2/29/2016 P-Day #71

2/29/2016

Hello family!

Thanks Alison for the letter this week!

This was a really great week! Besides the beginning of allergy season, everything's going great! The weather has been perfect and everything is going well!

We went to the temple this week, which is always great! I love the spirit there and the boost that I get afterwards! And eating at Cafe Rio after is always a plus! :) We had Sister Budica take us, and she was the member that would always take us back when I was in the Jurupa 2nd ward! So it was a lot of fun to see her again!

We also went on two exchanges this week. The first was with the other Chinese elders in Riverside. Elder Merriman came here with me, and it was good to have someone that is nearly fluent in Chinese! Haha my Chinese has improved a lot, but I still have a lot to learn! The next day we exchanged with the River Heights elders,
and I went into their area with Elder Wood. They live with Sister Smith, my old home share, so I really liked being back there! We got to visit a lot of people that I had taught before, so that was fun!

Funny story this week... While we were on exchanges with River Heights, Elder Dyer and Elder Gulbranson went to a park to talk to some people there. The Jurupa City parks worker, who I'll call Steve, came up to them and started yelling and telling them that they're soliciting and next time he sees them there, he's going to call the cops. They found out that he's an active Baptist, so that explains why he wasn't so happy to see Mormon missionaries there! So eventually Elder Dyer left, not too happy with what happened. The next day, we go on street conacting with our whole zone in the Eastvale sister's area. I go with Elder Pennington to the area with the same park Elder Dyer met Steve at the day before. We park next to the park and start walking through to get to the neighborhood where we're going to go walk around. We're kind of joking about running into Steve, and then we see this park worker making a beeline for us, talking on the phone. As he walked past us, I saw the name "Steve" printed on his shirt and heard him telling someone to send a deputy over to the park! Haha so we got the cops called on us, but we were over walking around in the neighborhood before they showed up, so we didn't get to talk to them. But Steve drove past us a couple times in his truck while we were walking around the neighborhood! It was pretty crazy! We'll probably be avoiding that park for a little while!

Anyways... Oh! Antonio and Lucy had their baby this week! On Friday! They asked President Grant, he's he councilor in the mission presidency who interviewed them for baptism, to name the baby! He didn't think they were serious, but Antonio called us last week and asked if he had picked out a name yet! We called President Grant to remind him, and the name he picked was Thomas Spencer Li (like Thomas Spencer Monson). They asked us to come by sometime soon and visit them! So I'll be sure to get some pictures of baby Thomas! Haha

Well that's about it for this week! I love and miss you all!

Love,

Elder Warren

2/22/2016 P-Day #70

2/22/2016

Hello family!! Thanks Ryder, Ruby, and Danielle (twice) for the letters this week!

This week went by a lot faster than last week! 

We started teaching this awesome investigator named Yi Meng Li. She's visiting from Beijing and her cousin who she's staying with is really good friends with our stake president. He has invited his friend, Xing Fu, to church many times and the missionaries have visited her son a lot! She came to the stake conference broadcast and we went by this past week to teach her. She's receptive, but has a very scientific why of thinking. She wants to know every little detail and the "why" behind everything. She said she would be baptized if she knew this was true. She had heard that we weren't allowed to drink coke, so she hid all of her coke in the fridge before we got there! After she found out that that wasn't true, she ran into the kitchen to drink some coke! haha

We found out Joanna literally lives one street outside of our mission boundaries into the Rancho Cucamonga mission, which just got Chinese missionaries a month or two ago.......... We talked to President Mullen and he will talk to the mission president over there because they're kids come to school in Eastvale, they've made  friend with the members here, they're planning on moving to eastvale, and the "Chinese group" (with 0 members) that they are trying to start up in Rancho is about a 40 minute drive away from them... so we'll see what happens. Hopefully we get to teach them still!

President Mullen came with us to go visit some people on Saturday night! It was interesting because he doesn't know any Chinese! So when I was talking, or our investigators were talking, Elder Dyer would translate for him. And when Elder Dyer was talking, I would translate! But it went really well! I don't know if you remember Tony Ding, but we dropped by his house with President, and apparently he has been going to the Mormon Battalion place in San Diego every other week and meeting with the missionaries there! We taught about the restoration of the gospel, and he knew everything! It was insane. He can't come to church this week, but he will be bringing his family the following week! Hopefully he is ready to progress this time around! I'm so excited!

I love you all and miss you like crazy! If you are still stuck in the cold and snow, just remember that it's about 90 degrees and sunny here right now ;)

Lots of love,

Elder Warren

2/15/2016 P-Day #69

2/15/2016

Hello everyone!

