Week Fourteen: One Month on the Island and Brendan Reaches Mango Nirvana

Hello Family and Friends!

Yongkang in the hazy morning sunlight.

This week has been really great. Very stressful and discouraging at times, but it continues to amaze me that even if 80% or more of the time, things aren't going well, the few good things that happen blow all the disappointment out of the water. The Lord truly does bless us.

Front of the Mango Museum.

On Monday, we went to this place called YuJin, which has called itself the "hometown of the mango". There was a mango museum that we wanted to go to but it was closed. It was so sad. Instead, we went to this shop and got "manguo bing" which just means "mango ice". It's basically shaved ice with mango chunks and mango sauce all over it. It was really good. Mangos aren't in season right now so the pieces of mango they put on there were previously frozen but it was still fantastic. I bet in the summer, it's absolutely heavenly. We also played Chinese chess which was pretty interesting. After that, we bused back home and finished our day. So yeah--P- Day adventures! So fun!

Manguo Bing (Mango Ice).

On Tuesday, I passed off my Lesson 3 evaluation. In this mission, the way you learn the language is through 3 "phases" of learning as established by past mission presidents and assistants. The first phase is learning to teach the lessons. We're evaluated by our district leader on each lesson individually and then by the zone leaders on lessons 1-3 together and then lessons 1-5 together. My goal is to get them all finished by the end of this transfer. So by December 8th! It's a pretty lofty goal. Most people don't finish it until a couple weeks after the move-call, but it's pushing me to focus which is great and I'm really learning the lessons and becoming an effective teacher faster I would if I wasn't working towards that goal. I also want to get to the 2nd phase as fast as possible which is basically a bunch of flashcards that help you learn common phrases and words. That will be sooooo helpful for actually understanding what people are saying because right now it's pretty hit or miss. I might get some of the points of what people say, but because I don't get all of them, my understanding is incomplete and it can make communication and teaching really ineffective. 

Playing Chinese chess.

We met with a past investigator named Lin Zandong. He's super solid. He's read the Book of Mormon all the way through and he feels that it's true. However, he said he's having a hard time right now allowing science and religion to coexist inside himself. He said he'll get baptized, but it'll take some time for him to feel that he's ready. It was really funny and also very frustrating because we asked him how long he thought that amount of time was going to be. He opened up to the introduction of the Book of Mormon and asked us when the Savior would come again. We said no one knows and he said he didn't know when he was going to be ready to be baptized either. We won't be able to meet with him again for a month so we'll have to think about how we can help him resolve his concern.

Yujin: Mangos on the street signs.

We found a new investigator this week on Thursday. His name is Liu. He's got an extra thumb on his right hand. Fun fact. He's a past investigator. Unfortunately, his record is pretty vague so we're not really sure what the past missionaries taught him. He knows a lot though. He's just a bit odd. He gets off topic really easily and it takes a while for things we teach him to sink in. We taught him a first lesson, though and set a baptismal goal with him for Christmas week. More about him next week.

We had a lesson with Chen Dixiong that day as well. He's still doing awesome! WE shared with him the 10 commandments, follow the prophet, and keep the sabbath day holy. The only one that was a problem was keeping the sabbath day because he has meetings on Sundays a lot. He's got 2 jobs and it seems like he's pretty important in both of them so hopefully he has enough leverage to change the times to different days. I know he'll do what he can though. His desire is so awesome!

"Manguo xiansheng" which means Mr. Mango

We shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Word of Wisdom with Liao this week. He is also just so solid. It's amazing. He came to church yesterday and in Priesthood, we were talking about...I honestly don't remember. I can still only pick up bits and pieces. Anyway, somehow it came up that Liao's mother was dead and that he could do vicarious ordinances for her in the Temple. He said that was awesome and that he hoped she was being taught in the Spirit world right now. It was so cool. His plan is to be baptized on the 7th and he's actually been telling people that when they've asked him if he's a member or investigator. I'm so excited for him. OH! Something else amazing. When we taught him Word of Wisdom, he said he'd studied about it a little bit but still didn't know very much. We started sharing it with him and somewhere in the course of the lesson, he told us the story of how the Word of Wisdom came about. I guess he'd been reading the church history online. He told us about how Joseph and Emma saw the men in the early church smoking and chewing tobacco and thought there's no way that's ok so Joseph prayed about it and the WoW was revealed to him. It was so nuts. His only problem with it was that he had just recently bought this giant can of coffee from Costco that cost him like $25 so he didn't know how he was going to get rid of all of it. But when we asked him to live the Word of Wisdom, he said in English "Absolutely". It was so awesome. I'm so excited.

But yeah, that's about it for this week! Tomorrow, we have a Mission Tour where Elder Funk of the Seventy is going to speak to us. I'm pretty excited for that! In preparation, President Blickenstaff asked us to read his conference talk(awesome, by the way. at least for missionaries) and prepare a 3-minute talk based on that talk, the scripture, and preach my gospel. It's been such an enlightening experience. I encourage you all to read his talk! 

Alright, more next week! Love you all and God does as well. Make sure you remember that and pray to him as you deal with life's challenges. It's helping me a lot right now:).

Until next week~

Elder Brendan Smith