Ashling attends the byptism 8/29/2012

Mom!! 

Well, Mom. Since I can't talk to you for the next few days, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!  You are a super super awesome Mom and I'm SOOOO glad to be your daughter. You are AMAZING, Mom, and always remember that !

Hope you have a Great great week!

This week, two general authorities visited. I got a picture with Elder Rasband from the church missionary dept and who is in charge of visitor centers, we got a picture with him (we didn't even ask for one, our mission president just told us to stand in the picture :)

The best thing this past week is our zone conference. It's been so long that we get a whole block of time set aside for us to learn. We got it in MTC a lot--devotionals and firesides, but not so much, so zone conference is great. We have Elder Gay from the 70 to talk to us. He is soooo good. Our zone conference is 8 hours long, we took breaks, but even though he talked for 2-3 hours at a time, we never got bored. What I liked most about his teaching method is that he finds out your needs, then he asks you questions to make you teach yourself. It's an art.

One of the things he taught us was to work smart, not just hard. It's like what you taught me before--use your time wisely. :)

We actually got a little lost getting to zone conference because Concord wasn't on our map so we didn't know where to go and actually just went off of the directions of our district leaders. Ended up going to Martinez, beautiful drive, but not where we are supposed to go, almost went out of mission boundaries actually. It's ok though, we got there before Elder Gay. (He was late :)

Remember how I wanted to be a teacher when I was younger? Now I'm doing a lot of teaching, mission is teaching, and I didn't even realize it until now. :) Funny how the Lord works.

Baptism was great. Everything worked out. Lots of ward members showed up. There was refreshments afterwards. Program was printed and everything. Everything just went really well. It was short and sweet. We did it in 50 minutes. The talks were creative. I almost cried when I saw her and her friend in the baptismal font. Even our other investigator who was there said she felt something special, she felt very emotional. So good. I don't really know what to say, it's hard to express, but you know :)

We had to hand off one of our investigators. She is from Chile and speaks Spanish. She has been meeting with us cuz she wanted to learn English, but we and she agreed that it would be best to learn from the Spanish elders. This is right after the baptism, so we really know that she is not just here to learn English anymore, she is here to learn the gospel. So we handed her off on Monday. It was sad. It's hard to let her go but we knew it was best for her. It's kind of like having a child and sending her off to another family and hoping that the new parents are good ones and will get her to where she can be. But the elders were awesome. They are soooo nice and great. They told us that she should keep coming to our sacrament meeting since their meeting is far and she walks. They will teach her in Spanish, but because she comes to our ward her numbers count for our numbers (# of investigators attend sacrament and # of lessons taught). The elders were still willing to do this, they really are super awesome. They teach for the Lord, not for their numbers.

Also, our district are super awesome too. We did booth again this week, but we did it on university campus since so many students are coming in and don't know about the church. They did this purely for us because nearly everyone they would talk to here are students, since the other two companionships serve in family wards, they don't get anything. It's amazing, this mission. The people really do this all for the Lord, they don't care if they are the ones to baptize, but as long as they are part of the work. So great. I love our district. So yeah, we got 6 referrals that day, all done in less than one hour, which is amazing, a miracle in itself. So many people who don't know the gospel. I'm getting better at talking to everyone though. :)

Anyway, just so many miracles this week to tell. So many amazing people. A lot to learn still. :)

Transfers is next week, so we'll see what happens. :)

Ashling had fun P-Day (castles houses from neighborhood) - Aug 20,2012

Hi Mom,

Sorry, today we do actually get email time. Everything is so messed up. Next week we have p-day on Wednesday, so I don't know if I'll email on Monday or Wed, probably Wed 29th.

Of course I remember Dad and the things we did together. I have our picture there still, and one in back of my Book of Mormon. And sometimes I tell people about Dad.  :)

Hope Yolanda is ok with her sister loss.

 We moved apartments this week with the Berkeley elders. They had all girls in the complex so the president asked us to exchange apartments. We moved on Thursday. Took 5 hours to move all of our stuff :) But we had to wait for the elders because they also use our car to move their stuff. Anyway, so our new apt is smaller but brighter, so we are cool with it. We have gas stove now, more fitting for Chinese cooking.  Hmm...we used a lot of the soup things you sent because we pretty much didn't want to cook since we just want to get all the boxes unpacked. It's good.

