Week 12

Hello! Wow, this week went by pretty fast. I'm already almost done with my first transfer on the island!

This week our forgetting-our-limits goal was to get one investigator every day of the week. And we did it! We taught someone the gospel and made plans to continue to share at least once a day. It was amazing to see the pattern of our work. "Oh man, today we might not get our investigator....oh. Let's pray." And every time we would humble ourselves to pray, the door of miracles would open. Recently I've been studying about humility. In Preach My Gospel it says that humility is the willingness to the submit to the will of the Lord and to give all honor of our success to Him. I've really felt so much stronger as I stop and think of my weakness, and my reliance on the Lord. I can feel the Lord more easily guide me, and enlighten me. It's like Ammon says, in His strength, we can do all things. Including finding an investigator, finding a job, succeeding in school, or whatever we need to do.
But I think now I need to work on gratitude to fulfill the latter part of humility, which is giving our honor to the Lord for whatever has been done. I feel I need to thank Heavenly Father for giving me so many blessings already. For blessing me with Chinese before even coming to my mission. And to have the testimony and experience that I've already come here with. I know it's all the Lord's plan. I know He's prepared every step that I've been willing to take. So I need to show my gratitude in every step that He continues to allow me to take.

This week in english class, my spiritual thought was about the Book of Mormon. And I had a really great experience. First of all, I started 10 minutes before the lesson started with no idea of what I was going to do, but I prayed. And then I got an idea. On our tracts that we hand out to everyone, there are "soul-searching" questions that are found in Preach My Gospel that the Book of Mormon can answer. So I decided to have an open discussion where people could choose any soul-searching question they had. I had to pray super hard that I could think of the scriptures needed to respond to everyone's questions.
We ended up answering three questions with the time we had. The first one was about how all Christian religions say something different about Mary, and how God could have made her have a child?
At first I tried to explain it by myself. I explained how there are many things on this world that work, we just don't know how. Like our bodies. Like the world! And how we know that God gives us all that we need to know. But they didn't really understand. (I still have a problem where I translate too directly what I want to say, and so Chinese thought processes don't really understand) But then I thought of a glimmer of a scripture. I knew that Nephi saw Mary in a vision, but that's about all. I didn't know how it could answer his question. But I looked and I read, and I smiled. 1 Nephi 11:14-17 answered the question exactly how I wanted it to, the way I wanted it to (and in Chinese!) It is the angel asking Nephi right when he sees Mary, "Knowest thou the condescensions of God?" in which he replies "I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things." I bore testimony that God loves his children, and so He gives us every bit of information that we need to know to have faith in Him and return to Him one day. After sharing the scripture, He clicked! And he said to me what I was trying to say to him all along. I was truly blessed with inspiration at that moment. I really am grateful for that experience. I know the Book of Mormon can answer all of our questions. And I know through the Holy Ghost we can learn all that we need to in this life.

Thank you everyone! I love you all! This is all I have time for this week.

Love,
-Elder Liu