Hello Family and Friends!
My goodness. P days are coming faster and faster. I hope the speed at which time flies levels off at some point because otherwise I'm going to blink and it's going to be over. But let's not think about that. I've still got 2 years. Haha. That's kind of a joke when people ask missionaries who've been out here for a really long time how long they have to go and in order to not think about how little time they have left they say "Oh, I've still got 2 years." The best is when sisters say it because they never had 2 years in the first place.
Anyway.
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| Dinner. Lunch box. Yummm!!!! |
So this week started out pretty slow. We only had the evenings for proselyting on Monday and Tuesday becauseMonday was P-day and Tuesday was a Mission Tour(I'll talk about that later). So, we didn't really have anything going on Monday or Tuesday and Wednesday also looked pretty bleak so we looked like we were in sad shape to hit our goals for the week. However, we went forward in faith, we relied on the Lord, and we went to work. We didn't hit all of our goals but we hit the mission standards(standards set by our mission president to tell us what we should shoot for and what we should focus on). Every one! 2 investigators at church, 2 investigators with a baptismal goal, 3 new investigators, 8 lessons with a member present, and 20 total lessons taught. It was a miracle! We felt so blessed this week. We felt the power of prayer. Our own, and those that I'm sure many of you offered.
So who were all these people we were helping by hitting these "mission standards"? First, we have a baptism on Saturday! Wooooo! It's Liao Dixiong(I don't know if I said this before, but if I put a 'dixiong' after someone's name, it just means 'brother'. So liao dixiong is brother liao). He passed his interview this last Saturday right after the baptismal service of an investigator in the other ward. So yeah this is super exciting.
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| Christmastime. |
Chen Dixiong also came to that baptism. He has wanted baptism for so long. He's been meeting with the missionaries for about 7 months because he's so busy with work. The other reason he hasn't been baptized yet is because he has to come to church twice for 3 hours in order to receive baptism and he has a company meeting ever sunday at 10 am that he leads. Our church starts at 9 and goes to 12 so he can only make it for the first 30 minutes. We talked with the mission president on Saturday night and tried to figure out a way he could attend an afternoon ward maybe, but president said--and I thought it was a really good point--that Chen Dixiong needed to exercise his faith and figure out a way to attend his own ward. We were a little discouraged because we new Chen would be disappointed at the news, but we decided we would fast and pray for him the next day. After dinner, we met with him and decided we'd give him a pump-up lesson. We read with him 1 Nephi 3:7 and Moroni 7:33 and basically just said "Alright, it's been promised that if you'll have faith, the Lord will provide a way. Let's figure out how we can get you to church twice for 3 hours so you can be baptized." We talked it out for a while and we finally worked it out so he could have his partner cover the meeting this Sunday and then next weekend, he'd take a train back from Taipei after his meeting let out so he could be in Yongkang Sunday morning--next Sunday as well. Then, he can get baptized on the 20th of December. It's a miracle. It's not a permanent solution to the problem because the meeting is still there, but I really think that he has faith and desire and as he comes to church twice in a row for the full 3 hours, he will want to make permanent arrangements so he can continue doing that. I'm so excited for him and I feel so blessed that I was able to see this great example of someone exercising their faith in order to do what the Lord asks of them. Everyone please pray for him! He needs it!
We also met with a guy yesterday named Andy. He hasn't been able to meet with us for the past couple weeks because he was in Japan and then he had friends, but this week, he finally was able to meet with us again. He is so solid. His questions are so thoughtful and sincere and they invite the Spirit instead of distracting from it. One question he had yesterday was "Why didn't God share his gospel with people before the restoration?" and another was "What if people don't have a chance to hear that full Gospel? Will they just be lost?" Without going into huge detail, we were able to answer his questions and he's really progressing a lot. We just finished the 1st Lesson with him yesterday and it went really well. We have a goal for him, but because he meets with us so infrequently, I don't know if it'll happen. We'll see. He said he wants to believe that it's true though because he said he feels so comfortable here. It was really funny. He made the comment that "other churches are always telling people that other churches are bad and you need to come to our church, but you guys(meaning us missionaries/our church) are like 'hey, you can see what's out there. go for it. but we know that you will want to come back.'" and he likes that about us. He said that he doesn't like that a lot of churches focus so much people being converted to the denomination that they forget that they should become converted to God and Jesus Christ. He's just super awesome and prepared. I'm so excited to see him continue to grow and develop his faith.
But yeah, that's about it for this week. So good. So many miracles and I'm hoping we can carry this into next week. Until then, my friends! Love you guys:)
-Elder Smith
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