June 22, 2015
Jiating
(Family),
Thanks
for the letters. I got Abby's letter, Sadie's letter, and both of Mom's
letters. Thanks for keeping me up to date on sports and your lives back
home. Hopefully this email is a little more organized. We printed off
emails this morning and have been reading them so this letter should make more
sense. The Dear Elder letters are great cause we get them during the
week.
Thank
you for all your prayers in my behalf, I really appreciate them. To answer some
of your questions, Elder Woolley is going to Hong Kong. There are 3 in
our district and 7 in the zone going to Hong Kong. The majority are going
to Taiwan, with a few going to Canada, Honolulu, California, and Virginia in
our zone. My comp knows Sister Stone pretty well and He knows Sydney
Young. Suit jackets are only required on Sundays and
during TuesdayDevotionals. James Gilbert is going to be in my Zone,
which will be sweet. I found out my Chinese name is not Elder Wet.
I looked up Shi in the dictionary with the first tone, and it does mean wet, so
the word sounds exactly the same, but the characters are different.
Apparently my name actually means or is similar to Elder Work. Chinese is
kind of hard cause there are a lot of words that sound the exact same.
Shi with a 4th tone means is/are/was. There is no past tense in Chinese.
Shi with a 2nd tone means 10. and there are probably many different meanings to
the same word with the same tone.
About
the Atonement for your lesson Mom: Last Sunday we had the opportunity to watch
a Devo Elder Bednar gave entitled, "The Characters of Christ."
It was great. He counseled us to Learn of Christ, not about
Christ. He explained that there would be no atoning sacrifice without the
character of Christ. He gave one example and encouraged us to look up
what the character of Christ was for ourselves. The example he gave was
that the Savior always looked outward, not outward. When the natural man
turns in, Bednar said, He turns out. He gave the example of Christ in the
cross. He was suffering for all of our sins and yet instead of turning
inward, he turned outward. He was worried for his Mother. He shared
a story of a lady who called Bednar when he was a Stake President. This
lady was calling cause there had been a car accident with 3 young ladies in it
and one of them was dead. Also one of the girls was this lady's daughter
and she didn't know if her daughter was alive or was the one that died.
Bednar realized that while she was talking to him, She was also talking to a
medical person with her hand on another phone in her other ear. He could
hear the medical person say over the phone that they had just confirmed who had
died and that the young lady who died was this Mother's daughter. What
happened next amazed Bednar. This lady, who just found out that her
daughter had died, immediately said to Elder Bednar that she needed him to
inform the other mom's and tell them that their daughters were ok. She
had the character of Christ. She was focused outward. When most
people would have turned in, she turned out.
Another
quote I loved from his talk was, "Conversion is consistently being true to
what you know." Elder Holland explained something that I love when we were
watching a clip. He said, "Everything in the conversion process must
happen to you before it happens to them." If we want the people we teach
to pray sincerely, we need to be praying sincerely. If we want our
investigator to read the book of Mormon, we need to be doing the same. If
we want our investigator to repent and use the Atonement, we need to be doing
it first ourselves. I love the quote from I forget who, who said,
"You cannot convert someone beyond your own conversion." This
is key to bearing testimony with power and helping the investigator feel the
Spirit, which is the true teacher and converter.
Our
devo on Sunday was about prayer and obedience. This quote was
shared by Elder Packer on Obedience, "Obedience is powerful spiritual
medicine. It comes close to a cure all." A lot of problems
could be avoided and a lot of situations could resolve themselves if we are
obedient. It is interesting to see in 3 Nephi 11 when the Savior first
appears to the people of the America's that the first thing he teaches is about
obedience. I believe it is in verse 11 where he says that he came down to
do the will of the father. We can all be more obedience, to live what we
know, and live lives of integrity to all the covenants we have made.
Humility
has been on my mind a lot lately. I have been greatly humbled here.
I was reading in James 4 about humility and read some things that I loved.
verse 6 says, "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the
humble." and verse 10, "Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord
and He shall lift you up." I sure need that strength from the Lord
and his Atonement. We need to be humble and recognize our total
dependence on the Lord. I also love in 3 Nephi 11 that Jesus explains
that we need to become as little children. One of the reasons I believe is
because children are totally dependent on their parents and others. We
need to become this way with our Father in Heaven. All the abilities and
talents we have are gifts from God. As we are humble, we are more
teachable and the Lord can better use us. I also love what the hymn #97
Lead Kindly Light teaches about humility. The first verse. " Keep
thou my feet; I do not ask to see the distant scene--one step enough for
me." and the second verse. "I loved to choose and see my path;
but now, Lead thou me on!" As we allow the Lord to guide us and lead us.