Thanks Grandma Clark, Grandma Gray, and the fam for the Valentine's Day packages! I loved them! :)

This week went by really slow! The first week of transfers always do, though! We found some awesome investigators this week! (in total we found 16 new people to teach! Which is a lot! I think the most I've ever found in a week was around 7!!) The problem was that none of them were going to come to church this week! We're going to do better at focusing on the Sabbath throughout this upcoming week though!

I'm sure you're all wondering about my new companion, so here's what I know so far! Elder Dyer's from Shanghai, China. Well, technically he's from Michigan, but he moved there when he was about seven years old. His mom is from Taiwan and his dad is American. His Chinese is really good! But he's been in an English area for so long that he's pretty rusty! Still a lot better than me, though! He was an AP for six months. He started when I started as a zone leader. He works really hard, and definitely loves the work. It's going to be a good transfer! He's really funny and's always joking around. He's really good at sports, especially soccer. He's going to Brown University for biomechanics.

Yesterday was a west-coast regional stake conference. All of the stakes/districts in California, Washington, Hawaii, and Oregon watched a live broadcast from Salt Lake City. Elder Renlund, Elder Hamula, Elder Rowe, and Sister Oscarson all spoke! It was really good! Here are a few of the things that stood out to me!

·  The "primary answers" are not enough to build and develop our faith.

o Feast daily upon the scriptures

o Pray with all energy of heart

o Focus on the sacrament. Church attendance should be a demonstration of our faith.

·  "If someone were to accuse you of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?"

·  Discipleship isn't a pick or choose pathway. We are either all-in, or we're not on the path at all. There aren't varying levels of being a Mormon.

·  Pattern to overcome fear:

o Keep your eyes fixed on the Lord (the story of Peter walking on the water)

o Trust in the Lord and the power of His deliverance (Christ's Atonement)

o Stand with the Lord's church and it's leaders (leaders are not perfect! But the revelation they receive is.)

·  How do we respond to questions of our beliefs?

o We can respond by explaining Joseph Smith's experience and how we still receive revelation from a prophet of God today.

o Remember of the context of commandments within the Plan of Salvation! The "why" behind all the "rules"

We had some interesting experiences this week.. We had a meeting with the leadership of our Chinese group this week about how we can help the members and such. Afterwards, we were telling them that we were going to go and talk to some Chinese people in the park. Sister Zhang  told us that one of the other sisters in the ward had a dance class in one of the parks, so we should go there because there would be lots of Chinese people! Thinking it was a good idea, we searched out the park, pull up and see a group of about ten Chinese woman doing some interesting, almost flashmob-like, dancing around one of the playgrounds. We sat in the car for a second and tried to figure out why in the world we thought this was a good idea!! We weren't sure what to do! Do we go out and try to talk to them? Neither of us wanted to go try and join in.. so after awkwardly watching the unusual spectacle, we got out of the car and talked to the American people in the park hahaha. So if you are ever invited to a Chinese dance class.. don't go!

Secondly...We were meeting our investigator, Joanna, at a CVS parking lot to give her some more copies of the Book of Mormon, and a children's Book of Mormon for all the kids. While we were waiting outside, this guy gets out of his car and starts talking to us. Asking us who we are, what we're doing, and all that. We told him we were waiting for our friends to give them some copies of the Book of Mormon. Then he asked us the "usual" questions. "How many wives do you have?", "You guys can't have fun, right?", he brought up the Word of Wisdom, Law of Chastity, etc.. It was weird, he seemed just too friendly and a little awkward. He told us he grew up Catholic, but doesn't attend now. He had a friend who was LDS in high school, but didn't know anything about what we believed. So we explained about how we are Christians, and also how we believe in modern-day prophets, and revelation. We asked him if he'd ever been to a Mormon church and he said no, but he asked if there was one close by that we could go see. So after Joanna came by to pick up the books, he followed us and drove to the nearest church building. It seemed kind of suspicious to me, and Elder Dyer was freaking out a little bit, thinking that this guy (who's name was Cody), was going to murder us or something. We get to the church building, and showed him around. As we were in the chapel, we were asking if we could get his info to send to the missionaries in Fullerton, where he's going to college. We told him about YSA wards and he asked us what he needs to do to marry a Mormon girl. Elder Dyer pulls out a picture of the Salt Lake Temple and asked him if he had ever seen one of them before. So Cody pulls out his cell phone, shows us the screen and says, "You mean a building like this?". His wallpaper was the Newport temple!! Then he told us he was a returned missionary who had been home for a few year.. and he just wanted to see if we would actually talk to him, etc.. It was pretty dumb. Haha he got us pretty good. I was kind of upset, but it's okay. He said he has been going through some struggles lately, so we talked to him for a little bit before we left. He knows a family in our ward that we have dinner with on Tuesday, so we told him to come if he had time. It was definitely an interesting experience! We're still a little upset about it haha!

