4th letter

Date: February 14, 2012

Companion: Wang Zhong Lao (Elder James)

MTC

Coming up on week 5 already time is flying. So this week was extremely similiar to last week seeing as though we have the same schedule every week but i still have some great things to talk about. First i want to talk about TRC. If you remember last week i told you about it and this week was just as good as last if not better! The first message we shared was with the same lady as last week (Sister Day, the lady in her 40s or so) but she had another young lady with her who was attending BYU Provo. She is from singapore and she knew my friend Bryce Wang from BYU Hawaii. He is from singapore and also served in taichung! How crazy is that! Our message that day was about how to receive answers to your prayers. We probably learned just as much from them as they learned from us. The spirit was strong. Next we spoke with another young girl who attends BYU Provo. Her name is Lucy Lu and she is from Texas but her family is originally from southern China. She is probably one of the most animated talkers i have ever seen and she speaks so quickly but i did pretty good understanding for the most part. She had a few really good experiences she shared with us about recieving answers to her prayers. We didn't get to finish our lesson because we ran out of time, partially because she really liked talking :D I love TRC every time we go we have such great experiences. Both lessons the people really liked us though, especially because we challenged them all to bear their testimony to someone who is not a member. They were so surprised when we asked them to, but they appreciated it alot and were pretty impressed! They said they had never had someone leave them with a commitment like that!

On sunday night we usually have movie time after our fireside, but this time we watched a talk by Elder Bednar. It was the talk he gave when he came to the MTC on christmas of 2011. That talk had to be one of the most inspiring i have ever heard. For real! If there is any way you can find that talk you MUST watch it. And if you find it online please print it out and send me a copy :D He talked about so many things so i will mention just a few. One thing that really stuck out to me was when he talked about Christ. He quoted Mosiah 3:19 "The natural man is an enemy to God" And then talked about how when we are down in life or want something, we turn in towards ourselves. He then shared a few stories of Christ's ministry and some very good examples of people who were in times of need for themselves and instead of helping themselves reached out to other people. He said "GET OVER YOURSELVES" quite a few times! He also talked about how having a testimony of the gospel is not enough. We need to be converted. Having a testimony is knowing what is true by the power of the holy ghost. Being converted is consistantly being true to what we know. What an awesome statement.

One last experience i will share, since i am running low on time, is the lesson we had with our investigator yesterday. We had the opportunity of having a "member" present for our lesson (Dai Jie Mei who is a zone resource for our zone came with us!) We went in and checked up and he had been keeping all of his commitments! Like reading and praying, which he usually doesn't. After that we explained the relationship between the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and the plan of salvation. Sister Dai helped so much. He understood and said he would be baptized as long as we help him prepare! I was so excited that it didn't hit me that he was already a member (and my teacher) until we walked out of the room hahaha i can't wait until that happens for real! It is such an awesome feeling!

Somethings i thought i would share not pertaining to the gospel so much-This week we tried the tower challenge. The tower challenge is where we try to eat a whole tower of cereal in one meal. They keep the cereal in these big plastic towers, hence the name tower challenge. We got so close! We went for the fruit loop tower and got oh so close to eating all of it but we just couldn't! Nik Huff was my inspiration to do this. He did it with his zone! I see him pretty much every day it is so great! We averaged around 10 bowls each, but next time we are going to get it.