Chinese New Years celebration

February 27, 2007
Dear Everybody,

How are you doing? I'm doing pretty good. It's raining here. It's supposed to be a pretty intense storm today.

I did read the New Era this month. I learned so much about being a missionary - I felt kind of shafted for not knowing this stuff already! I mean, seriously, I am a missionary, I should be able to write it, right? But yeah, I learned a lot. I recommend it highly.

We're doing okay on finding people, but we still don't have any baptisms coming up. Steve Dow is probably the closest. We took him to the fireside with President Garner on Sunday night. It went pretty well. We went with our ward mission leader Brother Lao in his very fast car.

Anyway, about this week. Wednesday, I went on exchanges with Elder Ellis in PQ3 and had a good night. That's the ward where I used to serve. We did some tracting and taught some lessons to some less-than-interested people. That night, we went to Gwen's house for dinner - she was a recent convert when I was serving there. She's still active. She fed us some fairly weird food, but it was still good. That night we went to the Albertson’s parking lot and found some kids. We got six teenage kids to sit down on a bench and we taught them all and answered their questions. We committed them to call for a free Book of Mormon. We'll see if they do.
On Thursday, we did some checkbacks and taught a lesson to Steven Dow. That night we passed out some fliers for the party at 99 ranch. The security guard was out there with us and we taught him as we stood there. He was kind of interested.

On Friday, we did service with Elder Mendoza and Elder Ellis, moving a whole bunch of rocks. That was a good work out. That night, we went and visited Evelyn, and she told us she is very busy lately. We taught her about the standards of the church and told her we'd get missionaries in contact with her when she goes back. She probably won't investigate right now, unfortunately. We also checked on a referral we got in the same apartment complex, and he was nice but busy and not super interested. He gave us his email address, so Brother Lao is going to work on him through email.

On Saturday night was our big New Years party. However, when we were at 99 ranch, we saw an advertisement for a big Chinese New Years celebration down town. So on Saturday morning, we loaded up our display and table into the trunk and went downtown, parked and took our table. There were lots of booths there. Unfortunately, we got kicked out pretty quick. They wanted 300 dollars for us to have a booth. I guess they could do that because they had the streets blocked off and a permit from the city. We tried just talking to some of the Chinese people that we saw, but most of the people there were Americans. So, it was kind of disappointing. I haggled with a Mexican guy who had a booth of Mexican wrestling masks and belts to get a cheap Nacho Libre mask. No, I haven't seen the movie, but I don't care. Have you guys seen Nacho Libre?

The branch's new year party had about 400 people. There were probably 20 Chinese nonmembers there. We taught a few lessons and gave a few Book of Mormons out. No new investigators, though. There was an extremely cool lion dance, where the lions jumped into the crowd and scared all the little kids.

On Sunday we went to the MCRD and taught some lessons. I taught less active members who didn't know much about what we believed but wanted to get back into it.

Yesterday we went to La Jolla to tract. We found a couple noninterested Chinese people, and got in a door of an Indian lady. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and gave her a copy. We also taught this kid we had tracted into before named Tom. He's kind of closeminded, but openminded enough to let us in and listen. If he hasn't read what we told him to by next time, then we're not going to waste any more time on him.

Michelle, if you have any questions from the person that's trying to convert you, just ask me and I can give you advice. Remember, all that your friend has to do to get a testimony is to read the Book of Mormon, ponder, and pray sincerely about it. That's it. It's easy and it works every time. I really really really recommend that you read Preach my Gospel.

Keep sharing the gospel guys. I challenge you to a duel - each week, each missionary is supposed to make an invitation to at least 70 people about the gospel outside of tracting. I challenge the whole family to beat me this week. (This is an idea our mission president gave us.) I'll be talking to seventy, can you guys combined come up with that? Yeah, you'll have to stretch your comfort zone and pray a lot, but I promise you it'll be the best week in a long time. Make it a subject of conversation at the dinner table. There's no reason to hold back, the church is true. Will you take my challenge?

Well, that's about it for this week. We've been tracting a lot. I hope you're all doing well. Thanks for your support and prayers. I love you all.

--Elder Myers

I think the spirit must have touched down

February 20, 2007
Dear Family,

How are you doing?

I'm doing pretty fine. This week, I went on exchanges twice. Once with Elder Wickham our zone leader, and once with Elder Mendoza. The highlight of the week happened with Elder Mendoza, an Elder in my district - we worked really hard, tracting a lot and contacting lots of people. Finally at night time, it was down to, well, do we want to keep tracting or go visit a less active or something. At that point it was very clear to me that we needed to do whatever was going to help somebody get baptized. So, we went tracting. We knocked on one door that turned out to be a Spanish member who manages the complex, and she told us that upstairs (which we were going to knock on anyway) was somebody we should try who was a single mom with 3 kids. We knocked on the door, and she said that her neighbor upstairs one more floor had just moved, but was a member of the church and before they moved, they had given her a Book of Mormon. Sandwiched between two member families, I think the spirit must have touched down in her house a time or two because she was prepared, she was receptive. She let us in to teach her, said we could come back, and also said that she was thinking about coming to our church.
God IS preparing people. If we work hard and are willing to just get in there and keep tracting, we'll find them. Her name is Linda.