 Hmm..this week is pretty busy too. Now that everyone is coming back from summer, we have lots of investigators and a lot of people bringing their friends to church. Yesterday, I hardly knew half of the people at church because there were so many new faces. But I love of the members, she came up to us and pretty asked us to tell her if we need her for any member present lessons. I think I'll probably be doing the same thing after I go back. :)

BUT, I have GREAT news. Guess what, Mom? WE HAVE A BAPTISM! It's this next Sunday the 26th. It's really amazing story. We got a call on Monday night from one of her friends. He said her friend has been reading the Book of Mormon over the summer and knows the gospel is true! She had met the missionaries before but her boyfriend didn't like us, so she stopped taking the lessons. But she broke up with him, and now she wants to get Baptized as soon as possible! Yep, so we taught her three times last week and will have four lessons next week so she can be baptized on Sunday. SO amazing. We about jumped around the room :) Oh, and guess what, she is Chinese.

I definitely think I'm in Berkeley for a reason. Yep. So as of yesterday, I've used every single language I know --- Mandarin, broken Cantonese, my high school level Spanish, Russian, even Hebrew and Arabic. It's really amazing. I think my Spanish is better than my Cantonese still, but I can understand lessons in both language now, roughly.

I had exchanges with Sister Smith on Tuesday in San Leandro. She is from London. :) And she made a really pretty breakfast for me. Fruit and waffle.

We did the booth again this week. We were only there for about 30 minutes, but had two really good conversations. One of them left her number. Most of them are quite interested in what the Mormons believe, and that's the question we posed on the blackboard so it was good. I learned that you really need to talk to Everyone because the most unlikely people at first glance sometimes are those who will leave their info to meet the missionaries.

I didn't have time to write journal this week, so everything is a little unorganized. Remember to take care of yourself, and ask others to help if things get broken or need help.

Love you Mom! Hugs, kisses.

Meng

Aug 13, 2012 -- crazy week! (She ever has not time to say love me...poor mom)

So today is really crazy, we just got to the family history center to write email. Next week, we don't have p-day on Monday. We don't know our schedule yet, so just watch for my email sometime during the week next week, possibly on Thursday.

One of our sisters, Sister Lavea, who was my roommate in the MTC. She got a tumor in her chest and is going back to New Zealand next week, so all the schedules are changed.

We got a new sister from MTC a few weeks ago, her name is Sister Garcia. She was companion with Sister Lin. She would like me to tell you thanks for all the food you sent her because she got to eat a lot of it too.:) She really liked your dried vegetables, I think it's the one where you put in the soup, so could you send some to her and me too? She told almost everyone about you, so you are already popular here in the visitor center. Everyone loves you already :)
Also, could you send me some piano music? They are on the black shelf where all my music stuff is, they are in the folders. See if you can find Savior Redeemer of My Soul for violin and piano (there are two different sets), and walk tall you are a daughter of God.

So this week is a little crazy. We've been busy pretty much all the time. I found Aloe juice here in C-town, so I'll be ok with that.
I never got to write Cameron, Jerin, Lauren yet....I'll try next week.
I don't think I'm eating too much. is my face really getting fatter or are you just saying it?

We had YSA Conference this past week. It was really good. Speakers talked about the story in Matthew 14. The story is just like our life. We see the Savior, at first some investigators are afraid, but when they realize who he is, they want him to ask them to come. When we do go toward him, we realize that it is really hard and the waves crash around, and it challenges our faith, and sometimes we start to sink, but the Lord is there to help immediately. It is important that what Peter probably remember from the experience is not the fact that he walked on water, but that the Savior was there to lift him when he needed it. It was such a good analogy.

Two of our investigators came to church this week, YSA Conf and had Good  experiences. They are so awesome. Don't have time to tell much more, but it was so good.

The work is really picking up speed as everyone comes back from summer to school. We are getting lots of referrals from church headquarters. So good.
It's surprising how many Chinese people are here. We have so many of them come to VC and we see so many on the streets. A lot of them are super prepared and just needs the lessons. I got to talk to a few of them through email in the VC.

