I'm soooo tired! Were you constantly tired on your mission? I've like mastered the art of instantly falling asleep anywhere in an attempt to catch up on sleep... It’s crazy how fast I can do it EXCEPT when I lay down to go to bed every night. Then I just lay there and think about EVERYTHING. The other night I pondered the lyrics of "If you could hie to Kolob" ... Bad idea. That just confused myself for like three days.
Anyways....
As far as I know Dicky is doing okay but they need to push back his date because he does have a problem with believing in one true church. (I knew this when I left) He pointed out other churches’ and faiths do HAVE truth to them and that's whats holding him up. He thinks if he ONLY believes in this one church he will miss other truths from other faiths. He doesn't truly get that there is one answer but they are working on that.
So about the cockroaches... We bought an axe deodorant spray can and a lighter and just light them on fire when we see them.... I probably shouldn't be telling you this. We need to by a bomb and you are probably right about the flat being infected but I can't really do much about it. We are lucky it’s not THAT bad, its only like 10 or 15 we see a day (and kill with fire hehe).
Let me share a story of a golden referral that we received this weekend! This last Saturday we had a music activity in our ward, where everyone would show off their talents. (They even asked the missionaries to do a piece). Half way through this kid gets up and beat boxes and it’s AMAZING! He was a nonmember but his friend asked him to perform. So afterwards I went and talked to him. Found out his name is Billy and he taught himself to beat box over the last two years. I complimented him on his beat boxing and he was like I can teach you! (So I might be learning to beat box...) Then we talked some more and I invited him to other activities for this upcoming week (English class and soccer night) so he gave me his phone number. Then Elder Osborn (my comp) gave him a tour and showed him the baptismal font and he asked "So how do you get baptized?" and "What do you have to do to get baptized?" We talked a bit more then invited him to church then headed home. We get to church yesterday 15 minutes early (like normal) and he is sitting in the chapel already! The night before every young man was asking him to teach them how to beat box and so all the young men and him were just chatting it up. It almost looked like he was a member by the way he was talking to them it was awesome! Then he went to all the classes (sacrament, gospel class, young men) afterwards we pulled him aside and asked Peter (he is a RC of two years) to help us. Instead two more young men come in and help us! We wanted to teach him a short lesson on how you can know this church is true but he asked a lot of questions so we just taught him the first lesson. Gave him an invitation to read, pray and keep meeting with us. He accepted. We promised he could know it was true and he said he would try. When we started walking down stairs (our church building is two stories btw) Billy and Elder Osborn were talking (I was talking to Peter) he told Elder Osborn, "Yeah I think this could be true!" So he is our golden referral and I am so happy!
Yeah soooo for all the finding hours we've had these last two weeks (which is a lot by the way) God rewarded us with this kid!
Our current investigators that are progressing are Billy (also a new investigator) and Nephew (yes that's his real name). We have a couple other investigators but we don't really meet all that often so hopefully we can fix that.
I try to help Elder Osborn and I push him a lot to help him improve; I just hope understands what I am doing and not just trying to "run" everything. I've tried to explain to him my method on pushing him (like I did Elder Martinez) and I think he understands. When we go finding (just on the street) I try to talk to someone by myself and he talks to another person so we can meet as many people as possible but he normally just follows me around and talks to whomever I stop. So now when he starts talking I walk away and let him handle it. This is the method Elder Ward used on me and I used on Elder Martinez. It guarantees he will learn how to find quickly, pick up Chinese faster and become a good teacher but I think he might feel I am just leaving him hanging. I've explained and I think it is helping him. (I got him to teach two street lessons on his own this week). So I'm serving him but pushing him a lot. Ehhh being in a training position is a lot of work and being District Leader over a bunch of young missionaries is a lot more work haha... When did I become the mature one to handle this?
Well a typical day in Hong Kong is pretty much the same everywhere... We wake up get ready, studies then we go find or teach lessons if they are planned. That's really it. We pray and ask were to find or sometimes (more recently it’s been like this- we just walk... We do have paakmuhn (door knocking) areas but I don't like them they really aren't that effective with Chinese culture. So we normally go street contacting. We do have activities up here to bring in investigators like English class and soccer night. We have other ones coming up like dance class (we won't attend haha). Overall it’s going okay.
So this last Monday we had a special activity called EEFY (English Especially for youth) we planned a "war day" which capture the flag and a water balloon fight... But I need a hair cut sooo I asked Elder Townsten to help me out and instead of get my hair wet in the sink I thought it would be more fun to take a sick picture with a water ballon hitting me in the head!
Then the water balloon fight started.... And let me tell you I am SOOOOOO glad I got a water proof camera because these pictures were awesome!
So we quickly ran out of water balloons like you would imagine with 30 + people and so it turned into an all out bucket war! It was INTENSE haha
No one was safe...
Like I said no one was safe from the buckets at any given time... Even during group pictures people were getting attacked!
Me and Elder Townsten didn't want the fun to end so we kept taking crazy slow-mo pictures with my camera and hitting each other with water... I got like 100 pictures of just me and him doing this to each other...
So Sister Mckown took this picture and it just made us look super gangster so I thought it was funny. The big Asian in the middle is A-Ho he is going to Snow College (in Utah) this week. All the white kids surrounding him are missionaries... By the way everyone commented on how Mexican I look... I'm in China and people still think I'm Mexican. (By the way my hair doesn't look that crazy... the water just made it look like I greased it back...)
