WHAT MORE CAN HE SAY THAN TO YOU HE HATH SAID?

October 5, 2015

Family,

Dad - Wang DX is good.  He came to church yesterday and is planning on attending conference with us, at least 1 session.  Liu DX moved back to Mainland unexpectedly because he can't find work and doesn't know if he'll be back.  He sent us a text saying how he was grateful for us teaching him and could tell how we loved the Lord, and he finished with his testimony. Hopefully he can keep reading the  Book of Mormon over in Mainland.  No new news with the others.  Branch 2 is cool.  It's really awesome to be able to understand what is being said in sacrament meeting, instead of just sitting there clueless for 3 hrs.  They really don't have many piano players here, so I get to play the piano a lot, which is fun.  I play about every meeting.  We always sing very spirited hymns during Elder's quorum.  The Elder's quorum president loves it and leads with enthusiasm. Our focus is on LA's and unordained bretheren, because we have very few priesthood holders in the branch. We haven't taught Gao JM.

I'll get a voice recorder hopefully today, so I can send you voice recordings next week. Thanks for the idea.

Good week this week.  I had a hard time getting back to Macau though.  As I was going through immigration, I got stopped and taken back into another room.  They asked me why I keep coming back to Macau and then finally after 50 min they let me go, but required me to got to the immigration center in Macau the next day to explain the same thing.  My comp goes through immigration a different way since he is a HK citizen, so he had to sit outside wondering whre I was for the whole time. Anyway, no prob though, i got my 10 more days.  

One of the hilarious things here is all the exercise equipment they have in the parks. It's so funny.  I'll send you a pic hopefully this week.  One of the machines, you sit down and push to bars forward which lifts up your seat and then bring them back as your seat goes back. Then they have a bunch for flexibility, which are pretty funny.  We have been eating a lot of moon cakes this past week. Delicious. Most of them, some are gross.  There is a guy in the ward, Parker, who was wearing a Hala Madrid shirt the other day and I started singing it to him.  He was laughing. Every time I see him now, I sing that to him. The other day he came over to me and started playing it on his phone for a few seconds.  

Few quick thoughts.  The third line of hymn #85 hit me real hard this week.  "What more can he say, than to you he has said." As I am petitioning the Lord for help in seeing how I can improve, this struck me.  I have already been given all that I need to know.  I know what I need to do and need to make sure I am living with integrity and following the spirit.  We are all given enough to press forward.  It is easy to wait sometimes thinking that you will go and do after you know and understand, but that is not how it works.  I also love the 5th verse of that hymn this week.  

I also loved 1 Nephi 15:24 about the importance of the word of God and especially the reference to holding fast.  It took me to Proverbs 4:13.  "Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go; keep her; for she is thy life." Let her not go.  Whenever we read scriptures, we need to let her not go, we need to keep it, ponder it, study it again.  We can't just read it and then let her go and forget about it.  Whenever we receive instruction and counsel from our priesthood leaders and from prophets and apostles, we need to let it not go.  It is very easy to let it go. Having the perspective that 'she is thy life' will help us let her not go.  Later in v 26 it reminds us to ponder the path of thy feet.  This can also give us precious perspective by pondering where we are taking ourselves vs maybe where we should be taking ourselves. 

Thank you for your letters and your prayers.  

Elder Stratford

 Temple

 BBQ with the Filipinos.

 snack jack. I like snacking so much and ever since buying this snack, everybody in the apartment calls me snack jack.  

 Macau Tower. We went to Macau tower today and had the 360 buffet at the top.  It was sweet.  I definitely got my money's worth of food.  Nobody could keep up. My comp was the last one standing and bowed out a few plates before me.  The top spins around slowly while you eat, it's a sweet view of macau, taipa and mainland china.  So close to each other.

Taipa where I live.

  Macau. 

 macau tower.  Elder Lai, Parker, Elder Brandse, Elder Feng, myself and Elder Ma.

 Elder Ma took this of me, looking out of Macau Tower.

my comp praying out of language study

SACRAMENT MEETING 4 TIMES IN A WEEKEND

September 29, 2015

Family,

Sorry I forgot to tell you that my P-day would be Tuesday instead of Monday.  This is because of my U-turn is today, so they made it my temple day and p-day instead of monday.

Mom - I have not been able to see a primary program. We will watch General Conference the weekend after it happens.  Language is fine.  I am starting to understand a little better what people are saying.

