This week's rundown

Dear Family,

Michelle, I'm sorry your money was stolen. As missionaries we have a rule to only carry as much cash as we'll need for the day. That way if one of us is robbed, the other missionaries don't become targets. Because, what would a criminal think if he got 100 dollars off of two missionaries? He'd go look for some more, right? That's awful that you were robbed at the church, though.

Well, we've worked hard this week. We have done even more finding this week: we spent 22.5 hours finding this week. That's even more than last week. I think some of that time is beginning to pay off. So, here's the rundown on this week:

Darla, who Elder Elkington and I found last monday, wasn't there at our appointment we set up this week. We haven't been able to contact her again :(. We'll see if anything works out with her.

Elder Jensen and I went to go tracting in that neighborhood again yesterday, but we decided to talk to everyone we saw on the way. So we talked to this old black guy who's a professional sign holder - he just stands out there on the street corner holding a sign for various things (in this case a used car lot) all day every day. We talked to him about God for about an hour then went on our way. We gave him our phone number and said hi to him a couple more times that day, since he was quite near our apartment. Nothing really came of that, but it was fun to talk to him.

Also, at a bus stop, we talked to a guy for a few minutes who, shockingly, really WAS interested, gave us his contact information, and arranged an appointment with us at his home. So, we'll see how that pans out.
While tracting, we knocked on a door of somebody who we've talked to before at the 99 Ranch Chinese Market, actually. When she opened the door, she laughed and said "do you remember me? I work at the bookstore." She was actually very warm and though she didn't want to let us in, she took a pamphlet (in english, but she does know some english) and we taught a lesson in chinese at the door. So that was a pretty cool coincidence. She not only remembered us, but remembered exactly what we had bought at the chinese bookstore. I guess they don't get many white people buying chinese books there.

We stopped by a potential investigator one evening this week, and nobody was there. So, we were going to go, but I was a little bit interested by something on the bulletin board across from their apartment, so I was fiddling with my camera for about a minute to take a good picture of it. Lo and behold, before I could get a picture, there came Mr. Dai and Mrs. Ren around the corner. We talked to them, and they invited us in, and they agreed to hear the discussions just like that. So, we'll teach them a lesson tomorrow. We were happy about that.

Yang Jie came to church again this week, and we taught her the Plan of Salvation. She accepted everything we taught and, since she is sincerely praying she is, as elder jensen says, on the high road to getting an answer.
Annie, our other chinese investigator, also came to the chinese branch for the first time on sunday. She's very nice but is also kind of wishy washy on commitments and hasn't read very much at all. Nor is she really praying. So we're trying to get her back on track. We taught her a lesson yesterday that was basically just "you need to be reading and praying every day or you'll never find out if these things are true." If she doesn't show Heavenly Father that she's serious about gaining a testimony, he can't help her gain one.

Henry wanted to come to church this week, but when we tried to arrange for that to happen, his family kind of dropped off the face of the world, and we weren't able to contact them. Maybe next week.

Elder Elkington and Elder Gibbons had another Mrs. Ma-esque experience. They had a very solid 17 year old baptismal candidate whose mom suddenly refused to let her be baptized or go to church. Ironic, isn't it, that our families were given to us by God to help us grow spiritually, but yet they can be exactly the thing that keeps us back.

Well, that's about all of note that's happened within the last week. I hope you all have a great week. I love you all.

Love,
Elder Myers