A baptismal challenge accepted

Feb 21, 2006
Dear Family,

Thanks for writing! I'm glad Vancouver was fun. There are a lot of Chinese people that live there. I do drive both on I-5 and I-15 very often. They both go right through San Diego. The Temple is actually right off of the 5.

We don't know what's going to happen next week when Elder Elkington goes home yet, but we do know that President Garner has a game plan. There's a new sister missionary named Sister Wong from Hong Kong in the San Diego Mission, so we might have to get her to help us a bit with some of our more southern investigators; she speaks good mandarin and English, and I'd assume, probably was raised in Cantonese.

That anti-beaver contraption in the pictures you sent is pretty ingenious. Way to go, dad. I don't know if I could even figure out how to dam that. Thanks for the other pictures too, it's always nice to get them. Mom, you and Midnight both look like you're doing well, and the woods the house is in look beautiful.

So, onto about this week. Well, we had something very interesting happen. Remember how last week, I told you that we had an appointment from a previously-opposed father who now wanted to meet with us? His name is Brother Tuioti. Well, when we met with him, he really was sincere. The spirit was very strong, and actually, within the first 5 minutes, I committed him to be baptized when he knows these things are true. That was without really teaching anything first, just sharing a scripture and telling him our purpose as missionaries, and making the invitation. Now, we've met with him 3 times, and he's working on setting a date to be baptized. He has really turned around 180 degrees, and it's so amazing to see how sincere he is. I'm glad that he was humble enough to put aside his pride and learn from us. When he's baptized, so will their 3 kids. Unfortunately, if I'm transferred next week, I won't be able to keep teaching them until baptism.

More good news: Jessica's being baptized. Elder Elkington and Elder Gibbons worked their magic, and after 3 years of investigating, she's had her baptismal interview and will be baptized on Sunday. That is, if her husband doesn't forbid it.

We tried to pick up Henry again for church this week, and again fortune wasn't on our side. We'll make sure plans are absolutely solid next week.

Our appointment with Darla this week was cancelled because her family came into town. So far we've only taught her twice.

Mr. Dai and Mrs. Ren were sick this week when we tried to visit them, and so we didn't teach them.

It seemed that this week was kind of a pause in the work with some people; a lot of appointments fell through, but we got brother Tuioti who now has more promise than all of our other investigators put together, so it was definitely a good week, all in all.

On Sunday I taught Sunday school in Chinese about Our Heavenly Family. Ever tried to answer a question about Heavenly Mother in Chinese? It was very hard and I didn't do an amazing job, but I learned a lot from preparing the lesson anyway. Then in Sacrament meeting, we had Skyler Ng's baptism; he's the 8 year old son of the first counselor in the branch presidency.
Yesterday I went on exchanges with Elder Gibbons. We taught Yang Jie and Annie Zhang. Elder Jensen wanted a chance to go up to orange county with Elder Elkington, which is why we made the exchange. They had lots of fun, and we got pizza from the members in whose home we taught Yang Jie, so everybody won.

Well, I'm about out of time. I hope you all have a great week. I love you all.

Love,
Elder Myers