Yesterday it was raining SUPER hard. Elder Moreno and I decided to rack up some "hot wife points" by tracting in this weather. We got pretty wet, but we found a couple people who said they'd accept a Book of Mormon. We're tracting the same complex again tonight. It's in La Jolla. It was pretty interesting - we prayed for the rain to stop ("thy will be done") when we pulled up to the complex but nothing happened. The building we were doing yesterday had two sides, both with about 20 doors on each side, so we started with the side on which the face of the building protected us from the full deluge. Literally at the last door of that side, when it was time to tract the other side, the rain stopped. It didn't just get a little lighter, it completely, utterly ceased. Just an example of the tender mercies of the lord. The last door we knocked on the second side was an inactive member from the Philipines who I think can be cracked with a little help from Elder Bednar's talk from conference. He still knows the church is true, I think he just needs a little kick.

We've been completely out of touch with Steve Dow this week. I've tried calling several times and he hasn't returned my calls. I wonder what happened. I sent the missionaries in his area over last night to make sure he was still alive and his car wasn't there. Maybe this mystery will be solved this week.

We had a good stake conference this week on scripture study. I love studying the scriptures. I'm about to finish the Book of Mormon again, for about the 5th or 6th time on my mission.
In our English class, we have a kid named Sibo coming now. He's been in the states for 3 months. He's about 10 years old. I think his parents might bring him to church one of these weeks. We met him at 99 ranch.

We did some contacting outside of Chinese restaurants this week. We didn't meet anybody who was really interested, but we talked to a lot more Chinese people than usual.

We did some reconnaisance work at the local college campus and found some "free speech zones" in which we can freely contact lots of the students there. That's a great opening for us.

On Sunday we went to our roommates' baptism, a Mexican named Eric. Elder Moreno gave the Missionary Invite and started crying all over the place when he bore his testimony. There was one nonmember there, a Mexican man who lives in Escondido, who went and gave him a hug after the invite. The Spanish elders are now trying to get this guy taught.

Anyway, that's all the highlights from this week. I hope you guys are doing well. I love you all. Thanks for the letters.

Love,
Elder Myers

This may be the last post.

Blogger is upgraded.

I just called them to repentance.

February 13, 2007

Dear Family,

How are you doing? I'm doing pretty good. It's raining right now and has been since yesterday.
I'm sorry if this week's report is short and boring - not a lot happened that's noteworthy. We did have many good street contacts and got their addresses and phone numbers- none of whom are Chinese. We're currently looking for a place to street contact which isn't 99 Ranch, because we don't want to lose permission to have our English class booth there. We don't care about getting kicked out of other places. This week we did find a new English class student (Yay) and Mr. Fan and Steve Dow came to church. The branch did a little food drive for Steve and we took him a whole lot of food.

We had a great zone conference on Friday. President Garner gave a lesson on the gathering of Israel and at the end bore the most powerful testimony I'd ever heard. Ever. Not in the words alone but in the power of the holy ghost.

We cancelled going to the MCRD this week to take Steven to his local ward, but he got sick and wasn't able to make it. So, we were able to have a bunch of extra time on Sunday with which we street contacted at the movie theater and asked people if they went to church today. When they said they hadn't, (most of them "didn't have time") I reminded them of the first and great commandment, and the first of the 10 commandments, and invited them to do better. I actually liked it. I didn't have to preach hellfire and damnation, I just called them to repentance. None of them wanted to hear the restored gospel though. Oh well.

There was a big 'ol tractout for one of the wards in the zone, in which 16 companionships were able to go out. My companion ( a priest in that ward) and I were able to find 4 checkbacks and commit 2 people to read the Book of Mormon. We were quite blessed to be able to testify to them and have them really become interested.

Yesterday, I got to go up to Escondido for a district leader training. President Garner trained us on how to do baptismal interviews. There were a lot of good insights given.

I met somebody that knows Donald. His name is Brother Obarr and he's the branch mission leader for the Spanish branch. He used to be Don's branch president in Linda Vista.

Well, that's about all that's happened. I hope you all have a wonderful week. Happy Valentines Day. Love you all.

Elder Myers

Recruit McDonald was baptized

Dear Family,

Dad, yes, I'll be coming home to the Redmond stake, that's right. I think. I hope they don't send me to the wrong state.

Happy 18th birthday Michelle! I hope you have the best birthday EVER.

Not a lot happened this week. We contacted a lot of people. I made sure my district all met the goal of contacting 20 people a day per companionship. We did.

We had a car wash this week, and an 18-yr-old Chinese kid showed up to get his car washed. He seems interested in the church, and he's next door neighbors to one of the stake presidency, President McPhie, who actually introduced us to him a couple months ago when we went to dinner at the McPhie home. It's good to introduce neighbors to the missionaries, even if they don't seem interested in the message.

On Sunday, Recruit McDonald was baptized. We didn't get to go, because my companion took forever getting ready and by the time he was ready, we would have arrived at the place where we meet the APs too late, so I had to call the APs and tell them to go without us. That was a bummer. But it's great that he got baptized.

We're making a way better, way sweeter booth for Chinese people. It's one of those science fair tri-fold style things. It'll be fun.

Anyway... Mr. Fan and Steven both came to church. I'm going to try AGAIN this week to get Steven into the English ward. Pray for us.

That's all this week of any interesting note. We're doing a lot of street contacting and finding. I hope you're all doing well. Give missionaries referrals- giving the missionaries one personal introduction to somebody is better than an entire day of their own tracting and contacting. Look for ways to help them. Keep them in your prayers, and keep your own missionary experiences in your prayers. There's no reason to hold back - this IS the true gospel, the everlasting gospel, and if we act out of love we'll do anything to help the people we love find salvation.

Love,
Elder Myers