We had zone activity today and took lots of pictures.

See what Ashling eats every day?! (Aug 6,2012)

Hi Mom!

Today we have a district activity at 3pm, and we just came back from lunch at Chinatown, so I don't have enough time to talk, so I thought at least I'll send an email.

I got your package. I haven't opened it yet, but :) love packages.

We just bought Muer today. We are cooking all sorts of random Chinese food, it's really cool. We m this ade soup too this week. Sister Poon really likes hot/spicy food, so I have to be careful not to get us sick by eathing thoese things too much.

My Cantonese is certainly getting better though. I can introduce myself as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, and say random things like This is, and my favorite phrase "I don't know". :)!

I just got the letter your wrote on July 19 this past week, don't know why it took so long, but I got it.

Got your letter you just wrote on August 3. Haven't had a chance to read it yet, just got it today. But I did read a few sentences, so happy birthday to Grandma.

We have a new rule, we can email pictures now, so here are some attached. Next time you send package, can you buy a USB card reader for me, so I don't have to borrow Sister Poon's every time. :)

This week has been so amazing. First of all, we got 8 new investigators, which is like a lot, a lot. It seemed that everywhere we go--lessons, member dinner, church--there is always a member who brought or is with a nonmember. So, we got lots of new people. Quite a few of them are progressing, meaning they are keeping their commitments--reading the Book of Mormon, praying. Most people have finals this next week, so they are a little busy, but we still managed to set quite a few appointments. I have no doubt that at least a few of them will be baptized. :) So awesome.

We did a booth again this week. It was just two companionships, but we were quite outgoing. Sister Poon is just amazing all around. She got three people with their numbers and one of them even with an appointment, all within the space of little more than an hour. It's crazy. I really tried to talk to everyone, had a nice conversation with one guy, but he didn't end up leaving his info, but I did get two people to say they will go to the visitor center, and I handed out about 2cm thick stack of Mormon.org cards. I guess I'll never know if any of those will change those people's lives, but that's ok, I'm sure some of them will.

We've been getting more member dinners this past week, so it's all great. The member are really willing to help out with lessons and investigators fellowship.

Right now we have five lessons total. In preach my gospel, you can see. First four to be taught before baptism, the last one can be taught after.

About your questions, we can't answer all of the questions at that time. For example, we had a lady come in the VC who wanted to know if she could go in the temple, and got upset when she heard she can't. We had to go through the whole pattern of apostacy, lost of priesthood, restoration of priesthood, Joseph Smith, and modern prophet before she could understand why she can't go in to the temple. Other times though, questions are simple to answer, and we can explain more later. Book of Mormon and Bible differ in that they are written in different place. God loves his children in all places, and he "speak to one nation like unto another." So Book of Mormon is in the Americas, and Bible is for Jerusalem. Difference is location, but they are both God's words. That's usually how I explain anyway. I don't know what the situation is, but I do know that sometimes investigators' questions can't be answered because they are not ready to hear it, like the visitor center visitor lady.

Hmm...I want to send some pictures, so I'll stop here. :)

Love you tons, Mom!

Meng

"Greenie meal"

Brazil restaurant

My companion

The district center

July 30, 2012

Hi Mom! How are you??

The talk I gave was at the singles ward, so it was all members except my companion.

I remember Pioneer Day, and you have the day off. I was in the visitor center that morning and I had people watch a Pioneer Miracle in celebration of pioneer day. :) It was a slightly different story though, about a girl who didn't obey her parents and went to a place she wasn't supposed to. There was a rock-slide and she and her brother almost got killed, but miraculously got on the side to the way home. Years later, her brother was sick and said something about it and about angels coming to rescue her and him from danger. It was in the back of his memory, that he saw angels. So cool.

Well, my new companion is awesome. She is super hardworking and at all times she is doing something. Of course, we cook together, and that's great. She is always smiling and so encouraging, it's great. :) My Cantonese is not improving as fast as I'd like. I feel like I'm getting old. Information is not staying in my head as well as it used to. Studying the scriptures is so great every day, but I have a hard time remembering where I read what. It's alright though, the work is going. Sister Poon is so brave too, she talks to everyone at church and says hi. We cook together too, because we eat the same food now. We just went to Chinatown today, and is going frequently now. We ate lunch there too.

