4/25/2016 P-Day #79

4/26/2016

Hello everybody!

Happy Monday!

Thanks Alison, Myra, and Marina for the letters this week!

A big group of people form our group went to the Redlands temple to do baptisms for the dead last week! It was an amazing experience to hear about! For a lot of them, it was their first time being able to go! Yoyo was upset that she had to wait until she was 12 to go inside! I think this has to be a historical moment! Probably the biggest group of Chinese members to attend the Redlands temple! It's so exciting!

​This weekend was Tony Ding's baptism!!! We were really worried that it wasn't going to happen, but all went well! It was still a bit of a crazy day. Brother Miao, our ward mission leader and unofficial group leader, is out of town with his family and his sister's family who are the two most solid families in our group! So we were scrambling to get people to help out with the baptism service! The person conducting was 10 minutes late, a bunch of members weren't going to be able to come to the baptism, and there was a wedding at the stake center the same day and we were short on chairs to put in the Relief Society room!! But after the service started, the Spirit came, and none of that seemed important anymore. Afterwards, we talked to him about meeting with the bishop on Sunday to have an interview to receive the priesthood, and his first thought was: "That means I could help my wife be baptized!". He's so excited to help others learn about the gospel!

We went to contact a referral from the Spanish sisters this week, who they said was really interested. We knocked on the door and met Sunny and her two sons, Justin and Charles. She invited us in and we started talking. They've been in America for about two years now and moved to Eastvale about a year ago. Her sons are soo funny! Justin, who's 10 years old, is a really old soul trapped in a 10 year old's body! While we were talking with Sunny, he was digging around in the pantry and fridge. I thought he was making himself lunch or something, but then he comes over with this plate full of chips, crackers, and some cookies with two Coke's and sets it down in front of us! It was so funny because his mom hadn't even told him to get us something to eat, he just did it all on his own! Meanwhile, his brother Charles, who's 4 years old, was eating one of the candies where you have the white sugar stick that you dip in the sour powder (I can't remember what it's called!) He dumped the powder out on a plate and started just licking it straight off the plate with his tongue!! Haha when his mom asked him why he was doing that, he just said: "Because the stick was too slow." We all busted up laughing! She brought her husband and kids to church on Sunday and it seemed like they enjoyed it. They also came to our Chinese choir practice last night, and the members were all just reaching out and pulling them into the group! They were baptized a year ago in a different church, but hopefully with the help of the members, we can pull them over here!

We also had our mult-zone conference in Corona this week. It was basically a repeat from our individual zone meetings, but President Mullen gave this amazing training on the doctrine of Christ. He used the scripture store of Peter walking on the water, which is one of my favorites. The moment we turn away from Christ is going to be the moment we start to sink. When we let the towering waves and the howling winds pull our focus away from our Savior, we lose the peace and safety that He brings. Even when we do turn away, Christ doesn't forget us. All we must do is reach out and cry: "Lord, save me". He will. We can also expect a little prompting to come from the Spirit, saying" "O ye of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt". I just think how amazing it is, that even if we fall, even when we fall, all we need to do is reach out and say "Lord, save me". He will calm the storms and bring peace. 

Thanks for all your love, support, and prayers! I love and miss you all and hope you will all remember your Savior in times of trial! He loves you and He will save you!

Love,

Elder Warren

p.s.  We were teaching English class this week, and afterwards we were talking to the Li family. Sister Li told us that Alice was curious that because we already wear seat belts (our shoulder bags), do we need to wear them when we get in the car?! Haha every week, there's some funny question that they ask us or their mom!

4/18/2016 P-Day #78

4/18/2016

Hellooo everybody!

Hope you all had a fantastic week! I know I did! It's starting to get really hot over here! 

