Chinese Church Tour

On Monday, February 1, 2016 1:10 PM, Dustin Thelander <dustin.thelander@myldsmail.net> wrote:

After we emailed last week, we had a super fun zone activity. The high school here had school off on Monday, and we got to play some basketball with the entire Ho-Ching family. They are super athletic, and the games were intense. Was I sore afterward? Yes. We had a great dinner later with Chea- she has come back to church after years of inactivity. She is super strong and is working on getting a job that has Sundays off. For the time being, she takes her lunch break early to be at sacrament meeting. She is a great example of giving her all for the church. On Tuesday, we had a zone conference. This is a pretty big meeting that usually includes 3 zones and the mission president and his wife speak to us. This time it was just our zone. This way the training could be more one on one, and President Hobbs can get to know us much better. It was really awesome. We spent time in the scriptures and discussed in detail what was taught to us in the big missionary broadcast. Following that, we had a lot of cancellations, kind of a bummer, but we have those people set up to meet with this week!

Wednesday and Thursday, we had the chance to visit some less actives, and that was really great. Our role with them is to rebuild their faith and invite them back to church. A lot of times the hardest part is figuring out why they left in the first place. Some say it is too early, some say they were offended, and many other things. Really though, it usually comes down to lack of faith, and when that occurs church becomes something to do when there is nothing else to do. I was thinking at church this week about how much I love going. For me, I love the spirit that I feel at church. It brings me peace and comfort. The week can do so much to drag us down and take the spirit away from us, but church is that spiritual recharge that we need to get us through the week to come. Once people come back to church, they feel that again- they just need to take the step to come out to the building. On Friday, we had our weekly stop with Brother Cook. He is doing better this week physically but says that each day is a question mark pertaining to his health. That night as we were talking to a random woman on the street and relaying the message of the Restoration, she got very interested. In fact, she accepted a Book of Mormon, and invited us back this week to discuss it further. She is Yara, and I think we have a good shot at starting to teach her. This really built my testimony of talking to everyone. I have no way of knowing who the Lord has prepared for me to teach if I don't stop and talk to everyone.

Saturday was awesome. I was on exchanges with Elder Redhair, our zone leader. So, I went to his area for the day. The stake here did a building deep clean of all of the buildings, so we helped out with that in the AM. Also, in the morning, we had the chance to give a church tour. The two touring were Yolanda and Alien, both from mainland China. They are here on a foreign exchange program for 3 weeks and are staying with members of the church. Before Saturday they had never heard of Jesus Christ!! We took them around the church and showed them the pictures and explained to them how our church services are run. It was really awesome. They did view it more as a cultural learning experience, but to introduce them to Christ is amazing. They attended church on Sunday as well, and talked with some Chinese speaking missionaries at the temple in LA. Who knows, maybe these two will start a Christian movement in China.

On Sunday, we were blessed to have a new bishopric put into place. The meeting was so spiritual, and I know all there felt that. The former bishop and his counselors gave great testimonies as well as the new bishop and his counselors. This is not the ward I come from, but the spirit confirmed to me that the new bishop has been called of God and is the right man to lead the congregation right now. In the evening, we taught George. He is in his 30's and fresh out of jail- he served 17 years. He is looking to make a change, and we taught to him the Restoration of the Gospel. He wants us to come back, and he asked us where our church is so he can make a trip out and see what it is all about. This week was full of ups and downs, but doing the Lord's work is so rewarding either way. I love you all so very much.

Scritpure of the week comes from the book of Helaman Chapter 5 verse 12 "And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock or our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall."

Love,

Elder Thelander

photos- with the Chinese students and me next to a nice car