Rancho Penasquitos

Hi Family,

I am sorry about last week's email. I will save messages before I send in the future.

I am allowed to receive emails from immediate family and grandparents, that's all. However, if people want to write you and you put it in the email, that's fine. I can receive as many emails as I need to.

We are in Rancho Penasquitos, known as PQ, which is a section of northern San Diego. We have divided up the area; my companion is Elder Elkington, and we're from Penasquitos north, as far as we need to go until about LA. Elder Gibbons and Elder Jensen are the other two Chinese missionaries, and they cover from Mira Mesa south, all the way to the border with Mexico.

When we arrived, we were "whitewashing" in, which means that we were a new companionship who both got transferred into a new area. Elder Elkington has spent the last six months in Orange County doing English work, so he's a little rusty but his chinese is coming back. Elder Jensen and his old companion who just went home and was replaced by Gibbons were in charge of the entire area, and now we've split it. We have yet to get an area book, and all the investigators were in their area, so Elkington and I basically had to start from the beginning in order to find investigators. We have a goal of 1 new investigator a week.

In order to find, we have a couple things we do. We sometimes tract and street contact, but that's not really that effective. For tracting, we get street directories at the library, look for asian names, and then write down the places with high concentrations of asians, then try to go find some chinese people. It works pretty well, since we know which houses to knock on. When we knock, they see two white boys and if they don't speak english they try to turn us away, then they're shocked when we start speaking chinese. But we haven't actually gotten in any doors that way.

The Branch is very much centered on missionary work, though. We meet in Penasquitos and have... maybe 40 people, give or take. I'm not sure. but there have been several baptisms by elder jensen in the last few months, so the branch is doing well. The Branch President, President Leung, is from Hong Kong (I think), and he speaks cantonese and english. He is very supportive, and helps plan activities that will bring investigators. Last Saturday we had the annual Mid-Autumn Festival, or the Moon Festival. It was the night of the full moon, and has kids carrying lanterns around and food and other festivities. There were a few non-members there that we met. One was a previous investigator that Elkington already knew, Jia Zhang. We are hoping to meet with her on Saturday, but she has to check her schedule. Another was a couple who Elkington and Gibbons helped move while Jensen and I taught English Class. They are in Gibbons and Jensen's area, so we don't have much to do with them.

But the final non-member we met was named Emily Tsai; she had been brought by some friends and had asked for a chinese book of mormon. so, we met her and she already had a book of mormon and gospel principles book in her hand. She wanted to meet with us. So we set up an appointment for yesterday. Yesterday we prepared lots for the lesson - we were hoping to turn her into an investigator.

And the lesson yesterday went very well. She felt the spirit, we taught her what that was, and taught her about God and prayer. she had been having doubts about their being a god, but said that she felt God close by when she came to the church and that there was a peace in her home when we came. We told her we would help her overcome doubt and develop faith and knowledge about god. We assigned her Alma 32, and had a really great lesson. We invited her to pray at the end, and she did and the spirit was very strong. We set up an appointment for tomorrow, and she asked us how often we could come, and wanted us to stay for two hours next time. We're only supposed to stay 45 minutes, or an hour tops, so we told her we couldn't stay quite that long, but it's great that this lady has such a desire to become close to God and it's very exciting. So, we're both feeling very good about her joining the church. we were very fortunate to find her. Oh, and we taught mostly in chinese, but she wants us to use english sometimes too cause she's working on her english.

Well, I had better wrap it up. I cannot give you my new address - I do not know it, and we are all supposed to use the mission office address. So, we get mail once a week on p-day. It's kind of hard to only get it once a week, but time is going fast.

Elder Elkington is from Federal Way.

I am doing very well. It's good to be doing the lord's work. I hope you are all doing well too.Keep writing; it's good to hear from you.

Love you all,

Elder Myers