Hey Everyone!
This week wasn't quite as good as last week. Besides not having the uplift of a baptismal service, we also had quite a few people cancel on us or not show up when we thought they were pretty dependable appointments. But that's missionary work sometimes! Setting goals that are largely dependant on you using your agency and other people using their agency to choose to follow Christ is a risky business and doesn't always work out like you expect it to. However! I've learned from this week and I'm now I'm going to "Look ahead and believe" as Elder Edward Dube put it in the last general conference. But I'll tell you about it anyways, since you probably want to know the details as well as the take-away.
First of all, Chen Xuanzhen dropped his goal, which means he didn't come to church and so he can't be baptized until after he can come to church next. He took the night train like he planned, but then he was too tired to come to church in the morning so it didn't really have much use. I totally understand. He is super busy. He's probably exhausted all the time, but we were really hoping he'd be able to be baptized this next week. We're meeting with him on Friday to talk about prophets, baptism and sabbath day observance. We're really going to try to focus on sacrament meeting as not just your ticket to get baptized, but also a really important meeting for after you are baptized. We have an recent convert who has a really similar situation to Chen. He's a really nice guy and from his teaching record, it sounds like he was super solid, but now he never comes to church because he doesn't have time and he's stopped picking up the phone because I think we were starting to bug him. It's really sad. I don't want that to happen with Chen so hopefully we can figure out a long-term solution.
We've also been working with another investigator named Chen. He's 50 years old, is a professor at a university in Taiwan and is working on his doctorate degree in philosophy so he's a pretty deep thinker. He says he wants to hear about the gospel in order to gain more "devotion" as he put it. He seems really sincere. We've met with him a couple times and extended commitments, but he's been kind of flaky so we'll have to see what's up.
We saw a miracle this week with a less active man named Zheng Baba(Baba means dad, so basically just older guy). He was inactive, but in the last 5 or 6 months has been coming to church every week with his son. His son hasn't been baptized and he has never accepted the priesthood or a calling. However, the bishop came and visited him and he now has a goal to get the priesthood for January of next year so that's awesome! I'm super excited. We've also been meeting with him and his son and his son has a goal to be baptized as well. It's not until summer vacation, but hopefully as we continue meeting with him, he'll realize that he's ready now and I'll be able to see that great day when he can be baptized by his dad. That would be great. Please pray for them!
That's about it for this week! Oh also I had to wear my rain gear for the first time this week. Fun stuff. Hence the title of this week's email. Anyways, love you all. I appreciate you and hope you are all doing ok. And Merry Christmas!
-Elder Smith
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