Dad - ping pong was fun last p-day.  I for sure sent my information to Regents Scholarship.  I remember going into the Administration Building to get my Transcript and then going up to mail off the letter with the information in it.  I don't know what else I can tell you. I remember mailing it in.  That's pretty weird. We were just the missionaries in charge of teaching and baptizing her.    My language is not good enough to be able to confirm her so I did the baptism.  It was fine saying the prayer in Mandarin. Pretty short to learn.  I have to leave in 10 days.  My comp doesn't.  He has no restrictions. It's just because I am an American.

We have been teaching a new investigator the last week and a half.  He is amazing.  His name is Wang DX. I found him through calling through former investigators. He has been taught by a lot of missionaries in the past. During our first meeting with him, I had an interesting prompting.  I felt prompted to tell him that the Lord needs him on His side.   I have never said anything like this before, but I felt like I should share it.  He was kind of surprised and asked me if that was really true.  I affirmed to him that it was.  He has been amazing these last week and a half we have known him.  He is praying everyday and reading from the scriptures everyday.    When I called to follow-up, he told me that he got a special feeling when reading in 1 Nephi 3 and how he especially liked v7.  Amazing.  He came to church 2 weeks ago and has a lot of good questions.  He seems to be interested, has a desire to learn, and is very sincere.  He wasn't able to come to church this last week though.  

Liu DX is such a stud too.  He actually called us Sunday morning and told us that he would like to come to church that morning.  We met him at the Bus stop and attending the 9 am meeting with him. He got home from work at 4. Slept for 3 hrs. Got up and called us to see if he could come to church.  Amazing.  We introduced him to some members and the branch president and seems to be getting along good with them and making friendships.  He went to work straight from the church meeting.  We haven't been able to meet with him in a while though, because of his crazy work schedule.  

We had a lot of lessons planned where investigators didn't show up.  We had  5 in a row on Saturday, 1 on Sunday and 1 on Monday.  and some others beginning of last week.  It was a bummer.  

This week things got shifted around a lot.  Elder Griffiths got moved out of Macau so his companion, Elder Feng, is now our companion. We are a 3 some now.  Also this week we were told that we are now going to be doing English work and attending Macau 2nd branch, which is the English/Tagolog branch.  So it's pretty unique.  Elder Feng is a cantonese missionary.  So we are really busy.  We get to now do all of his work with his investigators as well as ours, not including now being a part of the Filipino ward.  We will now be attending 2 sacrament meetings every Sunday.  Our normal cantonese branch at 1 and then the english branch at 5.  We got to go to sacrament meeting 4 times last week though.  That is because we went to the 9 am meeting because of Liu XS on Sunday as well as the other 2 and we also went to the sacrament meeting on Saturday, because my comp got asked to give a talk.  They hold a sacrament meeting for the 2nd brach on Saturday night as well as Sunday night, because some of the Filipinos can't get off work on Sunday.  We normally won't attend Saturday though.  

Filipinos are opposite Chinese people.  Chinese people are quiet and keep to themselves.  Filipinos call you over and won't stop talking to you.  They invited us to a birthday party  right after sacrament meeting sunday, that they do every month for the birthdays in the ward.  We went and got to know a lot of the members.  It was good.  They eat a lot of food.  I was just standing there talking to somebody and they just kept dumping food on my plate.  I wasn't complaining though.  I'm a little bumbed I won't be able to continue to work with them. I am out in 10 days.  

A funny thing is that nobody knows how to handshake.  They never really do it.  We go to give them handshakes and they just hold our their hand like a dead fish for us to handshake.  It's pretty funny.  All the school kids wear uniforms that are all white.  White pants and white button down shirt for the guys and a white dress with a tiny colored tie for the girls.  

Quick thoughts.  Nevermind. No time.  Sorry. I'll try to sneak them in next time. Thank you for your prayers.  I know that as we feast on the words of christ, we can have the spirit more in our lives and know how we can best improve to be a better disciple of Christ.

