5/23/2016 P-Day #83

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

5/17/2016 P-Day #82

*Tuesday P-Day this week because of a temple trip*

Cole is Twenty!!

大家，你们好！

I hope you all had a fantastic week! I know I did! Being in a trio is so much fun!

Thanks Maddy and Tenley, and the rest of my family for the packages this week! And thanks Noel for the letter! It was a good birthday week! My birthday was a little crazy, but good! Haha we were running back from the gym that morning, and the English sisters in the Eastvale ward (who live in the same complex as us) had decorated our front door with balloons and streamers! Then I opened presents! Afterwards, we got ready for the day and had our Zone Meeting! Which was a lot of fun! Afterwards, we drove to Riverside to have a lesson with one of Elder Merriman's investigators from last transfer, drove back, ate dinner, and then went to English class! It was a busy missionary work day, which made for a good birthday!

This week has been crazy busy! And a lot of fun! Thank goodness we have a trio, though! It's fantastic how easy it is to split up! We have had many instances where we had two lessons at the same time, so we just had to find one person to take one of us, and the other two go to the other lesson! It's also fun to have someone else to talk with and joke with! We are always laughing and having a good time! It's a little bit harder to focus, though! When there's just two of us, it's a little bit easier to avoid distractions, but with the three of us, it is incredibly difficult! Haha but we're working on it! I'm really enjoying it! I wish it could last longer than one transfer!

Liu Ting Ting is getting baptized on Saturday! She had to have her interview on Friday, and since she doesn't speak English, we had to get Elder Zeng to come and do it! The only problem is that he is down in Lake Elsinore now, which is about 32 miles south of us on the I-15.. So that morning we had to drive to Riverside to have Elder Merriman's exit interview with President Mullen, and then head straight down to Lake Elsinore to pick up Elder Zeng, take him to Eastvale, and then drive him back down to Lake Elsinore! It was a lot of time in the car, but it was a lot of fun!

We had our zone meeting this week, and it was a lot of fun! We brought Panda Express with us this time, and it was a big hit! For our big activity, we made a life-size board game to help everybody with talking to people on the street. They were in teams of 4, and two people would roll the die, while the other two were on the board. If they landed on a square that said "Chance", they had to draw a card that had different scenarios on it, like: "You notice that street contacting is giving you really nice tan lines, go forward one space!" or "Run into someone who is overly concerned with your salvation as a Mormon, go back two spaces". If they landed on a regular space, they just had to practice talking to someone on the street. So Elder Dyer and I would pull out our amazing acting skills and would be a father and a son playing catch, somebody working on their car, etc.. It was a lot of fun! The prize at the end was Krispy Kreme donuts, so people were getting really competitive!

Well we have to get going because we have our temple trip today! I love and miss you all! Have a great week!!

Love,

Elder Wu

5/9/2016 P-Day #81

5/9/2016

Hello fam! 

Thanks Grandma Clark, and Omie and Papa for the birthday packages! I still haven't opened them yet, but I've been very tempted to! Haha!

This week was a lot of fun! It was great to see some of you on Skype yesterday! I can't believe how fast the transfer went by! But this transfer should be even better! Elder Dyer and I are staying together, but we'll be in a trio! Elder Merrimann is coming to join us for his last transfer. He's from Syracuse, Utah. He was in Eastvale when I was in the Jurupa 2nd Ward, so I know him pretty well. He's really quiet, but so funny! His Chinese is the best out of us white Chinese missionaries, so I'll be able to learn a lot!

We had probably the best English class ever this past week! The Spanish ward was throwing a party on Friday for the whole stake! We told our English class about it on Wednesday and all of them really wanted to go! So we made a little worksheet for everybody to learn some Spanish words, had a short lesson at the community center where we hold our class, and then we all drove over to the stake center for the fiesta! The worksheet was pretty hilarious! We put the Chinese, English, and Spanish for all the words on there, and then made a pronunciation guide for the Spanish using Chinese characters! For example, we had Taco (there's not a word for it in Chinese) and for the pronunciation guide, we put 他口(Tā kǒu)! But they all had a lot of fun, and it was a good field trip! They had "booths" set up all around the cultural hall with food and decorations to represent a lot of the different countries in Southern and Central America! There was soo much good food there, I probably gained twenty pounds! There were also some musical numbers, and a few performances! It was a lot of fun!

We went to go see Cindy this week, and the whole lesson kind of flopped... It was going very well at the start! She has read all the way up to Mosiah 4, and is understanding most of it! We taught about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and it was going so well! But as we got to the end, she told us that she doesn't have the faith to be baptized yet. And she's only coming to church once a month because she's too "busy", and only wants us to come by twice a month... It was a bit of a shock for both of us! And then she asked us to help her call some company to help translate some questions she had about her bills.. All in all, probably not one of my most favorite lessons.

