Elder Homer Mission Conference!

This past Monday we had Elder Homer from the Asia Area Presidency visit our mission for a mission-wide conference. It was super fun to see a lot of missionaries and the meeting was very spiritual. One thing he said that I really liked was, "Don't compare the inside of yourself to the outside of others." This is what we're doing when we compare ourselves to others... and it's not fair to yourself! Don't do it. 

This week we has an awesome lesson with the Li 李 family in their house. We reviewed the baptismal interview questions with them and then a few days later they passed their baptismal interviews! They'll be getting baptized this Saturday!!

Some more exciting news is that two friends who I had the blessing to previously teach in ZhuBei will be getting baptized this Saturday too! Brother Xie 謝 and 陳姵如 ChenPeiRu. Sadly I won't be able to make it to their service on Saturday but I'm so excited for them. 

This week we went to Grandpa Zhou's 周爸 and he made us his famous homemade deep-fried chicken for us. He lives basically on the top of the mountain so the ride up there took a while, but it was so worth it haha.

Some of my favorite lessons this week were with Chloe and Janet. Chloe has had all the lessons already for a while now and is facing family opposition. We had a lesson with her on the blessings of baptism, specially the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and it went awesome. We finally found a time to meet with Janet, which is a miracle!!! She normally works 12 hours a day everyday, but finally had a day off! We discussed the restoration and and a great talk on the differences between the many churches today.

We have a friend we're teaching right now who also happens to be the host of the local ToastMasters Club. Which is a group of public speakers who get together every week for a 2 hour activity to essentially practice public speaking. We got specially invited to do a 1-minute introduction of us each individually, and then a 10 minute presentation with a Q&A session. Our plan is to share the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through Joseph Smith, invite them all the read the Book of Mormon, pray about the truthfulness of it themselves, and then open it up to questions for everyone. To top it off...Our Mission President will be joining us for the presentation!! I'm so excited.

Elder Smith 

施長老