This week has been so amazing too,
oh my goodness....so many people to church this week! So many new
members, so many investigators! And, a couple were some really precious
member referrals that we've been man man lai working with them. Jiayi is
just bursting with all sorts of miracles--we have 2 getting
baptized this coming sunday and a bunch that are still progressing
towards the goal of baptism. The two getting baptized are zheng pei xiang
and wu jing min. They both were still a little nervous but after their
baptismal interviews they just realized they were ready and they are so
excited! Jing min went out after her interview and bought a skirt, she
looked so beautiful yesterday at church. She and her boyfriend are our
investigators but her boyfriend goes home on weekends to Huwei so is their
investigator and will get baptized there. But he came to church here
yesterday and loved it--they both have fantastic testimonies.
They are always a little hesitant right up front to change. But they
want the blessings. It was so awesome because the first time we told
brother zeng, the boyfriend, about word of wisdom he didn't want to keep
it. The blessings weren't even enough. He didn't even want to
set a goal to start keeping it. It didn't feel right to pressure him
so I just told him to go home and talk about it with Heavenly Father and
set a goal with Him. And, especially ask for His help because we
definitely need Heavenly Father's help. And I guess it was kind of a
mistake on my part, because his girlfriend had already come to church a
couple times so she was ready for a baptismal interview and so in a lesson
later that week we showed them the questions and asked them if there were any
problems. It was going to just be her interview, but he said he was ready
as well :) So they both had interviews on Sat and he decided that
night that he was going to start keeping the word of wisdom. They
have such a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon and that is honestly what it
takes. Once the Book of Mormon is true everything else just falls into
place. They all are just so ready.
We are also still teaching the Zhang
children, and they are still coming to church but their mom refuses to stay for Primary. She says that the youngest still has to go to school and she
won't let someone take the other kids back home so they haven't been to primary
or young men's yet. We are still trying to figure out their true desire
as well, Sat's lesson was not as great as before. There was no desire to
learn and whenever we ask them if they wanted to go to church they just say:
dou keyi (anything is ok). So, we are still working with them, working with
mom to figure out what we can do to help them.
Jiahui (last week's Week A dropout) is
not doing too well. We are still meeting with her and helping her set
some goals to improve her life, develop faith, and to realize she doesn't have
to be married to be happy. God wants us to be happy in all and any phase
of life. God knows what we need to do to be happy, use His methods.
This week was fantastic new member
week! Guo xiu rong found a way to get to church and we are trying to help
her see that she can do it every week. She needs church. Well, it
actually all is pretty much because of our zone leader's fantastic invitation
this past week: Operation: Get Recent Converts to the Temple. All the
lessons to our recent converts were focused on the goal of going to the temple,
what we feel when we go, why we go, and how we can prepare. All our new
members are at different stages of preparation but the week ended with: 1 new
temple recommend, 3 new commitments to go next month, and everyone else recommitting
to keep certain commandments needed to obtain their temple recommend. Our
new members are going to the temple! And, over 50% came to church! The
sad thing is that should not be something exciting, they should be there every
single week. We are still working on that.
And we've been helping our new
member jing yi come to church by giving her small callings such as ward greeter
:) She came early to church and was wearing a skirt yesterday so she
could help us welcome people to church :) And we've been asking her to
help us call and share scriptures with people. We are hoping that as she
learns to serve that she can feel the happiness and sense of fulfillment that
comes from helping others.
Oh! I wanted to share something
that I learned as I was reading this morning. This is something I never
would have thought of before. I love doing this activity where we are all
the time focused on Christ. I was reading Jacob 1:10-11. It is
totally about Nephi. But, it talks about how the people love Nephi
because he protected them and 'labored in all his days for their
welfare.' Then! 'wherefore, the people were desirous to retain in
remembrance his name.' This is exactly the same reason we always remember
Christ. I never realized that before. I always love to share Moroni
4:3 about our promise when we partake of the sacrament. Part of that is
that we always remember Jesus Christ. BUT, when we recognize what peopel
have done for us, especially Jesus Christ, we appreciate and always remember.
It's just natural. Remembering him will come naturally. I used to
think that was something hard--that we were supposed to always try and think
about Jesus, but it's really not. Once we learn about his sacrifice for
us and how every single effort of His has been for us and in our behalf--how
can we understand about his sacrifice and not always think about it and what it
means to us? There is so much studying and learning and changing I still
need to do.....
Love you!
-sister allison ko
No comments:
Post a Comment