Hey there, friends!
We just got move calls last night and I will be staying in Hung Shui Kiu with Sister Branch–super excited for this next transfer and we are ready to buckle down and keep working hard!! Also I hope that I never leave this area because I love these people so much! We have been able to visit more members recently and just getting to know them and share with them has helped me love them that much more; I feel like I am so close to these people now!
We have been busy with meetings and a lot of stuff that’s not super fun but still needs to be done, although we did have a little time for finding this week. We were walking around and there was literally no one on the streets–not a single soul! We live in the middle of nowhere pretty much, so sometimes you encounter this problem if you are going to a place a little further out there. But we felt that we really needed to be there, so we did some finding. We had a prompting to try to visit a less-active that we haven’t been able to get ahold of, but she wasn’t there. However, as we were walking out of the place where he lived we talked to a lady behind her and she was super nice and really interested in coming to church with us! And funny enough the name that she’d chosen for herself was “Faith” 🙂 Heavenly Father has a way of testing His children in order to get the message across!
We go to a place called “Crossroads” every week for service and this past Friday they invited us over to do a poverty simulation. In it we were all divided into “families” and had to work as fast as we could to make and sell bags that we made out of paper, otherwise we would get kicked out of our place and our family would die. It was such a mind-opening experience for me because I realized how many people are living in complete destitution and how helpless and hopeless their lives may feel. We only did the simulation for about an hour, but by the end of it I just felt for these people so much and had a greater desire to help them. At the end of it all, the guy conducting us asked, “So what. So what are YOU going to do about all of this now that you know?” I know that we all have the power to make big changes in the lives of others, but only if we are willing to really seek out these opportunities and then work hard to help someone else!
We had another lesson with our investigator Mary and she is doing super well! She has been reading the Book of Mormon and praying and just has such a sincere desire! The only problem is that she works every single Sunday and is really pressed for money and doesn’t think that her boss would let her take it off. But it was super cute because when we committed her to try to find a way to come to church she pretty much started mapping out everything that she had to do to be able to achieve this goal. I think that it will be a slow process for her, but I have faith that if she continues doing the things that she’s doing then she will continue to progress spiritually very quickly!
We did lots of exchanges this past week so I’m kind of blurring together what happened and when, but it was a really good week despite my bad memory! I am actually in a really interesting position right now as I am training a brand new missionary and then helping my other companion to go home in just a few days, but it has given me lots of new insights. These past weeks I have looked for more opportunities to serve and been busier than ever, and what a blessing it has been for me! I know that the Lord places us with whom He does for a reason and that we can always learn something new from others.
Have a superb week! And as always–SERVE!!
In my area most people out here live in “Tsuens” which are big groups of buildings and houses. They are essentially villages and some of the people that live there have lots ancestors who also lived there many years ago and in a sense “founded” that village, and usually they are all related. When you are walking through these Tsuens the people who live there usually all have the same last name because they are related in some way or another and the Tsuens are usually named after them. There is a place Called Lo Uk Tsuen in my area and so as we were walking around there, pretty much everyone there was named Lo unless they had recently moved there. Pretty interesting!
A journey through Thailand 