September 26, 2010

So, as far as missionary work goes, I'm doing okay. We have one really solid 18 year old kid named Tu2 Ren2 Xiang2. His baptism is scheduled for Saturday. I'm excited for that. We also have a 14 year old kid that might get baptized next week. That would be good too. I ended up giving the grandpa and grandma investigators to the sister missionaries and they are doing great things with them, and the 90 year old grandma is scheduled for baptism the next week. My little chubby kid would have been able to get baptized next week, but he didn't come to church yesterday. So I probably will have moved by the time he gets baptized. That made me sad.

Sometimes things just make me really sad. I kept thinking of our newest convert Chen Zhi Tai this week, but he was really busy with work. We finally met with him, and he had smoked some cigarettes again. Cigarettes are so so gross. I hate smoking. I pulled this bum guy off the street into church yesterday and he was really funny. He smoked an entire cigarette in like two puffs before he came into church, and then coughed all through sacrament meeting. oh well. he can change. So I confiscated his cigarettes, and had them in my box on the back of my bike, but it just brought a real bad feeling to even have the cigarettes. It was like Satan had more leverage to get to me just because I had some of his stuff near me. Even though smoking isn't a temptation for me, having stuff that satan has control of just brought a bad feeling, so I threw them away. Anyways, because chen zhi tai is such an amazing amazing new member, Satan pounded him real hard last week. We met with him and set goals with him to work towards being worthy to get the priesthood and go to the temple, and committed him to meet with the bishop. But he didn't come to church the next day. Maybe I was too hard on him, and just made him feel guilty that he had smoked or something, and felt awkward. So If you could say prayers for Chen2 Zhi4 Tai4 then that would be good. It was this that made me first realize how missionary work really is like a war. A war with satan. Because after everything we do to get this person to the baptismal font, Satan's very favorite tactic is to swoop in on the very newest members, and just get them while they are still weak and haven't developed a real strong testimony. And when I saw satan doing this, I just got real real mad, madder than I've ever been, because I'm not going to let him just take this person who found such joy from the gospel, and make him miserable. I don't know what our missionaries and our members are doing wrong, but unfortunately this is a war that it seems satan is winning right now. We have a Recent Convert list of people baptized in the last year, and there are 36 or so people on it, and of those only about 13 or 14 are active in the church. It's so sad. And our ward list has probably about 500 people on it, and of those only about 120 come to chuch each week. And this isn't just my area, this area is one of the oldest strongest wards in the mission. And this mission is the jewel of the Asia area. We actually truly need every single member to wake up, break out of their little shell where they feel comfortable, and go out and be saviors. go out and be the savior's hands, do his work. I don't know why I didn't realize this before my mission. I just came to church, and focused on myself. And if a friend or investigator or less active came to church I'd just think they were some weird new kid and not really talk to them. Well, I just hope that in General Conference someone will address this, and help our members realize that they actually do need to start doing missionary work. That like Elder Bednar says, they should not be praying for the missionaries to do their responsibity of finding people to teach. Oh well. Mom I'm only sending this to you because you are a such a good example of not fearing man more than god. It doesn't matter what other people think of you. If you bring somebody to the celestial kingdom is it worth an awkward moment? So keep being awesome and encourage as many other members as you can to do missionary work, give referrals, find less actives and strengthen them. alright, bubye!