Elder Stratford

 moon cakes. It is a holiday here in Macau.  The moon festival. 

dragon fruit. Delicious

BAPTISM OF WU JM

September 21, 2015

Family,

Mom - there is nothing i really need or want that I can think of at the moment thanks. Going better with opening my mouth. The people are nice. They kind of laugh at me and mostly tell me they have no idea what I am saying. Haven't been able to use the paddles, though we are going to use them right after I send out these emails. I have until about Oct 9 in Macau. Still haven't met with Gao JM, or Tang Yang. He reads the Book of Mormon every day. We meet him 2 weeks ago and he was at Alma 5 and then a week ago he was at Alma 34. We were supposed to meet him Thursday, but we misscommunicated on the time and weren't able to reschedule. Thanks for letting me know what is happening at home. 

Dad - Thanks for keeping me updated on sports and work and thoughts. Bummer cougars lost, but sounds like they are pretty fun games. I have a few more weeks in Macau, just under 3 weeks.

One miracle would be last Monday. We were traveling to the chapel in Macau from Taipa (where we live) and the police pulled the bus over just before the bridge. They had everyone who was standing up get off the bus. We all got off and they had us show them our ID cards. This was definitely a miracle because I usually don't carry my ID card around. I only need it for emails, so I bring it along and then put it back in my drawer after. For whatever reason, I left it in my bag after emails. I always have my ID card on me know. 

One pretty funny thing would be last Tuesday I think. We were going home teaching with Guan HZ our Branch President and visited a few families. The lessons went longer than expected and we didn't get done till 9:35. We need to be back in our Apartment by 10:00and it usually is around 25 min from the bus stop to our apartment not including traveling to the bus stop. So we got out of the visit and started running to the bus stop a little ways away. We were running through a park and my comp ran inbetween a dog and a man and all of a sudden, the dog jerked and the man turned his head. My comp ran into the dog leash at full speed and kind of lost his balance. I was laughing so hard. The dude with the dog was yelling, "my dog, my dog!" Dog was fine. We did make it back on time though. Literally right at 10. Also, whenever we do comp study at the chapel we always can use the piano's to sing a hymn. So now we always sing one of those upbeat, energetic hymns. I play with a lot of energy and we sing at the top of our lungs. Pretty fun. Give's us some energy going into 2 hrs of comp (2 hrs because of my training the first 12 weeks). Also, the 2 other elders that live with us have rubik cubes. So while they were gone, I popped a piece out and turned it around and popped it back it. This makes it impossible to solve. That night they were getting frustrated because they couldn't solve it and were suprized because they had never run into the problem before. I told them to let me have a try, so I did it for a while and while they turned their head hurried and switched the piece back around so I could solve it. They were pretty shocked and amazed that I could solve it and asked me how I did it. I didn't tell them and waited a few days and kept doing it to them before I told them. It was pretty funny.

Pretty amazing week this week. I was really blessed to be able to participate in the baptism of a mainland visitor. It came as a total suprize. Usually they are supposed to give us at least a week notice and it usually is always done in Hong Kong, not Macau. But we got informed Wednesday that we would be doing a mainland baptism the next day, Thursday. So it was pretty crazy trying to get that all ready. Thursday was an amazing day. We met her at the chapel at 10. Thaught her Lesson 1 till around 11. Let her read and pray about the book of mormon for 30 min, then taught her Lesson 2 from 11:30 till 12:30. Then she had a break to go to lunch from 12:30 to 2. During this time, we traveled back to Taipa for a lesson with Tang yang at 1:30, which we didn't teach because he thought we scheduled him for 4:30, We had a quick lunch and headed back to the chapel. Elder Feng and Elder Griffiths taugth her lesson 3 from 2 to 3 and then we taught her lesson 4 (all of the commandments) from around 3 to 4. We then taught her lesson 5 (laws and ordinances) from 4 to 5 (you now have to teach all 5 lessons before baptism, not just first 4). Then she had her baptismal interview, while we started to get things ready for the baptismal service. We had the service from 6 to 7. It was an amazing baptismal service. the Spirit was very strong. We were singing the opening hymn and Wu Haici (the sister who got baptized) couldn't hold back tears. I had the priveledge of baptizing her, then my comp confirmed her. I don't know what he said, but boy the spirit was so strong the whole prayer. Then she bore her testimony which was amazing. Didn't understand much of it, but could feel it. My comp told me that she said how she had pushed off the prompting for some time, and now was very glad she decided to be baptized. She also expressed suprize at all the people who attended. She is from Zhu Hai which is right across the water from Macau. So a lot of people from her Branch were there and all the missionaries in Macau with investigators. I then was able to play that arrangement of How Great thou Art from Bebee. I finally started to play the piano according to the text again, which all hymns should be played. The text tells you how the piece or hymn sould be played, which parts to put emphasise on and so forth. It was the best I have played it in a long while. Then after that, her Branch President spoke and that was it. I really was so blessed to be able to associate with her for a few hours. She taught me a lot more than i'm sure i could have taught her. She is amazing.

