amazing part is that when he came into our lesson on Saturday, the first thing he said was, "It's true. I read it for 5 hours today. It's true". He ready all the way to the end of 2 Nephi and marked it up a ton with a colored pencil he bought. For about 10 minutes straight he shared with us all of his favorite parts. It was AMAZING to see! The only worry I have for him now is The Word of Wisdom, because he loves tea. We will be teaching him that this week and we will see how it goes!

We set a baptismal date with Li XS this week too. He's retired, single, and about 65. We've met with him about 3 or 4 times now and he's accepted a baptismal date for 12/16! We will be focusing now on making sure he's really developing his own testimony in Jesus Christ and The Book of Mormon.

In terms of other people we taught this week, we found and met with: Robin (I met him at English Class and found out he met with the missionaries 4 years ago and was willing to meet with us again), Leon (was meeting with us about 3 months ago but then got too busy until now), Huang DX and Chen DX (two LAs), Lin Jia Wei (23 year old who said he only had interest in learning what our religion was but wouldn't convert), Jason (20 year old currently studying Biology in college), Acer (a random guy who is always sitting in the same Family Mart for hours every Saturday night), Wu JM (a woman who we said a prayer with on the street to help her at work and then met with her the next day), and Zhang David (30 year old baptized into another Christian church a few years ago). 

It's amazing to get to meet so many people and share with them about Jesus Christ. Even though they don't all always continue to meet with us, it's amazing to share with them this amazing message that has blessed my life so much.

Elder Smith （施德臻長老）