Last day of 2012 (Dec 31, 2012)

Ashling Stout	4:48 PM (1 hour ago)
to me

 

so crazy that another year passed already. This week, we've been fed and fed. So right now, I think I'm 10 pounds heavier than before my mission.

It was so nice to call you on Monday. Hope you are ok afterwards. :) Make sure to buy a webcam next time though. :)

This week, we have had lots of small miracles, as always. On Thursday, when we were going to English class in downtown to teach someone another pair of missionaries found, Sister Lao saw that a guy was looking at us. She wanted to go and talk to him but there was too many people and he was walking fast. I saw her trying and pretty much gave her a push and so she talked to him. It turned out that he had been to English class before. We invited him to go again. He came that same day. We saw him there and decided we should talk to him about the gospel, so we invited him to learn more right there. And he said yes. We've set another appointment already. He works in Sacramento five days a week but he wants to come to church (which, by the way, doesn't happen very often with people you just meet) So we are happy to have the chance to teach him. Funny how a little flyer or a short conversation can do.

Our mission president changed the standard of excellence (mission goals) for 2013 so we were supposed to have 3 new investigators each week. We're lucky this week to achieve that goal. It is a miracle in itself, cuz we weren't expecting it. :)

We were super stoked though, when our investigator suddenly showed up at church this week. We didn't expect her to come, she should've been working. We usually don't look at our cellphones during sacrament meeting, but for some reason Sister Lao looked, and saw a missed call from her. She was gonna call afterwards but I felt like we should call now. So we sneaked our of announcements time and called her. She was outside trying to find the church building, so we helped her find it and come it. It turned out that her boss decided that day that they were gonna remodel the place, so she had the day off all of a sudden. :) I don't think it's a coincidence.

It's so amazing how wonderful companionships are. It always takes two to have things happen. If Sister Lao didn't want to talk to the guy, or I never push her to go for it, we'd never teach him. If sister Lao didn't check our cellphone for no reason, or if I didn't insist we call now, we'd never have our investigator at church.

On Christmas Day, we went to the Visitor Center ot hear the Sister missionaries' christmas devotional. They are all dressed so well and they sang so well. It's like whole bunch of angels :) Love those people.

Thanks for the gifts, by the way. Sorry I can't send pictures today, will do next week. On X-mas day, we spent our exercise time trying to make C, H, R, I, S, T, M, A, S with our bodies. It was hilarious. We did that and open our presents and eat all within one and half hour, quite proud of us :) Anyway, it was wonderful opening presents from everyone. Justin and Bonnie gave me a notebook (always so useful for missions), got lots of cards, including from Chris and Chelane, Steph Jason and kids... Got a dress from a sister in the ward. And of course your things made me quite happy. We drank hot chocolate with those crackers. It was fun. Already started using the stickers, bookmarks are quite pretty. Robe is so soft, :) love it. Can't remember everything, but it was just all really good :) Sister Lao gave me a card holder, cuz I keep losing my bus pass in my bag among all the stuff that's in there. :) I gave her a book organizer cuz she has a hard time with stacking her books and she has to try to restack everyday, I thought she should just put it all up like a bookshelf. :)

I'm talking a lot for some reason, but anyway. Our less active said he talked to his boss to change his schedule to come to church next week. :) Progress, progress.

We had ward X-mas dinner on Saturday. Us the missionaries performed 12 days of Christmas in Chinese, with slight moderation on the lyrics. Here is a part of it

On the ___ day of Christmas my true love gave to me,

a partridge in a pear tree

two turtle doves

three French hens

four calling birds

five golden rings

six geese a laying

seven swans a swimming

eight maids a milking

nine ladies dancing

ten lords a leaping

eleven pipers piping

twelve drummers drumming

在圣诞第__天我的朋友送给我

一只鸟在梨树上
两只白鸽子
三只法国鸡
四只愤怒鸟
五金戒指

六个鹅下鸡蛋

七个鹅在游泳
八个人喝牛奶
九个女生跳舞
十个疯狂男生

十一个人在吹笛
十二鼓手敲鼓

Anyway, it was really fun. We had so much fun trying to translate the song. We had other crazy ideas, which included making a Christmas-LDS version of 西游记, but we didn't want the members to identify us with the characters. (取经是去取摩而门经) It was just a lot of fun. Our elders are pretty funny.