Thank you for all your prayers. I know our Savior lives and I know that God is really in the details of our lives. The more I pay his attention to his tender mercies in my life, the more I realize this. Thank you for your inspiring examples.

Love,

Elder Stratford

 Me, elder ma, Wu JM and her fellowshipper, Liang JM

 Elder Fung, Elder Griffiths, Wu JM and us. We took too many pics.

all the macau missionaries with Wu JM and her fellowshipper.

TENDER MERCIES OF THE LORD

September 14, 2015

Family,

Thank you for the emails, the updates on BYU, and other insights and thoughts.  I appreciate them.  I got your package when I went into to Hong Kong on Saturday for my U-turn. Thank you lots.  

Good week.  Haven't been able to meet with Liu XS or Gao JM.  Tang Yang is doing good although we can't get him to church because of school.  I am starting to cry a lot. It's pretty bad.  We were teaching Tang Yang and reading from Alma 34 with him, that is where he is at, and I just couldn't hold it in when reading in verse 14 and 15 I think. Very powerful chapter and verses.  Tang Yang is such a stud.  A-xiang we commited to baptism which was awesome.  We watched the Restoration video with her, discussed a little bit and asked her to be baptized.  Xu JM is good, but can't come to church either.  Jin XS says he really felt peace and his worries leave him while at church last week, which was great, but didn't come yesterday.  Our recent converts we are teaching are doing well.

I am constantly amazed at the tender mercies of the Lord in my life.  The other day while waiting in line to get dinner, Ma Zhanglao told me that he was grateful to the Lord for blessing him with a humble companion.  I don't think anything I have done has merited that kind work, but it got me thinking.  I have been wondering how I can do better at serving with all my heart and giving my all to the Lord.  I have been thinking about how I can do better at opening my mouth and have the faith and courage to talk to everyone.  My father's voice and words are always ringing in my ears to talk to everyone.  Whenever I am on the bus or anywhere and not talking to everyone, the Holy Ghost brings his words to my rememberance. But still for whatever reason, I am not always heeding the voice.  I have been trying to figure out how I can better do this.  Ma Zhanglao's words reminded me about the importance of humility and eliminating pride.  Because of his comments, I decided to again review Beware of Pride by Benson to see how I can improve.  I feel like I talk a lot about this, but it must just be something that I really feel like I need to improve on and is important.  This time through I was impressed with what he said about emnity or a state of opposition.  He points out that when we are prideful, we pit our will against God's.  I think this is the answer I have been looking for.  I have been more in the Spirit of my will, not Thine be done.  I have been not talking to everyone because of personal embarassment or personal insecurity with the language even though I know I should be talking more instead of resorting to my vocab book.  It is my pride causing this.  It really is so important that we have the humility to submit to the will of our Heavenly Father, because only then can He use us to help Him gather his children.  It was a blessing from the Lord to help me see this and try to improve.  As I am writing this now, it seems pretty silly that I am not willing to talk to everyone.  I hope to change that now.  Maybe if you could include a question in your emails to me reminding me of this, to talk to everyone, that will give me someone besides my Heavenly Father to be accountable to, which should be motivation enough. 

I really like what it says in the 1st book of Nephi chapter 3.  Nephi's brothers were about to turn back in i think v 13 and then on verse 21 are persuaded to be faithful and stay.  Pretty remarkable turn around in just a few verses.  I spend some time thinking about this, because man how sweet would it be if I could better help my investigators, who are not that interested in continuing learning about the gospel or who do not want to keep commitments, change to desiring to be faithful.  I think this can apply to anybody we are teaching.  The first thing Nephi does in v 15 is show his determination to accomplish the commandments and his faith.  I think as I am teaching my investigators who want to turn away that we won't give up on them and the Lord won't give up on them. Show determination to help them come unto Christ and explain our purpose again to them. The second thing Nephi does is give them a call to action. He doesn't just leave it at that though, he give them a solution or a way for them to accomplish it.  He give them some guidance (v16). Then in v 17 and 18 He reminds them why they left in the first place and helped them see why they are now doing what they are doing. Then in v 19-20 he explains why they are back in Jerusalem.  This gives them mitivation to stay.  He shows the importance and significance of this action.  Then in v 21 they are persuaded to be faithful.  I hope to implement this more into to my teaching. To first show determination and faith, then give a call to action and some guidance of how that could be done, and then explain the why to the investigators.  I really believe it is important that they understand the why.  That has changed the attitude for me doing things many times, after I understand the why.

