Ok, so you are in class, but by the time I finish this email you'd be done :)
P-days here are a little more relaxing, we don't have tourist sites to go to. We thoroughly cleaned our apt today, washed the car, vacuumed the car, and I took a nap because my limbs were tired. So it's pretty nice. I like seeing things clean and organized.
The members here have been good. We got lots of dinner appointments. They are helping us to find, teach, and fellowship those we teach. Really awesome ward.
Do you know where the Francom sons are serving their missions? I saw a mail package in the mission home for Timothy Francom from Aaron Francom. The assistants to the president said an Elder Francom is in the mission waiting for his visa to go to Taiwan, so he is in our mission and serving in Oakland with an Elder Kwok. Is Tim getting transferred to Taiwan?
This week was a little slow. We had great expectations but turned out to be lots of cancellations. We found some new less actives to teach though. A lot of them are willing to meet and to feel the spirit again. They never lost their belief, it was just they were too busy and got distracted from church things as life picked up.
We got a great chance to be trained by two guys from the church missionary department. It's such a great opportunity, and those guys were amazing. One of them was showing us how to use the visitor center more effectively. He had everyone gather around a picture of Jesus healing a blind man with the crowd all around him looking at the miracle. He asked us one question:"who do you identify with the most in this picture?" This simple question led to so many amazing answers, it opened us up and we knew each person and what they need from that one question. If they identify with the protective father, who realize something important is happening and doesn't want his child to disrupt, we know that visitor might need God's Plan for his Family. If they identify with the blind man, then maybe we should take them to the Book of Mormon table and share a scripture from there...I really learned the importance of asking good questions that morning, so that day in our lessons, we were asking questions and using questions to teach and have them come to their own conclusions and find their own testimony. It was amazing to see how different it was.
The training also helped us remember to use short and simple statements. Don't get long-winded. It's funny how short sentences has so much power. They had us practice a page in Preach My Gospel about families. (160) --There is nothing more important to us than our families. Having a strong happy family is the priority for many people throughout the world. You have been part of God's family since before you were born. He wants us to return to live with him and be part of His family again. Families can be together forever. God gave us the gospel to help us to know how. It gives us the greatest hope for a strong happy family in this life. -- I just think, if we get to share that with people, who wouldn't be interested in the gospel? Even if they don't accept us, at least it will have left a impression, whereas long conversations probably wouldn't have.
We had an experience like that last week. We were tracting, not much success, then we talked to this one guy for 30 minutes. He was non-practicing Christian (doesn't go to church). We talked a lot about doctrine because he kept going there. He was skeptical about everything and doesn't want to share the gospel with Anyone. Finally at the end, I just bore my testimony, short statements, looking at him straight in the eye. We didn't get an appointment at the end, but he said we could come back and talk to him later. He also surprised us by saying that if he knew someone who need God, he would send them to us. Wow, big change. I think we left an impression, planted a seed :)
But most exciting thing was yesterday, we got to go back to San Francisco to see Yanni's baptism. I got to teach Yanni from the beginning, more than two months ago, and now she is finally baptized. She had lots of experiences where her prayers were answered. She also had lots of opposition from family and friends making her waver whether she wants to join the church or not, but after she decided, she found out that everyone was not as opposed to it as she thought they would. Anyway, baptism was great. Loved to see those wonderful people again. Hope my Cantonese/Mandarin isn't getting too bad. There is almost no Chinese people in Concord that I can see.
Anyway, that was my week. :)
Now, when do I get a picture? And it can't be a picture of a picture.