This week I had an experience that reminded me that the Lord blesses us in His was and His time. We were on a blitz (which means all the missionaries in our zone go into one area and talk to people on the streets) this past Saturday in the River Heights ward. I was with Elder Truman, and we said a prayer before we got out of the car and asked for the Lord to bless us with 5 referrals to give to the River Heights elders. As we were walking, it was super windy outside. It was insane! Nobody was outside! We only talked to about 4 people in an hour, and none of them were interested, or knew anybody that needed the light and hope of the Savior. I was a little discouraged, because I felt like we had exercised our faith and worked as hard as we could, but didn't see any success. We had talked with everybody and we hadn't found the five referrals we had asked for. After we had all gathered back together, the River Heights elders added up all the referrals they had received, and the grand total was 5! Which is exactly what Elder Truman and I had asked the Lord to help us find. It may not have been the way I was expecting, but the Lord still answered our prayers!

We also had ZDM this week, and it was a lot of fun! Elder Dyer and I went all out. We made name-cards for everybody, little agendas printed on card stock, we had snacks, and brought Chick-fil-a for lunch! I think they all enjoyed the meeting! We trained on overcoming discouragement, and did an "eternity line" object lesson. We stretched a string across the room to represent eternity. We asked one of the sisters in our zone, who is very artistically talented, to draw a picture of each of the missionaries that we clipped onto the line to represent the tiny amount of time we spend on our missions. When we step back and look at the grand scheme of things, the things that bother us now, the trials that we face, are so minuscule compared to our Heavenly Father's plan for us!

We were visiting the Li's again this week, and Yoyo and Alice asked if they could see my Gospel Art book with all the paintings in it. As they were going through it, Alice would ask us a question about the stories, and Yoyo would tell her the answer! It was amazing, because we had never taught them the story of David and Goliath, or Daniel in the lion's den, but Sister Li told us that she loves to read, and had been reading the children's books of the Old and New Testaments, Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine and Covenants! She's a really smart kid! Alice asked her about the picture of Christ on the cross and Yoyo was explaining to her that Christ was resurrected for all of us. So that we can all be resurrected! Alice's response was "Wow! That's so great!" or "Wow! That's pretty cool!" I'm not 100% sure how to translate it into English and get the same meaning, but it was really funny in Chinese! Haha

I hope you all have a good week! Remember that God loves you and hears your prayers!

Love,
Elder Wu

Elder Wu

4/11/2016 P-Day #77

4/11/2016

Hello family!! 

I hope all of you had a great week as well!!

We found this really amazing lady named Cindy Diao. She's from Harbin, China. Which apparently is reaaally cold. I've obviously never been, but whenever everybody talks about Harbin, the always say "wow, that's so cold!". So I also say it, because I'm doing my best to imitate the native speakers! Haha but she was a referral from some English missionaries in Riverside that we got the other week. We went by on Wednsday and met her, and had a really good lesson! She has read the whole Bible before, but has never joined a church. We taught the Restoration, and she got so excited when we talked about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith and told us, "Oh, I've never heard about this before!". She accepted a baptismal date for April 30th, and then came to church on Sunday with her daughter (who's in her 20's)! Her daughter thought it was boring, but I think Cindy really enjoyed it!

Another awesome experience from this week, we found out that a recently reactivated member (who only speaks English), has been taking time each week to go and visit Sister Lin (Sunny)!!! Apparently Sunny made a comment in Gospel Principles, she goes to the English class, about how she wants to make more friends. So this wonderful sister has been going over to her house to get to know her! It makes me so happy to know that there are people that go out of their way to make others feel loved.

We were visiting with the Li family this week, and their baby is getting so fat! It's very adorable! Sister Li was talking to us about how he refuses to sleep at night, but sleeps all day. And one of the daughters, I can't remember if it was Alice or Yoyo, pipes in and asks "Why does Tommy sleep so much? Is it because he still has jet-lag from coming from heaven?" It was so funny! We all died laughing! I guess that makes sense. They just made a really long trip, so that must be why babies sleep all the time! Haha

We also went to help Tony's wife, Eileen, translate for a meeting with her son's preschool's principal. It was really funny, because it's run by another Christian church! We were hoping that we weren't going to be asked to leave because we were wearing our nametags, but the principal was super nice! She even had a Greg Olsen painting in her office! 

