5/23/2016
大家好！
Thanks to Grandma/Grandpa/Adrienne for the birthday present!
This week was craaazzyyy! I don't even know where to begin..
Well for starters, last week right after I emailed home, the
fleet coordinator called us to tell us they needed to come pick up our car to
take it into the shop for some repairs and they didn't have a replacement for
us.. So we have essentially been covering three missions on foot! Woohoo! It's
been quite the adventure. Hopefully we get the car back tomorrow, but we'll
see! Thankfully we have amazing members that will drive us around if we need to
get somewhere far! We have an appointment in Riverside which is about 20 miles
away! We are waiting to hear from members to see if they can give us a ride out
there! If not, it's only a 5 hour and 40 minute walk!! :)
We had two temple trips this week, which was awesome! On Friday, we got
to go with the Yu family to the temple! They received their own endowments and
then were sealed with their five-year-old daughter! We were waiting in the
sealing room for a while before their daughter shows up, and when she walks
through the door, it was probably on of the most adorable things I have ever
seen! She was in her white dress, and had this big white bow in her hair, and
she just smiles and waves to everybody! All the temple workers loved her! They were all
talking about her afterwards! They were also so excited to see a family from
China going through the temple for the first time! I had to laugh a little bit
as they struggled through their names, but it was an amazing experience! Now
they're a forever family! We were originally supposed to go and help translate
for them while they talked to the temple president, but they have a temple
worker who is from Taiwan (her older sister is in our ward!) who they called in
to help translate. So they didn't actually need us there, but I was just
grateful to go and participate!
Saturday was another packed day! In the morning, Elder Christofferson
came to visit us! Our whole mission gathered together at a building in
Riverside to meet with him! We had a question and answer session which was
pretty interesting. Some missionaries had some weird questions, but he was a
good sport about it! He is actually really funny! He was cracking jokes the
whole time, and we were all laughing a lot! There was a musical number, where 4
elders and 4 sisters sang "Faith in Every Footstep", and halfway
through the musical number, the whole mission stood up and sang the last half
of the song with them! President Mullen knew nothing about it! Sister Mullen
had us all secretly practicing the song so we could surprise him at the
meeting! I think he was pretty blown away. It was such a powerful spiritual
experience! Having almost 200 missionaries singing about their conviction to
serve their Savior!
Saturday night was Liu Ting Ting's baptism! Elder Dyer baptized her and
Elder Merriman helped because she was super pregnant and wanted two people to
help pull her out of the water. In her testimony at the end, she said "I'm
so grateful Elder Dyer and Elder Merriman came to teach me about the
gospel." Apparently I wasn't there to help teach her! Haha! It was a great
experience, though! The member who was supposed to give the talk on baptism was
sick and couldn't come. So I got picked to give the talk! I panicked a little
bit, but I think it went alright! Thankfully the Spirit knows a lot more
Chinese than I do!
Now, I have another cool insight into the Chinese language! The
word for prophet in Chinese is 先知 (xiān zhī). 先 means: first, in advance, or early. 知 means: to know or be
aware of. So the word for prophet literally means "to know first".
It's so true! We are so blessed to have a living prophet to warn us of thing
that are to come! When we listen to our prophet, we can prepare to face the challenges
ahead of us. Elder Christoffersen told us: "The Lord wants to bless us,
but we limit ourselves by our preparation." If we aren't prepared, the
Lord can't bless us. As we continually strive to do the things we need to, even
if everything in our life seems to be going well, we have the Lord's promise
that He will bless us!
I hope you all have an amazing week! I love and miss you all!
Love,
吴长老
No comments:
Post a Comment