The mission's yearly tradition is to have a missionary New Year's party where we all gather together to watch movie with our zone. We are doing it tonight, and watching all G or PG movies. One is called Brave, the other is Kong Fu Panda HOlidays.

Hmm...I like Christmas :) But HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Christmas Eve (Dec 24, 2012)

Well, it is Christmas Eve already. I think time is just going by really fast. Tomorrow is Christmas. We have 2 dinner appointments tonight, so we'll have double dinner. Then we have one for lunch tomorrow, and one for dinner. I think we are gonna over eat for these few days. :) I'm really glad to be in Chinese branch, especially at this season. :)

The highlight of this week would be our zone caroling at Union Square, which is in the middle of downtown San Francisco. We did it right by the Macy's christmas tree, which is gigantic. We had lots of people who video and take picture. We had a table of materials out for them to take, and a lot of them took something. We had a quite outgoing Tongan elder who was really good at getting people comfortable enough to take things. There was only two companionships of sisters in our whole zone, and we went out to pass out materials and talk to people nearby half of the time. It was quite fun and quite happy.

It really doesn't feel like Christmas yet, maybe because most days are just the same for us. But, as Elder Holland says, what a good way to celebrate Christmas to serve the His children. :)

So we are quite happy. Planning on opening gifts tomorrow morning, before we have our regular studies schedule. Sister Lao got lots of packages. I got a letter from the Chinese ward at SL :), a purple package from Bonnie and Justin which I haven't opened, a card from Stephanie and Jason, and yours of course :) Quite happy.

Not much else going on. One of our less active member is going to change his work schedule and start coming to church every sunday. :) Another less active wants to go to BYU for some reason and so decided that he will come to church every sunday now.

Our baptism on the 13th is still quite solid. She is awesome. Our recent converts and forming their own little group :) They get along quite well. So happy to see them progress, getting the priesthood, passing the sacrament, and even talking about going to the temple and eternal marriages (). It's all good.

One of our recent converts introduced us to his friend, so brave. :) And his friend was slightly interested and agreed to learn more.

It's gonna be good. Hope your end will be good too. :)

Love you! Will call you tonight around 8pm.

Visite Chocolate Factory on P-day(Dec 17, 2012)

 So last week we went to the chocolate factory. We saw how they made chocolate. They had these coco plants which has a fruit called the cacao pod, and then the seed inside they roast it and it is like 100% dark chocolate, and they have to mix in milk powder to make it more sweet and not completely bitter. It's kind of cool. We got lots of chocolates to taste, which was bad for dinner. :) But we had clam chowder soup at Fisherman's Wharf. I forgot my camera today :), so I'll try to send pictures next week. But it was pretty.

Got your package, opened it and saw the note, then closed it, so I don't know what's inside yet. Thanks though :) Made me happy

We had zone conference this week. This time it was more Christmas oriented. They mission bought a lot of little things, food, toilet paper, candy, things like that, and it was wrapped in gifts so we couldn't see, but we had to choose and that was our gift. I got cereal, but it actually tasted pretty good. :) We learned about how to fold our laundry, especially the elders. We learned how to back a car :) Anyway, besides that, we sang O Holy Night. It was quite good. We also watched a video from President Holland, really made me want to be more hardworking. It seems not so long ago that I just got here. Can you believe it's 7 months already?

We had exchange this week too. I stayed in Daly City with Sister Croft. We went tracting a lot, but we also had lots of lessons. She is really good at tracting. Hold on, send the pictures, then will continue...

She just knew what to say when she meets people, and she doesn't ask the same questions very often. Anyway, it made me a little braver at talking to people. So now, I'm just shooting for it and things usually come out alright. What's quite amazing is that this week we try to have a vision of who everyone we meet can become, as soon as we see them. It helped a lot in finding, I'm not sure if we just met a lot of successful people last week, but we had quite a few good potential investigators now.

Our investigator with a date is still solid and she loves the members. They invite her to dinners and she loves to be with them. She goes to all the events too, despite it being finals week.

We got to go to the visitor's center twice this week to take our investigator and recent converts to events there. The temple is so beautiful, they've got the lights on. :)

That's pretty much my week. Going soon.

