This week has been busy and full of learning. I have learned so much from Sister Guo, Sister Cluff, and Sister Ho. They're all great examples of diligent and loving missionaries. One thing I've learned from them is how to contact people on the street and tie the Gospel into our conversation. I am typically a shy person and have a hard time trying to start a conversation, and then bringing the Gospel into it...However, as I've watched how the other sisters do it, I've learned that it's important to see others as Christ would, as a child of God, and that we love and care for them, without knowing them. My experiences with 'finding' this week didn't go as planned. People would reject our message and ignore us more than frequently, but it only gives me more motivation to keep trying.
Every time we teach our investigators, it just testifies to me that Heavenly Father has prepared people for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It's amazing to watch how much investigators, recent converts, members, and missionaries' testimonies grow during the lessons. I have never felt the spirit guiding me so strong until I became a missionary. The companionship of the Holy Ghost is one of the greatest blessings I've received. I've never invited someone to baptism, and I felt prompted to ask a potential investigator if she was willing to be baptized when we met her for the first time. I was nervous, but she agreed happily and knew that this is the gateway to salvation. It was incredible. The spirit in that lesson was so strong.
I absolutely love the missionaries, members, and people here in the Harbour City Zone. It's been such an incredible learning and growing experience. The work is hard, but I've learned that if we're willing to put our heart, might, mind, and strength, the Lord will help us so much.
I've been reading the Doctrine and Covenants lately, and it's so full of great insight. I absolutely love it.
So some highlights of the week:
On P-day, we had a zone picnic in the park. It was a beautiful day and we had so much fun. Sister Cluff and I started talking to an older man who was really friendly...and then he found out we were Mormon. It was funny because we told him we were missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and he didn't associate them with Mormons. Then he told us he has respect for everyone but hates the Mormons because apparently we shove religion down peoples throats...which is absolutely not true! Then we told him we were Mormon and he pulled out his brown bag of red wine and poured it into his cup. It was a pretty entertaining conversation. He was actually polite other than the fact that he didn't like us.
Some of the ward members, Graham (Simba in the Lion King musical here!), Junior (a professional Rugby player), and Jay (YSA) joined us for the picnic. We did rotissarie chicken sandwiches :)
Then we had FHE later that evening, and we just played ninja.
We had lots of really good lessons this week, and I did more teaching than observing this time, so that was good! :) I'm gradually becoming more confident in my teaching in Mandarin...it's nice when we just have to teach it simply. Our investigators are great. Now the struggle is finding new investigators. We have a couple people who seem pretty interested.
We also teach free English classes, and those are fun! We get a pretty solid group of people that come, and we teach them about how to have a conversation based on the topic of the week. Last week was clothing, so we played a fun activity where they had to make clothes from newspaper and then name the clothes they made.
I've explored the city a lot during my finding, and that's been super fun. At Victoria Park, by Sydney U, we met a guy whose family used to be LDS. He was really cool. He's now agnostic, but remembered a few of the things he learned in Primary and enjoyed the good messages and lessons that the Gospel teaches.
On Thursday and Saturday, Sister Kuo and Sister Cluff did tradeoffs in the other areas, so I was with Sister Ho, and that was a lot of fun :) We have a good time together. She's an incredible missionary and has a great spirit about her. Throughout the week, we've had members accompany us in lessons and come with us contacting. That's a lot of fun. The members here are always so willing to help us. They're great!
Also, the food here is great. I love the diversity of it all. So far I've had Taiwanese, Thai, and Japanese food...so that's been really good. One of our recent converts works in a Chinese restaurant, and he brought us yummy chicken and rice...super spicy!
Sundays are great as usual :) Had a few visitors, so that was fun. Some of our investigators came to church and that was great!
The zone leaders, assistants, and a couple members cooked dinner for us since most of us fasted, so we had a zone dinner which was fun! Corn beef, saussage, toast, pesto pasta...basically all the leftover food in the flats, haha. We also have a lot of meetings, so that's fun :)
That's about it for now...
OH, and I saw Emily Newman! She surprised me, so that was super fun! It was so weird talking to her though as a missionary. I've definitely changed and am in a different mindset...I think it might've frightened her a little haha. It's interesting because all of my conversation are to be centered around the Gospel somehow... it was good though. I loved seeing her!
I love you all! Church is true!
Have a great week!
Sister Lew
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