SHE WAS SO GRATEFUL FOR THE BOOK OF MORMON

May  29, 2016

Family,

Good week.  

Zou JM set a baptismal date! Sept 25. Little far away, but she set the date and is working towards it. She set the date because i guess 9 is a lucky number, 2 is like a couple or pair and apparently has some good meaning, and 5 because it kind of sounds like the 'I' in 'I love you' in chinese. Whatever works for her. She is doing great and continues to progress.

Wang Le has been in Shenzhen this week.

Jia Jm didn't come to the lesson or english class cause of the rain. People are really afraid of the rain here. 

We found Chen DX this week. Pretty amazing. We knew the general area where he lived. I wasn't in a tall building, only 1 story village, so there wasn't a security guard and we could knock doors. We found his house. He told us that he has not been coming to church because his mom doesn't like him to come. He told us she said if he comes, she will kick him out of the house and he will have no where to stay. Not sure what best to do there, but we just expressed our love for him and encouraged him to continue to read the Book of Mormon.

Also Fang and Chen are back from Mainland! We called them on Thursday during weekly planning and they said they just got back that day. Problem is they are very busy now. Hopefully we can meet with them and re set a baptismal date for them.

One of the cool tender mercies of this week happened last night. We were talking to the bishop about some members in the ward over the phone and he wanted us to go check up on Zhu JM (same one that helped us teach the other old lady and speaks half mandarin and half cantonese, and the same one that I gave a blessing to) She was home, but didn't answer the door. We called her and she told us to come back the next night. It was a little weird that she didn't answer since we could here her talking in her house when we called her, but no problem. We walked back home and just as we were about home, this Filipino lady runs up to us yelling, "Elders Elders!" (too bad I can't put a Filipino accent on that, they are the best).  She went on to tell us that she was a member back in the Phillipnes and since moving to Hong Kong a year ago, she has not been and doesn't know where to go, but wants to. We helped her get in contact with the Filipino sisters and then ran back home to get an english flyer with the addresses on it for english church. We happened to have a Tagolog Book of Mormon in our apartment, so we came back down, gave her the flyer with the church address and offered her  the Book of Mormon. At this point, she broke down crying and was so so happy she found us. She was so so grateful for the Book of Mormon and info about church. She couldn't stop staying thank you. 

If Zhu Jm had let us in, we probably would have been there for 30 min and then coming home, would have missed this Filipino sister who was eating dinner on the bench before she went home.  My district leader used to stay a lot, There usually is a reason lessons get canceled. That was for sure true in this instance.

The Lord is looking out for each of us and is in the details of our lives. 

Have a great week.  Love,

Elder Josh Stratford

ward correlators house before correlation