Got new car! 1st lesson in Cantonese! (Dec 3, 2012)

We got a new district leader this week. The only new person in this transfer. Elder Davidson (sun1 zhanglao) from Virginia. He is quite funny. He came on his mission one transfer after us, he has to learn Chinese in the MTC.

 

THis week has been highly interesting. San Francisco is full of ... different...people. Lots of Filipinos, Chinese, and Hispanics. We got someone who yelled us us for pushing the doorbell, :)

 

Oh, great thing this week is that we got a new car. Completely brand new. It's a 2013 Ford Cruise :) Smells new, I had to open the window to be not gagged inside. It only had 75 miles when we got it. :) So cool. And guess what color it is? Sapphire  :) It took us a while to figure out how to work the car, too advanced. I like it. HOw did we get this car? Well, first of all, we hit our previous car. It was an accident. I pulled into the parking spot as the elders were opening the door. None of us saw the other until we heard the crunch, so our car had to get fixed, so we got a red car temporarily. The red car is old and needed to be sold. Elder Bailey, the mission vehicle person, had told the elders before to change the oil on the red car, but they never did, he also told another pair of elders, and they never did, when we got the red car, we changed it, not knowing that it was such a big deal for him. Then we get this call from him saying, because you did the oil change, you get the new car. :) Cool. Now we are famous in the mission home for changing the oil.

 

Also great this week is that we got a new investigator. Another golden one that is so prepared. When we asked her if she will be baptized once she knows what we teach is true, she said "of course!" :) So yeah. She is from Guangdong, so she speaks Cantonese. The member who introduced her to us is so awesome. She just got baptized in April in Hong Kong, and she is only here for three weeks, but she is sharing the gospel with everyone still. :)

 

My Cantonese is getting better, I think. I can understand what the topic they are talking about any time, but as for sentences and words, not so much. I can understand enough to add. I taught the first lesson to Sister Lao this week, all in Cantonese. It was really crazy, we laughed so much.

 

Had another experience tracting at Supermarket. A guy came up and started saying Joseph Smith is a fraud because he got charged and was in jail for fraud or something. He is an athiest and doesn't think God exists. So all I did was teach and testify, then testify and testify. At the end, he was silent for a few second and just said "I got to go." He had no basis for his arguments and he knew that I knew the Book of Mormon is true and Joseph Smith saw what he saw. It was quite interesting. Left him something to think about for sure.

 

Don't know if you saw the Christmas Devotional, but it's quite good.

 

This past sunday, our recent convert (Brother Wang) passed the sacrament to us :) and he bore his testimony too. so happy. Then another one (Bro Zou) got confirmed. So it's a pretty good sacrament meeting.

 

Got your letters. Glad you had a good enough Thanksgiving, especially with out me 

The boy who referred himself got baptism, Yeah! (Nov 26, 2012)

Hi Mom,

So we got our transfers call last Saturday. I'm staying in SF, still with Sister Lao. So I guess we'll have a San Francisco Christmas. Extra cold. We are quite happy though.

Thanksgiving was great. We had three dinner appointments. I was quite proud of myself not eating too much, even though I liked some of the food very much :) It wasn't my best day though. I think it's true what they say, you are happiest when you are working hard. I felt like I'd rather have a day teaching and talking to people rather than sitting and eating too much food. We have awesome ward members though. I think we'll be eating Thanksgiving leftovers for the next week still. We still have turkey leftovers in the fridge.

We had a ward Thanksgiving dinner too, so that's more food. I just eat normal amounts though. We had lots of less actives and investigators come, so it's good to have them talk with members.

Most exciting last week is of course the baptism. :) Brother Zou from Shanghai. He is great. He was the one that referred himself on mormon.org to meet with us. He was totally happy. Everything went smooth. He was happy. Lots of people went. Perfect :)

We are having a baptism next week too, in Berkeley. The person I got to teach before. :)

You take care yourself, Mom....

More byptism (Nov 19,2012)

So. Got your letters :) Chen Meng is in Hawaii? I don't remember that happening. Forgetting everything again. Hm...she should send me emails :)

We didn't get to vote, but that's ok. We heard Obama won. No one asked us about it though, so that's good.

