Letter #64

HELLO, HELLO

 

Well this was really an interesting week! To start things off, I have a new companion. His name is elder Mok, he is from Hong Kong! My mission president talked to us a couple a weeks ago, and told us that there would be a new elder coming, but we were not expecting him to come in the middle of the week and to have him join us as a three sum! There are now five elders in our small china town pad! We have only done it one night so far but it was not bad, we had a good time! We think that elder Faulkner will be leaving here in a few weeks, so it really will not be that bad! Elder Mok is so cool! He is very funny, and humble. He also speaks very good English! He attended BYU-H before his mission, and he loves to read. So put those two things together, and you have good English.

Well this week went great. I think last week I told you about Vicky. This is the investigator that we said we would write a song for if she read the book of Mormon every day for a week. When she came to meet with us, she refused to start talking about the book of Mormon until we performed her song. The song went great! Elder Faulkner is very good at the piano so the words of the song really did not matter! It made my job very easy; all I had to do was look cool. (Something I am pretty good at doing.) After we performed the song for her, we sat down and talked with her about her experience reading the book of Mormon. She had a lot of questions so at first we just answered all of her questions. After she was done asking questions, we asked her what she thought. She said it was ok... but we could tell that she wanted to say more. We asked her if she had any cool experiences from reading and praying about the book of Mormon. She got quiet for a second, then said, "well, I have one, but I don’t know if it was real." she then started to explain that earlier that week, she was in a fight with one of her close friends, and she was feeling really bad about it. She really wanted an opportunity to talk to her friend but she had called and called and nobody would answer. She even said that the phone would make a funny noise, so she thought that her friend had changed phone numbers. She decided to read the book of Mormon and say a prayer. As soon as she finished her prayer, her phone started to ring and it was her friend calling. She then looked up and said, do you think that this is just coincidence? We told her that it was not and bore testimony that it was an answer to her prayer. But, she was still not 100% sure. She still continues to deny the answers that she gets to her prayers. But, it has been really cool for me to see how heavenly father still answers her prayers! It is so touching to see how hard he is trying to get this girl to know that he is there.

We also had a really cool lesson with a young man name Hong. He had talked with me a few times in chinatown on the street but never really had any interest to learn about church. Until one day he saw us standing outside in the rain and he could not believe that we would still be passing out cards even with bad weather. That day, he actually did not come and talk to me, it was the next time I stopped him walking he stopped and talked with me for a while. He told me that he had seen us last week in the rain passing out these cards. He then started to ask sincere questions about Jesus Christ. I told him we would love to meet with him one day and teach him more about who Jesus Christ is. He gave me his phone number, we called, and he really came! We shared the plan of salvation with him and it went so well. We figured that if you want to really understand who Jesus Christ is then the plan of salvation is the perfect way to do it. When we told him in the beginning we wanted to answer three questions for him; where we were before this life? Why we are here? And where we are going? He told us that he had these questions ever since he was a little boy. He even remembered one time asking one of his friends what he thought about these questions. He told us that his friend said, I don’t know, and I really don’t care. So he just kinda blew it off. He got really into the plan of salvation! It was so obvious that this man was very prepared. We are meeting with him again this week, and we are very excited to see what happens.

We also met a new guy this week named peter! This guy is so awesome. He walked in randomly a couple days ago and said that elder Faulkner contacted him long ago. He told us that he does not have a lot of time, usually just Wednesdays he will have some time off, but that is not even for sure. This man loved Christian religion and thought the country of China needed it really bad. He had heard some news recently of a young lady in Chinatown that was hit by a car. She laid on the side of the street in pain and not moving. It was video taped by the traffic light camera. There were 10 people counted that walked by and did not say a word, just walked by. Finally in the end it was a garbage lady that stopped helped her up and called the cops. Kinda reminded me of the Good Samaritan. But anyways, he said that he really wanted to make a difference. He asked us if he could come out with us street contacting after we shared a lesson with him. He came out with us for over an hour, then we had to go look up to a less active and he asked if he could stay just until he was out of cards. We obviously said yes! And were so excited! As we walked away thinking about what we just heard, we both looked at each other and decided that this guy needed a baptismal date. We walked back and invited him right then and there on the street and he said yes! He told us that he would love to and was very excited! We are not sure when, but we will make it happen! This man is so prepared!

Really was a great week! I was very blessed! Well I hope that you are all having a great week! I love you guys so much!

ELDER BARTON!