As we depend on the Lord we can have that grace in our lives to lift us and
bouy us up to do things much grander than we could ever do on our own.
We
taught just 3 more lessons this week to Zhang Yu Fan. I was still mostly
clueless but they were good. During our 4th lesson, I got really
frustrated cause I could not come up with the words to say what I wanted to
say. Also, my comp could understand him much better and could respond better.
The lesson went poorly. I learned a lot from this lesson. The
spirit left because I was impatient and I became frustrated. The next
lesson, we prayed before our lesson that we might remain calm and patient and
to have the spirit in our lesson to help the investigator feel that
spirit. The lesson went much better. The spirit was there and we
could both feel it strongly as we taught and bore our testimonies to our
investigator. Patience is very key. I am good with being patient with
others, but have a hard time being patient with myself. I am learning
more how to develop the heavenly virtue and christlike attribute of patience.
We read in PMG chapter 10 about how to improve our teaching and we made a goal
as a companionship to stop thinking of what we are going to say while the comp
is teaching and just listen. As we really listen and try to help the
investigator, we are much more successful. Another goal we made as it
suggests in PMG Chapter 10 is to pray for your comp while he is teaching.
Our last goal was to share personal experiences during our first lesson which
was also suggested in ch10.
On
Sunday I was asked to play the piano for Sacrament meeting. I was
told to play 165 Abide with Me and was able to choose the other 2 hymns.
I planned to play redeemer of israel and hark all ye nations. When we
showed up for sacrament however, the songs were totally different. There
was a miscommunication somehow so I had to sight read hymn 177 for the
sacrament hymn. I was blessed to be able to play the hymn without a
mistake and keep the reverence and spirit of the meeting. The other 2
hymns I already knew, so it was no problem.
Also on
Sunday, we had a district meeting and our district leader forgot to assign
someone to lead the discussion which was in the Gift of the Holy Ghost.
So I got cold called to lead the discussion. We had an amazing discussion
and many people in the district commented on it afterward as well as Brother
Williams, the first counselor in the Branch Presidency who was with us.
The Spirit of the Holy Ghost is so amazing. Thoughts came to mind and I
was able to teach of things I had learned from the scriptures and the apostles
words and from personal experiences I had had. That gift should be one of
the most, if not the most, cherished companionship we have. The constant
companionship of the Holy Ghost.
While
at choir practice, an Elder who was sitting behind me thought he recognized me
and I realized it was Houston Hemuli from little leauge football. He is a
big boy and seems to be doing great. It is crazy all the people you run
into. I also got to talk with Elder Tolk a little bit.
I
jammed my finger pretty bad at kickball and it has been killing me all week to
even shake people's hands. But it is mostly better. It was hard playing
basketball. As we started playing, I took a hard pass that hit my hand
hard and a searing pain went down my hand. It kind of stunk, cause I
could only really use my left hand the rest of the gym period and wasn't as
helpful to my basketball team.
One
of the guys in our district is kind of obsessed about clothes. He is out
district leader. His name is Elder Hammond and I actually knew him from
BYU. Anyway, while at lunch, he had a glass of milk in his hand and an
Elder swung his arms back and knocked Elder Hammond glass of milk all over
him. I was laughing so hard. Of all the people for it to happen to,
it had to be He Zhang Lao (Elder Hammond). He was pretty mad.
Another pretty funny story happened a few nights ago. One of the Elder's
in our room snores pretty bad. I don't have a problem with it, but it
keep his comp up at night, so what he has learned to do is get up and shake him
to get him to stop. Anyway, a few night ago, He (Kong Zhang Lao) got up
to shake Jia Zhang Lao. While he shook him, Jia Zhang lao woke up and
yelled. Then Kong Zhang lao, half asleep, screamed too cause it startled
him. I was about asleep and heard these 2 consecutive yells all of a
sudden and it took a while to figure out what had happened. Jia Zhang Lao
didn't even know he screamed. After it happend, 15 min later we were
about to fall asleep when my comp Wu Zhang Lao started busting up laughing for
like 30 minutes straight. It took him that long to figure out what had
happened and once he figured it out, he couldn't stop laughing.
Love,
Elder
Stratford
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