Thanks for your prayers. I know the Book of Mormon is true and as we strive to abide by its precepts, we can get nearer to God and better help others do the same.  

Love,

Elder Stratford

 Elder and Sister James (senior couple in Macau) treated us today for P-day lunch.  It was delicious.

 Delicious!

CARD IN THE APPLE

September 7, 2015

Family,

Gao JM is around 40.

 Her son is a few years older than Blake.  

Comp isn't as busy. Just that first week figuring everything out, I guess.  

We either run, or do pull ups or push ups or core workouts for exercise. 

English classes are good.  We are trying to make them  better. We only have a handful of people attending now.

 People in Macau are pretty nice at listening to us for street contacting. Probably 1 in 4 people will listen to us. 

It is ok.  I don't think it is that effective.  We usually do that when we have nothing else to do. 

 It depends when we do calls.  Usually we do a half an hour to an hour.  This is basically calling investigators, members, people we contacted that day on the street, less actives, new converts, and other former investigators from the area book to see if we can meet.  

street contacts vary.  We'll just try to talk to somebody, if they stop we'll ask them some questions, share with them a few things, invite them to meet with us, or come to church, or come to english class.  We'll give them a card or a flyer about our church. if we have a prayer it counts as a lesson. Anywhere from 1 to 10 min.

3 branches in macau. 2 cantonese branches and then a english/tagalog branch.

weather is cooling off.  It has been a lot more rainy, but not bad.

knew about piano i think because I played a hymn for them sometime, i don't know.

i probably told my comp about my brother while we were street contacting.

the other missionaries in the branch performed in sacrament meeting.  We performed EFY medley.

We can't get a-xiang to keep commitments right now except for continuing to meet with us.

everything is pushed back a half hour. so we get up at 7 and go to bed at 11. 

Thanks for updating me on everything and for your thoughts. Go Cougars! I'll probably get the package this week when I go to the mission office on saturday.  I have to leave macau for a day because of visa restrictions since I am an american.  

This week has been a good week.  Our investigators are good.  We couldn't contact or meet with Gao JM this week. Jin XS came to church, which was great.  a-xiang meet with us, but isn't keeping commitments.  We got a few new investigators this week.  Xu JM and TangYang.  

TangYang is amazing.  He already has been taught a lot and accepted a baptismal invitation in the past, but left back for mainland.  He just came back for school, so we met with him and reinvited him to be baptized which he accepted, which was awesome.  I couldn't understand a lot of what he said, but I sure could feel the spirit strong and could feel of his faith as he spoke.  He has a baptismal date for Oct 12.  for people to be baptized we now have to teach them all 5 lessons, not just the first 4 and they have to attend church 4 out of 6 weeks.

Xu JM is amazing too.  We contacted her through the area book during calls of former investigators.  She has had some trials with her job and work and explained to us that she believes God gave her these hard things to help her grow, which was amazing to hear her say.  We were just planning to get to know her and talk about prayer, but while she was talking I had the prompting to invite her to be baptized.  So as I was talking about prayer, I was talking about how we receive answers to our prayers through the Holy Ghost and then talked about the Gift of the Holy Ghost we can have after we are baptized.  I turned it over to my comp to say something before I invited her. He said some things for a minute, then paused, and invited her to be baptized.  She accepted.  It was cool.  Can't come to church though because of work.   My comp was surprised to hear me talk about baptism and the gift of the holy ghost, but got the same prompting to invite her.

I am learning the importance of having members in the lessons.  We tried to have more members in our lessons this week and it was amazing.  Because of a member Jin XS came to church, there is no way he would have come otherwise.  Part of the reason too, is because his son, who has a lot of problems due to kidney failure, was able to drive himself to the hospital.  This amazed Jin XS.  He called my comp that night and asked if he was God.  My comp assured him he wasn't.  This might have been why he came to church.  He is an old man about 80 yrs old and likes to talk a lot.  Pretty funny.  Really hard to get him to understand things.  have to teach very simply.

