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
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