We helped Tony again with some yard work this week. We helped him pour some concrete to extend a smaller patio he had made a while ago. Halfway through our project, it started to rain! Nothing crazy, but we stopped and waited a few minutes for it to stop, and then went back to work! We did that another two or three times afterwards! California rain is annoying! Either it dumps all the water from the clouds in about two minutes, or it sprinkles on and off for hours. There's no middle ground! 

We went to Relief Society on Sunday, which is a very weird experience for me. Every now and then we go to help translate if we have a lot of investigators in there. And the Relief Society instructor asked us to come and share a two minute thought we had from conference this past week. So Elder Dyer and I are sitting in the back corner trying not to draw attention to ourselves as he's translating. Then I got to go up and share something that I learned in conference in Chinese. The Chinese members all looked so happy when they got to take off the headphones and listen to somebody actually talking in their language! I'm so excited to see our group grow and expand, and eventually become it's own branch! Next week is our Chinese sacrament meeting again, so I'm really excited.

I love and miss you all a lot! Have an awesome week!!

Elder Warren

4/4/2016 P-Day #76

4/4/2016

Hellooo family!!

I hope you all had a great week! And I hope all of you that had a chance to watch General Conference loved it as much as I did! Elder Holland and Elder Bednar's talks were my favorite! Elder Holland should close conference every session, in my opinion :)

Other than conference, this week went by pretty well! As a missionary, April Fool's is terrible! We were trying to text our zone to give them a bunch of information about meetings, how many miles they get to drive for the month, etc.. and nobody believed us! They all thought we were lying! Haha 

Every now and then, we have days where we literally have no time to stop and take a break! Friday was another one of those days! We had set lessons from 12:00 until English class at 6:30. It was insane! We had to cancel one of the lessons, because we were falling so far behind! We met this super cool family by accident on Thursday, and had a return appointment with themon Friday. We were originally trying to get ahold of a member, Brother Liu, who hasn't been coming to church for a while. But when we switched phones back in September, a lot of the contact names got cut off, so we had two phone numbers that just said "Liu". We called the first one and asked for Liu Yue, and the man who answered told us we had the wrong number, and he was Mike. After talking to him for a little while, we figured out that he was a member who was baptized in the Chinese ward in Hacienda Heights, and moved out here to Eastvale ten or so years ago. His parents had been taught by missionaries for years, but neither Elder Dyer or I knew anything about their son Mike! We went by on Friday to visit him, and he's a pretty cool guy! His English is perfect! He runs his own trucking business, and was a tour guide for Americans in China before that. He knows a lot of the members that live in Eastvale, because he went to church with them over in Hacienda Heights. He was super friendly and said that we are always welcome in his home. He also is going to allow us come over to teach his wife and his son about the gospel! We're really excited!

We helped Tony again this week with some yard work, which is always fun. Hopefully he will be getting baptized on April 30th! We just have a few more things that we need to work on with him and his family! He wasn't able to come to conference, though. We called him after the Sunday morning session, and he said he forgot about church haha and said he was really busy that day and wasn't going to be able to come.

We also saw the Li family a couple times this week. We had a family night with them last Monday and it was a lot of fun! Then they invited us over a couple times throughout the week to eat dinner or lunch with them! We helped them make dumplings on Sunday

 inbetween the sessions, and it was so much fun! It's harder than you would think! They roll out the dough into a little circle, then you put meat/veggies inside and have to fold it in half and pinch the ends shut! Sister Li is a professional! She can put a ton of the filling inside and it still looks nice and pretty after she folds it! The ones Elder Dyer and I made didn't look very nice, but they still tasted good!

I love and miss you all so much! Hope you have an awesome week! :)

Love,

Elder Wu

3/28/2016 P-Day #75

3/28/2016

Hello family and friends!!

Thanks so much Mom(and family!), Grandma Clark, and Omie and Papa for the packages this week! I hope you all had a great Easter, too!

