Week 63 - New Transfer

大家好!

Well, this week has just flown by. To be completely honest, it feels like last p-day was just the other day. Time really feels like it is speeding up, especially with my new companion, Elder Heaps! He just finished up training a new missionary in 花蓮 (Hualian) and then just moved here Friday morning, which has truly been a blast.

As for the first part of the week, it was really pretty fast. Elder Huang had a lot of people that he wanted to say goodbye to and have one last visit, so the beginning of the week really was pretty fast. As for the send part of the week, it was spent with Elder Heaps, which was also a blast. We were able to find a ton of new people to start teaching along with seeing a ton of miracles.

As for the biggest miracle that we saw, it was actually church this week. For the longest time, the ward has been struggling with having a lot of people attend, but this last week there were 74 people at church, which is super rare. The real blessing was the number of investigators and less actives that we had at church, but only want to talk about one of the less actives and two of the investigators that came to church. For the less active, it is actually a member that moved back from California, but just hasn't been to church in a while and his record was not in the ward list, so we actually didn't know that he was here. So that was such a big miracle for us. The other miracle was the two investigators, with a really cool story. It was a mom who is a christian of another christian denomination in 桃園 (Taoyuan) and her friend who is not a member of any church but lives here in 新竹 (Xinzhu). The woman was wanting to introduce her friend to a christian church here in 新竹 (Xinzhu) but wasn't sure where a congregation was at, so she decided to ask someone on the street. The interesting part was that the person she asked wasn't a member of the church, but because all of us missionaries are out there sharing where our church is at, the stranger actually know of our church being next to 台大醫院 (Taida Hospital), and so stranger told them how to get to our chapel and they then attended our sacrament meeting, which was such a cool miracle.

As for some contacting this week, it was super interesting in that we contacted two westerns and they both seemed interested to meet with us. The reason I say it was super interesting is because one of the foreigners is from west Africa. Omodou (That is his name) is a Muslim but believes in Jesus Christ, which he even said was a little different than most Muslims. But he said he was really interested to learn more about the teachings of Christ, so we are excited to be meeting with him again. And the other is American that actually teaches at an international school just down the street (3 minute walk) from where we live, and we just ended up contacting her and it sounds like she is also really interested to learn as well.

The second part of the week was also spent helping Elder Heaps get to know the area and get to know a lot of the less actives as well, so this week we really did have a lot of less active visits, which was cool, but we also were able to see the success of it, which was with a lot of them at church as well. We really have high hopes for the ward right now and are looking forward for what these coming weeks have to bring and for the miracles that the Lord has in store for the 香山 (Xiangshan) area!

Lastly, as for a little about my new companion, Elder Heaps and I actually knew each other in the MTC. He is one transfer younger than me, which makes things really fun because we both have the language down and so for teaching and everything, we are really doing good with passing the conversation between the two of us, which is super fun. As for a little about Elder Heaps family, they live in Northern Utah and he has a younger brother and a little sister. As for more details about him, they will be coming in the coming weeks.

Well, my time is pretty much up. Hope that you all have a great week and thank you for all the prayers and letters!

我愛你們,

Love you,

柯長老

Elder Okeson