Hard work pays off

January 24, 2006
Dear Family,

Well, this week has been a great week, and a very hard week. I got the flu this week, and we also worked harder than perhaps we ever have before. We asked 67 people for referrals, and we did 20 hours of finding, which is far beyond our weekly records so far. We found 3 new english students, got several referrals, and got 2 new investigators. So let me tell you about it.

Last Tuesday was transfers. We got a new roommate, Elder Tree. He is a fine missionary, and easy to get along with as a roommate. That's definitely a blessing. We also gave part of our P-day up to go down to Serra Mesa (pretty near where uncle Donald lives) and teach English to a nice Chinese lady named Grace who we met while we were giving out the Chinese fliers to one of the restaurants. We scheduled a weekly Tuesday visit with her, but last night she called us and said that she all the sudden went to LA and she might not ever come back. We sure hope she does - especially since she had us buy an English book for her. She gave us the money in advance, so maybe we'll just have to ship it out to her in LA. We will definitely, once we figure out what's going on, try to get the missionaries up there over to her place.

One other English student that has resulted from the fliers happened like this-- We got a message from an American saying that his mother in law is Chinese wants to learn English and she had a flier that said we taught it. So we're arranging times to come teach her English lessons too. The thing with Chinese people here is that they work A LOT. They do not have much free time - usually one free day from work a week - and that free time usually doesn't line up with our Saturday English Class. So, we do a lot of private English lessons. But, as people learn who we are, what we represent, and accept our invitations to come to church and hear the gospel, the time we spend teaching English will pay off.

Oh, today we got some sweet new name tags that we ordered a couple months ago from the Hong Kong mission. They have our English name and the name of the church in English on the left, and then our Chinese name and Chinese name of the church on the right. It's very cool.
On Thursday, we started using the free bikes that we got from the mission office. They're not very good bikes (mine's purple and has bad brakes) but they help us travel MUCH faster on days we don't have the car. Mira Mesa is a very flat place, which, though it doesn't do much for beautiful scenery, is definitely a plus from the seat of a bike.

That night on exchanges, I went with Brother Harrison to visit a lady in our ward that we felt we should visit, and it turned out that us showing up was an answer to her prayers: she had been wanting someone to come, but she didn't have the courage to ask her home teacher or anyone else to come. She has a lot of health problems right now and we gave her a blessing and the spirit was strong. It was cool.

On Friday night, we went over to Jennifer and Henry's house. Henry mentioned that he'd read the book I'd given him. Not the whole thing yet, but he brought it to me and told me what he'd read, and then we read some more together. We got up through 3rd Nephi. He has since finished it. At that same time, Elder Jensen worked on talking to Jennifer and, miraculously, a brand new immigrant from China who is staying with them as she looks for an apartment. She is a doctor and her English is very good - in theory- but she needs practice. So he invited her to English class and she came. During English class, each missionary took a student and had some one-on-one practice (all in the same room). I was with the new lady, min-lin was her name. We spoke in English and practiced phone conversations, and eventually got into a discussion about missionaries and our religion. She seemed receptive and we invited her to church but she said she had some other plans. But she has some potential. Also we invited Jennifer and Henry, but they also didn't come for some or other reason. But we keep working with them. We took Ronald and his son Calvin over there on Sunday before church to introduce them and try to get them to come to church, but it didn't work. Oh well, maybe next week. Now that they're introduced, we're going to try to have a family home evening/lesson at a member's house with Ronald's family; maybe Ronald’s house, even.

We have gone down to UCSD (The hugest campus I've ever seen) twice in the last few days to try to contact the referral we have down there. He hasn't been home. The second time I went with an exchange and we decided that we weren't going to make an entire trip in vain, so we started tracting. College dorms- now that's a way to get a LOT of doors opened in a short period of time. That's also a good way to find an RA who politely kicks you out, asking you to get express permission first. So we'll have to make some phone calls before we go door-to-door tracting there again.

On Sunday, a potential investigator came to church again and we taught her, moving her into investigator status. Hooray. Elder Jensen spent his night with his exchange mingling and asking for referrals after a huge temple worker fireside. They figured that 1000 very active members from all over the county was a good crowd to ask about Chinese referrals. He seems to have gotten a few good leads, and he gave a lot of Chinese New Year fliers out.

Yesterday we had Zone Conference. Zone conference is always great, but special about this one was that we got these new awesome pamphlets from the church to go along with the missionary lessons.

Yesterday afternoon, I went on exchanges with Elder Elkington down in our English ward, tracting for a couple hours. At the end of our time, we knocked on this door where a lady told us to come back in half an hour because she was taking a nap but she really wants to hear what we have to say. So, we exchanged back up to our regular companions, and then I went back with Elder Jensen. She invited us right in, and then started crying. She opened up to us about how she felt that she had drifted away from God and explained some of her problems. We taught her the message of the restoration in such a beautiful spiritual way that seemed to apply to her like we had never taught before. And we left her with the awesome pamphlet for her to read and study before our return visit on Friday. So, Darla is a new investigator, and we are very happy about what happened yesterday. I'm still a little cautious though, because of what happened with Diamond up in Penasquitos, where we saw the entire Nephite pride cycle happen within about a week. If they don't truly convert and commit while they're humble, as soon as they get their feet under them again, they forget all about God again.

Well, I have exceeded my time, so I had better go. I love you all. Have a great week; thank you for the letters, the stamps, and the gift of a month of money for my mission. I appreciate it very much.

Love,
Elder Myers