We had our mission president come and speak to us this past week on sunday. He talked about missionary work, of course. It was a great talk, made the people in the ward realize how simple sharing the gospel is--giving out mormon.org card, it's a great website; or just take them to the visitor center because it is right nearby the temple and is a super pretty place with good views. Sister Meredith said, if you had a spot remover that could remove any stain, wouldn't you want to share it with everyone? The same thing with the gospel. It can help everyone, so why not share it. Anyway, it was great.

We helped out at an assisted living home this Saturday as part of our service requirement in the white handbook. It's really sad to see people there. Most of them are asleep all day because they got nothing else to do. Most of them can't even talk well now. The one guy who could speak doesn't have family because before, he worked all the time. It's really sad here, they have no one to visit them and they don't have much to do. They are all in wheelchairs. Anyway, it was good to talk to them a bit.

Our Chinese investigator is still doing great. She just came back from Disneyland. We met her for dinner, had a good lesson. Her parents aren't coming to the U.S., so it would be hard to get a baptism, but at least she'll have known the gospel.

So everything is ok. :)


Loves and lots of hugs,
Meng

more than 1/9 of mission time is gone: July 23,2012

Hi Mom!

I'm here. Doing good. Got your letters :)

It's hard to imagine that 2 months already gone by, more than 1/9 of my mission. What impressed me the most, like it did before, is that I can be even better.

I got my new companion two days ago. We haven't gotten actually transferred yet, we do that tomorrow morning, but I know her. We both served in the visitor center. Sister Poon is from Hong Kong. Speaks Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. She is on a English-speaking mission, that's why they called her to Berkeley. She wants to learn Mandarin better even though she speaks quite well already, and it'd be great cuz I want to learn Cantonese. :) See, it's all just perfect. She is really nice and loves to cook Chinese food, has lots of ingredients, is super awesome missionary, so we'd get along just great. I'm really looking forward to it.

We are at the visitor center about 4 days a week. Every week is different. Of those 4 days, we serve either from 9-3 or from 3pm to 9, depends.

Ok, it's good to have our after-mission trip lined up already. My MTC companion Sister Lao and the other Hong Kong sisters told me to visit Hong Kong and they'd be there to take me around too. :)

Mother, you are supposed to practice piano!  That's what we said, remember? It's funny cuz when I first started I didn't want to either, but once you can start playing songs you like, then you really want to play. So just get better and better then you can play cool songs and you'll just want to get even better. :)

Sister Sampaio is leaving, so we've had dinners everyday this week. One of the members too us to Fenton's this ice cream place. They have gigantic-size icecreams, but quite good. Maybe I'll take you there later. :)

I really liked what you typed from Preparation PreceedsPower, (the missionary book) I remember when he said that but it's so good to hear it again. Sometimes I forget. All we are focused on is getting our investigators to progress (go to church, keep reading BoM, keep meeting with us, pray...) but we forget that God knows hte best and we shouldn't ask him to get them to keep their commitments... Thanks, Mom.

So I forgot to tell you in my letter last week about my two "crowning events." No, really, it's was just hte highlight of my week.

First of all, on Friday, we did a booth on one of the busiest street here, Shattuck and Center St. So we pretty much had a poster about the visitor center, with a little bit info about family history, then the three companionships in our district just stood at and around the poster and talked to EVERYONE. It was so scary. I had to make myself say hi. It was good though because I got two person's information, and the rest of the district got theirs too, so it was quite useful. We sang hymns, that was the most effective, caught people's attention and they smiled at us. We had a homeless guy who was ok at first, then he started swearing at us. We just kept singing and people noticed, way to draw more attention to us, guy. :) Anyway, we got one guy interested because of that, so you see, everything works out at the end. It was fun. Crazy idea, but fun, and useful.

The other thing is that I gave a talk in church on the 14th. I talked about Doing hte small and simple things because a lot of the members don't know that read the scriptures and pray often is a commandment. Anyway, so apparently it was really good, as people told me. I thought it was only ok. Glad for the chance to speak though.

