I'm dressing up as a missionary this year.

October 31, 2006
Dear Family,

Happy Halloween. I hope that you all eat plenty of candy and stay safe. I'm dressing up as a missionary this year. We're staying in because that's the mission rule. We're planning on using tonight for having Elder Jensen make calls to all the former investigators he's taught and try to make appointments with them before he leaves. Next week, I'll be with a new companion, and Elder Jensen will be gone.

Keep working on Faith in God, Lisa. That's a great accomplishment.

That's awesome that you got contacts, becky. I'm surprised mom didn't mention that they were colored as smiley faces or something.

I think the mixer is a great birthday present, mom. I look forward to partaking of some of the goodies.

Dad, how was your trip to Texas? Did you have a good time? Did anything interesting happen?

Yesterday, we spent another day down at 99 ranch for about 6 and a half hours. We found a new English class student, and he seems to be somewhat interested in learning the gospel too. Many more people seemed like they wanted to come, but didn't sign up yet. One of our current English class students actually brought a bunch of Chinese friends to the stake Halloween party.

We had dinner with the Johnson family last night. We set up a time to have another lesson with the mom. We're pretty excited about that. This is the part-member family, where the mom is Chinese Buddhist.

On Saturday, we went singing/contacting in the park. 5 missionaries stood and sang hymns, while 3 contacted people. I sang. It was a good experience. This unique idea was suggested in zone conferences by President Garner.

We met with Gavin again on Saturday, but we weren't able to get him to come to church. His roommate Rubin says that if Gavin converts, he'll start coming to church too.
On Saturday night, we had a tip-off that there was some sort of Chinese party (non-church related, just Chinese community) at the Poway Civic Center, so we went to check it out. It turned out, it was just a karaoke dance, and so we left some flyers and went our way.
Besides those things, we just had the typical missionary work schedule. Some tracting, some contacting, some check-backs. Nothing phenomenal, but we're optimistic that things will happen on the Lord's time-table.

I hope you have a great week. I love you all. Send me some Halloween pictures.

Love,
Elder Myers

Oct 24, 2006
Dear Family,

How are you all doing? I am doing well. Thanks for your letters.

This week, I went to two baptisms. One was somebody that Elder Jensen taught before they gave Mira Mesa 2nd ward to some other elders. Another was of a family in Penasquitos, the Esmaeli family. They're from Iran. Brother Esmaeli has been in America for 5 years, working for enough money to bring his family over here. He had to flee from Iran because he was put in jail and tortured for possessing a Bible. His family is here on assylum. They hardly speak English, but they have a lot of faith and knew it was the right thing to do. The baptism was great - the father, mother, and one of the sons. The night before the baptism, one of their family friends said she wanted to be baptized too, so they quick taught her the rest of the lessons, had her interviewed, and she was baptized too. What a great step in opening doors to preach the gospel in the middle east.

This week, we taught a few lessons to nonmembers while checking back on our potential investigators list. However, we didn't find any who were willing to investigate. So, we move on.

On Wednesday, we went to 99 Ranch with our English stand, then we went to teach Jimmy. He had some infections and asked a blessing. We gave him one; he's getting better now. Here's an interesting experience he had: he was feeling really weighed down by trials and he prayed for God to guide him to know whether he should keep going with the church. The next day, he got a call from the secretary asking him to speak in sacrament meeting on the topic of trials and enduring to the end. He recognized this as the answer to his prayer. So even in small callings, like assigning someone to speak, you can be the lord's instrument in answering prayers.

Last night we watched a video called "Family Answers" with Ronald and Calvin. It's a pretty interesting video, and even though it's a little bit cheesy it has some good ideas on building stronger families. It would be good for family home evening one of these nights, I think. You should be able to get it from distribution.

Do you guys still have ensigns saved up? If so, how would you like to send me all the conference editions you can find (except for the last two - I have them)? If possible, that is...

