Conference talks and Chinese restaurants

Dear Family,

Hello! How are you all doing? I'm doing great.

Elder Jensen has 7 weeks left in the mission as of today. He's trying not to think about it too much. He's a big help, but my Chinese is still slowly approaching par.

Michelle, how's school going? Are you enjoying cross country? It's not giving your legs any trouble, is it?

On Sunday we were over at Ronald's house so he could give us a ride to church, and we met a Mexican friend, Herman, that's been living with him for a week. I didn't see any harm in inviting him to come to church with us, so I did. He accepted, and Ronald got him a white shirt and tie to wear. So we brought a Spanish-speaking nonmember to the Chinese branch, and he had a good time. Last night we went to their house for family home evening and showed a conference talk on the multilingual DVDs. We actually watched it in Spanish with English subtitles so that Calvin, Ronald, and Herman could watch it. It went well.

I'm really excited for conference too; I have been for months. Yesterday, we watched several conference talks in Chinese with people. We watched Elder Holland's "Broken Things to Mend" talk (Definitely a top notch missionary talk to give to non-members) with Sister Yue, and it made her cry. It's super-powerful. She's really bummed about having to go back to Taiwan soon. She really likes the church, the missionaries, and everything. She says she'll keep reading and everything when she goes back to Taiwan. I'm not sure that her baptismal date is going to hold - not that she's not ready, but that she doesn't feel ready. That's a common sentiment among most Chinese investigators. She wanted to know so much more. So we gave her "Gospel Principles" book and challenged her to read it within a week. Yesterday, the only real question she had was some confusion from some Jehovah's Witnesses' pamphlets she had been given. We had to explain that the J-dubs were well-intentioned and taught many good things but that they, like other churches, are also part of the confusion of the apostasy, and we have clarity of who God is through the added strength of the Book of Mormon and modern prophets.

And last night, we showed another talk, "Beware the evil behind smiling eyes" to Jimmy, and then again to Ronald (which I already talked about). At Jimmy's house, he had a friend visiting from Vietnam (she's Chinese-Vietnamese) and watched it in Chinese. We then gave her a Book of Mormon and got her contact info. Elder Jensen is going to be in Vietnam in December, and going to try to visit her or something. His brother and sister-in-law live there. They hold church meetings in their house, since the government won't allow them to have a chapel.

On Sunday Morning, we went to the MCRD again to teach the marine boot camp recruits, and we set some baptismal goals with people. It's pretty cool down there. The APs are in charge of the work down there, we just teach lessons. One guy last week came up and told me "I've been coming to church the last several weeks, how do I join?" I don't know how we missed him before, but he'll probably get baptized.

Last night, President Leung took us out to eat at a northern Chinese restaurant, where all 4 dishes were nothing I had ever eaten before. There were some new vegetables, a very spicy lamb, Chinese-style ribs, and a very good marinated smoked duck (not Peking duck). The only thing I was accustomed to was the rice and the water, but it was a very good meal. I think I'll be very good at ordering Chinese food for when we all go to Chinatown in Vancouver... except Vancouver's Chinatown all speaks Cantonese, so maybe I'll have to reconsider.

Sunday night we had a Chinese tractout. 10 branch members teamed up with 10 missionaries, and we got some pretty good leads. I'm excited to see how it turns out. I heard that in my old area they picked up a new investigator from the tract out we had there.

We got a referral for a Chinese family this week who went to temple square and were able to set up an appointment with them. We taught them the basics and invited them to church, but weren't able to get a return appointment. It was nice to have a referral that actually let us teach, though. :)

Thursday we went with the Korean missionaries to help one of their part-member families move from Chula-Vista to la Jolla. All 4 of us helped load the truck, then Elder Jensen went on exchanges with Elder Bates to go teach Sister Yue, while I stayed with Elder Kim to ride up with the non-member husband to go to la Jolla to unload. On the way there (about a 30-40 minute drive), Elder Kim taught him the whole time and committed him to read the Book of Mormon, and from what I hear things are going well. So service does help. We moved him into a 17-story building not far from the temple. I've never been in a residential building that tall before.

On Thursday, Brother Lau, the branch mission leader took us to dinner at the Silver Ark Chinese restaurant and it was really excellent. Not just the dinner, but the conversation. He is a really good leader to work with; he has lots of good ideas and, even better, he actually puts them into practice.

I am about 4 pages from finishing Jesus the Christ, that 793 page whopper. Yes!

And that's about it for this week. I hope you all are doing pretty well and that dad is still recovering. I love you all.

Love,
Elder Myers