Hong Kong: 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