This week, besides getting really excited I got Sister Poon...we got new missionary follow-up training by President Meredith. It's surprising how the Lord qualifies whoever he calls, President Meredith is awesome. We talked about the How to Begin Teaching section in Preach My Gospel, steps of finding, the Remeber This section at the very back, and how to help people keep commitments. It was funny because he just disected everything and, really, there is so much more meaning to Preach My Gospel than what is just written. We had practices after on begin teaching and keep commitments. I did ok, but definitely need to work on keep talking rather than having pauses that aren't necessary. Can't type all he taught us, but it was great. Oh, we also all shared our testimony. It's so good to see everyone is different than when we came. We used to say in Jerusalem "You've changed." :)

We finally gotten in contact with the Chinese girl we were teaching. She just freaked out about school, that's all. She said she got "really bad score" on math test. When I asked her, she got 12/15........You know, now that I'm a missionary, I'd like to think that it's not really bad at all, and she should keep meeting with us.  Anyway, she came on sunday for sacrament and people noticed and said hi, so that's good. (We've had member lessons in past weeks to get them to be more active in fellowshipping, so it's working)

Other than that, we have lots of potential investigators, people are starting to bring their friends to church again, so we'll be getting more. Summer is slow, but it's near August, the working is definitely picking up.

It's funny though, how we just seem to be at the right place in the right time. Last Monday, when I was here in the library, I got a guy who stopped me and gave me his number so he can meet with us, he wants to come back to church, he was member before. And last Saturday, I was standing outside waiting for our members to show up to a restaurant, a guy walked past and then walked back to ask where the church's address is, he just moved here. So cool!

And, last week we tried to visit a less active, he wasn't there, so we street-contacted a few people and two of them are willing to have the missionaries over. They aren't in our area, but it's so good to see that we were just there at the right time. :)

Anyway, too much good things to write down, so I'll just pause here, to be continued next week. :)

Love  you Mom!! Tons.  And hugs and kisses.
Meng

July 17, 2012

Hi Mom,

Ok, so today is crazy. Visitor center is closed we can't email there. We are in the Berkeley Library right now and so many people wanting the computer so I might not get enough time. We have to reserve time, so I'll email you whenever I can.

The biggest thing of this week is companion exchange we had on Saturday. I got to go to a city called Hayward with our visitor center training, Sister Duran. She is a Spanish speaking sister so all her lessons were in Spanish, which is quite interesting. I understood about 5% of the lesson, enough to know what is going on.

The purpose of companion exchange is to learn from other sisters. She is really good, especially since she is our trainer and has been here for a long time. We talked about how to teach lessons from Preach My Gospel, to read the lessons over and over so we can have it in our memory, but not to recite from memory.

She used lots of good examples to teach, like making fist for us and someone's fist for God, have the fist follow the other fist with the other person's eyes closed. it's hard to follow, so we need prophet, which is a pencil that connects us and God. So we can follow God. Anyway, it's really cool.

We had a cool time at the visitor center that day too. We had a person come in who had met the missionaries but weren't able to meet them and they stopped coming. He really wanted to read a Book of Mormon and we gave him a copy. He read 3Nephi 11 and came back five minutes later and told us that he believes all of it. He said this is God's word and this is no longer faith, he already knows. So wonderful!! Some people are just really prepared. So cool.
Our investigators are doing ok. We are still trying to keep in contact. Thank you for your advice, Mom. I had come to the same conclusion. Really, now, I'm trying to make everyone feel like they are a friend while we are trying to teach them lessons. Hopefully they'll respond better.

I had a crazy thing happen to me on Wed though. We were in zone training and that means we do role plays to practice our teaching. We were teaching the commandment to keep the sabbath day holy. I had never taught it before and thought I was gonna fail. It was especially scary since I was assigned to work with our AP (assistant to the mission president). Cool thing happened though. I didn't know a lot, but I just started talking and words started coming. All of us were so surprised that the practice went quite well. I asked the right questions and said the right things, simple and to the point. It was great. I don't know what happened but it definitely wasn't me. I think the fact that I didn't know anything made me rely on the spirit more. So cool. :)

I am putting Chen Meng's name to the Temple every time I go. I am so glad for her process! Please say Hi to her and continue to encourage her. We do hope she has better life.

Please say Hi to our family and friends at church!
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