On Thursday we had lunch with Jessica Yan, who was baptized on Elder Elkington's last Sunday here. She's been in Hong Long for the last several months, but she's still doing well in the church. Do they have Souplantations up in Seattle? That's one of my favorite places to eat down here, besides some of the great Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants.

Other than that, not many noteworthy things happened. We're still working and trying to help the lord's will get done, however we can help.

I love you all,
Love,
Elder Myers

Buddhism doesn't teach that

Dear Family,

How are you doing?

Well, I found out what was wrong with me. Pinkeye. I got clued in when my eye turned pink. It was viral, so the antibiotics weren't doing anything; I just needed to get better. I'm thinking I'm about there, though.

Sounds like fun having rain. I'm glad for it to start cooling down again.

Today we went to the temple. It was a great experience. Elder Sawyer is sick (From what? Pinkeye.) so Elder Jensen stayed back with him and I took 7 foot Elder Beyer to the temple. Elder Jensen gets to go in 3 weeks when he goes home anyway, so he didn't think of it as that much of a sacrifice.

One of the best moments this week is when we went to go teach a kid named Max Johnson - his dad is a member, his mom isn't. He's 15 and he's been active in the church all his life, but never been baptized. So we went over there to see what we could do to help. Turned out, when we got there, we ended up teaching his mom, who claimed responsibility for him not getting baptized cause he doesn't want to disappoint her. She's Buddhist. Lately she's been having a very strong feeling that she wants to be together forever with her family. Hmm, Buddhism doesn't teach that. So, long story short, now she's going to read the Book of Mormon with her husband. Awesome.

Emily's husband found a job. They've been coming to church every week since I got back down here in Chinese work. We'll see what we can do with that...

We started teaching a man named Jingfeng from China. We've met with him twice, and he's keeping his commitments to read the Book of Bormon. He's going back in a couple weeks, though. We've taught him the plan of salvation and the message of the restoration.

We taught Gavin Huang, and his roommate wanted to join too. That was fun. We taught the message of the restoration, and the roommate was fairly interested. We gave him a Book of Mormon.

Sunday we translated talks for the Chinese from English into Chinese. It's kind of frustrating when they ask people who only speak English, who aren't even high council speakers or stake presidency, to give talks and make us translate. It took us several hours to write out a translation: the talks were on Nauvoo. Not really the most typical sacrament meeting topic. Not really a topic with vocabulary that's really easy to just look up in a dictionary. But it was fun anyway.

3 new Chinese people came to English class last week. Up to 5!

Not much else happened. I spent some time with Elder Sawyer this week since he had the same sickness as I did, and he needed somebody to stay with him. So I got a lot of study in this week.
Well, I'm out of time, I love you all. Take care, be safe.

Love,
Elder Myers

Sick. Again.

Dear Family,
How are you doing? I'm doing fine, thanks.

No, I didn't get the cookies. Hopefully they're still good next week. I appreciate the effort, though :).

I've been sick this week. I don't want to go into it very much, because I don't have much time today, but I have bronchitis. Again. I should be better in the next couple of days.

We met with MeiHui twice this week. We had a really great lesson on Saturday with president Ong there. President Ong just got back from being a mission president in Hong Kong, so he knows his stuff. We also taught Sister Jiang once this week at the temple; she's not going to be able to meet for about a month though, since she's going to be taking care of a family who just had a baby, and Chinese traditions just after a birth are very weird.

This week, we had the Mid-Autumn festival. It was pretty cool. There were a lot of non-members who came, and a lot of the people we're focusing on came.

That's about all that happened, actually. I hope you're all having a great week. Awesome that you invited your new ward family over for dinner. I'll be sure to make friends with them.

I love you all,
Elder Myers

Meeting with a Chinese Christian Pastor

October 3, 2006

Dear Family,
Thanks for writing! I'm doing great, how are you?

Yes, conference was fantastic. I haven't been able to watch the Sunday Afternoon session yet (in English) but everything else was good. I took notes, and it filled about 35 pages. The October Ensign (and Liahona) is great too. It's got a lot of really helpful information. Make sure you all read it to know how to help those who are brought into the ward around you. God can't open doors that we're not willing to walk through - when you're prepared to fellowship and bear your testimony to people, God will bring people into your lives who will join the church. They're still distributing special edition Ensigns and New Eras from the 1990s, so I think it'll be out for a while.