Also, A-xiang texted my comp that she wasn't interested in learning more.  We intvited a member anyway to english class to talk with her and after english class she decided to let us teach her. The member helped a ton.  She got a-xiang talking more and they seemed to get along really well.  After the lesson, she grabbed my comp's book of mormon, saying that was her's so she could read and do her commitment.  We were shocked.  We can't get her to read, but she just actively took the book.  Hopefully she really does read though.

Out of time.  Thanks for your prayers.  

Love,

Elder Stratford

 weird drinks, but delicious they have here.  They put jelly and fruit stuff at the bottom.

 missionaries in our branch

 Card in apple

 my favorite meal.

TALENT SHOW

August 31, 2015

Family,

Hope everything is well back home.  Thanks for sending the package.  I'll let you know when it comes. 

My regular day is get up at 7, exercise for 30 min then eat, shower and get ready for studies.  Personal study starts at 8:30, Comp study is at 9:30 for 2 hours for the first 12 weeks for training stuff.  Then usually lunch at 11:30. Then Language at 12:30.  The rest of day is pretty variable.  Our studies usually don't all get done in the morning in a row like that, that is just if we have no other morning commitments.  We usually go out street contacting for an hour or two each day.  The rest of the time is different meetings with the ward and others, teaching lessons, doing calls, other finding things like teaching english class every thursday for an hour.  We get back to the apartment by 9:30, usually earlier because we do calls for some time.  Planning is 9:30 to 10. and then I usually shower again, write in the journal, and do whatever till bed at 11. 

My comp just got called as the zone leader for Macau. There are 16 of us here. 8 of us in the 1st branch.  He has had a lot of meetings with the other leaders who all just got called and so Elder Brandse and I got to go on splits for a good amount of time this past week.  My comp had a training in Hong Kong this Wed, so we were on exchanges that day.  It is pretty interesting because Elder Brandse just got on his mission too.  He is a week behind me.  and speaks cantonese.  It is pretty fun to go street contacting with him.  We both can barely say anything and when we do, we don't undersand each other because he speaks a different language.  This has helped me learn the language a little faster because I am now the one talking most of the time and he pops in here and there.  We were able to get quite a few street lessons in, which was cool.  It is pretty rare that a trainer gets called as zone leader, but two did here in macau.  Who knows why, but it is good.  It really helps and is an answer to a prayer. I prayed when I got to Macau to help me learn the language better and right after that my comp was called as zone leader.  I was pretty shocked, but it has been a blessing. 

Anyway.  Gao Jiemei has been out of town this week in Taiwan and just got back.  She actually came to church yesterday, which was amazing.  It is our first investigator or less active to come to church.  The meeting reminded me a lot of home, since her son was running around everywhere and making noise and she was chasing him down.  Just like Blake.  No other investigators this week.  We are continuing to meet with Liu xiansheng. He is really cool guy.  He always gives us hot water everytime we meet.  I don't know why people do this. It's already so hot here, but whatever.  It was 98% humidity yesterday.  Usually it is not that bad.  It has been more rainy this week, but not bad. A-xiang came to English class thursday which was good and we were able to meet with her, but she still isn't keeping any commitment.  Jinxiansheng we haven't been able to meet with this week.  

We had a talent show with the 1st and 3rd branch on saturday. It was fun, but the less active that was planning on coming with us couldn't make it and I was performing in it, so we stayed.  I accompanied some missionaries singing a Child's prayer and then I accompanied 3 sisters doing this other piece I've never heard of.  They did a good job.  One family in the ward had their daughter sing Let it Go.  She has a dress on and a blond wig.  It was pretty cute.  She danced, and sang and ran around with her little brother in an olaf costume, while her dad kept spraying this fake snow stuff following them around.  she is about 7 yrs old.  Anyway, We also performed at sacrament meeting yesterday.  They gave me the music on Sat and asked me to accompany them Sunday, so that was fun. We sang the EFY melody. It was good.  The spirit was strong as they sang. Cool piece.  

