Week 65 - Tsunami

大家好!

This week, is just as the subject says: Tsunami Week! So, we were pretty busy. Just as a Tsunami is a big wave that comes crashing in, the use of Tsunami in missionaries terms is a wave of investigators filling our area book. So, we have been busy all week working with all the new investigators that we have and also just finding time to get in all of the investigators we had before the Tsunami. With it being a busy week, it still was amazing. We saw lots of miracles and blessings, and hope that again this week, I can share just some of them with you.

Elder Varney, Elder Wu, Elder Azua, me, Elder Heaps, Elder Rasmussen

From the photo of the Tsunami missionaries, you can see that we had four more missionaries, and they really are amazing. I don't know what I can really say about them all, but they truly brought even more miracles to the area, which was truly a blessing. Not to mention. They really found a whole bunch of new investigators this week. The Tsunami lasted from Monday night when we picked them up at the train station til Thursday night/Friday morning, so pretty much three days of finding. To say the least, we were averaging about 7 new investigators a day, so if you do the math, you can see we have a ton of people to be meeting with, including a really awesome family that Elder Wu and Azua knocked into as they were tracting over by one of the main universities in our area, which is super cool. So we are really excited to see what this next week has to bring with all of those new investigators to meet with.

As for one of the best activities from the week, it was Tuesday morning. We had a ward missionary activity, where we got permission for four sisters to come help us out as well. So, in total we had 10 missionaries in attendance and we were all on splits with members all over our area. It was a two hour finding experience for the members in the morning, and it was super successful. Along with giving the members an opportunity to go out find with the missionaries, we also received five member referrals, which we are currently meeting with. One of which, is super golden. Her name is Bell, who I will share a little about in a minute. As for how the activity went, we were asked to give a thirty minute training on how to do missionary work, and Elder Heaps and I came up with that idea of using the '5 W and 1 H'. (Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How) The training was super fun, and the best part was when we were sharing the 'Why'. We decided to share D&C 18:10-16, which has to do with the joy of being able to introduce someone to the gospel. As we were having a member read the passage, we looked up and saw the member that had introduced 陳怡如 (Chen yi ru) to the gospel in tears. For us as the missionaries, it was just a super cool experience to see the members truly seeing the 'why' we do missionary work and feel the joy that comes with it. D&C 18:15-16

As to introduce who Bell is quickly. She is an recent converts referral who actually decided to attend the ward missionary activity and go out to do missionary work with us. Bell is 17 and a senior in high school, but for her sophomore year she actually spent it in Idaho as an exchange student. If you remember from when I first moved to 香山 (Xiangshan), we met with an investigator that actually knew Brett, my roommate from BYU-I. Bell, was actually in Sugar City Idaho, which is where three of my roommates grew up (Alex, Spencer, Drew). However, when she first was saying where she was, she just said a small town by Rexburg, which I didn't think too much about, but as she was talking about her high school, it made me think of my roommates that were from Sugar City. So I asked her if she was in Sugar City, and that really surprised her because apparently no one knows where that is. That was another one of those moments when I thought about what a miracle it was that I roomed with those specific people at college. So, we got to chat a little about Sugar City a little and also found out that she knew of Spencer and Alex's younger siblings, but none of them were actually in her grade so she didn't really get to know them very well. So, for me, that was a pretty cool experience to see how things were all planned out even before I came on my mission and even for where and when I would be serving in the areas I have served in so far.

As for the food photo, I should probably explain it a little. On Sunday, Elder Heaps and I were running a little low on the food that we had bought for the week, so we decided to clean out the kitchen and use what we found. We made rice and then we found some cans of meat and fish. So, we decided to kind of throw it all together. Well, to say the least, it was interesting and quite the experience. Not sure how healthy it was though, but it was food and we had stuff to eat for lunch on Sunday. Elder Heaps and I call it the "Surprise Lunch" just because we weren't really sure what exactly it was and the smell was close to that of stinky toufu. So, this week, we are making sure to have plenty of food for the next week.

Elder Heaps cooking Surprise Lunch

Well, my time is pretty much up. Sorry about not being able to write a ton, things are pretty busy today. But with that being said, hope that you all have a great week!

我愛你們,

Love you,

柯長老

Elder Brinton is in 新竹 (Xinzhu) with us now (in a different ward though) and went bowling with him for P-day before the Tsunami missionaries came, which was pretty fun.

Elder Okeson