This week went really well! Our Easter was awesome! On Saturday, we went to our ward's Easter Egg hunt, because we had a lot of investigators coming. It was a lot of fun! Most of them showed up late to the activity, and almost all of the eggs were gone. We felt really bad, but I am sooo grateful for wonderful Primary leaders and children! We distracted our investigator's kids while a member of the Primary presidency and her kids refilled some of the eggs with the candy they found, and went to go hide them out in the park so that our investigators would be able to go find some eggs! It made me really happy to see them reaching out to our investigators! That night, Elder Dyer and I went home and dyed eggs after we planned for the next day! It was a lot of fun! haha

Also on Saturday, we called Tony Ding to see if we could come by and visit his family sometime, and we also asked if he still needed help with some service in his backyard, because he's re-landscaping the whole thing! He asked us to come over around 4:00, and Elder Dyer and I got all excited, because we figured now is our chance to get really tan! But unfortunately we were in the shade the whole time... Oh well. We helped him level out a huge chunk of his backyard, where he's going to be planting a garden. It was a good workout! Afterwards, he asked us to stay for dinner and they made a ton of really delicious food! There was some fish, tofu, beef, and of course, rice! They had this one dish that was beef with some curry, carrots, potatoes, and other vegetables that were really good! I was eating some, and took a huge bite out of what I thought was a potato... It turned out to be a big chunk of ginger! It was nasty! I was very careful after that to make sure I knew what I was eating!

I'm sitting here trying to think about what else happened this week and nothing is coming to mind.. Haha the weekend was just too much fun, I forgot the rest of the week! Oh well.. I'm sure it was super spiritual and full of great memories that I'll remember when I hit "send"...

I hope you all have a good week! Sorry for the short email today.. Next week will be longer! Happy Spring!!!

Love,

Elder Wu

3/21/2016 P-Day #74

3/21/2016

Hellooo family and friends! 

Thanks Mom and fam for the St Patrick's Day package! I hope you all had a happy St Paddy's day! It was pretty boring over here! Haha I don't quite understand why we have this holiday.. but oh well!

This week went really well! The beginning was a little bit slower, but the weekend was amazing!

This Sunday, we had an all Chinese sacrament meeting! We went into the Relief Society room with all the Chinese members, and had our own meeting there! It was amazing. Hands down, my favorite sacrament meeting ever. I didn't have to play the piano, but I was asked to be the chorister, again.. haha I'd much rather be sitting behind the piano instead of standing in front of everybody else! It was really amazing to see a lot of the brothers have the opportunity to bless and pass the sacrament! They have been baptized for a year or two, and this was the first time they got the chance to participate in the sacrament! Sister Lin (Sunny), gave a talk! We asked her just to share her testimony for 3-5 minutes, but she ended up being up there for almost 10 minutes! It was really good! She told the story of her quitting coffee and how the priesthood blessing helped her again, and bore her testimony at the end of how God is real, and He loves us and will help us through our trials! It was so powerful. Then our ward mission leader, Brother Miao, and his wife gave talks. It was just a really amazing meeting! We had about 30 people there, including 8 of our investigators!

We also heard during priesthood opening exercises that youth conference is this next week. We have our investigator, David, who we really want to go! So we pulled him aside and talked to him about it, and he's really excited! He's made really good friends with a priest, Daniel, and unfortunately Daniel won't be able to go to youth conference. :( But we're still excited for the opportunity that David has! If everything goes well, the weekend following will be his baptism!!

We also had the performance for our Chinese choir! It was an Easter musical fireside, so all the wards in the stake had a musical number or two. My favorite song was "Savior, Redeemer of My Soul". Two sisters from one of the wards sang it and a young woman from their ward played the violin with them. It was so beautiful, and the spirit was so strong!! Beforehand, we went to the Miao's house to practice and have dinner. I was playing the piano at that time, because our pianist speaks better Chinese, so she could pause them and tell them where to improve, etc. I was feeling really worried because it sounded reaaally bad... They were trying so hard, but it just wasn't working out right. As we were sitting and listening to the other choirs, my anxiety just grew bigger and  bigger. They were all so good! We were second to last in the program, so we were going to sound even worse compared to the rest of the choirs. But when we got up and performed, it went very very well!! I think it was a good reminder of how if we try our best, and do our best to prepare, Heavenly Father helps us magnify our efforts! People came up afterwards and thanked us for the song, and said they really enjoyed it. It was just another great meeting to get ready for Easter!