Best thing about this week so far is that we had a baptism from Berkeley. We are allowed to back for baptisms in our last area if it is within one transfer (six weeks). So Tuan got baptized yesterday. He was so prepared. He had been coming to church for years and everyone thought he was a member. When he was ready to take the lessons, he emailed the priest quorum leader, and asked for missionaries. So when we taught him, he pretty much already knew everything. He knew how important baptism is and how important enduring to the end is. The perfect investigator. He is great!

I went to a leadership training meeting. I still don't know why I'm invited to go, but I certainly learned a lot from it. They talked about decision making and how important it is to gather ALL of the facts before making a decision. We already knew it but actually role playing it made it more obvious how we should do it. It's great. President Meredith also talked about the story in 1Nephi3, how all 4 of the brothers went to get the plates, but they went with different motives. None of them knew why. Nephi didn't figure out why they needed the plates until he was trying to decide to kill Laban or not. But attitude made all the difference. Nephi had to try twice, but his attitidue saved the day, and the plates. So he talked about exact obedience, that we don't just do things because we are told to, but we do it willingly. Obedient in thought and action. I liked that.

We took our recent convert, Robert, to the visitor center this Friday. We watched the Joseph Smith movie, 60 minute one (you can watch at Temple Square too. Bottom floor of the statue of Jesus place). He really liked it, everyone liked it. Definitely went away with a stronger testimony of why this church is here, why he didn't just join another church instead.

We got another investigator we are teaching who is gone a 180 this week. Last week when we saw him he was denying the existence of God and everything. This week he read the pamphlets and was asking a lot of questions. Still doubting, but he didn't say God doesn't exist anymore. He thinks our bodies are amazing. He read the Liahona, and is now ok with the Joseph Smith story. Great change, all in two lessons. Sister Olvera, the missionary who taught him with us, was great in testimony, I think that is a reason why he is softened a lot. Great to see the change.

Next week, we'll have two baptisms. One in Berkeley, a person me and Sister Poon taught from the beginning. He is finally ready. Another is from our area. He self-referred on mormon.org and has been looking forward to his baptism for a while now. He goes to church every sunday, mixes in well with the ward, and is keeping the commandments. All just great. Will say more next week.

That's pretty much my week.! :)

Happy shopping day (Nov 12, 2012)

So today we are emailing in the Chinatown English class room, which they also use as computer class room, joint rent. So I get a little bit more time. We just came back from shopping in Chinatown. So crazy, bought lots of stuff. Is there anything you want me to look for here that's not in UT?

 

So this week, we took our investigator to the VC. He really liked the place. I think he is at the point where he has and will believe everything. So we watched Finding Faith in Christ. Have you seen it before? It's really good. Makes me tear up every time.

 

We also went on exchanges this week. It's different doing it with the full-proselyting sisters. Almost the whole day we spent out trying to visit people. We mostly knocked doors. Their area is Spanish speaking, so I couldn't understand much, but enough to know the topic. It's good. We almost had to tract in the rain, but 'tis a blessing it stopped right as we were parking to go out :)  I learned that I need to be more persistent when talking to people about the gospel. Talk more, give out cards later. :)

 

We had weekly coordination with Aaron Wong. He is sooo helpful. He always asks how the ward can help with each of the people we talk about.

 

This week I also got to eat dumplings at a less active's house. Haven't ate it for a long time. :) Our meeting with different less actives were really good. Three of them said they'd come to church on Sunday. Most of them have a hard time waking up though.

 

Scariest thing this week was that President Pearce asked me to speak in sacrament the day before. I only got about one hour of preparing time to prepare. It wasn't cool, but at least I didn't mess up. Talked, told stories, not too bad I hope. :)

 

We tracted for a few hours on Sunday, since all of our plans fell though. It must've meant to be though, cuz of the four people we talked to, three of them agreed to have us come back. One family was Bhuddist and wasn't wanting to talk at first, but keep talking and eventually it turned out that they accepted a pamphlet on the plan of salvation and will have us back to visit in a few weeks and talk about what they read.

 

It was really funny today. It's our p-day but we try to share the gospel when possible. When we were on the bus coming to Chinatown, Elder Ho, our district leader, talked to a woman from Cambodia in Mandarin for a while, then we joined in the conversation. Not two sentence in, Sister Lao knew that she actually spoke Cantonese and they just starting talking so fast and for the rest of the ride, they were talking about families and gospel and everything. Me and Elder Ho were really amazed at her. :)

 

So, that's my week. Not too much new things. Lots of shopping.