That was basically our week... Sunny got back from Taiwan yesterday, so we can go and visit her this week! I'm super excited!!!

Love and miss you all!!

Elder Warren

2/8/2016 P-Day #68

2/8/2016

Hello Family!!

Thanks Myra for the letter this week!

I can't believe how fast this transfer went by! It's insane! I'm going to be staying in Eastvale as a zone leader. Elder Zeng will be going to the other Chinese area in Riverside. My new companion is Elder Dyer! I'm super excited. It's going to be a lot of fun.

We had a pretty good week! I caught some weird virus that's been going around the mission, so I was inside for two days. :P But other than that, everything was great!

Let's see.. We had our zone meeting on Tuesday! It went really well! We had a lot of fun with the members of our zone! We talked a lot about repentance and how, as missionaries, it's our duty to help other's repent! I've been thinking a lot about repentance and how negative the world views it as. But really, it's an act of love. If we love God, then we're going to change to keep His commandments. We receive so many blessings when we repent! Any pain or discomfort that we may experience during the process, because change is hard, is nothing compared to the joy we will experience afterwards! There's an amazing feeling of joy and relief that comes!

We went to Redlands this week for a "service" opportunity. A member from the Redlands stake called us and asked us if we would come to their stake center to help a group of Chinese students with a project they're working on for college. We showed up all ready to baptize every single one of them to find out that they go back to China in two weeks..... So we talked to them about service and why we need to serve others, said goodbye, and drove home.. Haha we wanted to give them some copies of the Book of Mormon, or maybe some pamphlets, but because of the laws/regulations in China, they're not allowed to bring that stuff back with them. Oh well! Hopefully they'll run into a member of the church later on down the road and remember the two weird guys in white shirts!

Well those were basically the exciting moments of my week! I love and miss you all! Talk to you next Monday!

Love,

Elder Warren

2/1/2016 P-Day #67

2/1/2016

Helloo everybody!

Thanks Mom, Maddy, and Tenley for the package! And thanks Kaitlyn for the letter!

This week has been a lot of fun! On Saturday we got to go to Riverside's Chinese New Year Festival! It was a lot of fun! We were hoping to be able to talk to a lot of Chinese people, but I guess it was a lot smaller this year (one of the other elders with us went to it last year), and so there were tons more Americans than there were Chinese people :P Oh well! We enjoyed it, and it was a lot of fun! They had a parade in the morning with a bunch of the Chinese dragons and lions, so that was really cool! They had a street lined up with vendors that were selling a bunch of Chinese trinkets. They had another row of vendors selling food! But it was super expensive and crowded, so we went to a Taiwanese restaurant just up the street! They had some performances throughout the day! It was a lot of fun!

I can't remember if I've talked about our investigator, Sunny, before... So I'll tell you a little bit about her! She's this super adorable older lady from Taiwan. She's lived in America for a few years now and her English is pretty good! She refuses to talk in Chinese with us, because she needs to practice her English! And she also told us that Christ only speaks English, so she also needs to learn to speak it so He can understand her!  We assured her that Christ and our Heavenly Father understand Chinese, but she is set on learning to speak English so they can understand her! Hahaha she is going back to Taiwan for two weeks and flew out last night. She came to church yesterday for the second time and loved it! She was a little upset after the first time that we didn't tell her to wear a skirt, so she went to the store and bought one last week so she would fit in! We stopped by after church with the Zhang's to visit her before we left and we had a super powerful lesson on the Book of Mormon! She asked us what the difference between it and the Bible was, and she really understood the purpose of it! She told us that when she has come to church these past two weeks, she has felt really calm and peaceful! She is taking her Chinese and her English copies of the Book of Mormon with her to Taiwan so she can read from them everyday! I'm super sad that she is leaving, but I'm super excited for the progress she has made!

We had a lot of people come to church on Sunday! Shirley's husband is visiting them from China for a month, and they've been really busy.. But they came to church on Sunday! We're going to try and teach him more about the gospel before he goes back to China!

Another family has moved into the house where the Li's live and we're starting to teach them as well! I think we are teaching everybody that lives there.. Haha they're pretty new, so I don't have much about them..

My Chinese is getting better and better every day! It's amazing to see how much we can accomplish when the Lord is helping us. I still have to study, and do my best to attempt to speak the language. We have transfers coming next week, so we'll have to see what happens. I'd like to stay in the Chinese area, but we'll see where the Lord needs me at :)

Since transfers are coming up, send any mail/packages to the mission office this week please! :) I don't know if I'll leave or stay, so it'll be safer if they get sent there!

I love and miss you all!

Love,

Elder Warren