Dad, I'm glad you're doing well, too. I find a lot of strength in your optimism and endurance. You're a hard-working dad.

Sister Yue went back to Taiwan without a baptism. Too bad, but we sent in her information so that the missionaries there can contact her. We also saw Mr. Huang and talked to him about Family History, since the sacrament meeting last week was about family history and without a background in the doctrine, he was pretty lost. He understands it now, though. He's super busy so it's hard to meet, but he's a sincere investigator.

On Wednesday we helped Gavin, an investigator the sisters in La Jolla turned over to us, move. We have established a really good relationship with him, and I think he has a lot of promise. We also received some inspiration about a potential investigator I met several months ago, and went to go find her house. She wasn't home, but we found where she lives again (all by memory and the spirit, since we had no record of her address).

On Thursday morning, we met with Pastor Luke of the Chinese bible church. He wasn't really open (it's kinda hard for a pastor to be open to a church for which conversion would mean he loses his job) but we answered some of his questions and I think we did a good job of representing Jesus Christ and his church. We didn't argue, didn't bash, and we directed him to some non-anti-Mormon sources to get his information, since his main source seemed to be books like "Kingdom of the Cults" which he had on his desk. That night, some thing very interesting happened related to our meeting with him, though. We went Chinese tracting, and some people at the door were about to turn us away, saying "we already have a church." Well, we asked what church, and they said "Chinese bible church." We asked them if they knew Pastor Luke and told them we were just up there that morning talking to him. Suddenly, they opened the door and invited us in. I said "You know we're not from your church, I don't want to give you the impression of that, but we are Christian ministers." They still let us in. We chatted for just a minute, until I mentioned that our church was sometimes called the "Mormon" church, at which point they were suddenly very busy and kicked us out. It's silly how that word conjures up for people images of cultish satan worship or incest or some other unholy practice to some, and to others it represents a prophet, or a book that brings people closer to Jesus Christ. It was kind of silly. The community of Chinese Christians especially have very malicious rumors among them, about how we're "the evil church." Regardless, the starters of those rumors will be judged at the last day and all will hear the gospel in its fulness, so we deal only with temporary setbacks.

Saturday morning we had a "Greenie breakfast" for the new missionaries in the zone. One is named Elder Beyer; he's 7 feet tall. The other is Elder Gregory; he's my new roommate. Included in the greenie breakfast are green pancakes, green eggs, green milk, and other such green breakfast commodities.

On Saturday after the afternoon session, we went to the San Diego temple to meet Jiang JieMei and we taught her with Sister Wong on the grass outside the temple. Remember where we all stood when we took the family picture at Donald's wedding? That's where we sat. She's doing really well; God has given her a lot of faith, and it's helping her a lot.

On Sunday, Jiang JieMei came to both sessions of conference (Sister Ding picked her up and made us lunch in between sessions) and we taught her between sessions. Elder Beyer and I went on exchanges so that I could be there to take care of Sister Jiang during the first session and Elder Jensen could go to the MCRD. They had 4 baptisms. Elder Beyer fell asleep during the lesson, and snored with all the fury of a giant. It was pretty funny.

Sunday night, we had a tract-out for Penasquitos Second Ward, and I found a Chinese person who said we could come back. It was pretty awesome. I also found an English investigator for the missionaries in that ward.

Yesterday, we spent from 9 am to 7 pm at the 99 Ranch promoting English class. We found scores of actually interested people, and we think we had a successful day. We ate lunch and dinner and did all of our study there. Then last night we went to see Mr. Dai and his wife and invited them to the branch party this week.

So, hopefully that was interesting to you in some way. We had a good week. I hope you all are having a great October; make sure to send me pictures of your Halloween costumes when they're in season.

Love you all,
Elder Myers