Few quick thoughts.  I love what it says in Ether 2 and 3 about prayer.  It is interesting the pattern the Lord uses to answer the questions of the Brother of jared.  First he tells him to build barges.  This might be to see the brother of jared's obedience.  Then the brother of Jared returns adn reports. He ask the Lord 2 questions.  1 is aout how to get air and the other is about how to get light.  The Lrod answers 1 of his questions but then asks the  brother of jar4ed what he should do to answer the second question.  The brother of jared shows that he really wants an answe rand is willing to work bery hard to get it.  He hikes up a huge mountain gets stones adn then hikes up to the very top to pray.  I'm sure he could have done something easier or got the stones some other way, but this was his way of showing dedication to God and a desire to have an answer.  I think this pattern is good to know.  Sometimes the Lord tells us to do things without us asking, other times he answers our prayers straight away and other times he wants us to go and show Him that we want an answer and work to receive the answer.  The answer will come as a confirmation after we have done the best we could and given our best answer. Ether then prays and first recognizes his dependence on the Lord.  He then shows his faith that his plan will work with the Lord.  I think that is a good example to follow on how to pray and receive answers.

Also I think A lot of times God doesn't answer our prayers because we are praying for different things that are both good.  He expects us to take the step of faith and go and do.  Then if what we are doing is not right, he will then warn us.  

Another quick thought since I have a few more minutes. I am learning that everything goes back to the Atonement.  I was pondering Ether 12:2.  It tells us that Ether could not be restrained because of the spirit of the Lord which was in him.  Wow.  I believe the reason he had the spirit so strong with him was because he really understood and used the Atonement.  This allowed him, first, to be clean so he could be worthy of the spirit and have it in greater abundance.  Also, experiencing the grace and firgiveness of the Atonement instilled in him a greater desire to share it. It goes back to what I think I shared last week about Enos.  The Atonement gave him increased desire.  Lehi is another example.  After he experience the love of God, he desired his family to taste of it. Alma the younger is another exampole.  He 1st experienced the Atonemetn and then said, "yea and from that time even until now, I have labored without ceasing."  

Thank you for your prayers in my behalf.  Thank you for your example to me.  They really do strengthen me often.  The spirit whispers to me and reminds me of things you have told me that help me be better and remind me how I can improve.  I know the Atonement is real and I know that as we ponder when we study, the Holy Ghost can help us see connections and learn what He would have us learn. This allows the Holy Ghost to bring things to our remembrance.  I know God answers our prayers.

Love,

Elder Stratford

District pic with teachers

Branch President Teng in MTC

me at temple first day

church lobby

apartment living room and kitchen

Bathroom.  We really are blessed with a sweet apartment

Bedroom

 study room

place where we do emails

funny door.  read the words.  I was laughing for a while after.

 Some missionaries in the zone downstairs in the church building eating rice boxes.  

They are delicious.  My favorite food.  It is $22, which is like under 3 bucks back at home for a good amount of rice with delicious meat and veggies on top. They also give you some soup.  

They have that chashu stuff you always get at the mandarin.  They have it everywhere.  They have it hanging up kind of like the pata negra in Madrid.  They have that and duck and other meats hanging up.  You order, they take it down, chop it up and give it to you.  So delicious and really cheap.  I'll have to send you a pic next week.

from the humidifier in our apartment.  This much water in a few hours while we were at church.

MEETING GAO JM AND HER DOWN SYNDROME SON

August 24, 2015

Family,

Thank you for keeping me updated and for the kind words. I appreciate them. 

This week was a good week.  Except I am always hungry.  Thanks for letting me us the card. I'll use the debit card to get some more money for food because we do not get enough with the monthly budget they give us.  I'd love some snacks, from sour patch, to sour sweet tarts, to peanut mm's, to pretzels, to chips, to dried mangos. Nevermind.  It probably is too expensive to send all that. I can just buy snacks here. I'm really hungry right now.  Only had a boiled egg for breakfast and a banana for lunch.  That is just because we have no time on P-day so we just grab something and run.

I do need some hair gel and a good water bottle that keeps it cold and my ping pong paddle from home.  If it is too expensive, just tell me.  The only thing that I really need is the paddle.  We played this morning for p-day for an hour.  My comp and the 2 other guys I live with played.  It was fun. The first game was rough but after that I started smoking them, which surprised them, since I am white.  I had a 10-2 record.  My comp 1-1, Elder Fung 5-0 and Elder Griffiths 4-1.  We play to 11. Also could you send my emails to these people, from my MTC district, kelsey.bain@myldsmail.net, jared.jackson@myldsmail.net, laura.felnaw@myldsmail.net, ryan.woolley@myldsmail.net, jared.kirscher@myldsmail.net. Thanks.

