Week 89 - 新年快樂!

大家好!

Happy Chinese New Year! This week has been such a good week. And it has just flown by so fast. But even though it has flown by, it has still be really fun. We have been seeing a lot of success and this week we saw so many miracles.

As for a few of the things that happened this week was that we had zone meeting which was really fun. This one was a lot different than a lot of the other zone meeting we had done because it was a discussion based training which everyone seemed to love and get inspired from as well. Everyone was able to bring a lot of good insight and everyone was able to get involved as well, which was amazing. So that was a big highlight from the week.

One of the biggest things from this week was actually finding. With everyone going on vacation, having lessons with our investigators were a little hard, but it also ended up being a blessing as well. For some reason, it has always been a said that Chinese New Year is the hardest to find new investigators, but Elder McNeil and I felt like it was so much better. A matter a fact, we found the most new investigators I have every found in a week this last week. Everyone we talk to actually lived in our area because they were all home for the holidays. So, it was such a big blessing. We were able to find some prepared people and also take some of the young men out with us to find, which was really fun. The coolest part for us was turning some of the teaching opportunities over to them to answer. Also, we took 蔣勝洋 (John), our investigator that could get baptized tomorrow if he would just come to church, out for finding as well. He seemed to really enjoy it and he even took what we did on the street and share it with his mom as well, which was a hug blessing. His mom approves 100%, we are just needing to work with him on switching jobs so that he can attend church and get baptized.

So, finding was a majority of the week, and it was truly a blast, especially since it was beautiful week. No sweaters, no jackets, no rain, just the beautiful sun. :) You can probably see it in the back of some of the photos.

As for two huge miracles from the week, it was a 羅姐妹 (Aya Luo) and 樊乃竺 (Sister Fan).

羅姐妹 (Aya Luo) is in the middle of the photo I sent home wearing the black dress. We were at the temple and saw two elders there with their recent convert. Taking her to the temple for the first time. And one of the elders, Elder Humphries was actually Elder McNeil's MTC companion, so we talk to them. As we were talking I realized I actually new their recent convert. We had received her as an international referral in 香山 (Xiangshan) and contacted her, met with her two times and then realized she lived in another set of elders area. And didn't hear to much about it after that. This was in early June of last year. Talking with her, I found out that she actually didn't get contacted until October by the missionaries in her area, and was baptized in December. Just thought it was super cool to finally hear about a referral being baptized and also seeing her again. So that was a huge miracle.

The other miracle was 樊乃竺 (Sister Fan). She was an contact on the street two weeks ago and is turning out to be our most GOLDEN investigator. And she has just been blowing us away with how amazing she is. She came to church yesterday and has been praying and reading. We asked her the other day when meeting with her, what was her favorite scripture and she said that 1 Nephi 3:7 seemed to touch her. All of us just got a smile on our faces when she said that. And then at the beginning of the week when we met with her, we asked her how to write her first name, she explained her first character, then she said, this one got us, 摩羅乃的乃 (Chinese version of "Moroni" like in the Book of Mormon), and then her last character. But we were just so amazing with her and the progress that she is making as well in the gospel.

Well, that was pretty much our week, just full of miracles and blessing! Thank you all for the prayers and emails!

我愛你們,

Love you,

柯長老

Elder Okeson

Eating with Members for Chinese New Year

陳姐妹 (Sister Chen), 關姐妹 (Sister Guan), Sister Cutler, Elder Elliott, Elder McNeil, Elder Ure, and me