I hope you all have a happy Easter! I love and miss every single one of you so much! Have an awesome week! 

Love,

Elder Warren

3/14/2016 P-Day #73

3/14/2016

Hello family!!

I was thinking about how bad I have been lately at responding to letters! I feel like I have been spending all my "free time" trying to study Chinese! So if you have sent me a letter and I haven't responded, I apologize! I'm not ignoring any of you and haven't forgotten! I pray for all of you daily and hope you know how much I care about and miss you all! :)

I'm so excited for Easter! If you haven't seen the Church's new video, Hallelujah, go watch it now! FollowHim.mormon.org! It is so amazing! I feel like this is really the first Easter where I've actually thought about and realized how amazing this holiday is! Christmas is great, because we celebrate the coming of the Savior into the world, but Easter is when we remember and celebrate His triumph over spiritual and physical death! In Chinese, the word for Easter is 复活节 (fu huo jie). 复 (fu) means "again", 活 (huo) means "life", and 节 (jie) just means "holiday"! It think it's a great reminder of why we celebrate Easter! Not only because Christ lives again, but because we all will receive the same blessing! Both spiritually and physically!

This weekend was Sister Lin's (Sunny) baptism! It was amazing! The spirit was so strong during the service! Brother Li was able to baptize her, which made it even better, because he was able to exercise the priesthood authority he holds! What a great opportunity for a new member! She got up at the end of the service and bore her testimony. She told us that when she first met with us, she only wanted to learn English, but what really changed was when we asked her to quit coffee. Coffee was one of her favorite things. She loved drinking it! She told us that when she was in the hospital for a long time after her stroke, her sisters brought her coffee every day, because that's what helped her feel better. She had tried quitting before, but it had never worked. So when we asked her to keep the Word of Wisdom, she was doubtful she could do it. We had given her a priesthood blessing, and she said that after that she just quit. Never drank it again. It was a neat experience, because I didn't know how much she relied on coffee! She was confirmed by another new convert, Brother Xiong, who just received the Melchizedek priesthood a month or so ago!

Brother Miao, our ward mission leader and unofficial Chinese group leader, really wants to pick up the work within the Chinese group. It's slowed down a lot lately, because everyone has just gotten so comfortable hanging out with the English ward. They don't have a lot of responsibility, they just show up and relax, listen to the translation, then go home. So every third Sunday, we are going to have a sacrament meeting with just our Chinese group! I'm very excited! The mission has had Chinese missionaries for 6 years now, and we still don't have a branch, so maybe this will help light the fire that we need! It's also good to help out the new members, especially the brothers! They will actually get a chance to bless and pass the sacrament! Brother Li will be doing in next Sunday with Brother Su, who was baptized a few years ago! I was also given an unofficial calling as the "Chinese group pianist"! Haha I'm also the conductor for our Chinese choir, since the usual conductor is in Taiwan right now! She volunteered us to perform at a fireside on March 20th, but her sister is really sick, so she had to go and see her in Taiwan.. So the responsibility of chorister fell upon me! We'll see how it goes! We're singing "How Firm a Foundation"

I also got to go on bike this week! We went on exchanges with the Jurupa elders, who do not have a car! It was so much fun! I hadn't realized how much I enjoyed being on bike! Well I guess I really enjoyed it because it wasn't hot outside, there wasn't a crazy headwind, and it wasn't raining... but I still liked it! Haha it was a lot of fun! Not that I'm not grateful for my car! It was nice the other day when it was pouring rain, and the wind was blowing like crazy!

Transfers are coming up! It sounds like I'm going to be staying in the area, though! It's nice to have a companion that knows all about the plans for transfers and such! Haha unless they do something totally crazy, I'll be staying in Eastvale with Elder Dyer! Because they added an extra week onto the MTC time for missionaries, this transfer is seven weeks instead of six. So it ends on March 27th!

Well I'm super excited to tell you all about our Chinese sacrament meeting next week! And also how our Chinese choir does on Sunday! It will be a good week!

I love and miss you all!!

Love,

吴长老

Elder Warren