I loved this week what I learned from Enos.  I was studying about desire and seeing how I could better help my investigators have a desire to keep their commitments and change.  He says he felt a greater desire for the welfare of his bretheren in v9 after hearing these words. The words I think he is referring to are the words from the Lord that his sins were forgiven him and that his guilt was swept away. When we experience the Atonement for ourselves and have that feeling of forgiveness and peace, we will have a greater desire to share that with others and help others experience the same thing. As we use the Atonement everyday, we will have a greater desire to share our wonderful message with others.  I know that is true. I felt like studying this for my investigators helped me a lot more.  

We had an amazing experience with one of our investigators, Gao Jiemei. Her daughter is a member, but she isn't. A lot of missionaries have tried to get her, but because of certain things, she hasn't been baptized. When we teach, she deflects the questions we ask her to her daughter and doesn't really participate much.  She has a son who is Down Syndrome so my comp brought up that I also have a brother with Down Syndrome.  After this, she started talking way more.  She started asking me all these questions and we were talking a lot about her son and Blake and similarities.  It was a miracle.  She started mentioning about how she believes in God and other things related to her son.  Then she brought her son out.  He is awesome.  I started crying.  It was pretty embarassing.  I think this just shows the importance of teaching people, not lessons.  As the people we teach see how it has personal relevance for them, they are much more likely to participate, and continue learning about the gospel.

We just started teaching a man named liu xiansheng.  xiansheng just means sir.  Liu is his surname.  Anyway, we taught him the Restoration.  The miracle was I was able to understand what my companion was saying, so I was able to come in and add to what he said to help the lesson flow instead of me speaking of something totally unrelated and him picking up the pieces after. It was a miracle. I have never been able to understand that much.  The spirit was strong.  He was really interested in the Book of Mormon and looked it over for a while.  We commited him to read it.  He is a Christian and reads the Bible a little. Also while we were teaching, I really gained a testimony of the principle that when we teach by the spirit, the teacher and the student both learn and are edified together.  The spirit helped me see that I need to spend more time feasting on the word.  It is easy to spend time doing other stuff for personal when there is so much to do, but is important to stay in the Book of Mormon.  I only had been using verses here and there in my topical study during personal study time, but felt like I needed to spend more time in the Book of Mormon. The Spirit told me that pretty obviously as our investigator was flipping through the pictures. 

We are also teaching this hilarious old man, Jin xiansheng.  He has gone through a lot of missionaries and has already been baptized and wonders why the missionaries keep asking him to be baptized.  He talks a lot and we have to teach really simply and clearly.  He hasn't been keeping  commitments, but my comp shared a scripture with him that he really liked and wrote down to look at later.  Haven't met with him since.

We have taught a quite a few other sit down lessons, but haven't been able to teach them again, I'll let you know, who the others are if we are able to keep teaching them. Also, If you have time, have a look at "Quick to Observe" by Bednar. Great talk.

There are a lot of people from Mainland that we teach and meet, but then head back to mainland, which is a bummer.  But they have a Book of Mormon they can read there.  There are a lot of people coming back from Mainland next month for school according to our Area book, so that is good news. 

 A few other things.  There are women everywhere that do the weirdest exercises.  The listen to this chinese music and wave their hands and bodies slowsly around sometimes  with hats in their hands all syncronized.  Also a lot of them slap them selves a lot for exercise, they slap their arms, shoulders and legs.  I have no idea why.  

They have these rice boxes we eat all the time which are so good. and really cheap.  The food here is pretty cheap.  They have that charsu stuff we get from that chinese restaurant, which is delicious.  Lot of McDonalds and a few DQ's here.

I got really close to mainland while street contacting a few days ago.  Could have thrown a stone to mainland. also for some reason card throwing got brought up so my comp wanted me to show him, so I flipped a card into an apple and he and the other elders that live with us started flipping out and going crazy, laughing and getting pictures.  It was pretty funny.

Love you all.  Thanks so much for your prayers.  

Elder Stratford

Me with one of my teachers, Liao Liaoshi

Me and Ouyang Liaoshi

 Elder Ma and I at the lighthouse overlooking Macau

 me at the lighthouse.

 everyone posed by doing a handstand on the lighthouse.  I couldn't do it.

 macau in the background

 normal intersection

 me at the lighthouse.  Sorry if I send this one.  I already forgot what I have sent.

Some of the Macau missionaries

 More lighthouse pics