Hong Kong: BIRTHDAY WEEK AND HALLOWEEN

November 1, 2015

Family,

Snacks are not quite gone. thank you. thanks for the updates.

This week was a good week. I slacked in writing down things to say on the email because I said most of it on the recordings.

Chen Family - they are busy and hard to schedule more than once a week. they are doing great. They are reading from the book of mormon and really like coming to church. the ward has really taken them in. It's amazing. We had a pretty crazy lesson with them though. We were planning on just teaching Ada, but they showed up unexpectedly as well. I thought Chen told me he couldn't come, but I misunderstood. Anyway, we changed our plan, since we were going to teach Ada the restoration, but we have alreadly taught that to the Chen Family we decided to teach Lesson 2. It was rough. We needed a member, and we weren't prepared with materials to help us teach. They were totally lost and looked confused the whole time. We probably should of just taught the Restoration and reviewed it for the Chen Family. Anyway, we have a member who is willing to help us teach them this week.

Sem Family - we found another family this week to teach. we were street contact and ran into Lidia. We rescheduled her and she brought her family. We taught them. They are great. Very nice family and interested to learn. They have a little 3 year old.

We are also teaching a family from Nepal. They don't speak very good english and no cantonese or mandarin. We are turning them over this week probably. Luckily, we know an investigator who has been taught for a year and is just waiting till he turns 18 to become a member because his parents won't let him. His first language is the language Nepal people speak, Nepalize maybe, and he is helping us teach this week.

Zheng - he had a lot of questions as we taught lesson 2. He is very sincere and very interested. Been taught for a while. Very smart man.

Haven't been able to meet with Sam or Elena or Jason this week.

my ponderize this week was 2 Nephi 9:18. It gives us 3 things to do to inherit the kingdom of God. 1st is believe in Christ. There is a reason that is always first. Faith is always before everything else, because it leads to everything else.If we don't have that faith, we won't endure the crosses of the world. 2nd is to endure the crosses of the world. JST helps us understand that taking up your cross is denying ourselves of all ungodliness, every worldly lust and keeping the commandments. We need to make the decision to follow Christ and deny ourselves from iniquity. Someone else can't do it for us. 3rd is to depise the shame it (i assume enduring the crosses of the world). That comes from humility and seeking the Lord's will and his praise over man's praise. i don't know if that makes any sense. my thoughts are jumbled today.

Lately I have been hearing a lot about simplicity. I was reminded of Utchdorf's talk in General Conference. Then in our zone training we talked a lot about keeping things simple. Then today in PMG I read a quote from President Lee telling us that we need to teach so simply and plainly that no one can misunderstand us. Then I opened the scriptures during personal study to 2 Nephi 25, where Nephi repeatedly reminds us about the importance of teaching with plainess to help people learn. Must be something I need to hear and to work on.

I am excited to get the Ensign this week I hope. So I can read over the conference talks. We have Zone Conference on Friday.

Thank you for your prayers and examples. I know that the Lord loves us and is looking out for us and sometimes will give us a period of testing to test our faith to see if we are serious in our desires to follow Christ and the help we want to receive.

Elder Stratford