Happy birthday to me! I am now 20 years old. It's very strange to consider, especially because I spent over 90% of being 19 as a missionary. I have become so used to telling people 我十九岁 that I'm not sure if I will be able to change, haha. Anyways, this past week was excellent. We taught 20 lessons in total (10 with members, 8 without members, and 2 with recent converts or less-actives), and we got almost 20 hours of finding. Much of it was thanks to the combination of two areas into one; we had the doubled numbers from monday, then all of the opportunities throughout the rest of the week to meet with investigators from both areas. I'm excited for this transfer!
We had a dinner with members scheduled for every single night, since the two different meal rosters were combined into one. On two nights we even had two different dinners scheduled, but we rescheduled some to make everything fit.
There were a few miracles this week. My favorite occurred while we were talking to people on the street. I felt impressed to talk to one fellow in particular. He wouldn't stop for me, however. I learned he had actually investigated the church in Taiwan but eventually dropped. Little to no interest whatsoever. However, as I had to walk beside him for a short distance, my companion followed me, and after I finished talking to the first fellow I discovered my companion talking with two girls. One, an inactive member, had approached him! She hasn't been to church for over two years, apparently her entire family is also inactive. Anyways, she came to church yesterday for the first time for a while.
Another miracle is that I learned last night that our investigator has quit smoking -- in fact she hasn't been smoking for a while! We weren't in touch last week because she was on vacation, but upon her return we learned that she had succeeded and wanted to be baptized as soon as possible. So hopefully I will have some good news to report next week :)
One of our most progressing investigators just returned to china, for a long time probably. They were considering baptism seriously before they returned, knowing that they might not have the opportunity for a while inside of China. However, it was just too short of notice. I hope they will continue to read the Book of Mormon and pray while in China, so they can be baptized at their next opportunity.
So anyways, my birthday... Some of our investigators that I am closest with, along with the member that helps out the most with them, planned a surprise celebration. This is how it happened:
One of the investigators returned from China just a few days before and he contacted us to schedule a meeting, on Saturday. We planned for 8 pm.
We met him at a bus stop called "Cultural Center" next to a place called South Bank (part of which is an area we aren't allowed to go to as missionaries -- there is an artificial beach and plenty of drunk people). He told us he wanted to sit down to talk to talk to me about personal matters (a true story actually -- his ex-girlfriend just got engaged while he was in China and his classmates have been against him). The manner in which he acted was a give away, especially when he acted as though he had lost an umbrella, called his "friends" to find out where he had left it, and then went further into South bank to "find it". Besides, I already was suspicious anyways. Nevertheless, I played along :P
We found the umbrella and sat down at a bench there. We started talking, and then the others appeared, holding a cake and singing happy birthday. I was actually mildly surprised at this part, the manner in which the others would arrive wasn't what I had expected. They had all been hiding behind a tree, very well apparently because I didn't notice them at all.
We didn't have long to stay with them and talk (so much for our lesson... that was the one disappointment for the week, haha :P ). I got a few presents and letters: some sweets, a refrigerator magnet from hong kong, a little key chain thingy from China, and a few others. The best of all though was that the investigator who returned from China brought with him a copy of 西游记 (Journey to the West)!!! If I can read that, my chinese will be really really good. Just a goal for the future, I guess, haha.
That's all for the week. We are hoping to keep up the success through this next week. It will be a good transfer. Take care everyone!
Elder J. Colton Ladd
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