February 9, 2015

Happy valentines day! I want all of you to be my Valentine :)!

This week we had Zone Training Meeting, and that was nice because I
got to see Elder Garver again. In ZTM we talked about our main goals
they are; Find, Teach, Baptize, Retain, and Reactivate! It is hard for
missionaries to do all of those things by themselves, if you can,
please help missionaries with referals, being a fellowshipper, or just
make them some food haha. I love the members in our YSA ward they're
really great to us. We ate with a family (Minchins) who is renting out
to a Chinese girl named Ziyi, she is really cool and the mom of the
family speaks Chinese from her mission in taiwain. The lesson was
great and they later came to our Chinese new year Fireside so
hopefully she can read and start progressing. Also I spoke a lot of
Chinese at that lesson so Elder Bird gave me a lot of good tips
after.  He says my Chinese is getting better but its hard to notice!

Later in the week one of our Investigators Chris finished the Book of
Mormon. He finished reading it in like A WEEK AND A HALF.. it was
pretty insane when he told us that he finished it. We were going to
teach the word of wisdom since we know that he drinks tea but he had a
lot of questions about the Book of Mormon and the Bible, he has read
the bible 3 times but still doesn't really understand it and doesn't
even believe in eternal life. He says it would be weird because
everyone will be old and a guys son could be other than his father. We
tried to explain the resurrection more and stuff but I think he just
needs to feel the spirit and build his testimony of Jesus Christ
because once he has that and then a testimony of the BOM nothing else
matters, He will be able to keep the word of wisdom and believe all of
the teachings because he understands Christ's perfection and the
perfection of his teachings. "Christ is the gospel personified" -I
think that was Holland. It is hard trying to find wahts right to teach
chris but he is still reading and progressing so hopefully its just
time that he needs.

We ate dinner at one of our favorite memebers, Emma's house this week.
she always is fun and were trying to help her roommate to be more
active. It never fails that I say something extremely stupid when we
go over to her house... and its usually sacrilegious, racist, or
something just ridiculous. Oh well haha. There wasn't anything too bad
this time. I think im learning my lesson. She taught me the correct
way to say Gyro you have to roll the G a little.. its rough. she got
mad at me for saying it wrong at dinner.

Ping pong and English class went great this week, we are having good
numbers come almost every time now. Its nice to actually have people
to teach English to. It is a great finding activity. Also on Saturday
we had a huge Chinese New Year Fireside. There was an hour of talks at
the beginning by Chinese members and two missionaries, it was great to
sit back and listen and work on  my Chinese. I can understand a lot of
church vocab and understood most of the talks. There were a lot of
former investigators and some current ones that made it out and I
think it was some great exposure for them. They can see that this
isn't just a white guy church. Plus there were lots a return
missionaries with great Chinese. Andrew Gibb is one of them and he won
a Chinese game show and got a freeride to any Chinese college he
wanted. Chinese people say that his Chinese is better than theres
because he has no accent at all. Most Chinese people have really bad
accents, being standard is a great thing and apparently his Chinese is
very very standard!

Sunday we met with Sean the lazy Taiwanese guy. Turns out he is not so
lazy anymore! He got a second job and is working really hard. He still
loves his League of Legends (an internet computer game) which he is
playing every time we go over. but he is becoming a really hard
worker. He had a super hard month, he wouldn't accept our calls or
texts, and was in a really dark place. We were able to bear strong
testimony that when you are in the hardest times in your life is often
when you can find and see Christs love and light the easiest. its when
we are stripped down to nothing that we look for things that are
immovable like Christ to rely on. Elder birds story really helped him(
about his near death experience in the car crash) he seemed to feel
better and always says that we are so convincing but we explained that
its the spirit that is convincing not us.

It was a great week, it snowed a lot and the roads were really scary a
few days, but we made it through!

Be safe, love you all! good luck on valentines day or Single awareness
day, whichever you prefer to call it :)!!

love, Elder Ostler