Elder Dyer and I were talking recently, and we realized that we both have a very serious problem.. If we eat dinner at somebody's home and there's no dessert, the meal doesn't feel complete! Something feels like it's missing! Because we get dessert with dinner almost every day, and we've become so accustomed to it! It's gotten so bad, that we'll plan in advance and say: "We know this family isn't going to make dessert, so what are we going to eat afterwards to make up for it?" It's literally one of the worst feelings in the world! We keep a secret reserve of chocolate in case of emergencies! So when I get home, no desserts for at least two months so I can break this habit!!

I want to share another cool Chinese thing that I've learned! 宽恕 is the word for forgiveness, especially when talking about God forgiving us. 宽 means broad, wide, lenient, or vast. 恕 means to forgive. So when God's forgiveness isn't narrowed down to a narrow list of mistakes. It's broad and vast. All encompassing. There's always a way back through Jesus Christ's Atonement! It's amazing how much love our Heavenly Father has for us. We can always repent and receive forgiveness.

I love and miss all of you! Go out and serve God with all your heart, might, mind, and strength this week!

Love,

Elder Wu

5/2/2016 P-Day #80

5/2/2016

Hello everyone who is taking the time to read this!

I hope all of you had a fantastic week! Since it's the last week of the transfer, if you mail anything, send it to the mission office! I think I'll be staying, but you never know what could happen!

We helped the Li's move this week! They just moved to a different house in Eastvale, so it wasn't too far or difficult! We're probably going to drop by tonight to see them and see their new house now that it should be all put together!

We went on exchanges with the River Height's elders this week! I went back to Sister Smith's house again because Elder Dyer is allergic to horses and would probably die if he spent the whole day in Mira Loma! I was with Elder Gulbranson, who's dad served in the same mission and the same time as mine! Small world! We were joking that in the future, our sons would be serving in the same mission, too! But we had a lot of fun! We visited member and she was showing us all of her animals in the back yard! She has two goats, a couple horses, a duck, and a few turkeys! She used to have around 20 turkeys, but a dog snuck into the back yard and killed all of them except the male.. She she bought a bunch of baby ones that were running around in their little enclosure that will start her new flock! But the duck was my favorite animal!! I think it was hit on the head as a baby or something, because it was not all there! It walks around and bobs its head really far back and forth! It also wags its tail nonstop, and can't quack. It just makes a weird hissing sound.. Haha but it was pretty friendly!

On Saturday we went to volunteer at Eastvale's Relay for Live event in the afternoon. We had half of our zone go in the morning from 7:00-11:00 and the rest of us went from 11:00-3:00. It was so small! They had maybe seven booths set up around the track, and at most 15 people walking at the track at any time! About half of which were members from the Eastvale and River Height's wards! We basically sat around and chatted for the most part until they needed us to do some small task, like move one of the EZ-Ups or check to see if the buckets were full of ice and water. We tried to offer the people walking some water, but they weren't very interested.. haha! We did get some free Chick-fil-a, though! The people at that booth were starting to pack up and asked if we wanted any of the food before the packed it all away! 

Saturday night, our Chinese choir got to perform again! This time it was at the adult session of our stake conference! It sounded pretty good to us, so hopefully everyone else thought so as well! It's was another neat experience!

Sunday was our stake conference and it was really good! Our stake president talked about why we need the scriptures. He also talked about how they are a tool for us to use within our lives to help us learn and grow. So why wouldn't we take just a small amount of time to read from them! One of his counselors, who's a seminary teacher, talked about how important the work we are in is and how we need to act!!! He gave an amazing analogy about faith! He said that we can believe a seat belt is going to save is in a car accident, but if we get in the car and don't buckle the seat belt, we can't say "why didn't you save me?? I believed in you?" We have to actually reach over and buck the seat belt across us! It's the same with faith, if we don't use it, it's just belief. Nothing more!

I've also realized how much easier it us to understand the gospel when you learn a different language! The different terminology we use takes on a whole meaning! Especially in Chinese! The words are so much more simple! I feel like I gain a much deeper understanding of the doctrines the more I learn Chinese! This week the word for repentance stood out to me, which is:

悔改

Hui Gai

The first character (悔) means to regret

The second character (改) means to change, to alter, to correct, to transform

When we repent, all we are doing is changing! We feel sorrow for what we have done, we regret having done it, and then we must change! We need to transform ourselves into someone better. 

I love and miss you all! Have a great week and remember the Lord loves you!

Love,

吴长老

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