Sunday, October 16, 2011

Week 18

This week was a little rough at the beginning, but turned out wonderful at the end. Great peace came to me as I feasted on the words of our living prophets in the new edition of the Liahona about the Book of Mormon. I love the Book of Mormon! I've been realizing that I'm not sharing that love and that knowledge enough to my investigators, so I'm trying to make that a goal in each of the lessons we share. Our one investigator, Tang1 jie3mei4 (jm) should be baptized this week! She's come a long way! She's faced questions about other gods, family opposition, and some other repentance problems, but she has had enough faith and desire to overcome these problems. She really has been prepared from the Lord. She says that recently she's had a really hard problem in her life, and gang hao we were able to befriend her and help her heal from her past. I really love being able to see the change that the Gospel has made for her. Sorry, it's hard to write about her, because I really don't know a lot. My Chinese lets me miss a lot of the personal things about her, but I can still teach her. She works at a place that works on a 2 days working 2 days resting schedule. But she's recently be studying to be a government worker...I'm not really sure what it is. But Elder Su says it's to regulate moving, some deaths, and just keeping track of people, I guess. But this job will let her take Saturdays and Sundays off, so we're hoping that she'll be able to do well on her tests so she can come every week. We just met with a recent convert named Liao4 jm. She has a son and a husband who's not a member of the Church. It's almost been a year since her baptism but people still haven't had the new convert lessons with her yet. So we started yesterday. We talked about Laws and Ordinances. We had their whole family as well as Xu2 jm. We talked a lot about temple marriage and being sealed. And after, Liao4 jm's husband was talking to us, and he agreed to start taking the lessons! Wow! He's always just rejected before. We don't know why he was so happy that day. This was a miracle we were really happy about yesterday. Yesterday we also taught a Gu2 jm. Recently she's been having a really hard time in life. Her relationship with her family has never been good. Her work has bad co-workers, and she has to stand for 12 hours from 7:30pm to 7:30AM. She says she wants to know if God exists, but she's been reading the Old Testament, and feels that God isn't fair and not loving because of the things that he does to those who don't follow Him. She says that she never receives any answers to prayers. She's been really hard to work with, sometimes. She has a lot of questions and we don't have enough time to answer them. But we've been trying to get her to read the Book of Mormon instead of the Bible. It's like in the Liahona. Mormon really did see our day. He really does talk to us, even though he's not here. The Book of Mormon can solve every one of our problems in every situation. And it's not that the Bible cannot, but it just wasn't written for our day. It's hard to understand. I'm so grateful that I have the Book of Mormon that I can read every day to feast upon the plain and simple words of Christ. As the Book of Mormon solves the problems of my and my investigators lives, my testimony of it grows. I had exchanges with an Elder named Elder Thatcher. Elder Thatcher is an amazing missionary. He reminds me a LOT of Chris Pope. His voice, his hair, everything, and especially his testimony. And it just made me realize how blessed I was to be with all the friends and family I was when I grew up. Every single one of them were amazing, and I know that together, even though apart, are doing amazing things. We are all influencing a lot of people just by our example, even when it's not apparent. And it's all because the Lord is guiding our actions. I am so grateful for the amazing influences you all had on me every single day. Thank you for your testimonies! I am doing great here. I hope I don't move from Miao Li just yet, maybe a couple more months or so. I love it here! I love you! -Elder Liu

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