Thank you all for your Birthday wishes! I look forward to being able to tell all our Chinese Investigators that I am 21. It sounds a lot older than 20 and whenever you tell them they get a really shocked look on their face and say that they don't believe you, when you adamantly reply that you really are they exclaim that you are way too young to know anything more than them. So 21 sounds better. President Preston told me to make it a special day, but I am not too sure how I should go about doing that. We have a Zone Meeting on that day, so I guess that is special.
There must be opposition in all things. That is the theme of the past five days. Ever since the start of the new transfer last Wednesday we, Elder Reynolds and I have experienced some opposition in our work. We have had seven investigators drop us, and pretty much every investigator appointment fall through. I have been telling Elder Reynolds that it is not usually like this, but I am not sure he believes me. Haha. It has given me a great opportunity to appreciate the times when we have a plethora of blessings in our work.
It seems many of the people who have dropped us recently have dropped us because they have read anti-mormon literature which has scared them away. It kills me when investigators fall by the wayside because they read something online because the reason they were reading in the first place is because they had a great curiosity to learn more and in doing so found something not true which turns them off. I know that these encounters do not count as a fair chance for these individuals, so at least they will have a greater chance in the future.
At the same time, as we have seen all of these trials piled against us we were blessed with a great experience last night while we taught a new friend for the first time. Her name is Olivia and she is from China. She does not have any belief in a higher power and knows nothing of religion. As we taught her the Chinese pre-lesson about God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost it seemed that we were getting nowhere. Although she was nice she seemed disinterested in what we were teaching her. Then about halfway through the lesson she woke up spiritually. She started asking questions that showed she had a true desire to know truth.
By the time we got to the end of the lesson and talked about prayer she had felt the spirit and she said she wanted to know how to receive an answer. We taught her how to prayer and invited her to say the closing prayer. The prayer was simple but sincere and immediately after she said amen before we could say anything she exclaimed that she could feel it! She said, "I can't believe it, it is real, I actually feel that there is someone watching over me and look after me, it feels amazing. She then proceeded to profusely thank us for teaching her how to have this feeling. We look forward to seeing her on Wednesday to see how her personal prayers are going.
After meeting Olivia and as well another girl on the street right before Olivias lesson I have decided that I just love happy people. I met a Chinese girl named Candy and she was uber happy and excited about nothing. I asked her why she was so happy and she replied, "why not? There is no reason to be said so I might as well be happy". I am not sure if there is such thing as too happy, but if there was she is a great example of it. It made my day speaking to her though. I still can't believe how happy she was. It just gave me the desire to be happy all the time too, even if I do have trials I have plenty of reasons to be happy. If nothing else, when I am happy I can help others to be happy too.
As we have been studying for our training about a change of heart this week I have been drawn to the line of a "broken heart". Something I have learned is that as we line our will up with with Lords, because we are not perfect, we end up tearing away parts of our desires (our heart) so that we can purify ourselves for the Lord to put the right will in. In essence, we are breaking our heart so that the saviour through his atonement can bind up our broken hearts. -Isaiah 61:1 He is the one and only person that can make our hearts whole again and in a perfect condition, that is why he needs our hearts to be broken, so he can fix them. Like muscles, in order to get them bigger we have to break them down. Although it may be difficult we have the opportunity to put aside our own carnal desires so that we can embrace the will of God. As we do say we will be putting ourselves in a position to truly build the kingdom of God in his way.
Once again, thank you everyone for the Birthday wishes. Have a great week and remember that God Helps those that Help themselves.
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